Asylum InformationBelow is information about the "Fool's Paradise" asylum on InsaneJournal. To join this asylum, click here. You may leave the asylum at any time. |
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User: | transsanity (1218594) |
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Name: | Fool's Paradise | ||||||||||
Theme: | Navigating Life's Imaginary Rules and Double Standards | ||||||||||
About: | I am no more and no less important or unimportant than anyone else. My opinions are just that, opinions. Opinions are more often than not fairly valuless to anyone other than the holder of those opinions. So why write my thoughts and feelings and experiences (and, yes, opinions) in such a public forum? Because I believe that everyone's life experiences have intrinsic value and that isolating ourselves in silent frustration is a waste of (possibly invaluable) resources. Besides, I really like to share with others ideas and different perspectives on the things that interest me. I have been many different people over the years, in a vain effort to try to gain a tangible sence of acceptance. After five long decades I'm way past being weary of such people-pleasing disengenuousness. Trying to live by everyone else's rules and deffinitions in order to fit in somewhere was killing me. Of course, when you happen to be transgendered and are terrified of anyone finding out (because there are people in this world who feel it's their duty to harrass, rape, and even kill people like me)...well, you tend to become a bit secretive. My goal is to share with others (who have traveled less distance on their own journey of self discovery and realization) the hope, strength, and experience I have slowly and painfully gained. I am no expert. I am not a professional. I'm only one transwoman among many, I don't speak for us in any official or sanctioned capacity. The transgender community is larger and more diverse than I ever dared to guess back in 1980 when my timid efforts to transition were derailed, mostly by my decieptful and treacherous therapist. But that's a story for another time. My point is that I'm just one voice. Over the next thirty years I very slowly became less and less capable of coping with the tension between my gender incongruence and what I believed were my duties to my parents and my spouse. Because of my therapist's betrayal, I felt I had no where to turn, and I quickly became suicidal. Fortunately I became involved in a 12 Step recovery program for substance abuse in 1985, and that gave me hope of a kind that was sufficient for me to survive - one day at a time. Here again, I'm no expert or spokesperson, I'm just one among many who found relief enough to begin to try to put together a life worth living with the help and support of countless others. The long and short of it is that 12 Step recovery provided me with tools for coping with life's myriad difficulties in a way I was incapable of doing on my own, and this, in turn, eventually brought me to a place of self-acceptance and self-respect and humility that made it possible for me to finally begin to transition, again, after a thirty year delay. No one should have to face these kinds of challenges alone, and especially uninformed. Are there other sites that can teach more about transgenderism? Yes, I visit them often. Are there sites that provide more of the latest philosophical and political activism news? Yes, again I find them quite valuable in my own process. My hope is that I might be able to provide a safe space for those who are either in the questioning phase or who have become frustrated with the attitudes of family, friends, etc., or even the gatekeepers who are supposed to be helping us but often make our transitioning a humiliating or stressful nightmare, instead, to speak out, to share their feelings, to have others they can relate to without having to have a masters or Phd in gender studies to enter and contribute to the discourse in a meaningful way. Oh, and by the way, this asylum is not exclusive to the transgender community or even the LGBT...etc., community. But if you are going to participate, you must be respectful. Slurs and other intimidating, misgendering, invalidating and marginalizing language and/or comments will never be tolerated. All posts will be monitered. You can always express a difference of opinion, but it won't make it through if it is hurtful in any of these respects. | ||||||||||
Interests: | 51: 12 steps, biking, christopher moore, chuck palahniuk, compassion, dada, dignity, dorthea tanning, empathy, enya, equality, evanescence, gender activism, georgia o'keeffe, healing, humility, humor, insights, ives tanguy, jennifer finney boylan, journaling, kay sage, learning, lgbt., long walks, loreena mckennitt, love, marcel duchamp, margaret atwood, max ernst, mazzy star, middlesex, momento, my mother my self, open mindedness, orlando, peace, respect, salvador dali, sharing ideas, she's not there, surrealism, the cube, the virgin suicides, tolerance, tori amos, understanding, virginia wolf, vonnegut, white oleander, writing fiction | ||||||||||
Members: | None listed. | ||||||||||
Account type: | Free Patient | ||||||||||
Date created: | 2011-04-23 12:42:25 | ||||||||||
Date updated: | 2011-04-23 22:49:22, 681 weeks ago | ||||||||||
Clients used: | |||||||||||
Journal entries: | 1 | ||||||||||
Comments: | Posted: 0 - Received: 0 |