Thursday, June 15, 2006

..considering my dick...

"Dude, I probably should comment on this somewhere in my journal. I just realized you are the only biological male on my friends list. Feel special :)" – Anon.

***

If I ever felt special about being a biological male... perhaps. *giggles*

You wanna know something? I was four when it dawned on me, horribly, that the world was always going to make a lot more out of my penis that was ever going to. I guess the "special" I feel is the being singled out, harmed, abused even. I mean, I get it. I gotta dick. An outy. However, that does not rule my existance -- it really doesn't. If I wasn't so sure that my project this life is to show that having one of these things does not mean I have to run to socialization (although I am aware of it and what I have absorbed, too, both as survival technique and also to understand my own misandry) and perhaps I can show the younger males of my family (which is as wide and as varied as... as anything) that to have a dick does not trap one in the jaws of patriarchy, that one can make a life with as little of that crap as possible...

This is not to say I am incapable of enjoying my penis, that would be a lie. But it is to say I feel a certain detachment from it that can never quite be bridged and I understand to be part of my own "gender identity dysphoria" (making me extremely giddy -- favorite joke there, I swear) (and alongside my other various and varied body issues... my bio grandfather was a linebacker... my body follows his genes... however, in my mind, I am maybe 5'6", 135 lbs, with long slender limbs and I move through the world with this intention... in a body that is 5'11", 25*lbs with large muscles that I force into grace...)...

No one gets it more than me. I got a dick. According to the rules of society, I am a male (sex) and then a man (gender)... but I am not society, I am me and who I am does not cohere with that. My maverick clit had other ideas and I get that, but I retain my space to not go along with society because it does not get along with me.

I get it. It is really interesting and you are trying to figure out how "it" and "I" work. Me, too. It doesn't always make "sense" to me either. But my reality is lived within my body and I have discovered, with some help from thinking over this kinda stuff with my friend S that I am most comfortable when I can exist as a body. I compromise on the sex thing because there's material proof, but I am starting to realize, out of those conversations with S, out of reading Butler, out of my own astrological study... I am compromising on that to the extent that I am losing my own damn point!

I am a body that has features that differ from other people's bodies. This body was raised and terrorized in order for it to cohere with the objectives and the lay of our society -- and it was wrong and terrible and is the site of much depression and heartache and break for this body that merely wants to exist in joy. You won't meet a person more open... when I was single and looking for love, I wasn't looking for a person with blah, blah, blah, I was looking for another body that could look at my body and partake of it with me without needing it to conform to some script it could never know, could never understand because the language was one it couldn't understand and what it learned to understand didn't WANT to understand...

So I get it... but I don't feel special when someone takes my whole body and makes it a male... or female... just as I HATE it when someone takes my whole body and makes it man... or woman. Because I am neither of those things. I am a body designed for biological purposes it will never take part in unless someone needs some of its material...

And please, don't take this wrong, it became a moment to make myself apparent to myself.

As I have gotten older, I have come to recognize (and/or search out) some of my barriers and boundaries. Like, although I like other bodies, I have a preference... and that is a REAL preference which means NOT to exclusion... it is hard these days to map identity and practice. I haven't had sex with a body that is called "woman" in nearly 8 years. Can I still call myself "gay-identified bisexual" or am I just gay now? And does it mean anything that I prefer bodies that look like mine? What does that *really* mean?), I am just me and my comfort comes from other people agreeing that me being me is much better than whatever they would make me.

I'm just more comfortable when the focus is not on my penis -- in *every* situation... don't believe me... talk to my partner about what he went through in order to give me head and it not freak me the fuck out... talk to one of my best friends (a sibling even) about all my body weirdness concerning my penis... I don't think about it outside the way one thinks of ears... needs washing, are there, hurt when hit or pressured, but part of everything, not special... sometimes very embarrassing... sometimes, I do think of it as a strap-on when I am topping and that's hot, but anything other than it as it... this is one of the ways I know and mark myself as a transgendered person... my relationship with my body, like all transgendered people, is just *different*. Markedly different. I keep most and much of it to myself because that is how I learned to keep myself safe and un-fucked with (when I was younger and couldn't hide and didn't have this body's dimensions which has a meaning all its own) -- but I do understand that it means to people outside of me.

Also, I don't want my body to be a part of other people's discourse. I have thought, sometimes, just to post a picture of my dick just so people who can't stop wondering about it would know that it is there in the hopes that they can then go about their business, but I am not interested in being judged on my body or how I conceive of it or how it works or does not work for me or you because that's all situational. Were I sexually attracted to you, you would experience my body much differently than if we were friends... even differently than if we were friends and I was sexually attracted to you (that happens... and I like it when people are ok with it because it does eventually transmute, but in many ways, I need labels less than a lot of other people -- or I see them as dresses one assumes *shrugs*... thank you Plath for that).

Maybe to bite Foucault and pervert him, I am interested in my body only within a discourse of relationship and context. Not law. Not science. Not societal -- not even social, but within closed relationships. Self and self that isn't confession or relying on power... which means... *grins* I have no clue! All I know is that I dread these kinds of conversations because I get some kind of pissed off and uncomfortable because I know it is something trying to make sense of me, trying to eat me in parts instead of just swallowing me whole.

Just swallow me whole. I'm actually better that way.

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