Crossposted in Orange at Teacher’s Lounge
Best laid plans sometimes get derailed. I know I had a topic somewhere I was planning to write about. But stuff has been looming for the past couple of weeks and now it is past the looming stage.
So I’ve decided to start writing about it here. Whenever I write more personal stuff at Teacher’s Lounge, reader participation is low. Maybe that will be a blessing in disguise and I can get the diary I feel obligated to write done so I can post it tomorrow and it can be resoundingly ignored. Or maybe this time I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Given the lesson of yesterday I’ll not count on the latter.
I’ve had this huge meeting (from my perspective) with the academic dean approaching over the past couple of weeks. The purpose was an attempt to solicit some aid in trying to get my words published into book form.
I wrestled with how to prepare all week…or maybe all 2.5 weeks that this meeting was on the schedule. In so doing it also came to my attention that 15 years ago tomorrow is the day I came out/was outed. In Teacher’s Lounge #49, I believe (Answers in Search of Questions, I posted a bit about that. But that was one of those TL‘s which people avoided in droves. I did include links to coming out stuff at the time:
…my two “coming out letters”, to the Chair and to my colleagues.
It also occurs to me that it is now two years since I became a member of DailyKos. In the first diary From the Heart on September 25, I laid out my purpose for being there. Here I am, 194 diaries later (101 weeks of Teacher’s Lounge and 4 other diaries about it) and in all of the diaries about our exclusion from ENDA, I have seen something akin to this:
I think dKos could use some trans education
from folks in the know.
It makes me wonder why I have wasted so much effort. Because that effort was made so that we wouldn’t get dumped from legislation like ENDA.
If I don’t get so disgusted with some of the people here that I leave DK forever, you may see more about that particular birthday tomorrow.
So what spoiled everything? First inkling that we were being dumped from ENDA was Wednesday…or maybe it was years ago when we started getting dumped from any sort of protective legislation for gays and lesbians that was put forward anywhere. It got worse over the next couple of days.
Being discarded from the society as not important enough to worry about is never a good feeling, for an individual or a group. Fortunately we transfolk have plenty of practice. We will survive. Well, at least some of us will survive. Many don’t.
But that should be withheld for tomorrow, I suppose.
I gave the short report of my meeting with the dean in Happy Stories last night:
Okay, so I met with the Dean. Marion was very interested in helping me make this publishing thing happen. She has some connections with some alternate press people. Well see if maybe we can do a book that is more biography and one that is more philosophy and politics.
She also was interested in the concept of trying to get the three collections of poetry (An Opened Mind, State of the Onion, and A Transition through Poetry published into chapbooks. Or maybe more. The faculty member who would have the most information about the process is on sabbatical, but we’re going to try to get this done, perhaps using our state of the art printing facilities (our Creative Arts and Technology division is top-flight).
She also asked if it would be easier for me going forward if my faculty line was changed in order to facilitate my creative work. I’m not positive what that exactly means, but I am, as always, open to change.
How’s that for an understatement.
Robyn
I’m really going to have to find out what that faculty line change thing is about. When she said that, I was as stunned as a carp in a pond someone threw an M-80 into. Maybe you can help me flesh out what this might mean in the comments.
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…which one could give a tug at. Be my guest.
Robyn
successful at Dkos.
Educating ONE person is worthwhile, and you have educated FAR more than one person in your time there.
transgender, alternative lifestyles, coming out… or, as you wrote: Being discarded from the society as not important enough to worry about is never a good feeling, for an individual or a group. Fortunately we transfolk have plenty of practice. We will survive. Well, at least some of us will survive. Many don’t.
we are all being discarded, it’s just that some of us know it better than others
we are in this together Robyn… white, black, red, yellow, men, women, straight, bi, trans, asexual (is there a designation for that too?)… throw it all out::: ALL OF IT and let it come back to us, just human beings, most of whom are doing the best they can
we are all grabbing for attention and recognition, but we fracture it
you and I, Robyn, are the same. you are part of my family. your rights are important to me and achieving them are paramount because what you want is good for all of us…
give me a more equitable world
even if NOBODY reads what you write, the writing is good for you. write what you must, and let ‘them’ be sorrier for not having shared it.
A while back on DKos there was a diary about A. Coulter that I commented on, beginning my comment with “mann coulter” not realizing what harm I was causing. Not to A.C. but to transgendered people, you showed me the error of my ways gently and I’ve always wanted to say thank you and to earnestly apologize for my rude behavior. You are a very patient teacher, I admire that, a lot.
about that have impacted my life more so because I wasn’t supposed to know or allowed to know about them. They could have been or should have been rather normal instances but they weren’t because I ended up being shocked and having no understanding about anything other than what I was allowed to know about. My Aunt loves to learn and a few years ago she phoned me and told me that I had to get the book Middlesex, that it was extraordinary. It is too and somehow the world became more complete for having read it. I never got to tell my daughter that not everybody hits the ground clearly male or female, she has been allowed to discover all of this along with me but we have been able to add knowledge to our son’s basic learning now that none of us had access to. About two years ago we were talking about girls and boys and about how sometimes things aren’t so clearly black and white and sometimes colored outside the lines with some of us. It is freeing and healing to say that we aren’t cookie cutter beings and if you tell me who you are I am completely free to be who I am. We are blessed with you a thousand times over. The ripples of you and the truth you bring mankind spread across the oceans where once such ripples were not permitted to be seen in the light and a dark scary unknown was all that was there for those of us not traveling such roads less traveled. Fear is not always a benefit this far from the cave dwelling, usually it sucks…..it sucks the life right out of all of us if we aren’t careful.