Child of Elros

[NB: This is originally a private rant from several months ago, when I was still trying to salvage the friendship.  Within the past two weeks, I have had to end the friendship; please see the update below.]

This is a frakkin' rant.

• Here, have a list of my disabilities:
  • Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome — and be aware that managing this disorder requires me to do a constant balancing act between how much pain I can tolerate vs. how much medication-induced sedation I can tolerate
  • Gout
  • All sorts of joint problems, including frozen shoulder (technically, adhesive capsulitis) in both shoulders, which requires me to do very painful exercises to keep my shoulders from freezing completely; chronic back pain due to kyphoscoliosis, which in the last year has become relentless and appears to be radiating into my left foot; carpal-tunnel syndrome; numerous other joint problems, including joints (knees, fingers especially) that just go out at the drop of a hat
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Asperger's syndrome
  • Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
  • Life-long, severe depression intractable to medications and therapy
  • Anxiety disorder
  • Dissociation, including derealization, depersonalization, and at least borderline / atypical DID (dissociative identity disorder)
  • Just sheer exhaustion from having to deal with transphobia, transphobic-misogyny, and binarism, as someone who is transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, and female (yes, it is possible to be all of those at once)
     
  So, when you go on about how "there wasn't air conditioning until after WWII, so quit bitching about the heat", how do you think that makes me feel? Keep in mind that before A/C, a lot of people frakkin' died from the heat, especially elderly people and people with disabilities. When I so-called "bitch" about the heat, it's because I don't have A/C and dealing with the heat is hard and exhausting. That "there wasn't A/C 100 years ago" is just victim-blaming. It's like, three hundred years ago, (colonial / European) medicine consisted of bleeding, so all those people without health insurance, quit yer bitchin'? Just because you can handle the heat (or what have you), doesn't give you the right to expect everybody else to handle the heat as well as you.
   
• Loudly referring to the two women immediately in front of us on the sidewalk as "men" because they're wearing loose-fitting (and damned comfortable-looking, maybe I'll get some for myself) shorts is all kinds of fucked up. It's misogynistic, it's transphobic (even if the women in question are cis — which neither of us knew one way or the other), it's gender-essentialist, it's frakkin' wrong. The fact that you yourself are trans makes it worse. You ought to know better than to join cissupremacist society in policing gender and its expression. Stop it.
   
• We are both trans women. (The fact that I am also genderqueer doesn't invalidate me as being a trans woman.) We have both suffered from cissupremacist society's often violent policing of our genders and how we express it. Therefore: Do not publicly — on the subway or anywhere else — tell me that I should paint my toenails. Do not take me to a sidewalk stall and hold up a frilly dress against me and tell me how good it'd look on me. Do not police my gender or its expression, and do not frakkin' ever, EVER, out me to anybody, stranger or no, without my permission!.
  
  For your edification, just like cis women, trans women can be femme, butch, androgynous, etc. I happen to be androgynous; I present more femme on some days and more butch on others. But one thing's for sure: I hate using makeup or painting my nails; I don't like dresses or most other feminine clothing; and I have a right to modify my manner of dress to keep myself safe on the streets, and don't you DARE imply otherwise.
   
• Your suggestion that I counter a cis gay man telling me that his conversation with a trans woman is "bizarre" by telling him that my conversations with gay men are "bizarre" is busted and wrong. Countering transphobia with homophobia is an oppressive act. If someone is being transphobic to me, I need to address their transphobia, not further an oppression that they experience (and don't tell me that cis gay men aren't oppressed).
   
• Stop calling gay men "she", unless you know they are ok with it. See the above point: Misgendering a gay man because he misgenders you, ain't cool.
   
• Finally, although it hasn't really come up yet, I am warning you: If you question or invalidate my gender because I haven't had and probably won't have surgery, or because of any other aspect of my transition-related history, or because you don't "believe in" genderqueer identities, our friendship will be over.

/rant

Ok, now the question is how do I actually address these points with my sort-of friend? I'm pretty meek in person (though I did call her out on calling those two women "men"), and really, really afraid of anger, including my own.

UPDATE 6-Dec 2011:

Ok, I give up.

I've already told you that I'm Jewish*, and so is my whole family.  Yet, you think it's ok to go on a two-minute rant about how Jews think we're a special club and how we think we're better than everybody else.  When I remind you that I'm Jewish, you then have the temerity to tell me "Oh, that's ok, some of my best friends are Jewish**" and then complain that "I didn't know you were so sensitive about that".

You know what that means?

Friendship over, sweetheart.

* I believe it's possible to be Jewish (by upbringing, culture, and heritage) and Christian at the same time.  I did not abandon my Judaism by becoming Christian.

** She literally used those words; I did not paraphrase her.

So, after having spent decades bemoaning the fact that I have a vocal range hardly more than an octave, it turns out that I have a vocal range of more than two octaves.

What happened?  I started singing lower.

A few months ago, I bought the Massive Attack album Heligoland.  (I'll note briefly that I think this album is more mature and musically diverse than Mezzanine.  So glad that 3D and Daddy G have moved beyond Mezzanine's focus on dick-waving.)

The song in question is Splitting The Atom.  From Daddy G's bass to Horace Andy's near-alto, there's nearly a two-octave span.  I enjoy the song - including its vocal range - so much, that I started to sing Daddy G's parts at his pitch.  Then I'd sing Paradise Circus at Hope Sandoval's pitch (there's just one note that she reaches on that song that I can't quite get to).

So that's my vocal range: at least the middle of bass to the lower register of alto.

In an academic sense, I've always known that random physical characteristics do not determine a person's gender.  But I've long felt self-conscious about my voice, fearing that it's what defines me as so-called "male".  Singing to music has helped me wrap my head around that just a bit.  I still feel self-conscious about my presentation in general, but I'm getting a bit more comfortable with my voice, and no longer feel the need to artificially pitch my speaking voice up.

I speak in a baritone.  I sing in a baritone / tenor / low alto.  People will have to just deal, and if they use that fact to make a judgement about my gender, that's their problem, not mine.