The same old subject

Gender, gender, gender, trans, trans, trans, sex, sex, sex: do you ever get sick of it?

I have created a trans blog. It's name emphasises gender, it is subtitled 'A Crodssdreamer's Journal', and now it is honoured to feature on the excellent T-Central. Nearly everything I've written on it has had a transgender theme. It is the only blog I am writing at the moment.

Does it represent my whole life at present? Is the realm of trans the only area of life for which I have any energy and enthusiasm? Why don't I write about other subjects?

Perhaps the answer to the second question in the above paragraph is not so far from 'yes'. Partly because this is new territory for me (i.e. communicating with others about these issues); partly because the rest of life seems at best tired, at worst wretched. (Is this perception a product of latent, unconscious gender dysphoria? This is possible.) I haven't got much that is new or buoyant to write about other subjects.

Nevertheless, recently I'm quite often felt overdosed on trans. I have no desire to reclaim masculinity, but I often rather like the idea of just being a person who does what ever they do, without regard to gender. In a way that would be more politically progressive: bye-bye oppressive binary gender, I licence myself to disregard you.

Trans culture actually emphasises the genderisation it transgresses. It portrays certain characteristics as belonging to your original bodily gender, and presents some sort of gender transformation or gender rebellion as the alternative to being stuck with these characteristics, either as part of you or as a criterion of measurement which deems you a failure.

Is life really that stark? Is life as a man all about how good you are at being masculine?

And sexuality? Sometimes I want to just attend to my sexual needs when they call, then live the rest of my life without much focus on the rather peculiar business that sexuality is (peculiar for everybody, I think it is; not just for crossdreamers).

But maybe gender and sexuality are so fundamental, dominant and determining in our lives, whether we wish them to be or not?

At times, I have come across trans writers, and other sexual radicals, whose attitudes have inspired  me. They write and live with courage, honesty,  imagination, compassion, wisdom and sensitivity. They offer a vision of progress. It's not nearly enough to make me actually optimistic about the future of our race, but it does make me say 'this is a good cause; I want to believe in it. I want to be part of it.' It rather wonderfully connects lonesome private feelings of mine with a cultural politics that makes me want to be active and to belong.