public health

to a young person questioning themselves

by

I’m 60Mf (that’s how I’ve been indicating a male-presenting femme-relating person). I’ve always known that I’m different on the inside, and I’m so glad that it is becoming normalized to express ourselves about the nuances of our experiences relative to gender.

I’ve also recently been diagnosed AuDHD, and that has really helped me understand a lot about myself. None of the labels around gender or sexual orientation have ever landed in a way that gave me a feeling of “yes! that’s me!” but the term neuroqueer feels really right, and bigender has been feeling close enough since i’ve tried it on.

I’ve learned that I was living fairly unmasked through my 20s, but became very high masking starting in my 30s until recently. the way that that relates to gender, for me, is that i experienced a lot of cultural acceptance around gender fluidity in the social circles i moved through in my teens and 20s, but then a couple of things happened. i feel there was a cultural shift in the 90s back to more binary norms, which has kind of continued to this day. But then also, moving into my 30s i felt a certain need to ‘grow up,’ and ‘get with the program,’ so i tried to become as consistent and legible as possible, if that makes sense. As someone who has always been recognized as being ‘different’ or ‘off,’ i think i just kind of minimized those parts of myself that i recognized would create friction. A lot of my masking behavior I chalked up to ‘adulting,’ and just thought it was what everyone my age had to do to survive. It was only after I found myself in burnout and sought diagnosis that i started to understand that what i thought was adulting was costing me a lot of energy and was totally draining me.

I wasn’t, by any means, trying to make myself into a heteronormative male—i’ve always had more women friends and felt fairly unsafe in male-oriented spaces—but i just wasn’t out and proud about my nuanced self, and in intimate relationships there has been a lot of effort devoted to responding to what I now know was me not matching the expectations that my partners brought with them about how a male partner was supposed to relate.

With the diagnosis, i have decided to unmask as much as is possible and practical, while still trying to read the room and pay attention to when it is to my advantage to kind of disappear into my appearance, if that makes sense, and just not challenge people’s perceptions of me too much. Choosing my battles.

But mostly, unmasking has been great for my mental and physical health, and for many of my relationships. And that speaks to one of the ways I’m not trans (one of my offspring is a trans adult, so there’s a relationship to how the terms are different within our culture, even though they’re arbitrary social constructs).

Even though I experience the world in both masculine and feminine ways, both through my internal perception and through others’ perceptions of me, it feels safer to me (i have a lot of issues around relational safety) to live in the body that i have and to allow my inner feelings to be what they are, and not interfere too much in trying to conform to any specific track. In practical terms, that means that i recognize that for me to be perceived as either heteronormatively male or female would require a great deal of masking, and that’s just not something i’m willing to do anymore. I’m fine with the contrasts and contradictions of having both things going on within me at any given time, and i’m more and more comfortable continuing to be myself even when i recognize that who i am is confusing to someone i’m interacting with.

The result, at least at the place I find myself, might be described as a precocious girl or young woman who presents as a rather salty older gentleman, who is attracted to feminine people, regardless of gender, and kind of put off by performative masculinity and the feminine counterpart it attracts. I respond to any pronouns—masc, femme, neutral, singular, or plural—at any given moment. I try to tread lightly through the busy world of public life, and be as rambunctious and outside the lines as i feel with my 2 or 3 trusted people. In that regard, I recognize the privilege of masculine presentation, in terms of safety, and don’t take it for granted. I wish i could give every woman i know the opportunity to wear a giant mansuit out in the world, and feel the safety that comes with that. I need to go cry for a minute. Be right back.

I know this has all been about me. That’s because, you being young, I feel a responsibility to model how a nonconforming person comfortable with themselves describes their experience of themselves, at least one version of that. I don’t want to give advice, because we all have to discover our own way. I hope that this has been helpful, and i just want to send all the hopes—that you experience deep relational safety with at least a couple of trusted people; that you experience ’enough’ relational safety to test the boundaries of who you see and feel yourself to be and how that person wants to present themselves; that you find fulfilling work that sustains you; and that if partnering is something that you want for yourself, that you find your way to people who see you and accept you as you see yourself.

Happy pride!

Living wage: probably not

by

We have been acculturated to the language of equity masking a reality that simply doesn’t add up.

When a business is telling you they pay a living wage, 9 times out of 10 they either don’t understand the term or they are gaslighting you. This is allowed to happen because most people don’t do the math, and most people over a certain age grew up in a very different ecosystem.

Living wage for the East Bay is $100,000/yr. Most people think that looks like a big number, but if you figure for living alone in a market rate apartment, current food, utility, and healthcare costs, $100k is modest at best. Living wage, then, if you factor in 50 40-hour workweeks, a living wage is $50/hr. It’s just that simple. So if you’re working anywhere that’s paying $20/hr, the only way that’s a living wage is if you have another job paying far above $50/hr to make up for the deficit that is created by working a $20/hr job. And it’s clear that most small businesses would not be able to pay the equivalent of $50/hr full time for most positions.

Life no longer adds up. When I was my son’s age, I could work less than full time at a cafe and pay all of my rent and bills and save money and travel a few weeks a year. My son works at an equivalent job, and doesn’t have enough to rent an apartment.

We can battle with small business owners all day. It doesn’t add up. That’s why everyone is trying to unionize, and getting tons of pushback. If we don’t solve income inequality, places like the East Bay will just become unlivable for the average person.

About tip culture: Because I’ve worked lots of restaurant and service jobs, I don’t buy into the “tipping as a reflection of service quality” mindset, and see tipping for what it is—a wage subsidy for low paid workers. Tipping-as-merit is a way to make the consumer think like a privileged person—the power to bestow and withhold is intoxicating, until you recognize the reality that low paid workers often simply couldn’t afford to work their jobs without tips factored in, because employers, due to margins being what they are, simply wouldn’t be able to pay what a worker needs to make without that subsidy.

Because it’s become part of the ecosystem, it buries a portion of the cost of doing business—in other words, consumers would be unwilling to pay the price that businesses would have to charge for goods and services if they reflected the actual cost of doing business. Understanding this, I automatically add 20% whenever I’m at an establishment where I know the workers are making a lower-tier wage; but first, I ask an employee how the management distributes tips—some businesses keep them outright, while others distribute them equitably.

I’m writing this as a person who has never earned what has been considered a living wage for the area. Rent control, beans and rice, and making sure to never become sick or injured are all that are allowing me to stay in the area.

Please vote! And remember that as long as capitalism doesn’t have safeguards that manage the ratio between the highest and lowest earners, things can only get worse.

my birthday wish

by

Some of you have made music with me over the years. You know what being in the room with me is like. Since my birthday is coming up, I’m hoping you’ll take a moment to hear what I’m asking for.

This past year, I decided to start something new. I wanted to nurture spaces that are explicitly neurodiversity-affirming. I wanted to make music that reflects the histories and cultures of the communities I’m in—not a fixed repertoire, but a living one. I wanted more instruments, wider age ranges, and a room that doesn’t sort people by developmental milestone or tax bracket. I wanted people to be able to attend as often as they like without paying more.

And I wanted to charge less than it costs to run the program, on purpose, knowing I’d be fundraising constantly to fill the gap. For years I taught in programs I couldn’t have afforded myself. That felt like a problem worth solving.

Enter imeetswe. We’re in our first year, and this is our Spring fundraising appeal. It would be a bait-and-switch to offer sliding scale classes and then only appeal at fundraising time to folks that are enrolled, so I’m reaching out to you. If any of this resonates—as a donor, a sharer, or just someone who wants to know more—I’d love for you to take a look, and share widely. Thank you!

donate