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I just watched the trailer for Nobody Passes Perfectly. There's a line in it that struck me - "You decide for yourself what kind of man you want to be."
On some level, this encapsulates everything that frustrates me about trans-related stuff. My ideas about manhood are second-hand, obviously, but I spent many years trying to get comfortable with the idea of womanhood, and ultimately, to me, that's it: you decide what kind of woman you want to be.
So why can't it just be, well, leave it at that? She was born with a penis but she wants to be the kind of woman who mixes the active hobbies of a creative artist with a driven professionalism when she's on the clock - good for her. She only fails at her womanhood if she spends all evening every evening watching TV and doing nothing creative at all, and all day every day making robots out of post-it notes. (Unless they're functional robots, in which case she is *awesome* no matter what.)
And that's still her problem, not yours. (Unless the robots are trying to take over the world.)
The thing I can't work out about some people's attitudes to transfolk and queerfolk and all sorts of folk, is: why do they care?
And I can't work out whether that's something I *want* to understand.
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Oh, Shakesville. So often good, sometimes so very, very wrong.
Comic fail.
Summary: xkcd comic features guy imagining that if he tells a girl her netbook is cute, she'll react angrily, announce it to everyone on the train, and they'll all agree he's creepy and tell the world. Meanwhile, girl wistfully blogs that the cute boy on the train still isn't talking to her.
Shakesville commenter, backed up by Liss, rants about how xkcd is totally getting it wrong, about how it's basically endorsing the assumption that women are always open to sexual advances: I feel like if xkcd dude, or any of the dudes who hit on me while I'm assuming my blank face of public transportation, considered the possibility that I was a doctor, or a lawyer, or, basically, a human being of any importance beyond a personalized fuck-hole for their enjoyment, they wouldn't feel like it's appropriate to interrupt me in the middle of my fucking commute in order solicit sex.
Except that if that's what someone thought, would it really be your *computer* they were complimenting? "Hey, cute netbook," isn't soliciting sex, it's soliciting conversation.
And I realised that the biggest reason this made me very, very angry is that it's deeply, profoundly and viciously sexist. Liss claims they're just teasing out the implicit narrative of the comic; well, the implicit narrative of the reaction is that men are sex-obsessed predators, incapable of attempting to talk to a woman they don't know unless they want to fuck her.
Bullshit.
I've had men on public transport compliment my laptop, or ask a question about it, or about my camera. If I didn't feel like talking, I brushed them off; if I did, I talked to them, and we had a chat about whatever it was, and maybe the chat wandered on to other topics, and at NO POINT was there any suggestion that they wanted sex. It's just a conversation.
And the assumption that's problematic is not that men always have the right to hit on women - which they don't, but the comic doesn't say that they do, so it's NOT IN PLAY. The assumption coming out here is that women should somehow have the right to have no-one ever talk to them, at all, unless they expressly wish it, and you know what?
If that's your attitude, go move to a fucking cave and take up life as a hermit, because that is not how life amongst the human race works.
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So, I now have a relatively firm date by which I will have left Scandinavia, in that I'm attempting to reserve accommodation in France from the 10th of November.
Because I realised I could be in Europe on Armistice Day, which meant I should be.
So my current intentions are to be in Upper Normandy, and on the 11th of November, and attend the Armistice Day services in Luneray. (Assuming they have them, which they probably do.) My great-uncle James, an RAF fighter pilot, was shot down over Luneray and killed, along with the German pilot he was fighting.
He was 24 years old.
I intend also to visit his grave, in the churchyard of a tiny village near Luneray. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, his grave is near the west door of the church.
Either on the way to Normandy (ideally) or afterwards, depending on how I'm doing for time, I'd also like to stop at Ypres and see the Menin Gate Remembrance Service (which takes place every day).
I'll probably be looking then to visit Germany for Volkstrauertag, and perhaps visit some battlefields, but I'm wary of visiting the places that hurt too deeply, because I'm not sure I'd be able to take it.
A few days in Western Europe, anyway, and I'll be aiming after that to get back to Britain somewhere around the 20th of November, I think - a few days before I have a ticket booked to see John Barrowman in La Cage aux Folles at the Playhouse Theatre in London.
Let's see: Evening show. Saturday night. Playhouse Theatre, London.
... I have to buy an outfit for that. I wear practical clothes as a rule anyway, and certainly will be *packing* practical clothes for nearly three months of travel - functional, hardwearing clothes.
I don't think I even *own* clothes appropriate for a Saturday evening at the Playhouse Theatre in London's West End.
But I'm pretty sure I can buy some there. (I have three weekdays left before I leave the country; I'm not spending them trying to find such an outfit here.)
After that, my plans have yet to firm up, but there's a LOT of stuff I have on my list of things to do while I'm there, so I doubt I'll get bored or run out.
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