魔法少女プリティジューリャ

So, a lot of people say to me: "Can you do $foo when you have a moment?" or "Can you work on $foo when you have some spare time?" No, no I can't, for everything that I do, I have to NOT be doing at least six other things. (And in general these are things that only I can do.) My time is way oversubscribed. You're just adding to my growing anxiety by giving me one more thing I can't do.

(This is really annoying at work, because I'll have two several-hundred hour long projects, but one will be the highest priority, so I need to work on that above all else, but I can work on the other project "when I get the time"… which never happens. So it seems like I'm never completing anything.)

So, last night while I was supposed to be finishing my art for Burning Man, I made the mistake of looking at Michigan Womyn's Music Festival Discussion Forums, and I get the impression that the music festival is not a safe place? Hypothetically, if I went there, would I likely be attacked? (I haven't had the time to research any of this yet, it's rather distant from my daily life. (And I seriously don't have the time for drama¹.))

But anyway, the reason why I'm writing this, is because I could not let an oft repeated statement go unchallenged. There is a common accusation that male to female transsexuals [MTFs] are men, who devote many painful years of their lives, to pretend to be women, for the purpose of raping them². And that their demand to be treated simple human respect and decency, the same as any ordinary woman, is male privilege.

As an actual, for-reals, victim of sexual assault, I find these accusations of rape highly offensive. Especially coming from people who have never experienced this. Attending a Womyn's Music Festival, just like any other woman, is not the same as someone [a man] holding you on the ground with a knife at your throat, and sticking their tongue in your mouth³. [And something else I've gotten:] Taking someone's photo, in public, without their permission is not the same as rape. It's not the same as being backed into a corner as a child and having myone's genitals fondled.

As a transsexual, I have been turned down for work; denied housing, twice!; denied medical care; denied government ID; lost friends (but not any more family than what I had already lost before); etc. all explicitly because I'm trans. (I know it's for that reason, because that's what the people doing it are telling me when they do it. It's perfectly legal to do, so why cover it up?)

As a woman, I also get people completely ignoring anything I say, or invalidating it, not believing that I can lift heavy objects, or take care of myself, or actually be skilled at anything technical, and staring at my breasts while they talk to me.

I can't even kiss someone I love, without the animal part of my hindbrain wanting to run away or attack. I have to fight myself to not disassociate when being intimate with someone. And I hate it. [Note that if you're one of the people I'm intimate with, and you didn't know, don't do anything different just because I've said this now.]

The next time I see someone accusing myself or someone else of rape rhetorically, I'm going to call them out on it. I'm not going to passively sit by and take it any more. Put up, or shut up. What the hell was your rape experience like? And how is that the same as whatever petty drama you're upset about? Oh, you never were? Well then kindly shut the fuck up.

Really, all this accusation of rape is, is verbal bludgeon for attacking and gaining power over people, in a sense… a form of rape itself.


P.S. You know, I don't even identify as trans most of the time. I've mostly forgotten about it (except when I use the bathroom), the only time people identify me as trans, is when they're using it as a weapon against me.

P.P.S. This can not seriously be the official MWMF LiveJournal community, right, right? http://community.livejournal.com/michfest/profile

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¹ What with working twice as hard as a man, for half the credit, because I'm a woman.
² I know this strikes most of you as being absurd, and it certainly strikes me as absurd, but there are people who very seriously believe this, which I still find hard to believe.
³ No, I don't want to talk about it, you may notice however that I'm still alive.

Attention people: I am not longer taking responsibility for your lives. Especially if you're going to freak out because I'm five minutes late, to spend my time and money to drive you to something in two hours. "We didn't know if you were going to be five minutes late or five hours!" Please, is this really your opinion of me, that I'm that flakey. Oh, and that I was wrong for being "Out of communication" when I wasted over five minutes searching for your number to call. You could have called me you know. (And when I'm late because I was busy helping someone else out.

"Julia, can you..." No, no I can't, unless you're paying me money or sleeping with me. Deal with your own problems. I'm out of time. This is why I'm exhausted all the time, I rarely get time for myself.

I wanted to go to Yoga practice tonight, but I've been sneezing all day (with sore throat, simultaneously dry and runny nose, etc.) So, rather than just infecting everyone in the class with whatever virus this is; I nobly stayed home and screwed around on LiveJournal instead… er, I mean I nobly sacrificed my Yoga practice for the health and safety of others.

I was fighting cold off pretty well last week, but then I went skinny dipping with a bunch of bisexual witches, in the redwood forests near Santa Cruz, in the [unseasonably] freezing cold [28°F], this weekend.

But, this reminds me that I haven't written a health update for several months…

My biggest breakthrough was the discovery that they use monochloramine to sterilize the tap water around here. Chloramine binds to hemoglobin, acting like a nitrite to induce methemoglobinemia; Which explains why every time I took a shower, I showed all of the symptoms of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, except that the CO detector never goes off. It kills fish if used in their aquariums, and many zoo animals need it removed from their water… But it's completely safe for humans!

Since moving back to California in 2004, I had noticed that every time I took a shower, I seemed to get sick. Mostly a really fatigued dazed brain-fog, weakness, dizziness, and coughing up clear mucus. Sometimes an, "OMG why can't I stand up!" laying on the floor panting for an hour while my hands and feet turn blue. I went to a few doctors, and they kept telling me that this is "Stress", that I'm stressing about going to work, and that I was hyperventilating (or having panic attacks). Despite the fact that if I didn't take a shower I would feel find, until I did, and would need to lay down, barely able to think. And also, this happens on the weekend, and before things I really really want to do, and I get upset that I can't move my body, to get up, and go do them. Also, that when I travel to other parts of the country, I don't get sick after taking a shower. (And I know several other people around here who have noticed the same things happening with them.)

[Repeat story about switching anti-depressants every month for my stress– none of them worked.]

All of this led me to believe that it was something present in the bathroom shower. My first hypothesis was that it was black mold, or even just mildew, as the first bathroom where I noticed this was covered in it. After practically remodeling two bathrooms in two different apartments, there was still something knocking me out. Of course, no one I told my suspicions to - about sickness related to the shower - took me seriously. I'm just a crazy stressed out woman! (Switching back and forth between male an female presentations, I can tell you for a fact that no one pays any attention to what you say when you're female. [Another rant about that later.])

Then one day, while arguing about ionic compounds or something with Nyah; She made an off hand comment about the chloramine in the tap water here killing fish. I did some research (see above), and some experimentation.

There is a window, in the shower, of my current bathroom, in just the right spot that I can stick my head out of it to take a breath, while in the middle of showering. So that's what I did; And the very first time I took a shower, and inhaled none of the fumes [steam] from the shower, I felt great afterwards. None of the common dizzy weakness I had suffered almost every day for two years.

So, this is how I've been showering since October — sticking my head out the window, and then holding my breath. My hit-points have been steadily going back up, and I've been putting my life back together, now that I don't feel deathly ill all the time. If I accidentally inhale too much steam from the shower, or one of my roommates takes a shower, and fills the house with deadly shower gases, the weak-tired-dizzy-panting-for-air symptoms return. (I really need to install a filter on the water line here.)

Oh, and to all those people who told me that I was a hypochondriac: fuck you.