Category Archives: Meta

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Well, that was a long nap!

I’ll admit it: I STINK at blogging and social media. If anything’s gonna kill my writing career, it’s my inability to maintain a constant pressure of self-promotion. I can write. I can edit. I can take critique. I can even, with support and encouragement, submit what I write. But I have a REALLY hard time either bragging about it or talking into the wind about whatever subjects are on my mind.

My posts cut off because I was laid off from my technical writing gig last year and spent a bunch of time scrambling to figure out what to do. That’s not an excuse, just an explanation for the curious. If anyone knows how (short of implanted electrodes or hiring a producer) to keep the updates comin’ regular-like, feel free to post about it in the comments. I’m sure I’m not the only one interested.

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30 Days of Coming Out, Day Three

The question for Day Three: “Who was your first real-life crush?”
I had a few hard crushes, but the first? I think it would have to be Jennifer Docherty. I have no idea what’s happened to her, but fourth-grade me didn’t have a chance. She and I had known each other since nursery school. She had blond hair, wore jeans instead of skirts, and she was way, way, way cooler than I would ever be. She played soccer better than most boys, climbed trees, and took nothing from ANYONE. Plus, she had a 12-inch Boba Fett action figure. I hope she’s out there somewhere, doing exactly what she wants with who she wants, and that she’s happy.

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30 Days of Coming Out, Day Two

The question for Day Two: “How old were you when you first discovered you were LGBTQ?”

28. I mean, I should have known. If I were growing up today, when the word “transgender” is out there in the world, and what it means to be trans is more accessible, someone might have figured it out. As it was, the only person who deduced it was an ex-Army sniper who stunned me when he said “Yeah, I always figured you had a gender problem. Glad you worked it out.”

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30 Days of Coming Out, Day One

I started this challenge late, on the sixth day, so I’m playing catch-up right now. The question for Day One: “Share your name, age, and identity. Share a picture of yourself.”

My name’s Christine Frances Stewart, born Christopher James Hedberg. I’m 44 years old, and I am a late-onset transgender woman and a lesbian. For those who know about such things, I technically fit the criteria for autogynephilia, but think that it’s a bogus diagnostic category. And as for the picture, this is as good a description as any:

A goofy-looking woman stands screaming cartoonishly as a fake bank safe crushes her foot.

If you had ever doubted it, here’s evidence that I am either a toon or a muppet.

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30 Days of Coming Out

So over on Facebook, some friends started doing a cool activity for this month of LGBT Pride. Every day, they’re each answering a different question about their queer history, drawn from this list. I started it on Facebook, but…well, I’m a writer, and I take my words seriously. Some of these answers deserve the real treatment, with thought and drafts and rewrites. They deserve to be remembered. They deserve to be real stories. So I’m going to post them here and rewrite them until…well, until they show my true pride.

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Because It’s Mine

There’s a new article out from Smithsonian.com titled “How Transgender Women Are Training Their Voices to Sound More Feminine.” Sounds fine. I did voice training when I transitioned, and I’m grateful I was able to. That sounds like an article I would happily read. So, here’s the subtitle: “Does striving for some ideal female voice just reinforce stereotypes?” The article below the fold is long, and I hope interesting, but I can sum it up easily.

NO!
Continue reading →

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Well, That Didn’t Last, Did It?

…the post-a-day thing, I mean.

I have a confession: I’m a hermit. Not in the physical world–I love people in the physical world. But online, I’m easily overwhelmed. I’ve thought about why. In some ways, it’s because I hyper-focus on things: what I’m doing right now is the ONLY THING. I’ll start on something, look up, and realize I’ve missed several meals. Even with the haiku trick, I started missing days.

That plays into the second reason: there’s so much out here in the Interwebs. It reminds me working on school essays as a kid. Start the paper. Look up a fact about James Garfield. See that the next page has a picture of a cool-looking fish (the gar-fish, if you’re wondering). Flip to the section on North American wildlife. Learn many things. Don’t finish the essay. Trust me, even with a NON-wiki’d pedia, it was pretty easy.

The third reason? The Internet lets me see how many smart people there are in the world who’re already saying what I could say, and usually better. I feel sad that I don’t have such wonderful, clear, clever things to say. “Today, I re-wrote a bunch of corporate marketing content from gibberish all the way up to pablum!” Just not that exciting to share.

But that’s a crummy way to think about things. Not that any of this isn’t true–there are always better writers out there. But that’s no reason to shut up. And one of the best ways to help get a point across is to share it and boost the signal, adding to it if you can.

So, you know what? The Hell with that. Don’t expect clockwork posts from me. Don’t expect stunning repartee in every post. But when I post, it’s because I have something I think is worth saying, or worth sharing, or it’s something I personally want to keep track of. I promise I’ll never torment you with pictures of what I ate for lunch.

Unless it’s frozen mammoth meat.