Change and exchange

I have written about this subject briefly before, but I could not return to the subject because my family had presumably found this blog before I fled their house. I cannot remain silent any longer. I do not care who sees this. It deserves to be seen, particularly by the people who caused this. It is a lesson to those who choose to serve bigoted religions over their own loved ones. I do admit to sounding slightly bitter here, but I cannot help it. I am still infuriated by this.

For several years, I lived with my parents, who were fundamentalist, conservative Christians. I would not compare them to Fred Phelps, but their views were similar to those of James Dobson, and the difference between these men’s views on homosexuals is a matter of degree, rather than a clear ideological difference. They do not believe that homosexuality and bisexuality are valid sexual orientations, or that transgenderism exists as an actual medical condition. To them, both are frivolous choices, regardless of what the medical and psychiatric community actually say about both homosexuality and transgenderism.

In May of 2006, when I was nearly twenty, their difficulty understanding why I could not do certain things led them to interrogate me about why I could not do those things, and I was forced to come out as transgender. Their reaction was unfavourable, telling me that they ‘loved the person on the birth certificate, [repudiated birth name]’, and that their God was not inclusive.

That was particularly cruel, especially since I had vocalised my distaste for my given name multiple times. If I do not like it, I do not like it. They did not know me when they gave it to me, and I believe I know myself well enough to know that it does not suit me, even if I were NOT transgender. These days, I cannot (not simply do not like to, CANNOT) use that name any more without panicking. Good going. That is what happens when you try to police others’ identities. They end up being repudiated at some point.

I was mocked, ridiculed and preached to. I was spoken to in a derisive tone the entire time. They told me that it was others’ ‘job’ to accept me, and that I only appreciated my friends because they told me how ‘great and intelligent’ I was. (My friends think favourably of me? I did not know that was a bad thing! Perhaps they would approve of them if they thought that I was stupid and not very kind.) They dismissed my gender dysphoria, which has been present since my childhood, as ‘confusion’ and a mere ‘choice’. I would not choose to be transgender. It is painful when your body does not match your preception of yourself. It is not the sort of thing one chooses on a whim. I would not choose such a thing whilst living with THEM, either, with their bigoted attitudes. Considering their attitudes towards my introspection before that, I should actually not be surprised, but that does not mean that I am not hurt.

Are not parents supposed to love their children unconditionally? If this is supposed to be unconditional love, I could not — and cannot — accept it. Unconditional love does not discriminate, and this is what my parents did. I was crushed. If my own immediate family are not able to accept me for who I am, who can? I was in tears for several days. Even now, I cannot stop myself from crying about it at times, even though the event was two years ago. I am crying a little right now, actually, as I type this.

I would have killed myself were I unable to escape my parents’ house, actually. I could not live with people who systematically denied some of the most important facets of my entire existence. Nor could I live in constant denial of who I was.

Their behaviour, both regarding my gender identity and other unrelated factors, caused me to leave home rather unprepared for independent life, and as a result, I have experienced unstable housing situations and verbal and psychological abuse at the hands of some of my housemates. I do not think that I am incompetent, but I should not have felt forced to make such a decision. (I cannot forget that they would have thrown me out had I not met certain demands of theirs, either, regardless of how much preparation they required. Said demands would also be dependent on the local economy. Such magnanimity.) Regardless of how competent one is, one cannot establish oneself when one is forced to be hasty. I should have had more time to plan, but when you are in an environment in which you are constantly being suppressed and invalidated, you cannot always think of the future. You are forced to think of the here and now, even when you would rather make more reasoned decisions. It is daily reality for me, but I would like it not to be so. I have never had the freedom to be able to sit down and make decisions for myself. I have always been under some of pressure to conform to others’ demands. Once you come of age, that should not happen, at least not to the extent that it has happened to me.

I have many dreams, and many goals. I feel that I cannot pursue them right now, thanks to this infinite loop that I have entered thanks to my need for a hasty escape. Is this what they wanted for me? I cannot imagine that it is.

You simply cannot win.

Regardless of my difficult experiences away from them, I still cannot speak to those who once called themselves my ‘family’. My heart has been broken, and I feel that I cannot forgive them unless they decide that it is all right for me to be who I am, rather than what they would make me be. I do not hate them, but I must say that I am angry and dismayed by their actions. I withdrew because I was hurt, not because of hatred. It is a natural response, I think.

To Mother and Father:

If you are reading this, please heed my words. I cannot tell you how much it hurts for me to write this. I am frightened that you will ridicule me. I hope that you can see this, actually. Is it really worth it for you to serve a God that severs families, breaks hearts and promotes hatred? I do not even condemn Christianity; it is the god of Christian fundamentalists whom I cannot worship or believe in. I am fully aware that fundamentalist Christianity says explicity that it can sever families. Is this really what you WANT? Is this really RIGHT? Please think about this objectively, for your own sakes.

–Not the ‘person on the birth certificate’, and therefore someone my parents apparently do not love.

From the creator of Change and Exchange and a bunch of other random shit comes Non-Random Replicator, my atheism and freethought blog! There’s a bit of content right now, and that’s going to expand as I continue to blog over there. Now that doesn’t mean that Change and Exchange is dead, though. I just want to divide them up because both blogs have different scopes. Change and Exchange will remain culturally focused (except for religion, atheism and science) and Non-Random Replicator will be focused on those last three things. Enjoy!

-Luke

I’m considering starting a second blog on Insolectual.com, this time devoted to atheism, transhumanism, rationalism and secularism. I will maintain Change and Exchange for my cultural commentary, as well as my talk of languages, entertainment, youth rights and whatever else I can think up. Both blogs will be updated intermittently as usual. Content might also be syndicated from my more ‘underground’ presence. It depends on how I feel.

The new blog, whose name I have not decided on yet, will have a different writing style to that of Change and Exchange. It will be slightly more formal and reserved than Change and Exchange is. I’ll announce the name of the new blog later. Sit tight and enjoy!

-Luke

WHY IS MOST SPAM FROM RUSSIA or GERMANY? I don’t get it. Whenever I check the comments to moderate…I get a bunch of Russian or G erman comment spam. Seriously, what is it about Russia and Germany that breeds spammers?

During my travels on the internet, I have come across a few websites promoting the ‘childfree’ lifestyle. Now I can understand people not wanting to have children for whatever reason, whether it be financial, health-related or simply not wanting to have children. What bothers me is people who want to ban children from nearly every public place, or laugh when children get hurt, or want to treat children as if they are less than human, simply because they are children. To me, that is bigotry against other people, plain and simple. If you replaced ‘children’ with ‘blacks’ or ‘Hispanics’, there’d be a moral outrage against such people. Children cannot HELP being children. Blacks and Hispanics cannot HELP their skin colour and heritage. It’s not the child’s fault for being a child, and a lot of these child-free people act as if it is the children’s fault for being young. Their age is not a sin, and being an adult is no accomplishment. Oh, I’m so special because I hit puberty and can have babies! Yeah, right.
And usually, when a child does something wrong, it is because he or she doesn’t know better. When an adult does some boneheaded thing, he or she usually knows better. I’d feel better banning stupid adults from things than innocent children. Who usually commits violent crimes? Adults! Who goes around raping people? Usually not kids! Who’s embezzling money and causing shit generally? Those exalted grown-ups! Kids are usually content playing games and talking amongst t hemselves. I’d rather be around ten crying babies than a grown serial killer.  At least the babies are harmless.
And it’s pretty fucking ironic how some of these ‘childfree’ people are acting so goddamned CHILDISH about children. You want everyone to be sophisticated and grown-up, yet you whinge just like the babies you complain about. Except it’s a lot less cute coming from someone who’s forty years old.
So in summary, it’s fine not to have kids, but to bitch about kids who honestly don’t know better when it’s people your own age causing even more shit? Adults these days! I wish they were more like kids.

I’ve been reading about the desire of many adopted children to find their biological parents. I can understand the pain to some extent, but in my case, I have had a rather difficult time with my own biological parents.I get kind of angry when people fetishise biological parents. I speak from the other end of the spectrum: someone who should have been adopted or something similar. I don’t feel much like a family member to my biological family. They don’t accept me for who I am and haven’t made the effort to try to know me as their son. They pretty much emotionally disowned me this year, and I’m still trying to deal with that. I know others whose biological families are similarly difficult, but have found more kindness in generosity from their friends or significant others. It’s a pretty difficult and touchy subject though, I know. I don’t want to trivialise the desire of people to find their birth-parents. If that’s what they feel is right, then so be it. However, I cannot understand the idea intuitively.

There are also people haranguing about trans-racial adoption. This isn’t a case of your typical National-Alliance-Ku-Klux-Klan-Aryan-Nations white supremacists. On the contrary; it seems to be a group of people from various racial minorities taking issue with such a thing. I think that white, black, Hispanic AND Asian activists are far too obsessed by the construct of race. Why don’t we work towards a society where ‘race’ is something insignificant and a mere trifle? I happen to have dark skin and traditionally African features, with a few European traits as well. However, I consider myself to belong to one race: human. Culturally, I identify with aspects of American and European culture. I really do not identify strongly with American black culture, or that of Africa. However, my lack of identification with such things does not indicate that I despise them: they simply do not dovetail well with my personal Weltanschauung. Others might find that it works perfectly for them, and if they can embrace such things intelligently, I applaud them. Our physical features vary because of the environments that our ancestors had to adapt to. However, we have the same feelings, motivations and desires. ‘Black culture’, ‘white culture’ and other such things are merely constructs. They are things that evolved over time, and people forget that such things are dynamic. People often think that such things are engraved in stone for all time, which they are not. It is incredibly frustrating to deal with those who are so obsessed by racial differences, whether they be people like Louis Farrakhan or members of the Nuwaubians, or others like Chris Brand and David Duke. They all seem to want to categorise us into racial boxes, obscuring the uniting aspect of humanity.

In summary: Genes don’t always make the family. We all belong to one race: the human race.

I’m finally out of ‘exile’ and am able to return to writing my entries, which is quite a relieving thought. I haven’t anything to say right now, except that I’m alive and well and doing a lot better. I’ll have something up later, I hope.

Change and Exchange is going to be on a bit of a hiatus. It’ll be back shortly. Don’t worry.

…but I am interested in why fundamentalists feel the need to take over the United States, and I’d also like to learn how to stop the phenomenon. Apparently there’s this movement in the United States headed by fundamentalist youth minister Ron Luce called ‘BattleCry’. Before the inception of ‘Battle Cry’, he ran (and still runs) an evangelical youth ministry called ‘Teen Mania’. (Doesn’t that name sound suspiciously like a pornographic site? I wonder what you’re thinking, Mr Luce!) It’s militaristic, full of pyrotechnics, and jam-packed with plenty of the most intolerant verses from the Tanakh and New Testament.

The brilliant folks behind the Acquire the Evidence site have a lot to say about this, as well as  the reasonable people over at Talk2Action. It’s pretty depressing that the fundamentalists have to start Hitler-esque rallies in order to indoctrinate youth. If fundamentalism really were that insatiable, then why do we need such propaganda? They accuse atheists of pulling out all the stops with propaganda, but when’s the last time you saw an atheist rally? Or evolution seminars without evidence? Or atheist tax-fraud scandals?

And one more thing: Comment spam sucks. I do not want my penis enlarged. I do not want a mortgage. I don’t want to see your incest/granny/lesbian granny bestiality incest porn. Why can’t spammers realise they aren’t going to sell a single thing that way?

If I have introduced myself to you as Luke, I expect you to call me that and to refer to me with MALE PRONOUNS. Anything else is disrespectful. I wouldn’t bother coming out to you if you were going to completely disregard that. That pisses me off.
Yours sincerely

Luke