Tag: Buddhism

Word choice can make a real difference

Published on by Jaye11 Comments

assigned-maleNot that this is a unique problem to People, but this article is a perfect example of a pernicious issue in the way trans* people are discussed in the media or even by the people around us.

What’s so bad?  You might be asking that.  I mean look, they used the right pronouns, the right names, etc.  Whatever could they have done wrong, cake and pats on the back all ’round, yes?

Well … no.

Oh, bugger, they’ve edited it already!  Well, in that instance congratulations!  But as it’s important we’ll continue as if they hadn’t for rhetorical sake.

The original text had been:  “[…]Stephen was born a girl[…]”

Now, some people might not realise what’s wrong with that.  Well, that’s where we get to the importance of connotation, of perception, of what language does on a more psychological level.

In short, let’s discuss why we must choose our words wisely.  I’m in favour of accuracy in language.  Not the “concrete” imagery of some literature and “creative writing” courses that say you should never say ‘azure’ just say ‘blue’, no … that’s muddying the language.  I’m not talking about some aspects of the political correctness movement that wants to reword the language in idiotic ways that sound good to social justice ronins, but pisses off the groups that are being crusaded for who might prefer the “un-PC” term/phrase.  I’m talking about logical language analysis here.

Let’s look at that statement.  “Stephen was born a girl” or “Jaye was born a boy”.  First and foremost, it’s simply wrong and inaccurate.  He was not born a girl, if he were he would be a girl.  I was not born a boy, if I were I would be a boy.  He was assigned female at birth, and I was assigned male at birth.  Semantics?  No, very much not so.

The former states the inaccuracy as if it were a given fact.  It implies that we used to be X and have elected to become Y.  We have not.  It implies terrible things about trans* people that are a lot of the ignorance that lurks behind the bigotry and rejection we face.

The latter, on the other hand, that accepts and acknowledges us.  Not our “preferred” gender, not our “preferred” pronouns, not our “identified as” or anything of the sort.  It says that the doctors and parents made an assumption, regardless how statistically likely to be correct, based on the anatomy they found between our legs and that that assumption was mistaken.  No one is to blame, really, besides an arbitrary methodology, or an antiquated ID system that bothers with such idiot details before the child is old enough to answer if asked which they are, etc.  Not any person‘s mistake, and not anything wrong with the trans* individual, just a reason why such assumptions are no better than any other assumption.

Some people have never heard of transgender, transsexual, trans[whatever].  If the first time they do they see it as “Mary was born a boy, but when she was 16 …” or, worse, “Mary was born a boy, but when he was 16 …” they store the word as a choice.  They see it as “Mary was born to Catholic parents, but when she was 16 she converted to Buddhism …”.  But, if the first time they hear/read about a trans* person it is seen as exactly what it is they come away with Understanding.

Please don’t take this away just related to talking about trans* issues, not just for even LGBTQ+ issues.  Please take away from it that while, yes, I do think the political correctness movement and social justice movements, feminism, LGBTQIA+etc activism, and so on do go too far sometimes and more importantly that some people go too far … occasional extremists and periodic extremism does not change that we really ought to consider our language and our word choice.  “Sticks and stones …” et al is well and good, but sometimes the harm isn’t to the person as an individual; the harm in your words can be harm on a larger scale that impacts the person by dint of being part of the demographic you just hurt in broad terms.

So … let’s be careful what we say so as to say what we mean.  Lazy language, at best, makes us look foolish, at worst you may hurt a lot of people in ways you may have never imagined.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Gramps & the Witch)

Published on by Jaye3 Comments

Albert Lee Swanson & Claudette Isis Swanson née Baardsson

10 October 1935 & 2 June 1933
Anglican & Church of All Worlds

The couple who brought Yvette into the world, and an eccentric pair.  Gramps, as far back as Yvette can recall, tended to give people names to suit a mix of who the person was and his own unusual sense of humour.  The Witch, on the other hand, felt that children should actually have names — so insisted on giving permanent names to her children, and also insisted that, given that they’d have to live with them, that it should sound like a name rather than an appellation.  Gramps has never once called one of his children by their given name — and his wife has heard him utter her name few times in the decades they’ve been together.

The pair live in an old hotel that’s been converted to a large home in northern-most Washington, part of their property is possibly in Canada in fact.

Married in 1951 the pair had ten children over the course of twenty-three years.  Gramps has always been talented with woodcarving and carpentry, so owned a furniture making shop and did contracting work while the Witch, who had always been immensely fascinated by the various uses of plants, opened an herbalist shop which specialised in beauty supplies and cosmetics.  Both businesses were successful enough that all of their children were able to go to college, though only eight did, and all of them got scholarships — so the education money went to helping each child into their first homes or other similar boosts to starting adulthood.

The Witch was raised in a household that, ostensibly, was Unitarian but was largely agnostic or Deist in specifics.  She and her siblings were encouraged to study philosophy and theology, their father believing it gave a better understanding of the world, people, and morals & ethics.  She is well versed in Judaism, several forms of Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, can quote the Bible in Greek, and has a firm grounding in several forms of Hindu.  When Otter and Morning Glory Zell founded the Church of All Worlds she studied it as avidly leading to her rising within the ranks of its priesthood.  Gramps, on the other hand, continues to attend a small Anglican church near his home any Sunday he can and makes a stubborn point of going on Easter and Christmas, and insisting even more stubbornly that his wife, and any of their sundry children, children-in-laws, and their children join them whenever they’re visiting on those days.

Among their various hippie friends the pair are sometimes seen as oddly old fashioned.  Gramps and the Witch were fairly strict with their children in terms of expectations of their behaviour.  The girls were, at the Witch’s adamant insistence, thoroughly taught etiquette, diction, posture, and just about every other womanly art that would be taught in a finishing school.  Gramps followed her example — every one of their sons was to be a perfect gentleman (he stopped short at actually making them learn to use a sword, given that he couldn’t use one either).  In seemingly stark contrast to this the parents were exceedingly open with their children and the Witch even educated those of her daughters and sons interested in the subject on the contents of her copy of the Kama Sutra and other related works — not practical demonstrations, mind, only theory; practice was up to them to arrange.

Eventually the couple has retired, giving over his business to a friend and hers to one of their children, and are spending their twilight years enjoying their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, spoiling them as much and as often as possible.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Allison)

Published on by Jaye2 Comments

Allison Zola Paradis

Born 26 November 1995
Zen Buddhist

Allsion is an artist.  It’s all she cares about, it’s all she wants to do.  She has little to no attention span for academia beyond artistic techniques and history.  Actually, Allison tends to have little to no attention span for much of anything except her friend and family, whom she loves deeply, and her adoration of horses and horse riding.  She’s a quirky girl with short chestnut hair and a propensity for dressing in whatever she pulls out of her dresser with barely a regard for how it matches.

Allison has been dating Jacob for awhile and, despite frequent arguments, the two actually get along famously.  She’s Zach’s cousin, the pair’s mothers are sisters, and growing up so close together has led to a deep friendship between them.

While Allison is the first person to explain that she isn’t too bright, it’s not really true.  She can be quite brilliant when she wants to be, but she does march to the beat of her own piccolo — her brain is quite off kilter from the reality those around her perceive.

Her artistic tastes vary widely, but her first great love is painting.  Any medium will do:  watercolours, oil, acrylic, airbrush, etc.  Her greatest loves are oil and watercolour.  Her style leans toward the photorealistic — and she has a profound admiration for many of the renaissance era painters — but she does them in rather fantastic and even surrealist scenarios.  For example, she might paint a pair of women in exquisite detail, even enhancing and refining their actual features, but they’re the centrepiece of a scene of some bizarre landscape out of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  Her works tend to make statements, especially if you take several of them together, but not always — some are merely inspired by some thought and are expressing it, these are often depictions of some aspect of Buddhist philosophy or mythology/legend.

She used to attend the same church as Lauren, and is one of Lauren’s oldest friends, but as the time to begin preparing for Confirmation drew close she began to question her Christian upbringing and faith.  She embarked on a spiritual quest for something that spoke more closely to her view of the world.  She tried Wicca for a few months, but eventually settled on Zen Buddhism where she finally found the spiritual peace she craved.

There is some suspicion among her friends that Allison might be bisexual; something to which she makes little to no effort to deny.  Though if she is, she has never acted upon it having only ever admitted to crushes on boys and having only ever dated boys — though, when in a teasing mood, her friends will often point to Jacob as proof since the boy is very effeminate in appearance and manner.

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