My thesis is one chapter away from completion, and it’d be three chapters away if I hadn’t made a strategic decision to give up on a certain measurement I’d been hoping to make. That measurement has been a pox on my career since I first proposed it. Even as I acknowledge that actually getting it would have been an impressive boon for my thesis, I am glad to see it go.
Month: December 2015
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Girl Pattern, Boy Pattern
Parents who want to do right by their children have a lot on their plate, and I do not envy their task. It is far too easy for even the best of us to end up duplicating the errors that were inflicted on us, or picking up new ones from parenting trends with little basis in reality.
One reality that many well-meaning parents don’t know how to acknowledge is how to make sure that their children don’t fear disclosing their membership in gender and sexual minorities. This society is hideously transantagonistic, and children notice this well before they have a word for it, and that can make them scared even when they shouldn’t be.
Guayaberas and Banana Leaves
I hid them in a garment bag. I couldn’t bear to look at them anymore.
Much of how I maneuver within womanhood was determined by my current environment. I’ve been watching women and building preferences for as long as I’ve been alive. The core of my style was settled long ago, pretending then to be a statement of preference for the other women in my life, with a tactile longing I only recently came to understand. But its current expression owes much to where I am now. Nearly my entire wardrobe is from the heaps of donations I’ve received, filling my closet to bursting and slowly being evaluated for whether and how I’ll actually wear each item. The friends who provided these items have fairly different styles of their own, and I accepted their largesse knowing that I’d be picking and sorting through it as my style evolves.
Most of those friends are Canadian. None of them are Hispanic. And it makes me wonder.
How different would I look if I had recognized myself in Miami, instead of in Ottawa?