It's even in English! Why am I doing this? Dunno. Anyway...
Leicester Pride did not go well for me. The day started fine apart from the depressing, time-consuming bath and hair removal just after I got up, which was annoying but something I have to do every day anyway. It even went well until about 11 am, but then it turned out Sarada wasn't coming to the march but just to the fair. At the time, I didn't consciously consider it a problem that I was going unaccompanied, so I left the house in a good mood. However, in the half hour or so it took me to walk down to the starting point of the parade bit, I went from being confident, happy and looking forward to it through a number of other stages. I thought about having to stand around feeling awkward among people who were either strangers or not strangers. That was enough to persuade me to walk around the assembly point, giving it a wide berth, so I could join it unobtrusively at the back. Then it got worse. Just before reaching the starting point, I chickened out and left, deciding to join the march at some point along its route. Then I decided even that was too much and I skulked around the back streets specifically trying to avoid the march. After that, I walked around the park to avoid the fair bit and waited outside the gates, where I'd arranged to meet Sarada. Even that was too much, so I hid round the corner until I saw her and went over. That was followed by about ten minutes' despondent plodding around the park before I left.
Not good.
What was going on? It was odd actually because the whole time I was fully aware of what I was doing, although it didn't stop it from happening. Two things in fact. One is that I felt like I was a complete wannabe tranny (note the offensive word) who just cannot possibly ever pass. In itself that would be OK because why should people even try to pass? There's an argument for people being obvious because, well, why shouldn't I do this even if it doesn't "work"? It works for me and that's all that should matter. However, I also felt like I would be letting other people down by doing that because whereas it may be something I'm at peace with, I shouldn't be imposing that on anyone else. The other is that I still haven't got past the TERF approach. If I go to Pride, I fully expect to be hated and despised as a metaphorical rapist and if people don't hate me it confuses me and I lose respect for them because it makes me feel they have false consciousness, which is not going to help them. Of course, nowadays I don't think that way. That doesn't mean I should be around people I offend or trigger. They are not necessarily in control of that triggering, or if they are it may take them a lot of effort, time and pain to overcome that, and why should I force them to do that?
It now gets worse in a different way. Sarada and I then went home and talked about it. In this situation, in order to be reassured I would need to be convinced that I passed OK, or of course that it didn't matter, which of course it doesn't, not in the end. Petty of me in a way, but I still need it, sad though that makes me. However, for her, me passing OK is a bad thing, which because it's bad and she can be glass half empty although she tries hard not to be, she is more likely to see me as doing than I do. For me, passing OK would be a good thing so I'm more likely for the same reason to underestimate my ability to do so. So, almost perfectly, my good is her bad and my bad is her good. Since our lives are so entwined that they are effectively one life, and this particular good is almost certainly key to my, and therefore our, confidence, happiness and success, this illustrates particularly clearly the problem.
It now occurs to me that all this might only be tangentially related to the thread about Merry. Sorry about that.
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