I expect that there are not going to be a lot of surprises with the weather. Yes we are going through climate change but I am hoping for a stretch of relative normalcy to reinforce some illusions of stability. It is not going to get ridiculously warm or cold. There will be no preternatural storms, winds or floods. The loony is going to return to par with the US dollar, a cure for cancer will be found and the New Jerusalem will descend to the earth. How we love to fantasize, Gentle Reader. How we long to live in a permanent halcyon blur all warm and fuzzy like happy little froggies being slowly cooked to death in the gently heating water.
The weather is a bit mild these days and this is usually what happens in mid-January. The worst of winter really feels like it's over, here in Yoga and Sushi Land anyway. Which reminds me of a little joke between my friends who have recently arrived from Mexico. You know you're really in Vancouver when every block seems to have a yoga parlour, a sushi bar, a pot shop, a gym and a Starbucks.
But seriously, I'm an optimist. Spring here begins at around January 15. Little flowers, notably snowdrops are already beginning to bloom. The house finches are singing. There is even now a little more daylight. The temperatures aren't quite so low. Today they are forecasting a high of ten.
I have been thinking about gender lately. I used to attend an Anglican church where one of the subdeacons is a transwoman. Now this is a particularly unpleasant disagreeable transwoman who seems to have her nose permanently out of joint and will only exchange the peace with her friends. One day we were having a polite chat about gender (she never could stand me by the way). I suggested lamely that she perceives herself as a woman. She shot back "I AM a woman." Okay, very postmodern of her and of course I didn't disagree with her. It is because she wishes, she wishes it so. She is NOT a woman. A transwoman, yes, but to qualify as a woman one requires a certain chromosomal set along with a uterus, ovaries and mammary glands. Not all the surgically invented vaginas and breast implants and hormone treatments in the world are going to do this. What makes a woman a woman is the fact that she can even potentially conceive and bear children.
This doesn't mean that I am not against sexual reconstructive surgery. Where appropriate I am entirely in favour especially given how many lives this saves from suicide. And I am completely against transphobia of all kinds. I accept transwomen and transmen and I accept there self-perception. But I equally accept that it is not my perception which I trust will be equally respected.
Gender is a funny thing. When I mentioned to a former friend who was then a recovering Christian fundamentalist beginning to backslide back into fundamentalism that there is a transwoman serving at this Anglican church as a subdeacon he shouted in horror "You mean there's a transvestite serving at the altar!" I gently explained the difference. He didn't seem to get it. Like most fundamentalists he is not particularly bright since his enlarged amygdala seems to interfere with normal brain functions and we soon were no longer friends.
In terms of myself I tend to identify as androgynous or agender. This gives me the best of neither world but it also makes relating with gender defined groups a little bit awkward. I seem to have a little in common with men, a little in common with women, a little in common with transpersons and not a lot in common with anyone. I am not comfortable in male exclusive groups for the same reason as female exclusive groups. They tend to bring out in one another some of their worst stereotyped traits.
Like the mostly male weekend bike jocks who occupy my otherwise favourite Saturday café. Fortunately they're gone within a half hour but I swear that they leave the place smelling like a locker room with an espresso bar. In a different café where till recently I was showing my art there was a swarm of loud obnoxious middle aged white women taking over the place every Friday. I had to stay away to preserve my sanity.
This isn't to say that not all gender exclusive groups are unpleasant. Yesterday in another cafe there was a just mildly strident gathering of women all from the same family, teens-to-middle age. even if they got on my nerves a bit I found them quite enjoyable and very intelligent to listen to. One was talking about a friend who apparently has the same thyroid-pituitary condition that put me in hospital last year. Had they been a mixed gender group I might have shared a bit with them from my own experience. I knew that being a biological male made me likely to them a potential threat (understandably) and therefore unwelcome.
In another café, a Mexican establishment I enjoy sitting in sometimes, there is sometimes another female dominant group of Mexican mothers with two or three small children. These ones are a bit different. To my surprise they seem quieter, gentler and less strident. Their energy is lovely and I quite enjoy being in the café with them even though we never communicate, naturally, given that even though I am agender when they see me they see a man and case closed. I might also be a bit prejudiced in favour of Latin Americans given that so many of them speak my adopted Spanish.
Then there is this particularly offensive add on CBC TV and online for a program called "Moms" where one character in a coffee klatch of woman who looks like a transwoman having a very bad day waxes on about her "Mom-gina." Too much information.
Next!
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