Trans Liberation Now

October 23, 2017 / Frankie Mouche / 1 Comment

In June 1969 the movement for LGBTQIA+ equality and liberation began. A series of riots took place centering around the Stonewall Inn in New York. These riots were instigated by transgender women of colour and the next year, the first Pride Parade was held.

Let me just say that again for the people who may have missed it:

The LGBTQIA+ rights movement was started by TRANS WOMEN OF COLOUR.

Why then for almost two generations did we refer to Pride colloquially as, “Gay Pride” and the LGBTQIA+ rights movement as the “Gay Rights Movement?”

The western world revolves around cisgender white males. It has done so for thousands of years. White cis men invented the patriarchy and white supremacy to keep the rest of us in our place and subservient to them. Don’t think we as queer or trans people are exempt from that, because we aren’t.

Every movie or documentary ever made about the Stonewall riots has been filled with cis white gay men. The most recent, “Stonewall” movie had a white gay guy throw the first brick that started the riots. Martha P Johnson will be rolling in her grave.

Even the famous UK charity Stonewall spent years fighting for the rights of lesbians, gays and bisexuals without giving a single thought about the trans women who started the whole damned thing.

The Stonewall charity are now fighting for trans rights too, but like many gay centered pages such as Pink News, they are allowing rampant transphobia to go unchecked in their comments sections.

It makes you wonder why 48 years ago trans people even bothered. Our rights have come along at a snail’s pace whilst the “gay charities” gain popular opinion, legal recognition and specifically in the UK almost entirely full equality with heterosexuals.

Are we content to be shut off like this? Well we have been I suppose. Waiting for our gay comrades to turn around and help us, the way we have helped them.

Now is our time. Lets fight for our rights and for inclusivity for the most vulnerable in our community. Lets call out the LGB bigots who make jokes about gender neutrality and dismantle the online spaces rife with transmisogyny. Lets support and help raise up our trans siblings of colour.

Fuck racism. Fuck cissexism. Fuck transmisogyny. Fuck transphobia. Fuck the LGB community out for themselves without a second thought for the TQIA.

Let’s make 2018 our year!

A Gender Revolution?

January 24, 2017January 24, 2017 / Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

When National Geographic magazine announced they were going to do a whole issue on gender, I was understandably excited but sceptical. Here I examine the good and bad parts of The Gender Issue.

They start out pretty badly to be honest. They have interviews with Gloria Steinem and Sheryl Sandberg. Gloria goes on to state that, “the idea of race and gender are divisive.” That’s a really privileged comment to make in my opinion and has no place in modern feminism.

The magazine goes on to ask questions of them both about binary gender:

What advice would you give girls and boys today?

Nice one NG! Erased in the first interviews. At this point I want to throw the fucking thing out the window and hope it hits a TERF in the face. ARGH!

Page five comes with a diverse image of people of different genders and races from across the world and a list of terms relating to them. For example it gives definitions of gender expression and gender fluidity. There could have been more of this. It’s 4 pages long and probably the best thing in the entire magazine. It was nice to see my identity covered too. That’s not something I’ve seen in a mainstream magazine before.

So now I’m hopeful. They get that gender isn’t binary, right? Nope. The next few pages are filled with binary gender statistics. I could have been erased entirely by science anywhere, but in the pages of a magazine claiming to be exploring gender, it hurts a tad bit more. I dunno if I’m just over reacting now. What did I expect? A magazine about gender to actually explore other genders than cis male and cis female properly?

A few pages later and I come across an article about intersex butterflies. Interesting. They explained what intersex was earlier and that the term, “hermaphrodite” is considered offensive. So what do they go on to do? Describe the butterflies as hermaphrodites. Are you fucking serious? What actually is life?

More binary gender stats about cis men and cis women. *yawn*

I’m actually bored shitless now and angry. Why am I even reading this tripe? The next set asks kids from around the world about gender. They include one transgirl for a bit of variety, but even she sees gender as male and female only. (She’s only 9 so we’ll let her off.)

Rethinking Gender is a gripping few pages. It examines the science behind our gender identities, different cultures with accepted third genders and the legality of officially changing your gender from the one you were assigned at birth. I actually thoroughly enjoyed this section.

The whole rest of the magazine is dedicated to:

How different cultures celebrate children becoming adults i.e men and women. That would have been fine if they had included other genders too. Obviously not though.
Paternal leave in Sweden. Um what?
Gender roles…..binary gender roles. Not the cool ones.;)

It was hard to read this issue and it was hard to write this blog because it brought out some very angry thoughts. Buy it if you fancy fucking screaming at it and smacking your head against the wall repeatedly. Also and just for clarity, fuck the cistem and fuck the binary.

Night all.

My Gender Queer Life

March 26, 2015 / Frankie Mouche / 6 Comments

I grew up in a house with two opposite sex parents. I like to state this because it is not by any means a given in life. My mother was and still is obsessed with femininity and my father has always been traditionally masculine. A pretty traditional upbringing in all senses of the word.

I was closer to my dad as a child. I don’t really know why. By the time I was 3 I could name every car on the road because he loved cars. He often took me to work with him at a car showroom and to various motor sport events which I loved.

My mum put me in dresses for a long time, but as soon as I could choose, I was in trousers and a t-shirt. They made me feel more comfortable. Not to say I didn’t enjoy spending time with my mum, because I did.

The first memory I have of knowing I was different was when I was 6 years old. My mum and my sister had taken me and my niece and nephew to an outdoor public paddling pool. It was a hot day and all the kids were running in and out of the water. My nephew threw his shirt off and ran into the pool with just shorts on. I took my shirt off and ran in after him. I was shouted at and told that girls must wear tops at all times. I protested, but I was really embarrassed. I had broken a social norm and all I ever wanted to do was please my family. It effected me so profoundly that I didn’t even consider what I felt like inside for almost 20 years.

Around the age of 14 I came out to my family as a lesbian. I had a girlfriend and it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide it. It was a relief but I suffered for it at school and in my personal life. To be honest this is quite irrelevant to my GQ story, other than a particular point I want to make:

Sexuality and gender and two different things.

Sexuality is who you are attracted to.
Gender is how you identify.

Like with the binary gender norms (male and female), sexuality is also enforced in a trinary (probably not a word.) Straight, gay or bisexual with the assumption you are straight unless you say otherwise.

As an adult I have come to realise both are on a spectrum, identifying as pansexual and GQ. (Being pansexual means you are attracted to the whole spectrum and reject the gender binary.)

Around about the age of 27 my partner of 3 years left me. We had a mortgage together, 3 cats and we had built a stable life. She left without warning and little explanation. My boss at the time was an unsympathetic homophobe who basically told me to get over it. I sat and cried at my desk everyday until HR eventually signed me off sick for a week. I drank a lot and had time to think about what she had potentially been suppressing in me. I started to explore my feelings about gender on Tumblr and Reddit. I started to connect with people who felt the same way about themselves as me. We didn’t fit in the gender binary. We didn’t identify as male or female. We were gender queer.

Now here is where it gets complicated so pay attention. There is a trans* umbrella. It encompasses lots of different identities such as gender fluid, bigender and agender as well as gender queer. I personally am fluid in my gender. Sometimes I feel more masculine or more feminine. However most of the time I’m entirely androgynous. I identify as gender queer because I don’t fit. I’m queer of the norm. If I want to actually pass as a cis male, then I will dress as one and do exactly that. I find it harder to pass as cis female for fucks sake and I have a damn vagina!

A lot of my gender queer friends have gone on to transition to become who they really are. For example having a female body and transitioning to that of a male. They are now transgendered people. Me on the other hand, I am already who I am and that is queer as bloody folk. 😉

So what is my life like on a daily basis? I get up and I think about how I’m feeling. Shall I wear tight jeans or shall I wear a baggy hoodie? Shall I leave the hairs on my lip or shall I pluck them? Suitably dressed for how I’m feeling I’ll go to the gym. Unfortunately at my local gym they do not have gender neutral changing rooms so I have to make a decision based on how I am presenting to the world. Sometimes this is made for me and I am ushered into the male changing rooms because even being androgynous means you are definitely male in the binary world. After the gym I’ll go to the supermarket to grab some shopping. I’ll need a wee because I’ll have drunk a lot post workout. Again there are no gender neutral facilities. I look at the door and the symbols don’t match who I am or how I feel. I have to yet again make a decision I’m not comfortable with. If I go into the female toilets I am often whispered about and sometimes even blatantly shouted out. If I go in the male toilets I could get beaten up. Ah I’m at home now. I’ll check Facebook and see what’s going on in the world. I’ll get misgendered as ‘she’ by strangers and even people I know when my profile clearly states my preferred pronouns are they and them. You know I’m really tired already and I haven’t even been to work yet. She this and she that all fucking night long. ARGH!!!!!!!

As you can see it’s difficult being a non-binary person in a binary world. Every action can be a stressful situation just waiting to open up and swallow you. Only around people who truly accept me can I be comfortable and sometimes even they make mistakes. It’s so hard to be unconditioned when your whole life you are told that the binary is the only thing there is.

Being gender queer certainly isn’t any form of attention seeking as I have been accused of in the past. It’s just me trying to express how I really feel inside on the outside.

I hope this little ramble has made things clearer for you. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them below.

A Week Off

March 4, 2013 / Frankie Mouche / 1 Comment

A couple of weeks ago now a friend of mine was taken from this world by someone who never deserved to have someone as amazing as her in his life. The whole metal community in my home town drank, partied, grieved and drank some more in her honour. I went to a couple of events and even carried on going to work until last Monday when it hit me hard in the face like a brick. The girl who was the first person to actively use Mouche and Emzy together , who would listen to my problems or dance the night away with me: She was gone, forever.

I had to have some time off to get my head around it, but that’s when my depression really started to kick in. All I wanted to do was sit on the sofa, play video games and drink and that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t even go to the gym.

My depression is a crazy monster that lives inside of me that makes me act strangely and alienates those around me. It’s also heavily affected by a healthy diet and a serious amount of exercise, neither of which I had last week. I continued to spiral downwards.

When I’m not in control of how I feel, I tend not to be in control of my gender issues either. I kept switching along my gender spectrum. This is highly traumatic for me because I can get dressed, go out and then be in the entirely wrong clothes and feel 100% dysphoric.

The picture of my Dad from 1978 rings a bell with me. I don’t have any biological male siblings, so I have no idea what I’d look like as a guy. I’ve been in femme mode for about the last two months and now I’m sat firmly back in androgyny, or as I like to say: without gender. Mykey my partner, has been supportive throughout this time and I look forward to him meeting the more masculine me, but for now I am back in control and where I like to be.

To top it all off, my oldest rescue cat went missing on Saturday. This triggered my anxiety and made me very twitchy. Thank-fully she came back and is happily asleep somewhere warm and comfy.

All in all, I feel a lot better today and I’m back at work. I even went to the gym this morning, so onwards and upwards.

An inspiration from an unusual source!

February 1, 2013February 1, 2013 / Frankie Mouche / 2 Comments

In May 2012, my partner of four years left me. I spent the next 3 months on the floor, drinking myself to death. It was during this time that I realised that my ex had suppressed something in me and it was starting to manifest itself. I realised that I was gender queer. To those who don’t know what this term means, let me break it down for you: people who are GQ live outside of the binary of male and female. They identify as neither, yet will flirt between them and sit in the middle without gender too. This is called being androgynous. (My best friend tells me that I am all kinds of androgynous hot. Who knew?) Personally my own gender switches when it feels like it, but especially when I am going through immense emotional turmoil and let’s be honest, I’ve not been short of that lately. Anyway, after my emotional breakdown I started to rediscover myself. I became this whole new creature, who could proudly sport a beard and urinate in the male toilets, or wear tight jeans and low cut tops. I really liked where I was and where I am to this day: Openly GQ. Gq_flag

Now I’m going to skip a good few months of losing weight and training hard at the gym (I can write about that somewhere else, because you know you want to hear that one) and we arrive at January 2013. I am in a new relationship with a white, heterosexual male. It never even occurred to me that this might pose some challenges, but luckily it hasn’t. He is very understanding and he also inspired me to write this particular post. We were talking the other day and he mentioned my lack of caring about what people think of how I behave. A confused face was made by me, to which he explained more. He mentioned that he was impressed with my lack of caring about particular roles in the bedroom and that I just did what felt right. When we were out at the pub, I always accompanied him to the bar and we took it in turns to pay – this made him smile. Then the fact that I would come up behind him and hug him, which he always saw as a male role – this makes him think I am amazing. I look female currently and I guess he thought he’d have to pay for things and wait on me hand and foot, both in life and the bedroom. It doesn’t work like that with me because gender is irrelevant. We work as a team of two equal people. (Although I am stronger than him, which won’t last for long because he is training everyday like me.) Now I have had this inequality in relationships pointed out to me, I can see it everywhere: One partner taking advantage of the other because of their perceived gender and therefore role norms. Why should what is between your legs, dictate how you behave around people you find attractive? How do we even begin to combat this as a queer movement and eventually as a society? For now I’ll keep being amazed at how many norms I don’t conform to in my newly, visually heterosexual relationship and look forward to the new adventure life has placed before me.

(NB: My new partner identifies as male, so I have referred to him in this pronoun.) 2013-02-01 11.47.01

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Gender Norms