Sunday, January 12, 2020

Disillusionment (Part 1)

This post contains descriptions of transphobia.

I never really thought about transgender before I became an Eddie Izzard fan.

I'm not transgender myself, my formal and informal education didn't include notions surrounding transgender, I didn't knowingly know any trans people, I'd never had to translate about anything remotely related to transgender . . . it was just one of the many subjects that wasn't on my radar.

Then, nearly 13 years ago, a google search took me to an Eddie Izzard video, which took me down a youtube rabbithole, which led me to my very first hero, role model, and inspiration. Eddie gave me a huge portion of what I needed to grow up from an insecure, uncertain young woman to a more confident, more competent middle-aged woman.

And, along the way, got me thinking about transgender.

I listened to what Eddie had to say in standup and in interviews about gender identity, googled some concepts that were new to me, and then let the ideas gently simmer while I went about the business of growing up.

As these ideas simmered, some realizations bubbled up.

I came to be able to discern my own gender identity, as separate from biology and socialization.

I came to recognize thoughts and feelings and reactions dating back to childhood that support this.

I came to see parallels between some of the experiences of trans people and some of my own experiences, which led me to stop seeing trans people as Other and start seeing them as people basically doing the same thing as I am, just from a slightly different starting point.

I became aware of trans people in my online and real-life communities.

I became aware that I should be listening and learning when people talk about their firsthand experiences, rather than boldly opining.

I became aware of non-binary, of ways to write and ways to make policy that are all-inclusive, not just masculine or feminine.

By the time transgender came up in my translations, I had a general idea of potential linguistic pitfalls and what I should verify with reliable sources, and was able to guide my colleagues accordingly.

Politically, I've become increasingly aware of how policies I'd previously thought innocuous (and sometimes didn't even recognize as policies - I just thought "that's the way the world is"!) could cause disproportionate harm to trans and non-binary people.

And, most importantly, I've learned to listen to and believe trans and non-binary people (and other marginalized groups) rather than thinking I need to be an expert myself.

I'm still very much in the listening and learning phase of my journey (since my starting point was zero, I've had a lot of catching up to do!), but I've been slowly and surely becoming more and more informed since that fateful google 13 years ago pointed me towards the path I need to be on.  It's been a gradual, painless meander in the general direction of the right side of history.


And that's why I'm both baffled and gutted by Heather Mallick's recent column, in which she describes a transphobic talk as "a feminist event", describes the trans women who were protesting the talk as "enraged men", and parallels these trans women with the perpetrator of the Montreal Massacre.


You see, that google 13 years ago that brought me to Eddie Izzard was inspired by Heather Mallick's writing. Her book title and her Eddie Izzard fandom brought me to Eddie, which changed every aspect of my inner life for the better, including setting me on my journey from being completely ignorant of transgender to being less and less assholic.

I have been very grateful to Heather for this ever since. I even considered walking up to her at an Eddie Izzard show (I recognized her from her column headshot) and thanking her for introducing me to Eddie's work, but I wasn't confident that I could do so without coming across as creepy.

And now I feel disgusted with myself for having - for years! - carried around positive feelings about someone who could say such horrible things.

And I'm also completely baffled that someone could start at the same starting point as me - could, in fact, direct me to the starting point when I didn't know where it was - and then head in exactly the opposite direction.

And then I'm wondering if, because this was my starting point, I might somehow unknowingly be transphobic myself???

What do you even do with this???

***

That was an awful lot of hundreds of words about my own feelings - what with this being a personal blog and all - but the real problem here is not about me at all.

The real problem is that this is a column in a high-circulation newspaper.

Newspapers are tools of information, so they have to be particularly mindful of serving the ignorant.

Having a columnist who is transphobic but somehow comes across to ignorant people (like me) as an ally of trans people is a disservice to ignorant readers. It exacerbates my ignorance. In fact, it conceals my ignorance from me, which is the exact opposite of what I need my newspaper to be doing - I need my newspaper to be enlightening me about areas where I didn't even know I was ignorant!

I can't tell if, when the Star hired Heather Mallick, they thought (as I foolishly did at the time) that she was a trans ally, or if they could tell that she wasn't and hired her anyway, or if they didn't care.

If they could tell or if they didn't care, they need to smarten up!

And if the Star was under the same mistaken impression I was, they need to find people who saw it coming.

As I've been picking through my emotions and slowly piecing them together into a blog post, it also came out that J.K. Rowling is transphobic, and it came to my attention that people have been flagging this for years. (I must start following some of them on Twitter!)

There must have also been people who could see years ago that Heather Mallick was transphobic, even back when I still thought she was an ally. The Star should consult with them when hiring people to write their columns.

Or, better yet, find some trans people who saw it coming and hire them to write columns!


I became aware of this protest, and of the nature of the speaker being protested, because of the trans people and allies I follow on Twitter. Similar things happen as I follow disabled people, and people of different races, and people from different countries, and people who speak different languages. As people talk about whatever's on their mind, information of which I was previously ignorant effortlessly reaches me, and the path towards the right side of history becomes just a touch clearer to me.

The Toronto Star, as a tool of information, should also be serving this function. It should be finding the voices that historically haven't reached its readers - especially readers who are ignorant like me - and putting those voices right where they will reach us effortlessly, nudging us away from our ignorance and in the general direction of the right side of history.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Breathe Right nasal strips for a runny nose: effective but messy

I have some serious and complex blog posts I'm working on that were stymied first by xmas, then by an annoying cold/virus thing that left me unable to do anything but drink tea while wrapped in blankets for over a week.

But, during the course of my cold/virus thingy, I finally had the opportunity to try a sample of Breathe Right nasal strips that I'd received ages ago. I was skeptical that they'd work for a cold, but I was too congested to sleep and I don't like taking decongestant (makes me wake up with my mouth painfully dry. So I decided to give them a try.

Surprisingly, they helped! They opened my nose by just a tiny amount, but it was enough to let me breathe well enough to fall asleep without decongestant.

The downside: if you have a really runny nose and you open it up wider, more snot comes out!  I woke up looking like a toddler who doesn't know how to wipe their nose!

I found this worthwhile, but other people might not.

I also developed an enormous cystic zit in the tip of my nose after using the Breathe Right strip. I can't tell if this was just coincidence (I tend to get more acne when my immune system is working on something) or if they actually exacerbate acne.

I will be trying them again next time I'm congested enough that it hinders sleep.