Sans Seraph

Tag: transgender

  • Carte blanche

    Carte blanche

    I don’t normally like to be so reactionary with my words as I’m about to be. I’m not a reactionary person. I prefer to observe, assess, plan, but I have some time to kill at the moment and the specter of fear is lording over me, so, here it comes out of the brain pipe, raw and unfiltered.

    I hope I’m wrong. I hope that the truth prevails, and that this incident with Kirk doesn’t become the call to arms for the right to start firing up the engines and building the camps. I hope that this incident was (as statistics show) just another pissed off cisgender, white, male.

    But it won’t be. The right has been looking for a martyr to catalyze their message for years. It didn’t work when Trump was shot, not how they wanted. They needed blood, and, after seeing the video, it looks like they got it.

    I pray to whatever force beyond me is listening that the shooter doesn’t turn out to be a trans person, but, as the truth does seem fluid these days, I’m sure no matter the outcome, we will be blamed. There is an agenda here, and this fits so nicely into furthering their narrative, that I really don’t see a way that they won’t try to twist this as a leftist-trans plot to kill “the Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk.”

    Since January 2013, of the 5700 mass shootings in the US, 5 of the perpetrators have been confirmed to be transgender, according to Gun Violence Archive. A statistic that works out to 0.088%. That’s even less that the often reported 1% of the population being transgender. Yet, of late, every single horrific event is being tied by the right to a transgender person.

    If at any point there is a person in this country with even a modicum of free thought that thinks that trans people are not being singled out an othered to force an agenda of eradication and genocide, then you are the highest of fools.

    Here’s what is really happening. Law abiding trans people, such as my partner and I, and scared. Fear is not something I generally describe myself as having. Yet, in the middle of the night two days ago, as I awoke to my dog barking out the sliding glass door that walks directly into our bedroom, I was afraid. I am proudly, outwardly trans. We have trans pride flags hanging from our frontage. Yet in that moment, my partner mentioned how maybe we should take them down. I wondered at whether I should keep my pistol out of the safe and next to the bed. Trans people have now become hunted things.

    What had become the greatest gift I had ever given myself, to be truly happy, to feel joy and love for myself and my body, is being used as a political tool to further the cause of fascism. It happened before, and it is happening now. Every fascist regime needs a scapegoat, and trans people are it.

    In the same week as three prime ministers have resigned from office, as countries such as Nepal riot in the streets and demand better, America, so braggadociosly strong, rests on her laurels and lets her democracy erode. While the jews died, the Germans suffered, and it will be the same here.

    Though the world did not depend on Germany. Germany was at best a giant among men. The United States is, for better or worse, a cornerstone of our civilization, and the fact that the “greatest country in the world” is keen to sit back and let the rot of fascism eat her from inside, says a lot about how decadence and comfort are the enemies of growth.

    I’m afraid, and if you’re not, if you think yourself distant from the conflict, or even on the “winning side” then you should at least beware.

  • Rattling the keys

    Mine is a very anxious mind, and as such, I have a very hard time sitting still. You see, I like to solve problems. More than anything I’ve ever been able to do, that is what I do best. Even this blog is a means to try to solve the problems I have with the insane ramble that is always chattering and wailing inside my head. Living like this, while constantly feeling I must shift one way or another, in a futile attempt to “fix” something about myself, or my life, is an absolutely horrible way to live.

    I wrote the above after having a shower revelation. I spend so much of my life trying to pursue some sort of arbitrary level of perfection. The impatience and anxiety I embody wholly is immense. I am eternally, and existentially, exhausted. I seem to be constantly taught and reminded to breathe and take things easier, slower. So I am hoping that this small, daily reminder, posted next to my monitor, will be something that can ease some of this tension.

    My entire life there has felt like I have this spring inside me, that I just desperately want to let go. The only time I have been able to make any progress on that goal was when I started transition. That is perhaps the only time I have ever felt peace in my life, and, for a long time, it was good. However, I’ve noticed a curious pattern of late. If I could find an answer to the biggest question I ever had, if I could actually change things in my life, than surely I could solve everything, right? If I had the ability to start this monumental journey, it should be easy to roll the momentum over and finally reach the top of the mountain. I could untwist the spring inside of me until the coil was straight and true and rang pure into the void of my soul.

    So, without even realizing, I let my guard down. I took out the earplugs, and let the sinister voice of anxiety back in. That demon then immediately used its greatest weapon against me. My old nemesis had sat for nearly a year armed and ready to bring me down, and it did so with my greatest flaw.

    I’ve never been a patient person. I rush through things. Really, it goes hand in hand with my anxiety. If I have things I want to do, problems I want to solve, I feel compelled to do them, even if care and caution are warranted. The weight of the thing pushes on the spring and undoes whatever progress I have made. Thus, the only logical way to relieve the tension, is to immediately and completely do the thing.

    Sometimes this manifests as projects completed to a lesser grade than I would like, sometimes it manifests as crippling agitation when I can’t do them. I will spend a whole weekend worrying about something I have to do on Monday. If I can’t complete something in one day’s time, than I will ceaselessly grind down on it until it and I are dust.

    I decided I’ve spent too much of my life concerned for the future and lamenting the past. I gave myself an amazing gift, of finally, after more than three decades, of being my true self. I have goals, sure. I’d like to own my own house some day. I really need to get out of my dead end job and do something creative for work again. None of these goals are achievable overnight. I am doing the work. Hell, this blog is testament to that. In the mean time though, there is a whole lot of life I’m missing.

    This is all easier said than done, of course. Not only do I seem biologically prone to this constant worry, but we live in very worrying times. Ours is a world that tells us to constantly achieve, constantly grow and earn. If we don’t do that we’re left behind, or possibly cast out. Our lives are candle flames that are being used to heat an ever larger pot, and the cook cares not for any individual candle flame, only that more are produced when one burns out. Well I’m done caring about the pot. The only thing that matters are the lights within me and around me, because in the end, all that really matters is the warmth around us while our candle still burns.

    So if there is a spring, and if there is a constant, never ending supply of loads added to it, then it follows that I should not be concerned with the rate at which I am able to unload the spring, but rather with how much weight the spring can handle. There will always be time to remove loads and solve problems, and there are far worse things to be than a spring.

  • You are (not) free

    I was born to deeply religious, conservative parents in a deeply conservative part of the country. I was raised to believe in the supremacy of the United States, that we were on the right side of history, that we were “the good guys.” At some point in my life, I even wanted to join the military, to serve my country, and to participate in whatever way I could in the great American experiment.

    Today is the Fourth of July, a day that used to be my favorite holiday. Each year in rural Montana we would go into town to watch the parade and spend time at the local faire in the park. This small town was the epitome of life when “America was great.” This was the kind of life that people had in mind when the wave of conservative thought rot swept the country. A place where you knew your neighbor, where you lived in harmony with the land, and where the great Big Sky that the state of Montana is known for opened wide to greet you.

    It was a town with such accolades as “the place FDR visited once,” and one of the few places Max Brooks in his book World War Z said would survive the zombie hordes. A place where if you were white and male, you enjoyed the pinnacle of existence, as long as you had a job; at the mill, or the mine, or worked for the Forest Service.

    Well, the mill closed ages ago, and the mine is, well, a mine. Many forestry jobs were lost when the government gutted the Forest Service, selling out the land that some many people, who voted vehemently for this administration, love and cherish. The nearest hospital is the next town over, and will probably close with the recent cuts to healthcare. Most of the people in the town are aged, and will almost certainly now suffer a higher mortality rate due to lack of accessible healthcare.

    Corporate interests will move in on the newly purchased land. Maybe enough labor jobs in logging and resource gathering will spring up to keep what few young people remain interested as the trees on the mountains thin, and the fish die out. Maybe, finally, after the mountains are run through with shafts and tunnels, and the Earth herself tries to shake us off her skin like biting fleas, will the people realize what they have done.

    When I planned out this post, I had intended to write about how today, as we celebrate the independence of our country from tyranny, that I, a trans woman, am less free that I have ever been before. I, someone who at one point wanted to serve this country, who, for all intents and purposes, has done everything “right” in my life, am in a position where I am simply a political pawn for our corporate overlords. All of that is true, and, honestly, the working class hasn’t been free in this country since, well, ever. However my thoughts today return to my small hometown in northwestern Montana.

    The overwhelming majority of those that fell prey to the MAGA cult are people like my parents and former neighbors, who wanted so desperately to live out in the wilderness and enjoy the serenity of nature and the quite of only occasional social situations that they deliberately chose to live in what could be called economically and educationally depressed areas. It is the people in these places that will feel a sickness of the soul that will grind them down into weak things even as people like me are hunted and destroyed bodily.

    The passing of the Bulbous Bubo Betrayal has doomed the average American worker, both those that voted for this administration, and those that so viciously fought against it, to a fate worse than what potentially awaits me and other trans people. Though it has become clear that the ruling body of this country will stop at nothing until me and my ilk are rounded up and done away with, it is those that linger and will have to endure the epigenetic blight that will suffer the most. You see, I never thought I was free. I took up the mantle of womanhood knowing that I would have to fight for my rights, yet I did so willingly. It is those who are truly the most vulnerable, who were duped into thinking what they were doing was right, who believed the lie that they were not free who will suffer the most as their spirit decays.

    So today, it is as I prepare to celebrate not the birth of my country, but of my community, that I lament the fall of the noble redneck, hillbilly, and good ol’ boy. The farmer, the miner, and the rig worker. To all of those that have finally realized their betrayal, who now realize that the lines aren’t left and right, but us and them that I say “welcome to the party.” You were always allowed in. We love you, and it’s okay. Now, grab your torch and pitchfork, and let’s get to work.

  • SOTD: Brain scratchies

    SOTD: Brain scratchies

    I have this section of the chalkboard in my house where I write a rather existential “Soup of the Day.” I started doing it on my whiteboard at Burning Man last year, and continued for several months after getting back to the default world. Well, now I want to revive it on here. Consider this a sort of “not worth of a full length post” post.

    I have the brain scratchies. It’s what I call the mental state that is similar to when you have a rash or other such affliction that you just can’t help but keep messing with. It isn’t that the anxiety is born of a particular topic, but there definitely feels like there is something “wrong” that needs “solved” but the “what’s wrong” doesn’t really exist, and thus the resolution can’t be found.

    This was a pretty constant state of being for me before I started HRT. Now, considering I just had my dose adjusted (lowered) I can only assume that’s what it’s from. Not that knowing the source really does much good.

    The only thing that seems to cure it for me is constant activity. The mind needs to focus so that you can ignore the psychic rash and feel better. The problem is, of course, that you can’t be busy constantly. That’s when the scratchies sneak back in. That’s probably why I turned to alcohol so much when I was younger. Sometimes you just need the constant hurricane of awareness to stop.

    So there you go: brain scratchies. Now I’m off to go make dinner, play video games, take a long shower, then read. Hopefully that’s enough time to let the brain meat heal.

  • The equality is in another castle

    This is an update to the story originally posted here.

    Almost two months to the day, and I have received word back from the Washington Office of the Insurance Commissioner, and, unfortunately, I have bad (but not terrible) news.

    My request to have WAC 284-30-572 updated to have gender included as a factor that cannot be used for setting rates for insurance in the state of Washington has been denied.

    Now, I never assumed this would be easy. I expected to be denied right off the bat. I am, however, surprised at the reason I was denied.

    According to their response, the OIC actually does not have the authority to update the rule because it would be in conflict with an actual Washington state law. Specifically RCW 48.30.300, which allows insurers to “use sex (as the term appears in statute) as a rating factor for personal home and auto coverage when “bona fide statistical differences in risk or exposure have been substantiated.”” (The fact that women are, apparently, statistically higher risk is probably the topic of another article.)

    Since changing the insurance law would conflict with the state law, the OIC is at an impasse. They simply don’t have the authority. Hope isn’t lost though. In addition to urging me to contact my congress critters, the OIC’s Policy and Rules Manager, Joyce Brake, informed me of a current study being conducted by the OIC to, among other things, determine the impact of “rate factors that may have disparate impacts on Washington residents,” of which gender is a factor.

    The report is due to the state legislation in November 2026. The wheels of bureaucracy move slowly. That’s not to say that our hands are tied, however. If anyone wishes to voice their opinions to their state legislators, you can find out who they are by going here.

    There is still a lot of work to be done, but I wanted to thank everyone at the OIC that has honestly been a joy to work with. They have been very forthcoming with all information I have asked for, and genuinely seem to want to help. They are a great example of what a government agency should be, and though I am disappointed that the issue wasn’t so easy to resolve, I greatly appreciate that they’ve been willing to point me in the right direction in regard to actually trying to change things.

    That’s it for now. Please, if you care about gender equality at all, write to your senators and representatives. Things really can change. There are people in the government that do truly want to help.

    The full text of Joyce Brake’s response can be found here:

    WAC 284-30-572 Rule Petition ResponseDownload

  • Gay, in the park, with the garlic bread

    Yesterday was a dreary day, but also the second annual Gays Eating Garlic Bread in the Park at Meridian Playground here in Seattle. After the it went viral last year over 750 people RSVP’d to the event, which was, of course, BYOGB.

    My girlfriend and I, being gays ourselves, thought that it was too good of an opportunity to miss, and so I hastily made two loaves of garlic bread, poured some store-bought marinara into a container, and headed out into the gloom and weather to “try to meet some people.”

    The event was nice. There were gays, there was garlic bread. People set up little canopies to get out of the weather. The host had organized some games and there was tale of a showing of a movie after dark. None of that is what this post is about.

    This is about SOCIAL ANXIETY.

    You see, I had been looking forward to this event. I woke up at 5 A.M., giddy as a school girl, ready to go and meet people. That has been my goal recently. I love my friends, but a lot of them live a few hours away. Also, being 30/40 somethings, we have our own lives now. All of this is well and good, but since starting transition I have felt this need to be social in a way I have never experienced before.

    You see, I am different now, and there are a lot of things I’m trying to figure out, or just straight up change about myself. One of those things (and perhaps the highest on the list beside the whole “I’m a girl now” bit) is dealing with my misanthropy and social anxiety. I have always known that my anxiety is a major thing holding me back in life, and now I have the will to do something about it, but I keep missing the mark.

    I’ve tried therapy, and will almost certainly try it again, but, as one therapist told me “I think this is something we try to manage, rather than get over, at this point.” Now, I’m not one for backing down from a fight, so I’ve started to take matters into my own hands.

    So, as my girlfriend and I drove to the event, dodging rain like shrapnel on the freeway, I was feeling pretty confident. I had a pop up canopy. I was going to be a hero. I would take in these soggy queers under my vinyl shelter, and through an act of service they would see I was useful and adopt me as one of their own.

    Delusion, it seems, is not something I am immune to.

    Of course, we arrive at the event, and the rain has stopped. No big deal, but, it also seemed like everyone was okay despite the deluge. The park had a pavilion most had gathered under, and others had brought their own deployable shelters. So, feeling awkward and no longer useful my girlfriend and I set up our shelter and two chairs in an out of the way spot, and ate some of our (now cold) garlic bread. A few people wandered by and we exchanged bread, but I was absolutely paralyzed to do anything other than cling to my girlfriend and our flimsy rain aegis.

    Around an hour in and my two very close friends arrived, one of which is one of the most social people I know. He even tried to get me to go with him and make some rounds passing out the garlic bread, but at that point my fate was sealed. That’s not something I can do.

    You see, almost all of the people I’ve ever become close to have been brought into my gravity well through some sort of project. I have tied my whole identity up with being useful and helpful, so I really don’t see the point in being social for sociability’s sake. There is not a world I can imagine where someone would want me to bother them, or, as I like to say, “inflict my personality upon them,” that is beyond the scope of a common goal.

    I am a useful person. I have a lot of practical skills. I have a lot of gear. I am frequently the most prepared person in the room. I have plans. However if you take that away, I am nothing more than an NPC. Just a grumpy, judgmental bitch, who hides behind said grumpiness until the next situation arises where I can prove my worth. There’s a problem? Oh, I can solve it! Didn’t I do a good job? See, I’m useful, don’t abandon me! Woof.

    Where this leaves me in regard to getting over this I don’t know, but I do know I have no intention of stopping. I think, for now, the plan has to shift to doing something with strangers where there is a clear goal or activity. My beautiful partner and I both love to rollerblade, so we’ve planned to go to the local rink and do that. We also enjoy bar trivia, and have plans to do that as well. Then there is trying to find a local DnD group.

    Things like that, while very “in my lane” feel like they aren’t helping me get over the problem. I guess what bothers me is that I feel like I have to get out of my lane and see where I fit. The trench of my comfort zone is immense however, but perhaps it is far wiser to slowly purge the ballast tanks and rise, rather then blow them all at once.

    For now, I suppose it is sufficient to just keep swimming.

  • Searching for a former clarity

    I don’t think I’ll ever get used to winter in Seattle. I am beginning to see the fleeting light of my fourth spring here, and, though normally I am ecstatic this time of year for the return of the light and warmth, this year it seems like that same feeling of rebirth and energy is missing.

    Spring really is a beautiful time here. There is just so much green; green that wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t such a wet place. Every year around April the dark lessens, the air warms, and the rain slowly retreats, ever warmer and less frequent, into the most beautiful summer you can imagine before once again running away for nine months.

    Once the flowers start to bloom and life returns to the land, it has always felt like life is also breathed back into me. I have terrible seasonal affective disorder, or, I did. I was really hoping that this winter would be different, because I am different, and, it was, but not in the way I was hoping.

    My life seems to have taken on a path of extremes. Where before starting my transition I existed in a state of constant melancholy, reaching down to despair, I now fluctuate between extreme happiness and extreme agitation. On one hand I have the endless sea of love and care that is my relationship with my partner, who continues to surprise me with the depth of her love for me, and on the other I am bearing witness to the destruction of my homeland as it is gutted and resold to the highest bidder.

    Being trans in America in 2025, or, honestly, being a person with a lick of sense in America in 2025, has become akin to watching a car crash in molasses. The die is cast, the stage is set, we all know where this is going, but the process into fascism seems inexorably slow. With the blanket tariffs, and the elimination of wealth with a speed and magnitude which has never been seen before, I think no one that isn’t caught up in the cult thinks that this ends any other way. At least the orange rectal fissure got one thing right, he is going to run this country like a business, which is to say, burn it down and sell it off to the highest bidder.

    The April 5th protests were the largest ones yet, and somehow the sycophants think that it’s all a ruse. The protesters were paid, the images were AI generated, whatever mental gymnastics they have to do to make it seem like the path they are on is the righteous one. History will not look fondly on this time, yet the outcome will not be a return to American greatness.

    If the twentieth century was the century of pax americana, then the twenty-first will be the century of American despair. We are no longer “the good guys,” hell, we probably never were. John Wayne isn’t coming in to save the day. In fact, like John Wayne, who made a name for himself playing a soldier on the silver screen while other men gave their lives in war, yet never went to war himself, America has become that which it originally opposed, a bloated tyrant inflicting its personality on distant shores.

    A lack of equality and fairness is the problem here. As long as one group, one country, one person, holds more power than another, there can never truly be peace. For a long time I thought we were moving in the right direction. I harbored the light of hope in my heart for so long, yet like the dull spring in Seattle I now face, that light has dwindled and the magic seems to be fleeting. I loved this country. This is my home, but I do not feel at home here. I have no intention of leaving, but my duty is not to this land, but to those who dwell in it. I do not know if I any longer wish to identify myself as American. I simply exist as a citizen of humanity, who hopes that with each action going forward that I am on the side of goodness and love.

    The wheels of history will continue to turn, and just as how a dreary spring will give way to the light and energy of summer, this will pass. The house divided will fall, and the survivors will build a new house, one with its walls made to include all, and it’s foundation built on the weary packed earth of history.

    Let us hope that next time we remember.

  • No contact

    I’ve been dealing with an interesting emotion recently.

    My childhood was not what you could call “good.” Sure, on the surface things seemed to be fine. Sure, there was the slow financial decline, that saw me continually sheltered in smaller and more modest dwellings the longer my childhood ran on. There was also the crusade of isolation from any sort of extended family, either due to my mother’s machinations, or my father’s lack of care and alcoholism. Then the emotional abuse and turmoil that extended to both me and my grandmother perpetrated by my mom. Also my absent father’s complete lack of interest in any real part of my life beyond obligation. However I was “given anything I ever wanted.”

    What I wanted though, was a home that didn’t feel like a warzone, or some sort of free range prison. I wanted a father that showed some interest in my life beyond when I was young and cute. I wanted a mother that wasn’t so obsessed with me that she stunted any sort of self discovery I had to force me to stay on the “right path.” It was never about what I wanted. It was about the status quo.

    An interesting thing happens after your egg cracks, where you start noticing all of the signs. I didn’t think I had a lot of signs that I was trans, but it’s so obvious now that I carry significant regret that I didn’t figure things out sooner. I think the original thoughts that there might be something different about me starting forming in high school. They would then rear their head again in waves until I finally cracked in early 2024.

    When I finally came out to my parents, they treated it exactly how I expected them to. I had hoped that there would be some sort of understanding, if not an acceptance. I was met not with love and willingness to understand, but hatred. So poisoned by the rhetoric of hating the “other” were they that I suddenly went from their child to something subhuman.

    Nine days after I gave them the news, on the day of my name change hearing, my father texted me from my mother’s phone. He informed me that my mom seemed to be suffering from a stroke, and he was taking her to the hospital. I tried to contact him to get any information, but to no avail. In late February I received a text from my mother, full of errors and jumbled words, informing me that she had been home for three days. The text was essentially lamenting how I now hated her.

    It was never about me. I was never expected to be my own person. It was never their desire that I forge my own path, or be happy. All that was required of me was that I fell in line and continue the crusade; of capitalism, progress, genocide, whatever our fearless white leaders told us was our god given path.

    As one might guess, that went over well.

    So I chose not to respond to her message. I will probably never speak to my parents again. I feel relieved by that. To know that I can finally heal from all of that. From the emotional pain, the fear, the bitterness. I am very sure had I not been so marked by them I would have accepted myself as I was far earlier. I’d be in a better place now, not that I have regrets. This is my karma, after all.

    This speaks to an interesting parallel in the soul of our country right now. The people in charge are mostly the people that are of my parent’s generation. This country is going through changes. The world as we know it is entering a new era, and much like my adolescence, the ones in charge are fighting tooth and nail to do what they think is best, with no regard to the flow of time and progress. We as a nation are being gripped by the cold, dead hand of the past and are being pulled into the graves of our forebearers.

    So afraid of their world changing in ways they don’t approve of, our leaders seek to freeze our lives into a form that never actually existed. Blinded by the fog of nostalgia for a time where it was only good to be white, Christian, and male, those in power will hold us fast and sink to the depths as they breath their last. One final send off from the me generation.

    So we “go no contact.” We must no longer let those who refuse to work for the future keep us in the past. If they see fit to ignore the laws, we should too. Keeping working the National Parks, and keep paying those park workers too. Refuse to clean their houses. Boycott their products. Approve that trans person’s passport. “Playing dirty” doesn’t have to mean throwing bricks and torching teslas.

    You can be your own person. We have spent far too much time doing what we’ve been told. If they refuse to see us, then we should refuse to listen to them.

    What of those that are listening to their parents, then? Those who are happy in their clouded misery? It’s okay, we all have to figure it out in our own time. It took me until I was 35 to figure out I was trans, and one day you’ll figure out that all of this hate isn’t who you are too.

    And you’ll be better for it.

  • To arms

    I’m going to war, and not in anyway I imagined I would.

    Surely, with all of the other issues that we are facing currently in this country, something as simple as gender-based discrimination in auto insurance wouldn’t be so vile as to beckon the full fury of my tenacity and wit.

    Yet here we are.

    The saga unfolds as thus: on 3/1/25 I noticed my auto insurance payment had been processed. I realize that my deadname is still on the account, so I proceed to change it. Afterall, I don’t want there to be some insurance SNAFU where I have mismatching documents.

    My insurance company makes it very easy to change my name. I just update the driver information. Everything is right there, even gender. So a few clicks, “Traea McGrady, female” and it’s all set to go, and hey, my premiums will even increase by $45.19.

    There’s something about that last part that doesn’t sit with me and it shouldn’t with you. I don’t like to jump to conclusions though. So I try the same process again, this time just changing my name and leaving my gender as male. This time my premiums do not increase at all. From this cursory reconnoitering I seem to have come back with the information that if you identify as female, you are charged more for auto insurance, full stop.

    Of course everyone knows about the “pink tax.” Everyone knows that we live in a patriarchal society, but here was damnable evidence that women are being treated differently just because they are women, and while I was extremely flattered and affirmed in my gender for being included in this, it still doesn’t make it right. Afterall, not but seconds before submitting my information with an updated gender, according to my insurance company, I was not any more at risk, and thus did not need to suffer an increase in my premium.

    Calling my insurance company got me nowhere but more confirmation that, yes, by identifying as female, my rates would go up. I do have to say that my insurance company was very helpful and the people I spoke to on the phone did try to find me any other discount that would reduce my rates. None was found.

    It was at this point I realized I had a choice to make. I could let this go. I probably should have, looking back, but I love a good fight, especially one with words as the weapon of choice. Not only was this blatantly misogynistic, but also felt punitively transphobic. At the behest of one of my friends, I filed a complaint with the Washington state Office of the Insurance Commissioner. The conversation that unfolded can be seen here, in reverse chronological order:

    The summary of the above is this: gender is a factor in insurance underwriting in the state of Washington. There are also rules in place that make it so that special cases cannot be accounted for outside of the bounds of the official rate plan. These rules are part of the Washington insurance law.

    The biggest take away from the above though, and much thanks to the transparency and service by Michael Harman, the Compliance Analyst from the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, is that there is something that I, as a lowly citizen, can do about it. Following the link he provided me has yielded a form which I can use to start the process of revising the law that says the gender can be a basis for underwriting of insurance in the State of Washington.

    It isn’t the hill I saw myself dying on, but the longer I sit here, in the moist grass, sun on my face, dodging in and out of the Seattle gloom, I think this is a fine place to get low.

    Stay Tuned.

  • The defeatist attitude is getting old

    “Protests don’t work. I’m not watching the news anymore. We don’t have any power.”

    Stop. Just stop. This is exactly the attitude they want you to have. All of this is designed to make you want to hide your head in the sand and wait for it all to blow over. They want you to dig a little hole and grow fat and weak so that when they come with the men in black to take you you’ll be an easy target, and they are coming.

    A lot of people seem to focus on the idea that protests, especially in liberal areas, do nothing. So let’s play in that space. Why do you think it does nothing? Because one protest doesn’t change anything? It took years, decades even, for everything to get here. This is a long fight. We are in the “peaceful gathering to show our discontent” stage. If you think that the only way things get better is by burning teslas, well, you’re wrong. If things get violent, the fascists win. As soon as the powder keg blows up, we will be in martial law and then we have REALLY lost. Right now we need to be gathering our allies and preparing for war.

    So what then do peaceful protests do? They show we are angry. Happy people don’t take days off work to go march. Those who are satisfied with their government don’t go stand in the rain with signs outside of government buildings. As for why protests are in the middle of the day when people have work? Because the people we want to see our discontent are also working normal hours.

    I feel like I’m shouting into the wind again. Let’s tie this up.

    I find myself both proud of, and disgusted by so many people recently. So many people out there care. I’ve been to a handful of marches and protests now, and the one thing I always take away from them, more than a sense of progress or control, is that I’m not alone. I see all of these other people doing the same thing I am, and caring about the same issues, and the fear and anxiety I have that creeps into my mind at 2AM is temporarily lessened.

    So protests do nothing? They prove you’re not alone. Are things going to change over night? Of course not. This is going to be a very long battle, but if I am a soldier in the army of freedom and liberty, I can’t fight if I am paralyzed by fear. Protests, if nothing else, feed your soul, and your will to fight, and that’s worth a lot more than ignoring the problem and hoping help will come from somewhere else.

    The time to throw bricks through the windows of Starbucks will come, but for now we need to build community and strength so when the boots of the faceless are standing on our necks, we know that help will come from those we stood with in the beginning.

    I guess that’s it for now.

    Hail libertas.