Merry Christmas

Well, I’m definitely a writer.

Here it is. It’s Christmas Day 2013, I have opened (and watched people open) all the presents, I have set up my new MacBook Pro, had my Christmas Dinner (nutroast mmm) and now, when I should be watching crappy TV, playing games and listening to rubbish music, I have the urge to write a blog post.

So that is what I am doing.

What am I going to write about you ask? I have absolutely no idea.

Firstly, I’d like to say thank you to all of those who have made my Christmas season the success it has been. You know who you are. Or maybe you don’t, but you should. If you know me, then thank you.

I’d also like to send a special thanks to my parents for the beaut of a laptop which sits with me now, but I know this is a bit useless because there is no way they read my blog and I’m not sure how I would feel about it even if they did, to be honest.

My poor Gran, bless her, there’s no way she reads my blog but I’d like to talk about her for a moment too. When I gave her my present (Calvin Klein Obsession, she’s a classy lady) she almost burst into tears because of how much she likes that fragrance. And then, when we all gave her the collective present, my old iPad, which isn’t really old at all since it’s the new one and has only been used about ten times, she actually did cry.

Music! Let’s talk about Christmas music. Since I work at a book museum catered for families, the main soundtrack to my life since mid-November has been Christmas tunes. This was OK for a while, in fact it put me right in the Christmas mood, but by early December, it began to get very old.

One of my favourite artists, Conor Oberst, brought out a Christmas album with his band Bright Eyes in 2002 called, simply, A Christmas Album. It is fantastic, my personal favourite being God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. So, if you’re a bit tired of worn out carols and Mariah Carey repeats, check out the album on Spotify.

Alternatively, look at the Cuckoo Christmas Playlists here.

That’s all I have to say right now, I’ll update soon.

Merry Christmas all! Have a fab day.

Be Friends With Good People

One of my best friends is a script-writer.
 

The other one writes mainly prose.

One of my best friends is studying for a BSc degree.

The other one is an English student.

One of my best friends can speak French.

The other one is really good with a map.

The both of them went to a school I did not go to.

They both have lots of mutual friends whom I do not know.

They prefer hot-chocolates over my boring filter coffees.

They are both women.

They are massive Christmas enthusiasts while I simply enjoy the holiday season.

We are all fans of John Green.

We all enjoy a cuddle.

We all are feminists.

And, finally, regardless of drink choice, we all enjoy a good coffee date.

There are many reasons why people are friends. The best friendships I have had in my life are based on lots of similarities, and lots of differences. My point is, though, that none of these similarities have anything to do with gender identity or, for that matter, sexuality.

Now I know how much it can help to socialise with people who go through similar experiences to yourself – of course it can, that is why support groups are there – and through these groups you can meet some of your best friends. For instance, one of my very good friends James is a trans* guy. I like him a lot.

But I didn't meet him through a support group... never mind, my point still stands.

This is not an attack on support groups, not at all. It is just a question of importance. Is it more important that your best friend is someone of a similar gender identity or sexuality to you, or that you can talk about almost everything with?

Let's just get this straight; I do talk about my gender to my besties. They know all anyone could ever know about me. But what I am trying to say is that it is not all we talk about.

We also talk about what we are working on at the moment (Hannah and I are co-founders of the group S.W.A.G., check out her post), books we like, films we enjoy (check out Beth's post about Mary Poppins), TV shows we watch (myself and Beth are huge Miranda enthusiasts), inside jokes from stupid things we've said, alcohol...

Basically this is just another post where Benjamin witters on about his friends because he isn't going to see them in quite a while (less than a week Ben calm down) and something got wrapped around his head after a conversation with one of said best friends (the script-writer, not the English student) about people who force friendships on themselves.

To all the trans* people out there, I know this might be a hard thing to get your head around (I know it was for me to start with) but you do not have to be friends with every trans* person you meet. You really don't. You can genuinely dislike someone and not want to socialise with them even if they are trans*. Of course, in no way am I saying that you should cut people out of your life for no reason (don't do that, it's mean) but if you don't feel comfortable talking to some trans* people for whatever reason you would feel uncomfortable about cis people, then that is totally fine.

Keep on being you and be friends with people you make you happy.

My best friends are cis gendered straight women, and I am a trans* male.

We are all OK.

Love,
Benjamin x

Writers Are Lazy

Time to write is more important than the drive to do so. Writers are lazy. I can say that because I am one.

Today I attended a lecture on skin and cosmetics at the British Science Festival. It is important to note that despite my double A at GCSE, science is not my strongest point; last weekend I blamed gravity for me stealing the covers from a friend, making her exclaim “Ben is not a scientist!” and she was right. It was very cold though…

Therefore, it is fair to say that this lecture was not my usual scene in the slightest. I tried to listen and concentrate on what the lovely man was saying about skin pigment and vitamin D but the diagrams of skin and stats where I usually would see info about techniques in Shakespearean theatre and the conventions of Romantic poetry got me all confused. I’m an English student, what can I say?

This did not bother me though, because it meant that I had a whole hour allocated to write. In this time, I wrote: a monologue about a boy whose girlfriend cheated on him with another girl, causing him a lot of embarrassment and distress; a short piece about a girl with anorexia and a problem with the letter C; and a poem about an anxiety-sufferer’s symptoms during panic. Even more out of the ordinary, I actually kind of like the things I wrote, which is more than I can say about a lot of my work.

About two years ago, I can remember reading an email from a certain prominent children’s author saying he was not a writer anymore. This was a ridiculous statement as he then proceeded to publish a book not even 6 months later but that is somewhat besides the point at the moment.

Even if he hadn’t published that book, even if he never published another book ever again, even if he never picked up another pen or typed on another keyboard in his life, that man would still be a writer and do you know why? Because he is one. And once you are, you can’t stop.

Believe me, I’ve tried to stop writing when things have got particularly bad. Like when I rhymed “box” with “cocks”, that was a hard time.

But of course, you can stop writing. Take a break, have a kit kat and all that jazz but you can never stop being a writer. A bit like you can stop having sex but you will never stop being straight/gay/bisexual/dinosaur/whatever. You will never stop being a writer.

Thinking what a writer thinks, doing what a writer does. Walking past an obviously homeless man on the street with a stick of incense burning in the ground and thinking “god, there’s a story in that!”, because it’s innate. Inbuilt. Instant.

So I guess what I’m saying is that writing depends mostly on timing, may that be making time or finding time, to sit down with your notebook and just write. Write anything and everything you can.

Writer’s block doesn’t exist unless you allow it to. And stories don’t come unless you want them to.
Break down your schedule, wipe out procrastination and write that thing you always wanted to read.

Love,
Benjamin x

P.S. This is an old article, previously uploaded on my old blog, but my point still stands. Especially about "box" and "cocks". How I ever got over that I will never know.

The Trans* Asterisk and its Place in the Transgender Community

Yes, I added the asterisk onto the prefix 'trans' on the title of this blog post. Yes I did. Will that give away the fact that I support the asterisk's place? Well drat, never mind. Allow me to go anyway...

There has been a lot of debate in the past fortnight about the place of the trans* asterisk in the FTM Transsexual community.

Now, as I understood it, transsexual was a term, or an identity, depending on how you see it (I know, now more than ever, that many people see transsexualism as a medical condition, which is totally fine, and I think that to a certain extent I too agree...). however, I saw it too as a word which went underneath the transgender umbrella – something which has now been shortened to being the trans* umbrella WITH the asterisk to show inclusion of EVERYBODY.

Under this umbrella we have identities such as: transsexual, transgender, agender, bigender, genderqueer, genderfluid, non-binary, intersex, transvestite. The list goes on and on.

I am going to name drop because I need to to get my point across. Because of their gender identity, people have been questioning Auguste and Emery's place on the FTMtranstasic channel.

Due to YouTube's regulations, you can't have asterisks in channel names. Does this mean that had you been able to do that three years ago, the channel FTMtranstastic would have been FTMtrans*tastic? I don't know. But that seems somewhat irrelevant regardless.

Not everyone on that channel identifies as transsexual, therefore I am going to assume that the channel was named that under the intent of 'trans' was to be a shortened version of the word 'transgender' and not 'transsexual'.

I don't think there is any debate about the word 'transgender' being an umbrella term, or maybe there is and I've missed it in the mess of it all, but I think that still stands. So if we see the shortening 'trans*' as being 'transgender' then what is the problem with the asterisk?

I personally think that the asterisk is there to see a differentiation, so that when you use 'trans' to mean 'transgender' it has an asterisk, otherwise people might think you meant 'transsexual' and then you get into all sorts of trouble.

There is a difference between transsexual and transgender. Yes there is. I totally one hundred per cent agree.

As I understand it, many transsexual people feel like their idenity is invalidated due to the inclusion of gender variant and gender non-binary folk who are identifying with the term 'FTM'.

Here's another identity to throw into the mixer. FTM. Female to male. Now, in my opinion, (I feel like I need to put a disclaimer here ALL OF THIS IS MY OPINION), any person who was female assigned at birth, with the intention to transition in all walks of life to male (including any variations of social transition and physical transition) should be deserving of the identity FTM.

“Deserving of the identity FTM”. As if it's a prize. It's not a prize, it's an identity.

Auguste and Emery have stated may times that they want to go on HRT and I know for a fact that both of them want top surgery. They are changing their names and they use male pronouns and they are both changing their gender marker from F to M. To the rest of the world who are not going to be in their pants, they are male.

When they apply for jobs in the future, they will be seen as male. When they meet new people and make new friends in the future, they will be seen as male. For all intents and purposes, in their future, they will be seen as male.

Therefore, they too are FTM.

I understand they use the term 'non-binary FTM' meaning they don't identify wholly with the male identity but do you know what, not every single FTM person does. And do you know what's even more funny? Neither does every cis person. My Mam doesn't feel totally female all the time. Try telling her she isn't a woman. I dare you.

So do I think that the trans* asterisk has a place in the community. Yes I do, to differentiate between transgender and transsexual. Do I think that non-binary folk can be FTM? Yes I do. Do I think that Auguste and Emery have a place on a channel for FTM trans* people. Yes I do. I also think people who are transsexual do. Because they too are FTM trans* people.

Bring on the hate and attack me. I would just like to state, even though I wish I didn't have to, that I am not non-binary. I am a binary, male, FTM who one day will probably be more comfortable with the term transsexual than I am right now. The only reason I am not at the moment, is because I have not gone under any medical transition yet. That is my personal belief. Right now, I am comfortable saying I am FTM transgender.

Love,

Benjamin x

Feelings of Shame in the Trans* Identity

There are lots of things that people feel shame for. Shame is a natural human emotion, and everyone will feel it at one point in their lives. Perhaps you cheated on a maths test, or you tripped someone over when you were six. Maybe you even started a rumour about that girl you've never really liked because she looked at you the wrong way. Some things, though, people should not feel shame for.

One thing of these things is denial about your non-cis gender identity.

Notice I say 'non-cis', meaning this does not just apply to transsexual people. This also applies to anyone who falls under the trans* umbrella.

And just to put a disclaimer, although I know someone will find a problem with at least one thing I talk about in this post, I do not for one moment believe that every single person who identifies under the trans* umbrella feels shame. I also don't believe that every trans* person refuses to talk about denial, lies about their gender journey, or actually anything at all because everyone is different, and I know that.

In the past week on OurLifeAsTrans, we have been discussing denial and identifying as something else before identifying as trans* because we didn't want to be trans* e.t.c. e.t.c. e.t.c. If you want to, you can see my video here.

Watching the other guys' videos though, and thinking more about the topic, I felt inspired to write this blog post.

As I said in my video, when I first thought I was trans*, I felt shame. I was scared, confused and, yeah, ashamed. And it didn't matter how much I looked up to other trans* guys (on the contrary, many of my good friends were trans* guys) try as I might I felt shame for a good few months about my gender. So much so that I tried to deny the fact that I was struggling. I disguised myself as a lesbian and used that as an excuse to dress in men's clothes (or, rather, clothing from the men's section, because who is to say what is a man's clothing, and what is a woman's?).

I was deeply disturbed by the idea of myself being trans*.

There, I said it.

Now, I am not going to deny that I don't still have some of these feelings some days right now. There are times when I just sit back and think 'Jesus Christ, life would be much easier if I had been born a cisguy.' Does this mean I am ashamed of myself being trans* or the trans* community? Not at all.

One thing that does upset me about the community though is about how this topic is not discussed. I know that one or two years ago, I would have benefited a lot from someone quite far down their transition – may that be post top surgery or even just a couple of months on HRT – saying that they too had had doubts. So many times did I hear “I have always been sure about my gender” or “I've known since I was 8” and that threw me off. Big style.

I thought, well I didn't know then, so I can't be trans*. Yay! I'm a normal lesbian. And is that true? Of course it bloody isn't. (Note: I use the word “normal” because that is what I would have thought at the time, not because I think anyone is “normal”, or that “normal” is even a thing. What is “normal”? Fucking nothing.)

One of the reasons I think people feel shame though, is because of the lack of talking that happens in the trans* community about being doubtful of your gender identity. The more people talk, the more people learn that it is OK to be doubtful, therefore the shame will be less likely to be there, in my opinion. I know that would have helped me for sure.

Basically, my point is that people should talk about doubts more. Being doubtful of your gender identity does not make you any less trans*.

Being doubtful of your gender identity does not make you any less trans*.

Being doubtful of your gender identity does not make you any less trans*.

I said it three times because I think it's important.

The amount of times I have wished that knowing your gender was as easy as knowing your sexuality, but it just isn't. I can see both masculine and feminine traits in my behaviour. The only thing that has made me sure that I am male is thinking about had I been born male, would I consider transitioning to female?

No way.

Therefore, I believe, I am a trans* man. But of course I have had doubts.

I could talk about this topic for years, and while I would love to, I do have a life to live and other things to discuss.

Just please, be more vocal about your doubts. People won't doubt your gender identity, or at least they shouldn't, and it could make a lot of people's gender journeys far more smooth and worriless (according to Word, 'worriless' isn't a word but I like to think it is).

Now, my good friend Alec made a fantastic video where he talked about not even realising you are in denial because you're in denial. I think that is brilliant idea I plan to develop in another blog post I think I am going to be writing within the next week. For the mean time, watch his video here.

Love,

Benjamin x

My Thoughts on Trigger Warnings

TW: I'm going to be discussing trigger warnings.

And, since I did a TW at all, this article includes language hinting towards eating disorders, trans* people, gay people, people with depression and anxiety disorders.

And millipede phobias.

Everybody has triggers. If you're a good person, then you generally want to do the best you can to not upset or, to use the word on everybody's lips, trigger anyone. My ten year old sister has triggers; if you showed her a photo of a millipede she would freak out, scream, maybe even cry. That doesn't mean that people would put “TW: Millipede” before photos of said insect on nature websites.

Now, this is not to say for one moment that the fear of millipedes is the same as fear of gaining weight, or the fear/discomfort experienced due to one's body, or sexuality, or low mood. Not at all. I am not an idiot, or at least I like to think that I'm not.

I am going to stop going around the houses now and get to the point.

In the past week, within the trans* community, there has been a massive debate surrounding trigger warnings, especially on YouTube videos. If you know what I am talking about, then you don't need to know the exacts, and if you don't know what I am talking about, then you don't need to. Not a fan of name dropping, to be quite honest with you. Basically someone said something that a lot of people didn't like and everything kicked off.

As a YouTuber, I know how hard it can be to say something you don't mean in a video, especially when you are making a video every single week. No body is perfect. And nobody thinks about every single word they say. Mistakes have to be made, they just do.

Inviting discussion is fine; correcting someone on their hurtful language is fine; comments voicing one's opinion are also fine. In fact, I promote all of that. What is not fine, however, is when discussion leads to hate, which leads to the invalidating of people's identities.

Can I just say right now that to say that someone is not one gender or the other or any kind of gender is really disrespectful. Policing people's identities is wrong. Stop it. Who are you?

To be honest, the fact that trigger warnings are being used on YouTube is a completely new territory to me. I've been posting videos for the past four years, on different channels (a few of them have actually had quite a large audience), and never once have I ever used trigger warnings. And never once have I had any complaints about language I have used.

Is this because I get terminology correct one hundred per cent of the time? Of course it doesn't. So what has changed?

A few years ago, if someone said something on YouTube that made me feel uncomfortable, then I closed the video and tried my best to get over it. Just like real life, you have to deal with it. I don't think that people have become more sensitive than they were when I was 14, but I do think that ideas of what is PC and what is not have expanded increasingly. People are more willing to question and argue than they were before. Is that because the audience has aged? Or is it just a “thing” in general?

Back to trigger warnings. Sorry, went off on a slight tangent.

The truth is, life does not have triggers. If someone is going to be rude to you, they're going to be rude to you. They aren't going to have a t-shirt on saying “TW: I am homophobic, transphobic, will talk about your weight and discuss self harm. I also have photos of millipedes on the back of this shirt.” This simply doesn't happen.

As said by my good friend, Hannah “you can't escape life”.

Now, this is not to say that trigger warnings are completely irrelevant. I can see why people would want them there. I know people who are very easily triggered and to watch some videos, read some articles, would send them into masses of anxiety, panic, or low mood. So for some people, they are a godsend.

And when videos have such a large viewership, and no one can know exactly who is watching what, it does make sense to have the trigger warnings there.

But can you say that everyone takes trigger warnings seriously? Sometimes, if I see a trigger warning at the beginning of a YouTube video for “discusses body parts”, I think “nah, it'll be OK. I can handle it.” and do you know what? I watch the bloody thing! And do you know what else happens? I can't handle it!

Does that mean I can blame the people who said/wrote such things? No it does not. So, for trigger warnings to have any effect, they would have to say exactly what they were discussing. And do you know what that could do? Trigger people.

Soon we'll need trigger warnings for our trigger warnings.

I, for one, want this post to invite discussion so please do not hasten to talk to me about it.

Love,

Benjamin x

P.S. Although this post did allude to the drama of the past week, I do not mean it specifically to it. I think this can apply to everything where trigger warnings are used. In the case I am discussing, however, I do not agree that the language used in the video was correct. At all. And I do back the questioning that they received. However, I just think that the backlash was OTT, offensive and ultimately, quite ridiculous. Just a disclaimer. If you want to talk to me ABOUT that video/scenario/thing, then that's fine too. Peace out.