Month: January 2021

Movies. Films. Cinema. It really doesn’t matter which word you use to describe the motion picture as a phenomenon I just want to talk about my love of movies.

Like most Americans I love television and one of the things I love watching on television are movies. I love movies. And even though I do tend to lean towards horror and Sci-Fi movies for the most part I have a broad range of experiences and tastes that I enjoy.

In fact while my top five favorite films of all time list is pretty heavily sci-fi / horror once you expand that out to my top 10 or top 20 it’s far more diverse. You start to see comedies, action movies, fantasy films even love stories in some cases. I just love movies I love everything about them.

Some of my favorite memories are of watching movies. Many of those memories are by myself going on a journey in my mind as I watch a movie Take Me Away to a Faraway place. But I also have several memories of movies that are associated with other people in one way or another. Watching a movie can be a social experience. The best part is it doesn’t have to be and that’s why I like movies it’s an activity you can enjoy on your own. I still feel like you’re a part of something bigger than you.

I watch a movie like Dumb and Dumber and I’m thoroughly amused by The Whimsy of it the innocence of those two idiots. I watch a movie like RoboCop and I’m taken to a dystopian place where crime is so bad the cops have to create an unkillable robot specifically to murder criminals just to survive. I can watch a movie like The Muppet Movie and just smile throughout as the puppets entertain me. I can dig into my childhood favorites and I can revisit Adventures of Pippi Longstocking and remember what it was like to see the world as a Fantastical Place full of wonder.

A lot of my favorite movies have one thing in common and that’s pretty much they present a world that is not completely compatible with reality or at least our perception of reality. And that’s what I love about movies each film is a story a self-contained alternate reality where the rules of time and physics and Society are altered ever-so-slightly to make that film possible. Whenever you watch The Three Stooges film short the first thing you have to accept is a bowling ball can land on a person’s head without crushing their skull. In real life that’s not at all possible but in the imaginary world of the Stooges it works.

Whenever I pick movies that I enjoy I usually find something that is either different enough from the world around me that I can experience something I’m not familiar with or it’s something that is familiar and believable but that I am not capable of experiencing myself for whatever reason.

Whenever I watch a superhero movie I get immersed in a world where people have magical powers fighting monsters who look like humans that have their own magical powers. Whenever I watch a Star Wars movie I’m absorbed in the concepts of this mystical energy field that has a light side and a dark side that is manipulating the events of people’s lives around it. I’m also fascinated by the intricacies of the political layers in the Star Wars universe.

Some of my favorite movies are abstract distractions. They might have a plot following certain characters but usually it’s the Fantastical elements that I’m drawn to not so much the human characters who are usually there to justify the existence of whatever fairy tale device it is that’s being used.

I’m also using movies as a way to feel things that I don’t get experience. Due to a variety of reasons including social anxiety, transgenderism, social awkwardness, and even a fear of rejection I live a fairly isolated and alone World a life all my own. So I use movies as a way to experience love and compassion and intimacy and all the human emotions that I don’t feel on a day-to-day basis.

I watch a movie like American Pie or Can’t Hardly Wait or even America’s Sweethearts so that I can put myself in the place of the hero on a quest to win the heart of a girl. Or I can reverse it watch a movie where the girl is chasing the guy and as a member of the lgbtq community I’m not opposed to watching a movie where it’s two people of that lifestyle finding love. It doesn’t matter to me what love looks like in the film just as long as it feels real and then I can share in that feeling as I experience the film.

While I do tend to lean toward horror movies and Sci-Fi movies for the most part that’s primarily because they offer me superficial Escape in other words there’s less appealing or less emotions in those movies it’s more like just an experience turning all feeling off and enjoying something that is complete escapism. That’s not to say only those types of movies offer escapism far from it.

I find that the only movies I often come across that I will say I didn’t enjoy are the ones that either didn’t make me feel good at the end of the day or they were done in a way that I couldn’t relate to. Whether it’s an obnoxious character that is too obnoxious or it’s an interpretation of a nerdy character that’s too offensive or it’s just really bad acting that I can’t get past but for the most part I’m fairly easy to please to be honest I enjoy most movies I watch.

But I guess to be fair that’s because I know what I don’t like and I avoid the movies that I know I won’t enjoy.

I’ve never been one to utter the phrase that’s 90 minutes of my life I’ll never get back after viewing an unsatisfying movie because for me every experience is worth having. As they say life is short. Pain makes us better it makes us stronger. So I watch a movie that I don’t enjoy it’s an opportunity for me to learn what not to do next. If it was the actor then I avoid movies with that actor.

Not ranking but just listing or even rambling some of my favorite movies of all time include: Star Wars, RoboCop, Weird Science, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, The Matrix, The Terminator, Dumb and Dumber, Austin Powers, American Pie, Caddyshack, Police Academy, Twister, Tremors, The Breakfast Club, X-Men, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Stephen King’s It, 10 Things I Hate About You, Can’t Hardly Wait, The Faculty, Last House on the Left, The NeverEnding Story, Who framed Roger Rabbit, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Home Alone, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, the Quick and the Dead, and so so many others.

Yeah my range of personal favorites is pretty broad even if there is a pretty heavy representation by sci-fi, fantasy and horror. I just love movies. I love watching movies that’s why I have over 800 movies on DVD. It’s why I subscribe to multiple streaming services. Hell it’s why I even own movies on VHS and LaserDisc.

Yes I use Cinema as escapism ironically I’m attempting to escape a lonely life and yet I enjoy watching movies while I’m isolated and alone.

When I was in first grade I remember reading a book where the main character was female and it was written from first person perspective so you the reader we’re reading the book as if you were her and every time somebody reference the character that you were experiencing a book as with feminine pronouns I giggled inside. I was only seven years old and I knew in my mind it felt right to be considered a girl not a boy I couldn’t tell anyone because I didn’t have the words or I didn’t understand it.

I almost started publicly transitioning when I was 11. I was watching one of those daytime talk shows you you know Maury or Sally Jesse one of those and they had a bunch of transgender kids on there well they were calling them transvestites I guess back then and I saw that and I thought to myself that’s it that’s me that’s what I want to be and I figured it out at 11 years old. So I started exploring I took a bunch of clothes girl clothes out of the laundry room snuck into my bedroom and tried things on the instant I slipped a pair of pink panties on I knew I was right that felt more right than anything I have ever done I was only 11 years old and I knew I was a girl not a boy.

I used to sit in my room isolated alone with no friends I would open my bible and I would read the part where Jesus said ask me anything and I’ll give you whatever you want and I would close the book and I would pray with tears pouring down my cheeks God can I please be a girl God please make me a girl. It hurts so much even though I felt betrayed I felt like why would he make me a boy when he knew I should have been a girl they keep telling me God doesn’t make mistakes but that means he chose to make me wrong? Right I thought.

Well needless to say my dad and I love my dad so don’t take this the wrong way but he walked into my room when I was sleeping and discovered I was wearing a girl’s bra. He assumed one of my sisters did it to me as a prank I had three sisters so he went and yelled at them for it. There was a lot of confusion in my house that day as he was telling my sister’s how wrong that was he was threatening them. He didn’t want his son thinking he was a girl. I remember sitting outside the window of our trailer house listening to my parents fight over their son wearing girls clothes and I remember both of them I remember the conversation they were both concerned they wanted to get me therapy because they wanted me to be normal.

Hearing that my parents thought I was broken devastated me so I went into hiding I became stealth but I also became very aggressive and angry and defensive if anyone went into my bedroom I would blow up at them throw things at them scream at them even threatens them because I didn’t want people to go into my room and find all my girl clothes I was hiding in my closet or under my bed. I was terrified of being found out but I couldn’t stop literally from that night on until today to this very day I have worn women’s clothes to bed usually the nightgown and some underwear but occasionally I would you know where other things just because I could do it any other time I had to be Stephanie I had to be me and I would go to school all day long hating my life hating myself cuz I had to hide.

I couldn’t go to my parents and say Mom Dad you’re wrong I am a girl please let me be one. Because listening to what they said. Them tell me I couldn’t have a Rainbow Brite because that was a girl’s toy hearing them tell me to watch Ninja Turtles and He-Man because those are boys cartoons or dad trying to force me to play sports and me just rebelling because I hated playing with other boys.

Then there was the time my grandma came to town and she wanted to hang out with me and so she bought me a movie on VHS she asked me what movie I wanted and I picked up mrs. Doubtfire. It was obvious to me I needed to watch a movie where a man could dress up like a girl I needed to see that I needed to know why somebody else would consider doing that. My dad did not like that movie and he hated that I picked it out and so he made me get rid of it he made me take it back to the video store and told me I couldn’t have it. He brought home Lethal Weapon instead and had me sit down with him and watch that movie that opened up with a naked girl naked breast hanging out. My dad the ultra-conservative who couldn’t even watch PG-13 movies wanted me to sit there with him and watch Lethal Weapon I don’t know if it was just because of bonding experience or if he was trying to get me to see naked tits.

I know that there were a lot of things like that. There was also that time in third grade when one of my classmates who was the boy came to school dressed like a girl for Halloween and I asked my parents if it was okay if I did that because I wanted to be a witch and they said no. I turned the witch costume into a wizard costume and that was the best I could get.

All three of my sisters knew that they were Girls when they were born they were constantly told they were girls they felt like girls and they were allowed to act like girls. I was told the only reason why I thought I was a girl I wanted to be a girl or tried to act like a girl is because I had sisters. But I have a lot of friends and met a lot of people over the years who were the only so-called boy and a house for the girls and I met a lot of people who were trans who had no brothers or sisters and

I realized over the years but that didn’t shape me at all.

I knew in my mind and my heart that I should have been a girl as young as seven years old but I may have had it figure it out or had questioned it earlier than that.

The more people I talk to who are trans and the people I talked to her just queer who like to cross-dress & the straight guys I talk to you for like to cross-dress and then drag queens that I talk to you like to cross-dress I can assure you there’s a difference between a cross dresser and a tranny. It might not being politically correct to self-identify as tranny or say that word fuck it I know what I am I’m a transgender woman and I should have been treated like a girl when I was a kid.

and I know if my parents had allowed me to be who I was there would have saved me a lot of heartache over the years. And I know it would have saved me a lot of pain a lot of questioning things a lot of the mistakes I made trying to cover it up or hide it or figure out how to get there on my own and it wouldn’t have forced me to live alone I wouldn’t have been forced to live isolated and not have friends and and not learn how to associate or socialize with kids when I was being developed when I should have learned how to socialize with kids instead I had to disassociate and distance myself from kids because I wasn’t allowed to Mimi I wasn’t allowed to be who God Made Me for whatever reason chose to make me different and so I suffered mostly in silence.

But that’s it if your kid tells you they’re trans they’re fucking trans end of story. Help them figure it out and if they’re wrong if they are confused don’t be afraid to ask questions but let them figure it out and just support them because you’re only going to make it worse you’re only going to make their life more difficult than it has to be and if you’re concerned with how people are going to treat trans kids don’t tell people their trainer move to a different School change their name change their gender change their identity and let them live their authentic selves and don’t cry don’t succeed don’t try to force them into a box that’s going to make them depressed and hate themselves and live in isolated lonely life resentful and hating everything around them and hating everyone around them because they couldn’t be themselves.

You don’t question it if your cisgender kidsembrace the gender assigned them at birth don’t question it if you’re transgender kid questions theirs just support them. PERIOD!

When I went to college my goal was to become a filmmaker. It was a broad goal I wasn’t trying to become an Oscar winner or a celebrity even just a storyteller. I spent the last seven years of my life telling stories for a living. I’ve been a writer for newspapers and TV stations as well as my blog here that you are probably reading. That’s not to say I haven’t had greater ambitions I’ve always wanted to write horror stories either books, movies, short stories, or video games for that matter.

I recently as in last summer finished my first thriller novel. No not reading writing. I wrote a book called goldfish on the mountain. I’ve had other ideas in my mind and thought how I would love to write the script for low-budget slasher movie and then gather the resources to make that a reality.

Every time I find myself in a rut if you will I usually find myself in the most creative and most ambitious mode of my life it’s easy to be motivated when you have nothing going on at least for me.

I can’t say I’ve read a ton of horror books but I’ve read quite a few enough that I have an appreciation for the genre. But I’ve seen more than my fair share of horror movies and I’m even dabbled in video games primarily the Castlevania franchise also Resident Evil and a few others sprinkled throughout. But I always come back to movies.

One of the reasons why I started the spider’s Lair YouTube channel was so that I could talk about horror movies. But also as a way for me to showcase the short films that I make as an aspiring horror filmmaker. And so that’s my next project. I want to make a short movie probably no more than 20 minutes in length. A Horror Story a complete story start to finish. That’s what I want to work on.

I don’t know what the path looks like but it’s something I want to pursue.

One of the hardest things a trans person has to go through isn’t explaining to people how gender dysphoria works rather it’s getting people to sympathize with the mental anguish that comes from our past identities.

Oftentimes people will be dismissive of your new name whether it’s because they are intentionally disrespectful because they don’t believe in gender dysphoria or because they’re too emotionally attached to your past and they don’t recognize how selfish is there holding on to your old self is or how painful it is for you.

Have an interesting story behind my dead name. It’s kind of like it’s been a part of my life. Whenever I meet new people I always have had this interesting story or I could say factoid about my name. I have three first names that also work each as a last name. All three of my birth name’s my first name my middle name and my last name are common surnames. And so that was a good ice breaker. I won’t mention what those names are here it’s not important and I don’t say those words anymore out loud. What is interesting is that was I’m not disappointed I can no longer tell that story because I have a better story now.

Now I get to tell the story of how I discovered Stephanie and how that name just fit. My whole life even before I was honest with myself about my transgender identity I cringed every time I heard that name. And not just whenever people were talking about me or to me or in my direction. It was just a disgusting name it offended me so much I hated it so much even when I was watching TV shows if somebody had that name I didn’t automatically dismiss that character but I always wished that people would not say their name because I hated hearing it I hated hearing those words out loud. I hated my name so much that I shortened it to my initials which spell the word r a t therefore I was more comfortable being called rat or the rat as I reminded people to call me then I was the name my parents gave me at Birth. That alone should have been an indicator that the name I was given was wrong for me.

I never knew how wrong that name was for me until I tried on Stephanie. The first time somebody called me Stephanie instead of the other name I had a twinge of mixed feelings it was awkward first. But now it’s who I am it’s who I always was who I was always meant to be. I’m currently going to the process of Legally changing my name the sooner I can get my court order back the happier I will be. Trying to explain to someone who’s not trans how harmful that old name is has been very difficult. The only two people I permit call me by that name are my parents and honestly that’s only because I love them enough I’m not willing to tell them how much that name hurts me because I know it hurts them and I’m I’m giving them leeway because they are trying. Not every trans person has parents who give a shit. And some people have parents who were fully supportive. But I fully expect everyone else to respect my new name and never refer to me as my old identity.

When I first started transitioning I likened it to having a superhero identity in a way. There was the secret identity that was the real me or the public face I guess and then there was the superhero who went out and did good in the world. That analogy didn’t work though because it was the face I had to wear the mask in public that was the secret identity and the superhero or the person I wanted to be the good person that could do good in the world was at home in hiding. Now the roles are kind of reversed except in my mind he’s dead and that’s why we call it a dead name it’s not just symbolic of our new identities it is a metaphor of a new person a brand new person walking around this Earth completely replacing someone who died.

I celebrate March 18th as my coming out day. To me it has the same weight and meaning as my birthday. Because on that day Stephanie was born and got to enter the world for the first time has herself her true self. And I know there are people that don’t understand the significance of it but I just want to say I don’t care if you understand I’m just wanting you to be respectful it’s only about respect. Somebody recently told me in jest when talking about the current political climate that they themselves identify as a black person and wanted to know if they could get all the free things black people want. Now I know this was inherently a racist comment but it was also harmful to trans people because it’s dismissive of our struggle.

I’m not here to explain how self identity works. God knows I’m not qualified. And I’m sure as hell not here to educate people on what gender dysphoria is or what being transgender means to me. All I can do is tell you when I had to be living a lie I was miserable and now that I’m free to be me I’m happy truly happy in ways I can’t explain. Now happiness is not constant so when people see me have a bad day or whenever I show a bad mood they immediately point to that as proof I’m not as happy as I claim. The happiness is not a constant it’s more of peace of mind it’s more a state of mind if you will. But it’s that word peace that I want to focus on because being my authentic self has given me an inner peace I can’t explain and that to me is worth it it’s worth all the pain and suffering that being trans has inflicted upon me and will continue to inflict upon me because at the end of the day you only get to live once and it’s not worth living a fucking lie.

I write a lot about my past and even before I started transitioning this whole blog was obsessed with the 80s and 90s my childhood the things from my childhood. And I know part of me wants to get back to just writing about toys and comic books and video games and movies and not facing life’s problems or difficulties head on. But something else happened when I took on my new identity and buried my past self.

A lot of the things that I was connected to in my childhood that used to give me Comfort they’re tainted now and so my perspective has changed. Also my brain chemistry has changed I’ve been taking hormones for 7 months it’s not just the emotions that I can feel I feel everything different than I was then I’m used to and so I feel differently about things than that then I used to Then I then I am used to and so my interests have changed my passions have changed because the way I feel about things has changed my feelings have changed. And it’s not just about doing things that promote gender euphoria which is a concept I only recently discovered. But it’s also about distancing myself from those things that reinforce my past identity and for that reason I will not respond to my deadname kindly. It is also that reason that I can’t look at certain things the same way anymore.

I hope in time I will figure out who I am and once I do I hope that I will be able to share that with the world. it is true there are movies and video games that used to give me Comfort that today trigger my gender dysphoria and so I’m distancing myself from those things at this time. you know they say we’re creatures of habit and I guess that’s probably true I just have a lot of bad habits I want to break.

Transitioning is about discovering Who You Are. I’m discovering things I used to like don’t bring me joy anymore. I’m also discovering new things that do bring me joy a new ways. And every night when I go to bed when I’m internalizing my thoughts my inner voice refers to me as Stephanie and that gives me peace. The other guy is dead his life is in the past and I don’t want to be connected to it anymore than I have to.

In the middle of the park there sits a tree as tall as the sky

A squirrel climbs down the side of the tree to the nut that caught its eye

It rests Atop The back of the bench that was built around the tree

It smells the perfume from the woman sitting there a baby on her knee

The mother feeds her infant child as she watches the other kids play

A smile creeps upon her face as she sits and enjoys this beautiful day

The sun shines bright no clouds up high a Sun Ray kisses her cheek

A perfect day she thinks to end the perfect week

laughter rises from the swings where her daughter is flying high

That single laugh rises above where it’s heard by a bird up in the sky

The bird flies down and rest its feet on the monkey bars below

It Returns that laughter with a song of its own it proudly begins to bellow

A little girl smiles at the bird as she hangs upside down from those very monkey bars

She enjoys the sounds as the birds song drowns out the passing cars

She runs over to her brother who is playing over at the jungle gym

She slaps his back and says tag you’re it and begins to run away from him

He stops his game and shifts his play to give his sister Chase

He runs around the field after her with a smile upon his face

She trips and falls and lands in the sandbox where another stands

She abandons her game of tag to sit and make a castle in the sand

Her play does not come to an end instead she sits and makes a friend

They laugh and giggle as they lob sand at one another

The girl has all but forgotten the game of tag she started with her brother

The mother blows her whistle and the kids come running to her voice

It’s time to eat she says as they are given a simple choice

Would you prefer bologna or PB&J she asks each of her hungry offspring

She savors every smile on their faces that this day did bring

It’s nut now gone the squirrel climbs back up the tree to its home

The squirrel smiled in its nest for it new it was not alone

That tree stood tall for several years and many kids came and went

And each one new time at that Park was always time well spent

If I told you that as a trans woman I also find myself a non-conformist you probably wouldn’t be very shocked. I mean after all being trans by its very nature goes against well what some people would argue is nature. Of course those people are small-minded.

One of the things that I resisted for so long purely on a cultural level and then I wouldn’t do it because it was the thing to do was drink coffee. Now that’s not to say I wouldn’t order a cup at Starbucks if I ever took a girl on a date because asking a girl to coffee is the standard go to American date for some reason. Well the other standard I guess first date is buy her a drink at the bar but I was never much of a bar person.

What are the other reasons why I avoided drinking coffee was because it was gross I never had a cup of coffee that I thought tasted good. Of course that changed when I went to work for a newspaper where there were coffee snobs who insisted on having good, good quality coffee I should say. This gave me the opportunity to actually taste a cup of coffee that wasn’t horrible. I want to go back to the whole buying a girl coffee at Starbucks thing well since I never liked coffee I never really explored my options and would always let the other girl order first and then order whatever she ordered. It wasn’t a move or anything it was just I had no idea what coffee was good.

It goes a little deeper than that though. My whole resistance to coffee as a form of protest started in my childhood. My parents are obsessed with it. They would each drink a pot of coffee every morning before they even woke up or I guess before they could do anything after waking up. I never wanted to be like that I always wanted to be someone who could just open their eyes and get out of bed fresh and ready to go and I have been that way most of my life. So a part of it for me was just not wanting to be like my parents for the sake of being different and the more my parents told me oh when you grow up you’ll drink coffee the more I resisted especially into my 30s when I was becoming my own person.

I also found there was another reason why I resisted coffee so long. In a way it was kind of political. I intentionally avoided tea because it was supposedly patriotic to do so you know Americans drink coffee we don’t drink tea but I also avoided coffee for that same reason I didn’t want to be drinking a patriotic drink either. So for me it was don’t drink the Patriotic tea that would identify one as British and don’t drink the Patriotic coffee because I didn’t want to make any political statements. I guess that in itself could have been construed as a political statement as in a form of resistance or even protest in some ways although I’m not sure if that was a conscious decision.

But one of the most obvious in probably glaring reasons why I didn’t like to drink coffee and why I insisted on drinking soda instead for my caffeine intake was purely childish. And I don’t mean childish in the sense that I was being stubborn. I meant more in the sense that I didn’t want to grow up I wanted to stay childlike pretty much forever that was my goal. That’s why I stay stuck in my childhood I play with and collect toys from my past I read comic books from the 80s and I mostly watch movies from that time period. And I watch cartoons from time to time and not anime like the so-called grown up kids do or the cool kids whatever but no I insisted on staying in the same mindset and experiences I had as a kid I intentionally chose to not grow up as much as possible.

So why did I decide to buy a coffee maker and start drinking the stuff semi-regularly? Especially now that I’m more cynical about American patriotism than I was before and most importantly as I become a visible member of the trans community I become more involved in more outspoken I also become more against the social norms. Well there’s a simple reason. Let me explain.

A few weeks ago I made the decision that I want to adopt a child. I knew I was going to have to make changes in my life to make that become a reality. I also knew I was going to have to make some changes in my life that convinced me I was ready to move forward becoming an adult to become a responsible parent so that I could take on a child and be her mother. And that’s when I decided that I wanted to buy a coffee maker not just because it was the grown-up thing to do it was a symbol for me.

That symbol has what has been driving me this whole time these last few weeks. It’s the reason why I insisted on spending money on exercise equipment and actually opening it up and forcing myself to use it. It’s the same reason why I sold all of my video games. It’s the same reason why I’ve stuck with my new diet this past week and I’ve made changes in my shopping habits to promote that new diet. It’s the reason why I reached out to all of my contacts to help me piece together a demo reel so I could begin applying for news reporter jobs as I reached Beyond my previous experiences.

I want to be a mom more than anything in the world. And that desire to hold my baby in my arms and to coddle her to love her to protect her and raised her and mother her that’s my only motivation right now and I’ll do anything I have to do everything I have to do to make that a reality. The real reason why I bought a coffee pot is to that end and it’s not just symbolic. I want to stop drinking soda I want to wean myself off of it and in order to do that I’m going to need coffee provide my body with the caffeine I’m going to need to move forward. And so everything I do every decision I make every move I make from now until the day I have my child in my life I will do everything towards that end. Because I assure you God willing I’m going to be a mother. And nothing is going to stand in my way. Mama bird has been woken and she’s fierce.

As a writer and a journalist I’m well aware of the fact that words have meaning and can be very powerful. Queer as one of those words that has significant power but its meaning is more complex than its surface understanding.

I don’t think anyone can blog about being a member of the lgbtqia plus community without getting into a discussion on the words that describe us. And there’s no word that is more divisive or confusing as queer at least in my experience.

I know when I tell somebody I’m trans that comes up pictures that in their mind they see a man pretending to be a woman who is very feminine and they don’t see a difference between that person and a feminine homosexual man who sometimes dresses like a girl or even a heterosexual or homosexual drag queen or crossdresser. I do have male genitals the terminology we use is assigned male at Birth but I’m not a particular fan of that myself I’m just trying it on but trans fits my identity because it’s how I feel and in my mind how I understand that word works for me and when I say I hope it conveys to others how I feel.

When I hear words gay or lesbian or bi as somebody in the community who has interacted with others I have a clear understanding what those words mean to me and when I believe they mean to other people so those have clear unambiguous definitions. Queer is far more complex and I think that makes it more complicated to wrap your head around.

I’m a child of the 80s I grew up in the 90s at a time when the queer community was just starting to be visible in society and were undergoing the early stages of the process of reclaiming the word for themselves. At the time I was an outsider looking in I knew I was different I knew I was weird and I couldn’t identify with weird I could identify with strange or freak I preferred the word freak myself as a descriptor because I knew it meant I’m not the same as everybody else but I shied away from where we are because it felt politically charged and it felt like it had its gay meaning or a gay leaning meaning and I didn’t identify as gay not at any point in my life did I ever think I was gay outside of that Moment of clarity when I decided I was a female in my mind and was attracted to females I decided I was lesbian but there was a complication I have a penis and so I felt like I couldn’t be a true lesbian as before I had an understanding trans’ or even transbian as a concept.

My first encounter with the word as a label that wasn’t a slur is the song queer by the band garbage. Now I’ve always told people garbage is my favorite band and when I was a teenager there was absolute truth to that their songs spoke to me in a way that nobody else’s music did or even could. But that was the very first song of theirs that I discovered and it was the song that made me attracted to the band. Nas I bought their CDs and discovered more of their music I fell further and deeper in love with them.

A few years later I heard the term but you read in the headline, we are queer and we are here used together as sort of a slogan in a way. I heard it in an episode of a TV sitcom called Everybody Loves Raymond wear the main character’s brother what’s going through a breakup with his girlfriend and the parents were questioning if he was gay. Having already adopted the term for myself in my own mind because of the song in my connection to it I had already accepted that to me it was a synonym of freak or weirdo or geek or nerd or any other label that I wore because I was tired of letting people call me those words so I started taking them on myself I saw this at something my black friends did with the popularizing of a certain word used in gangster rap music and so I followed their lead so to speak.

I’m at an age where I’m old enough to remember it as a prevalent slur and having that lobbed at me in that meaning in that context by people who it intended to hurt me. But I’ve also young enough to have seen it start to become used as an inclusive term.

As somebody who took a course of linguistics in college and has made a living writing words for other people any opportunity I get to examine an individual word or concept give me giddy feelings in my stomach I’m a total word nerd. And even now as I write this my understanding of the word itself is becoming more clear in my mind. For me personally I wear it as a badge because it says to me I’m different but I’m a part of something that is inclusive yet you have to be on the inside to fully understand.

When I’m writing I don’t mind using the rainbow acronyms because I want to be as inclusive as possible and respectful of others. But in spoken language especially in casual conversation I’ll just use Queer as shorthand partially because it’s easier but also because I was defining myself with that word when it was just becoming acceptable and my understanding of it is it makes more sense to me.

So what the word means to me is basically it operates as shorthand for non-binary non hetero non breeder if you will and so to me it’s anyone that’s outside of the so-called Norm. Now I noticed there are different variations of the acronyms the most common one is lgbt followed by lgbtq and I noticed that while there are some groups that leave out the T there are more who leave out the Q and that makes me wonder what their feelings are towards it.

The reason why I prefer it is because I’m used to it and it to me it fits. I consider myself a transgender female bisexual queer woman but that’s a very long way of describing how I feel. I’m trans but I find myself attracted sexually to females primarily but I also find myself romantically attracted to males and I will say curious about male sexuality but I’m not attracted in any way to masculinity which is kind of complicated.

Even as I become more public and more open about how I feel and who I am my understanding of the word is changing and my acceptance of the term is adapting and evolving as language does. It’s just like any other word that’s been reclaimed by a marginalized community if you call a woman a bitch and you’re not one of her bitches she may be inclined to claw your eyes out justifiably. It’s just like fag or faggot which I believe is more of a derogatory term targeted exclusively at gay men. So whereas I feel comfortable myself with the term queer I don’t want people who aren’t in the community calling me that I’d prefer you just stick to trans. I completely reject fag and all of its variants because I don’t identify as gay male. And I don’t want others to think of me like that either.

So however you feel about it just know that I’m trying to be in my mind and in my life inclusive as I can be and so for me the term is ours and I’m going to use it within that context. But only in those settings where I’m comfortable. And of course I’ll be mindful of those around me. Stay cool.