Pictures for Our Funeral Slideshow

 Hello.

I’m not looking for a friend. 

I’m looking for a partner. 

You were there for me when I needed you the most. 

You never left my side. 

How are you? 

You don’t have to say “good.”

I want all of you. 

I want every piece of you,

The good, the bad and the ugly. 

Show me everything, put it on my altar, 

I put you on my altar. 

You are mine to behold and to worship. 

Iconoclast 

She cannot be contained 

I’m in love with them 

All of them 

Brianna is strong 

Heart 

Mind 

Body 

She masters the mountain

Conquers the kitchen 

Strums the guitar 

They are the handy queer 

She manipulates electrons

At work

And in my heart

Tall 

Fiery 

True

Fun

Nobody ever said that marriage was easy

100/100

It’s not easy. 

You were there for me when I needed you the most. 

What’s up?

You seem sad. 

You don’t want me to say “what’s wrong?”

Because there’s nothing wrong with being sad. 

We have had our ups and downs. 

Nobody ever said it would be easy. 

But we are enjoying the ride anyway. 

This ride isn’t going to stop. 

Hi. 

It’s me. 

She, he, they. 

We are both a blend of genders and identities. 

We don’t fit into your box. 

I never liked labels anyway. 

God made us this way. 

He is proud that we are made in their image. 

God doesn’t fit into a gender and neither do we. 

Nobody ever said it would be easy. 

You were there for me when I needed you the most. 

We are out here in the world. 

Some people love us,

Some people hate us. 

There is a lot of fear. 

There is a lot of scarcity. 

We turn toward love and abundance. 

She is a beauty

Inside and out

Funny and smart

Guitar 

Skiing

Climbing

Jiujitsu

I see her

Singing

Dancing 

Playing

All the days of my life. 

Nobody ever said that marriage was easy. 

Bring it on. 

Let’s grow old together. 

Collecting pictures for our funeral slideshow. 

Fire

This year, I have been using an Intuitive Writing deck that my friend, Three, gifted me. Each card has a word or shape on it, and you use that word or shape to prompt a piece of creative writing. I'm going to post a series of entries from my Intuitive Writing practice here, just for fun. 

FIRE

The fire of passion. The fire of spirit. "That girl is on fire!" We are all struggling. But when you get to witness somebody else on fire, it’s inspiring. Burning, sizzling, cracking, popping. Reds, oranges, blues. 

The fire of anger. The fire of love. Sometimes, it’s so hot it can burn you. But other times, it’s just enough to keep you alive. Other times, it’s just what you need to cook your food as fuel for the next adventure. Fire can kill, but it can also save. It can burn, but it can also cook and warm. It can consume, but it also creates light and heat. 

We don’t have all the answers. Life, writing, doing research, trying to make a mark on the world-- it's just about participating in the unfolding of the universe. It’s not always fun. It’s usually a boring, stupid game. 

But it’s your choice. You can sit there and watch. You can pout. Or, you can engage, participate, and have fun. 

Nobody will remember us after we’re gone. It’s not about being remembered.

But maybe you can infuse your fire into something that will later plant a seed and later grow a tree. It’s the butterfly effect. You don’t know how you will affect something great, far away and far after you. All you can do is keep flapping your wings. Nobody asked you to be the next winner of the most beautiful and smartest butterfly contest. They only asked you to keep flapping your wings and pollinating flowers. Not for any reason, just because the process of the ever-expanding universe is the process to find joy in, the process of creating is what is meaningful. 

The outcome doesn’t matter–people are playful and have more True Fun when they aren’t focused on the outcome or when there is no outcome, and people are more creative when there isn’t an outcome at all. Yes, there’s research on this. So just focus on the fire of spirit and passion inside of you. 

Snug Bug Poem

A snug bug is

A snug bug was

A snug bug will be

Not just for snugs. 

A snug bug is 

For distraction

From the pain of the mother fuckin world

When faced with the discomfort of boredom

It’s like an itch 

That needs to be scratched 

With a hug and a squeeze 

Even if it’s through a screen 

I haven’t been bored for a long time 

There is a void of sitting and not doing anything 

I hate it 

I want to always be doing 

Life

Fun but boring 

A breath of fresh air 

But also a waste of time 

A time to play and explore 

I don’t have it in me right now 

I can’t do anything else. 

Why did I agree to this?

Lol

Star

This year, I have been using an Intuitive Writing deck that my friend, Three, gifted me. Each card has a word or shape on it, and you use that word or shape to prompt a piece of creative writing. I'm going to post a series of entries from my Intuitive Writing practice here, just for fun. 

The card has a picture of a star on it. Here is my response, which was just the first thing that came to my head when I saw the card, which I randomly chose out of the deck:

“We are all stars!” Gao Min, my Chinese friend in Nanjing, used to say all the time, while laughing his face off. He was joking about how everybody thinks of themselves as little unique stars, little celebrities, little princes and princesses, special and somehow entitled and deserving of some kind of reward or recognition. Indeed, we are all stardust in the end..

Yes, we all have our unique light. So how do you balance that TRUTH with the fact that it’s not all about YOU? 

The Earth revolves around the Sun, which is one star. The other stars we can see in the sky are all important and unique and the Milky Way galaxy is made up of them but everything doesn’t revolve around them. They have gravity but not so much as to change or move the galaxy. Each star has enough gravity to change or move the few planets around it. But outside of that force field, there’s nothing. And so it is with life, isn’t it? We do have energy, a type of gravitational push and pull that does affect the people around us, but not enough to change the world. Some stars are bigger than others. The question is, what kind of star are you? 

What did I do in my childhood that pointed to who I really am, who I really am and want to be, and what my vocation–as a gift not a calling–is?

I liked playing house. Choreographing movies and dance moves. Hide and seek. Kickball. Reading. Basketball and running. Dogs. Cleaning. Organizing. Cooking. Playing. Helping. Sitting with Jimmy. Befriending Courtney. Hanging out with Hali. Helping mom in the garden. Guinea pigs. Learning. 

What kind of star am I? What kind of star was I born to be? What kind of star will I become?  

Dread and Addiction to the High

I was dreading facing my emotions. They felt like a dark cloud over my head and a heavy weight on my chest.

My throat and mouth were full of bile, my heart full of acid, my body full of stress, my mind full of anger and resentment, my chest full of a burning sense of jealousy, self-righteousness, loneliness and pain. 

I was riding my bike home from Crossfit and my hands were stinging from the cold. The sun was just starting to rise over the horizon. The brown and sandy mountains were still in shadow with a soft yellow light painted over them. I realized that I was free. There was nobody holding me accountable, nobody asking me to do anything, nobody watching. I had no Higher Power in that moment, and I was reduced to my selfish and material desires. Why not? I was hungry, I was emotional, I was bruised, and I was craving anything to pull me out of the muck of human misery.

So, I stopped at Vance’s cafe and had breakfast. I was so happy to be there. I got a bacon burrito and a chocolate chip pancake, betraying everything that I stood for at the time: vegetarian, sugar-free, saving money on a budget, intermittent fasting. I threw it all out the window and the thrill of indulging in all of my addictions gave me so much adrenaline that it was worth it. I was so angry, so pissed off, I had lost my connection to my higher power completely and I was reduced to my ego, my self-righteous and self-centered Self, my greedy and not caring Dr. Jekyll.

I have no regrets. I enjoyed every bite of the burrito, every grain of sugar in that pancake, and every sip of the coffee. I needed that moment to feel like I had taken back sovereignty of my body.

Instead of surrendering to a higher power, I surrendered to my ego and IT FELT SO GOOD. There is a crucial difference between feeling like you are in control of your own destiny–in control of your own time and space–and the feeling of surrendering to a higher power. When you feel like you are in control, there is an adrenaline-high to it. You feel powerful, calm, and self-righteous. You feel smart, you feel like you are in the driver’s seat (and indeed, your ego, the part of your Self that you have identified with for most of your life is in the driver’s seat during those moments) and you feel a giddy kind of excitement and POWER. You are your own higher power. This is true. But sometimes, when there is an adrenaline high to it especially, instead of it being your Wise Self, it is your ego instead. You worship your ego like a god. You believe that this ego self has the power to make you feel good. 

And it does make you feel good. 

For a time. 

Eventually, the effect wears off.

There’s no food that can make you feel better; no gadget, no relationship, no drug. Not even an "experience," like a vacation, is the ticket or key to make things feel better, to fix your life or yourself. It’s just not how it works. 

Because whatever it is, its effect will wear off and you’ll be back to where you started.

Instead, life is about surrender. It's also about love and connection and creativity. But it’s also recognizing and accepting the pain and boredom as an equally important and valuable part of life. Life is pretty boring, not that exciting, and difficult.

To be in control of your life is an illusion. 

Feeling like you are in control vis-a-vis your ego's demands is such a different feeling from surrendering control to a higher power. When you surrender to a higher power, you do give up a feeling of control, freedom and sovereignty over your own body, life, time and space. It’s not just yours anymore. Your life and your body is the community’s, the marriage, the organization, the program, the Universe’s. Because what you do affects everything you come in contact with. It’s not all about you. And you’re not in control of your own time and space. There is so much with so much more power than you controlling your life, your time and space. Your marriage, your relationships, your community, your nation and your world all have control over how you are able to move in the world. You can’t pretend like you have control. That is a nice way to calm anxiety but it’s only an illusion. The more you can surrender to giving up control of your life, the better.

Life

Warm, rainy fall day 

He/him 

They/them

She/her

Why does it matter?

Why do I care so much?

Why is gender so beautiful?

It is such a beautiful creative expression of self.

Of beauty

Of diversity 

Of love 

Of body

I am taking back the narrative

I am the author of my life

Or, am I helpless with no agency?

No!

Even in the worst of circumstances, 

People express themselves 

This is the most beautiful thing 

To say, 

"Fuck you 

Fuck everything 

This is me 

This is who I am 

Take it or leave it 

I make mistakes 

I can learn." 

What is my value? 

My perspective from a marginalized gender minority 

YES!

This is me

This is who I am 

I have a unique subjectivity 

From this point of view, 

I see things differently. 

When you live your whole life outside of your body, 

You are constantly floating 

Eager to feel anything 

Addicted to drugs 

Craving sex 

Wanting to cut your wrists 

To feel anything is better than nothing at all

When you live your whole life outside your identity, 

You look for ways to come back into your body. 

When you live your life outside of your body, 

Coming back into it is like a drink of cool water 

A breath of fresh air

A liberation 

A freedom 

It’s not a choice 

It’s a human instinct 

Body is a territory of 

Power 

Self 

Expression 

Value 

Sexuality

Spirituality 

Identity 

Subjectivity 

At the margins of the margins 

You have nowhere to turn 

So you turn to the god inside of you 

What to do? 

What would Jesus do?

What would God do? 

What would you do? 

The god inside you, inside all of us, 

Says

Whispers 

Sings 

"You were created in gods image"

So be a god 

Be a god with your body 

Create your body the way god created it

God wants you to create 

What better way to create than in your body 

Reclaim the sovereignty 

Over the one thing that is yours

That is your god-given right 

Body

Downward Dog

 This year, I have been using an Intuitive Writing deck that my friend, Three, gifted me. Each card has a word or shape on it, and you use that word or shape to prompt a piece of creative writing. I'm going to post a series of entries from my Intuitive Writing practice here, just for fun. 

The card has the word "DOWN" on it. Here is my response, which was just the first thing that came to my head when I say the card, which I randomly chose out of the deck:

Downward dog. 

Downward dog points my butt toward the sky. The posture is a way to lift the root chakra and loosen the neck and shoulders by hanging the head. "You don’t always have to be upright," it reminds me, "you can be in different ways." Downward dog gives the neck and shoulders a break from all that work they’re doing all the time to keep us upright. Walking upright on two feet is something that most other animals don’t know how to do. 

The downward dog posture reminds me of dogs. They are so good with their bodies; shaking when they get up, stretching when they can, jumping and running around just about whenever they feel like it. They are programmed to please and to serve humans. Unconditional love is their default mode. And yet... they still find ways to ask for and get their own needs met. They do not have a lot of needs, but still, dogs can be demanding. They need walks (for the bathroom and exploration), food, water, and play. It’s pretty basic, it’s pretty simple. 

And humans are not that different. We don’t need a lot. We don’t need to change the world, to be rich and famous, to be admired, to bring groundbreaking knowledge into the world. We just need to eat, sleep, exercise, and play. 

Life is pretty boring at the end of the day. And difficult. Suffering is inevitable. There isn’t some candy at the end of the rainbow, no promised land where everything will be fine. There’s no food that can make it better, no gadget, no relationship, no drug that can make everything feel better. There is not even an experience, like a vacation, that is the ticket to make things feel better, to fix your life or yourself. It’s just not how it works. 

Because whatever it is, it’s effect will wear off and you’ll be back to where you started. The ticket to a satisfying life is more about love and connection and creativity, but also recognizing and accepting the pain and boredom as an equally important and valuable part of life. 

It’s just not about you and your comfort. 

You are one drop in an ocean. Nothing you do will change anything drastically. Nothing you create will change any one person’s life or make huge waves in the ocean. And that’s not the point. The point of life is not to feel good, to experience pleasure, to accomplish, to be famous or rich. That’s not the point. 

We were given the gift of creativity, and if you can spend as much of your time connecting, flowing, and playing, then that’s great. But ultimately nothing you did, are doing, or will do is going to make one bit of a difference. It’s just not. You are too small and the world is too big. 

But, you can enjoy your life while you’re here. And that doesn’t mean blow your mind with experience and pleasure and accomplishments every single day. I mean, enjoying the boring and the mundane, the painful and the heartbreak, the grief and the stress, the joy and the excitement in equal measure. 

And sometimes what that means is just enjoying that moment in downward dog when your shoulders and neck don’t have to support that big old head of yours anymore, and you can relax into being instead of thinking and doing. 

2022 Birthday Post

 Okay, Okay, I know I'm a little late. I wrote this on March 30, 2022, and here it is: 

“You’re one year older, one year wiser. What is one thing that you learned this year?” 

Trust the process, enjoy the process, and surrender to the process. 

Over the past year, a lot has happened. I came out as trans and started hormones. I read Ken Wilbur's integral theory and practiced meditation. I went skiing in Colorado and helped move Brie to Phoenix. I got the COVID vaccine–thrice. I finished the first draft of my book. I lived a Bachelor lifestyle in Prague, enjoying my studio apartment and hanging out on my balcony on the cool summer nights, letting dirty dishes pile up in my sink, watching movies and eating ice cream, taking naps and practicing Czech, working on my writing and reading lots of books. I did an unstructured month and started working on an autobiographical book project. I did yoga daily and connected with my body. Baby Sam was born. I went to Kyrgyzstan for a month, trained jiujitsu, stayed at a hostel, hiked, and worked with the LGBT community. I proposed and got engaged. I got a tattoo in Berlin. I hung out with my sister and Jeff in Vienna. I presented my work at a conference in the UK. I realized that I didn’t want to be an academic anymore and started to reach the integral level. I went to Opio at Red Rocks in Colorado and backpacking in Arizona. I connected with the Schwandt siblings. I fell in love with Bruno, an 80 lb pit bull. I finished the second draft of my book. I went to my sister’s wedding in Spain and spent Christmas and New Year’s in Prague. I got COVID. I said goodbye to the community I had built and started building a new community in Phoenix. 

In Phoenix in 2022, I joined the Like-Minded jiujitsu community. I did a dopamine fast by doing intermittent fasting and giving up sugar, ALL media (including Netflix, YouTube, podcasts and audiobooks), and alcohol for 30 days. I competed four times as a male in jiujitsu. I went skiing in Arizona and Colorado. I connected with my cousin, Bella. I started rock climbing. I wrote in my blog. I started planning our wedding. I lost contact with my mother and one of my best friends, both of whom ghosted me without giving me a reason. I read a lot of books about sex, transness, developmental psychology, spirituality, being true to yourself, and academic writing. I published a few articles about Uyghurs, as well as a few articles about jiujitsu and transness. I quit my job.

It was kind of intense–all the traveling, moving, meeting new people, coming out, transitioning, getting engaged, writing, competing in jiujitsu. It was all very chaotic and dramatic, and yet at the same time, I was more grounded this year than I’d been in most previous years of my life. 

A few of the things that stand out as the biggest milestones/changes/growth points of the last year are: 

-coming out as trans and changing my name and pronouns

-getting engaged and moving to Phoenix

-quitting my job and saying goodbye to academia 

These were the moments where I felt a lot of grief for the loss and passing of an old life and an old self–the moments where I felt like a breakdown was happening in my life and my self, where everything was dissolving and falling apart before my eyes and I knew that it was going to be a lot of hard work to pick up the pieces and start to build anew from the ashes (I guess “Phoenix” is a good place to do that then!). It was saying goodbye to Sarah, saying goodbye to singledom and bachelorhood and Prague, and saying goodbye to academia and the ego trip of power and fame that it was inducing on me. 

There was a lot of grief in saying goodbye to those things. Sometimes it felt like everything was falling apart and breaking down. But they were also the biggest points of growth, the moments where I was fully present and able to be mindful about looking at myself and my life objectively, from a third eye or third person perspective, seeing myself from outside and inside of myself all at the same time, and able to make decisions that felt authentic to my heart, spirit and body. 

Those were the moments when I really felt like I was taking back agency over my life and sovereignty over my own body, the moments when I felt like I was starting to design and create my own life, being the architect of my own life and my own experience, lucid dreaming instead of watching the show, lucid dreaming instead of sleeping, driving the car instead of being in the passenger seat. In this way, it was incredibly empowering but also incredibly scary. It was not only about driving the car, but it was also about driving the car and learning to explore and trust where the road was taking me, rather than constantly looking at Google maps. Instead of constantly worrying about where I was going, or constantly trying to build a new road or drive off the road, I also let the road take me where I was meant to be. 

Slowly, I have been embracing and actively trying to surrender to that which is larger than myself–the Universe, jiujitsu, partnerships, friendships, and even the larger academic and writing community, reminding myself that it’s not all about me, it’s not all about my pleasure and my fulfillment and what I want or need or what I’m doing with my life and if I’m happy and satisfied. It’s more about surrendering to the will of the higher power, whether that be marriage, jiujitsu, academia, Spirit, Universe, God, community, friendship, or even just my Higher Self. 

It’s not about me anymore. It’s about being part of something greater, something that I could never build or do on my own. I think maybe, ultimately, that is what I learned the most this year in terms of trusting the process. Rather than trying to control the process and attaching to the outcome, in the end I learned to surrender to a higher will for me and myself, and only then could I become who I was always meant to be, become who I was born to be, become who the world needs me to be, which is not the next Judith Butler or Michele Foucault, but perhaps just a drop in the ocean, the petal on a flower, a leaf on the tree branch. One more particle, one more atom, one more molecule that fits together with the larger cell to eventually create a living, breathing and functioning organism. It’s still important even if it’s invisible to the naked eye. It all comes together in the end to form beings of value and worth. 

I feel like the traveling back and forth from Prague, the traveling to Kyrgyzstan and Germany and Spain, the drama of the book and my coming out, the drama of my relationship with Brie, it was all very difficult and dramatic. At the time it felt like too much, like my heart was going to overflow with emotions. But in the end, looking back on it, it was really fun. The drama itself was a kind of fun, a kind of play. 

Life is hard, but in the suffering, there is joy to be found in the ups and downs of life. The drama of life itself is a kind of play, a kind of exploration, an ocean to explore and play around in. The waves will knock you over sometimes but otherwise it's the waves that make it kind of fun. 

Scarcity

Cracked teeth

A red jersey

Orange pulp stuck in her teeth,

Juice dripping down her chin

Orange peels on the seat. 

“Don’t ever drink,” she says to me. 

“My brother was murdered and I can’t stop drinking.”

I gave her some chocolate that I was going to throw out. 

She said it was her birthday

And asked God to bless me. 

The destitute camped out underneath the overhang of the building. 

An old man 

A young woman. 

Plastic tarps set up for privacy. 

Stringy white hair. 

Tan, crusted skin. 

Pink gums and missing teeth. 

A toddler crying on the bus. 

A tattooed man offers his orange and granola bar. 

It’s rejected. 

Four kids. 

Utter chaos. 

This is Phoenix. 

There’s nothing glamorous here. 

It’s not about money, it’s not about rednecks. 

It’s about survival in the desert. 

Cold at night, 

Hot in summer. 

There is no such thing as a nicer place to be homeless. 

That day.

I felt right at home. 

I felt so comfortable. 

I felt so free. 

I felt so authentic. 

I was out of my bubble

My bubble of patio furniture, Mac computers, and organic food. 

I was out of my bubble of biking and climbing, 

I was in my bubble of pain and fear, poverty and vulnerability. 

This is humanity. 

This is real life. 

This is survival. 

This is what I have known in my life and research. 

Pain, poverty, survival, fear, hope. 

It’s not about material possessions or money. 

It’s about being real. 

Being real is

Accepting illness and insanity, 

Accepting difference and struggle, 

Accepting precarity and knowing death. 

Trans

Queer Youth Are Five Times More Likely to Die by Suicide

A poem by Andrea Gibson

"Queer Youth Are Five Times More Likely to Die by Suicide

...

Means: 

You lived five times harder than you should have had to 

To still have a body when you graduated high school. 

…

Means: 

When your mother asked what was wrong, 

You were five times more likely to believe you’d lose 

Her if you spoke the truth. 

Means: 

You were told five times more often 

You’d go to hell when you died. 

…

Means: 

You were five times more inclined 

To triple-padlock your diary. 

Means:

You were five times more likely

To stop writing your story down."

Write a poem or essay that raises awareness for a cause you support: Trans rights. 

Trapped.

Suffocating

Living

Breathing

Dying. 

A pebble in the shoe. 

I don't know what to do.

Hiding behind a mask. 

My hands are tied behind my back. 

Dysphoria. 

Discomfort in the body. 

Disassociation during sex. 

If you don’t know, now you know. 

You can’t unsee what you just saw. 

Liberation. 

Truth. 

Beauty. 

Re-birth. 

Empathy might be impossible. 

The say, If you’re not trans, you just can’t know what it’s like. 

Or, can you? 

Has anyone made assumptions about your identity without asking you? 

Has anyone put you into a box? 

Has someone ever mistaken you for a different ethnicity? 

Has someone ever made assumptions about you based on what they could see?

Do you have an invisible disability?

Do you have an invisible truth? 

Coming out 

Caterpillar to butterfly

Baby to adolescent to adult. 

Teenager to grown up. 

Expansion. 

New me. 

Old me. 

Trauma. 

You lose friends.

You lose family. 

You lose community.

You lose social support. 

You experience rejection. 

You feel confused. 

You feel out of your body. 

You’re scared. 

You’re at risk. 

You’re a target. 

Every pronoun.

Every name. 

Every event. 

Every interaction. 

Is laced with fear and rejection. 

Trauma.

Sometimes it feels like de-transition is the only option. 

To just turn back the clock. 

To pretend that it never happened. 

To go back to the way things were. 

Nostalgia at its most toxic. 

Memory at its most warped. 

Wishing, hoping, wanting, desiring. 

Feeling like everything is just too hard. 

The only other option is suicide. 

To end it all in one stroke. 

Why not?

Life is meaningless anyway. 

Life is pointless anyway. 

Nothing means anything. 

There is no point. 

This moment? It means nothing. 

You’re going to die anyway. 

Why does it matter if it’s now or later? 

You are being invited to participate. 

It’s your choice to say yes or no. 

You are consenting to it. 

Trans kids. Trans people. 

Maybe we’re all crazy. 

Maybe we’re all brainwashed. 

Maybe we’re all just trying to get attention. 

Maybe we’re all just trying to be cool. 

Who cares what the reason is? 

Why does it matter? 

Maybe we are all just trying to be cool. Then, let us try to be cool. Accept and love us for that. We’re not hurting anyone. 

Nobody is asking you to understand. 

We are just asking to exist. 

Please don’t murder us. 

Just allow us to live. 

What is precarity?

Precarity is a concept developed by Judith Butler. Precarity means unstable employment and uncertain living conditions, which are entrenched in broader systemic frameworks built on inequality and exploitation. 

Precarity refers to lacking stable work and steady income, and the resulting harm, such as health risks due to malnutrition or inadequate health care, that accompany unreliable employment. In the precarity framework, lack of work is not due to laziness or ineptitude, but by political decisions or economic systems beyond one’s immediate control that create a situation of disadvantage for the purpose of exploitation. Precarity is not just any disadvantage, but specifically danger to one’s life due to lack of access to basic needs. While in other times and places, people with the least amount of economic resources are the most cared for. But not in the Western world, where our economy is instead built on exploitation of the most vulnerable. 

Informal, temporary, or contingent work is the predominant livelihood in the contemporary world, where examples of precarity are familiar: garbage picking (e.g., selling scrap metal or collecting plastic bottles for recycling), the gig economy (e.g., Uber driving), and selling petty commodities (e.g., street vendors selling USB cords, or small tourism trinkets). 

The modern world is no stranger to precarity, but minorities carry an unequal burden for precarious life. Our political-economic and social systems create this increased vulnerability based on the way bodies are characterized, especially along race and gender. In Butler’s (2009) words, precarity denotes a “politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death” (p. 25). In other words, exploitative political-economic systems calculate certain bodies as more valuable to the community than others, with poor and disenfranchised minorities on the lowest priority for life and highest likelihood for precarity. They are seen as a burden and cast aside as extra bodies that are unnecessary and de-valued, all the while being exploited for their cheap labor. 

Precarity is not just about employment status, but also about one’s increased likelihood of sickness, harm or death. In my research, the Uyghurs found themselves in situations of precarity due to political-economic systemic violence that denoted them as "uncivilized terrorists" and restricted access to the resources—namely, jobs and housing—of the city. The precarious conditions of life in the city where I lived devalued Uyghur bodies and lives. Precarity set the stage for the dehumanization that allowed their mass internment in 2017. Precarity meant they were always at risk. 

The Uyghurs are of course not the only ones experiencing poverty of urban life, as well as the exhaustion, stress, and alienation familiar to so many. Around the world, rural migrants as well as urbanites are no stranger to hard times in the city, especially economic dispossession and precarious living conditions. While people everywhere face uncertain, or non-existent, job situations, precarity is often based on value placed on certain bodies, especially those with minority race and gender markers. The most vulnerable in our current global political-economic system are those with the least amount of economic resources. 

Consent or Coercion? What is true freedom?

I wrote in a previous post: "Gaining consent over our lives is the first step towards liberation and true freedom." 

We all love that intoxicating feeling of “this is MY life, this is MY time. I get to do what I want, nobody can tell me what to do.” But this idea of freedom is an illusion. Thinking this way is like driving on a highway at whatever speed because it’s MY car. No, that is not TRUE freedom. That is an illusion of freedom because that is your ego feeling free. And that illusion of freedom is how you end up hurting other people and violating consent. That is not true freedom. 

So what do I mean by “true freedom”? 

True freedom is when you can agree with other drivers on some rules of the road and drive in harmony with them. It is only then that we and everyone around us will experience true freedom. As long as we think, “I can do what I want,” you will be driven by an intoxicating power trip that affects other people, taking away their freedom without consent in both small and big ways. 

The freedom to be yourself doesn’t mean "fuck everyone." 

As long as you keep thinking that true freedom is just “doing whatever I want,” then you will keep getting into accidents because you’re not recognizing the other cars on the road.

True freedom means, “I have agreed to the rules of the road and I’ve learned the roads so I don’t need to check the map, and now I get to choose where I’m going.” You work with the other drivers to create a give and take, while also choosing the place you want to go and getting to the place you want to go the way you want to. That is true freedom. The freedom comes not in gripping the wheel and staring at Google maps telling you where to go. Freedom comes in letting go and singing along to the radio instead of focusing on the road and the map all the time.

True freedom is asking yourself, “Do I want to drive fast or slow? Take the interstate or a more scenic route?”

Maybe how you act doesn’t matter to you. Maybe you drive like an asshole, speeding and endangering everyone else on the road. Maybe you are a grumpy person, bitter and resentful and ungrateful. Maybe you are rude, and none of it matters to you because it just comes out of your mouth and through your body and goes into the universe and you don’t have to sit with that energy anymore. In fact, you might even feel better because you have expelled that negative energy. 

Maybe you don’t mean anything to yourself. This is perhaps the saddest part of it all. It’s not only that you don’t respect others. It’s that you don’t respect yourself. 

But you do mean something to other people. In this way, HOW YOU MOVE MATTERS. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you. But it does matter to other people. 

We are not aware of the ways that we live in unfreedom so much by cultural expectations and cultural hegemony, whether that be capitalism, patriarchy, or just other unspoken rules and expectations, including the unfreedom of individualism, consumerism and materialism, then we haven’t actually given consent to live these lives. 

We are just living while sleeping. We are asleep at the wheel. But the freedom comes not in gripping the wheel, it comes in letting go and singing along to the radio instead of focusing on the road and the map all the time. 

Consent or Coercion? Is it consent if you didn’t know there was a choice? How do we take back consent once we have been given the choice?

I wrote in my previous post: "The problem is that sometimes we give consent without knowing it. People think we've given consent when we have not, or we are unaware that the consent process is being assumed. Sometimes we give other entities permission to determine what we do with our bodies without knowing that we had a choice in the first place. We think we have no choice, or we don't know that there are other options." 

How do we cede sovereignty of our bodies without realizing it? How do we seem to allow people or institutions or social norms to obtain sovereignty over our bodies and lives? 

The movie the Matrix portrays the conflict between individuals who are ignorantly asleep and exploitative systems that are greedily eating on their energy. The question posed to Neo is: do you want to take the red pill or the blue pill? The two pills represent a choice between the willingness to learn a potentially life-changing truth by taking the red pill or remaining in contented ignorance with the blue pill. Until this question is posed, consent has not been obtained. 

As in the movie, is it fully consensual to be in a tube being fed a simulation if you never chose it and didn’t know there was a choice? Once you are given the choice of red pill versus blue pill, and you understand the choice, then it is consensual. But if you don’t even know that the Matrix exists, are you truly giving your consent to be in a simulation? The answer is, I think: No, it's not consensual until the choice is presented.

The obtaining of consent without their knowledge is what happened with Indigenous land in North America. According to legend that is taught in schools as fact, Native Americans signed over their rights to the land to the white settlers. According to some historians, they, not knowing how to write or what a signature was, simply put an x-mark on some paper contracts and agreements that effectively ceded all of their land over to white settlers. In this way, some people argue that the Native Americans willingly consented to giving their land away. But is it really consent if you don’t have all the information you need to understand what that agreement was really about, and more importantly, if you don’t even have the epistemological framework to understand territory, private property and land ownership? 

Land is a type of territory, and bodies are also a type of territory. In politics, we often fight over the territory of the body.

COVID. Mask mandates. Vaccine requirements. Social distancing regulations.

Abortions in Texas.

Trans rights to use the bathroom and access health care.

MY BODY, MY CHOICE, yell the slogans. 

Our political climate is riddled with examples of the fight over bodily sovereignty. But what does it all really mean on the micro-scale, the scale of everyday life, the scale of the individual body? 

I also wrote in my previous post: "Gaining back consent over our bodies is the first step towards gaining back consent over our lives."

How can we start to go about doing that? Beauty is about exercising bodily sovereignty. Think about tattoos or body piercings, plastic surgery or hair dye, fashion choices or make-up. It’s about turning our bodies into art but also about self-expression. But it’s also a way of saying, “it’s my body and I’ll change it if I want to.” 

Doing what you want with your body is your choice alone–what kind of clothes you want to wear, what kind of haircut, what kind of facial hair, what kind of piercings and tattoos. You get to own your body, nobody else gets to determine who you are or your body for what it is. 

At the end of the day, we can never win if we are trying to mold to society’s expectations. Instead, we can take back sovereignty over our own bodies, which is about choosing how to adorn and present our bodies as a temple and as a celebration of our soul. You (yes, you!) have such a beautiful soul and it deserves to be honored in whatever physical manifestation you have and want to share. 

I know what it feels like to have a body that just doesn’t fit; a body that doesn’t fit right into clothes and doesn’t fit right into people’s expectations. No matter what happens, I will always have a female body and I will always feel wrong in it and it will never fit into what society expects or wants or glorifies. Many of us have bodies that don’t fit into what society wants or expects. But it’s not our fault that capitalism makes clothes only fit to certain body types. It's not our fault that patriarchy worships certain bodies and certain genders. Society polices our bodies as much as the government does. But it is our right to re-claim our bodies. 

Your body is yours. For whatever reason, God gave you the body you have, or your soul chose your body, or your genetics paired up exactly right to give you the body that you have. No matter how you look at it, your body is yours. 

If there’s one thing I hope for everyone, it would be for everyone to cultivate love for their body. It can be through sports or sex, of course. Those are two common ways. But it could also mean getting a piercing or a tattoo, or just buying some more nice clothes for yourself, or wearing a bracelet or chain, or cooking yourself some delicious food. It could mean doing your nails or getting a haircut or growing some facial hair or giving yourself a massage or doing some yoga. But your body is the one thing in this world that you can and do truly own, and it’s the one thing that will be with you for the rest of your life. You get to reclaim it for yourself, and nobody gets to take that away from you. We can take back consent over our own bodies in creative ways outside of the system. 

Consent or Coercion? What is the gray area and how is my body both mine and not mine?

 TRIGGER WARNING: DESCRIPTION OF NONCONSENSUAL SEXUAL ASSAULT 

I remember that night. We were playing pool. I was giddy and intoxicated with his attention. He asked stupid questions: “Where are you from? What do you do?” The alcohol was cold on my lips but warm in my chest. I felt hot fire in my veins. The liquid courage took control over my pre-frontal cortex, silencing that part of myself. My brain always tells me to doubt, doubt, doubt, whatever I am doing. It tells me, “You are wrong, ugly, nobody likes you, nobody wants to hear you.” So I kept drinking and the voice got quieter and quieter until it became silent. 

With the liquid courage, I became reckless and got into the passenger seat of the car with him behind the wheel, not knowing if he was sober and not caring, feeling high on possibility and filled with “fuck it” thoughts. 

When we exited the car, I jumped on his back and he carried me down the street as we howled with laughter. We stumbled into the bar. We danced, the fronts of our bodies smashed together. I don’t remember who else was there that night. It was the weekend after my birthday and I allowed myself to lose control in ways that I normally would have never allowed myself to: telling people I loved them, laughing loud, hugging anybody, telling the truth. I let loose that night, feeling free. The rest of my life was a cage. But with alcohol, I was free. Finally, nothing and nobody to tell me what to do or how to be. 

On the way home, I was in the passenger seat.

“Where am I taking you?” he asked.

“I’m down for whatever,” I say. 

“Let’s go to the crib,” I hear him say in a mumble with his hand over his mouth. Almost like he doesn’t want me to hear and object. Almost like he’s a little embarrassed and ashamed. 

Things started to get fuzzy. I was lying in bed and his fingers were jamming into me, rough and fast. I was so dry. It hurt. I pushed his hand away. He kept going. It hurt. I pushed his hand away again. 

“At least I just got a bikini wax, so I’m clean,” I thought to myself. “Nothing to be embarrassed about.” And everything went black. 

The next morning, I woke up and he saw I was awake. I felt my eyebrows furrow together. 

“Don’t worry, nothing happened. You kept pushing me away pretty hard so I stopped,” he smiled at me, chuckling. 

I smiled too. He liked me. I was worth something. My mouth was dry and sticky, my head hurt. I pecked him on the lips before I left and it immediately felt weird. I knew something was off. 

The next couple weeks unfurled quickly, me asking to see him, him avoiding me. I left for China not too long after that. I found out later that he was already involved with two other people at the time. I was crushed. He liked me! Or, I thought he liked me...

But people have different subjective experiences. For me, it was utter confusion. For him, it was just a fun night. 

Not only do people define consent differently, but they experience being and knowing differently in any situation depending on their unique history and the context of their life. How do you define consent when people have two completely different frames of reference? How do you define consent when there are two subjective meanings for and significance of the events that occurred?

Regardless of said subjectivity, I am angry about sexual harassment and assault. It’s not only because it’s the violation of someone’s body and the gross mis-use of power to take something that is not yours and make it your own. To steal for nothing more than your own pleasure. To take something without asking. To consider it yours. To claim ownership over something that was never yours to begin with. 

It is all of those things and those actions that make me so angry. And they are horrible things to do to the world. 

But I am also angry that people of all genders are feeling so desperately thirsty for human connection that they feel they have no other outlet, they are so alone and lonely and insecure. They are lacking the proper communication skills to the point that the only way they (we?) know how to move forward in life is to take without asking. Like a rubber band, they avoid and avoid and avoid and internalize and internalize and internalize then it snaps with harmful and painful force forward without control. And how that rubber band snaps and the people it hurts in the process matters. 

I, too, was like a rubber band that night, snapping without control with the help of alcohol. And I hurt myself in the process. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last.

The problem is that sometimes we give consent without knowing it--or people think we've given consent when we have not, or are unaware that the consent process is being assumed. Sometimes we give other entities permission to determine what we do with our bodies without knowing that we had a choice in the first place. We think we have no choice, or we don't know that there are other options. 

But why am I writing about this topic? Why do I care and why should you care? 

How we conceptualize consent affects our politics, bodies, and culture. Gaining back consent over our bodies is the first step towards gaining back consent over our lives. And gaining consent over our lives is the first step towards liberation and true freedom. 

Individualism, choice and freedom is that the core of mainstream American society. American politics often revolve around decisions that determine sovereignty over our own bodies—from vaccine mandates to abortion, from same-sex marriage to seat belt laws. These are often questions of consent.

At the end of the day, it’s all about consent: who is making decisions about how I choose to move and be in the world? Is someone else controlling my body? Or do I exercise full sovereign control over my body? 

Consent or Coercion? Choice or Destiny?

 “Before babies are born they live in the sky where they fly among the clouds. The sky is a happy place and calling babies down to earth is not an easy thing to do. From the sky, babies can see the course of human lives. 

This is what the Hmong children of my generation are told by our mothers and fathers, by our grandmothers and grandfathers. 

They teach us that we have chosen our lives. That the people who we would become we had inside of us from the beginning, and the people whose worlds we share, whose memories we hold strong inside of us, we have always known. 

From the sky, I would come again.”

--Prologue to The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang

“Do you think our souls wanted to be us? Do you think they chose our bodies and our lives?” Brie’s brother asked me, his eyes twinkling and his smile bright as he looked at me steadily across the campfire. The Arizona sky was above us, pitch black and bright with stars.  

My breath caught in my chest for a moment. This question, bigger than what could be contained in a single moment, was a question about consent. Is our existence a choice, or were we forced into being? This was a question about who we really are, a question about time and space (has everything that will happen already happened?), and a question about spirituality. This was a question that I had thought about a lot recently. 

“Yes,” I said firmly. “But it’s not a one-time choice. For me, I think our lives are a constant process of negotiation and conversation with our lives, with Love, and with the Universe. I think that if we think about life as a choice rather than as a demand; as a conscious and creative design process rather than as a movie we are watching playing on a screen; a lucid dream that we can control rather than one that we are just watching play out...then the conversation we are constantly having with our lives changes from an experience of coercion to one of consent.” 

For me, this conversation with the Universe is ongoing. As soon as I feel like I’m being forced to do anything, I find myself getting resentful and angry; I feel trapped and suffocated. I started feeling this way a lot. So I started pausing and saying, is this what I want? How can I make a decision that would put me on a path that I chose rather than feeling like a marionette on a string, being pulled this way and that, but without any real agency in my own life? Sometimes, the Universe would answer back: You are free to be your Highest Self.

When I felt this message, this deep inner Knowing that nobody was holding me back except for myself, I had to look at myself in the mirror and take responsibility for my life, knowing that everything I was doing was a choice. 

(Now, of course, we can also get into the structural and cultural aspects of choice. Is it my choice that I live in a free market, cash, and wage labor economy and therefore must work in order to eat? No. But within those cages—what some people call “cultural hegemony,” or forces of power so insidious that we don’t even realize they’re there—we have some choices. More on that later.) 

But these choices can’t be known without a conversation. Sometimes that conversation is with yourself, or with your soul, or a trusted friend. Sometimes that conversation is with the Universe.

The Universe delivers packages to us each day. Some are big, like a job offer, pregnancy, a lover, experience or life packages that set us on a course. Some are small, like pain, anger or jealousy, information packages that tells us what needs to change in our life that day or that year. 

For me, I had an important conversation with the Universe the day I came out as trans. I consented to taking Baby Sam into my life. I CHOSE to come out as Sam. You can’t choose whether you’re trans or cis, whether you’re gay or straight. But you can choose whether or not to come out. And that’s what I decided that day. Here’s what it felt like: 

A hand reached down and unzipped my heart. A zigzag pattern unfolded into the darkness, a double helix pattern, my strands of DNA breaking out into infinity. 

“This was encoded into your DNA a long time ago,” God said. 

“It’s time for your spirit transplant,” the Universe said. 

Only a few moments earlier, Saar had been sitting in their apartment and praying to the Universe, “Show me what I need to know. Tell me what you need to tell me.” 

“The answer is inside you. It’s been there all along. You keep asking for answers, but it’s not outside. You need to go inward,” God said. 

And so I did. I spiraled downward. I kept spiraling until I came to the zipper, the double helix pattern, as it was unzipping the code. I saw Sarah, with white porcelain skin and a tall, slender body, floating away down the river. 

In Sarah’s place was a Spirit named Sam, a spirit that had been there all along but was waiting for the full adoption and paperwork to be signed. In that moment, Sam jumped right into my heart and excitedly asked to be taken home. 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” God asked. “You are agreeing to a lifetime of care for this Spirit.”

Some people get pets or have kids. 

I got a boy named Sam. 

I showed Sam the world I had been preparing for his arrival: a PhD, living in Prague, practicing martial arts.

Sam was delighted. 

“It’s perfect,” he breathed. “This is the best day of my life.”

“There’s only one thing, Sam,” I said, my heart beating in my chest and jumping into my throat. “You have a female body.” 

Sam said, “What a cool superpower.” 

I burst into tears at this. 

“That’s all I wanted. All I wanted was for you to be happy,” I said.  

“Of course, this is more than enough. I am happy. I’m so happy,” Sam said. 

“This is your world, it’s your playground, go create the life you want. Just follow the values, agreements, and rules that we agreed on,” I said. 

The agreements I made with Sam were: 

• I will never abandon you

• I will never forget about you

• I will always take care of you

• Your needs come before others’

• Live by your values: Love, Communication and Play

• Take care of your body

• Remember the three givens for life: movement, fuel, hydration

I was able to see from a Witness perspective the split between my ego—which I’ve nicknamed “Daddy Sam” here—and my inner essence—which I’ve nicknamed Baby Sam. 

During the conversation, Daddy Sam kept butting in and saying things like, “I’m so sorry, you’ve been given a female body, it’s a bit older, got some baggage, not the best model out there...”

“NO! Stop saying that,” Sam shot back. “It’s perfect. I love it. It’s like a new car.”

Daddy Sam had spent years preparing the body and the life for Baby Sam, and Baby Sam was thrilled. It wasn’t a brand new sports car convertible, but it had character.

They agreed: “Sorry” was not allowed anymore to apologize for Sam’s body or life. 

Daddy Sam was firm with Baby Sam: “It’s your job to play and to play creatively.” 

Daddy Sam had some intrusive thoughts about expecting Sam to be grateful, or asking Sam for some kind of payment or return on his investment for adopting him. 

But no. This agreement—the agreement to allow Sam to come into the world and be taken care of and live his fullest and best life—was not based on debt and payment. This agreement was based on pure love and love alone. It’s not like a contract where Sam was in debt or owed Daddy Sam anything. Daddy Sam had signed the adoption paperwork. Not our of expectation but out of pure Love and had given over his body like a new used car for Baby Sam to drive around in. Daddy Sam was giving up the driver’s seat that he had perfected for so long and handing over the keys to Baby Sam.

This was given out of pure Love and nothing else. Nothing was owed as an exchange for adopting Sam. Sam never asked to be born. It was bestowed upon him and his life and his world as a gift, not a burden. It was bestowed from the creative powers of the Universe out of love, not obligation. 

This story illustrates my experience of coming out and how I understand life and spirit as a consensual relationship with the universe. 

No, we didn’t ask to be born. But maybe our spirits did choose us. When I started thinking about my life as a consensual process, one that I agreed to and chose rather than one that was forced upon me, I started seeing that I could design my life and make choices that aligned with my values and allowed me to live with integrity. Coming out as trans was the first step. 

Some people say CAFAB, or Coercively Assigned Female At Birth, to indicate that they never chose their gender, but that it was imposed on them by society’s expectations of biological sex to map onto the cultural expectations of gender. I won’t go that far, but I will say that my trans experience is one of taking back control over my body and gender in a way that is aligned with my life and my values of integrity, openness, vulnerability and authenticity. I am bringing my body back under consent of me and my life. Rather than my body out there in the world, going through the motions and playing along with society’s rules, I decided that I’m going to design my body the way that manifests the fullest, truest and most beautiful aspect of my spirit in its purest form. My body is mine to create in the mystery and beauty of life on earth. 

Before this moment where I chose to come out, I had thought about consent many times before. Consent is a topic covered by many social and political theorists, such as Gramsci, and I had considered this question in the context of Chinese authoritarianism—are Chinese people consenting to rule by the Communist Party even if there aren’t elections?—as well as the cultural hegemony of consumerism and materialism—is it really our choice if we don’t know that there is a choice? Do we really want those things—the house, the car, the job—or is it just our culture telling us that we should want those things? 

I had thought about consent in terms of sexual assault. I had thought about consent in terms of Indigenous or colonized land—is it consent if the people doing the consenting didn’t have the epistemological framework to understand land ownership, what they were giving up and the implications of it? 

I had thought about consent in terms of my own research. What does it mean to give informed consent to be a part of a research project in China, as a vulnerable population in a dangerous and constantly changing situation, and is it fully informed consent if you can’t check to make sure that they would still want their stories to be told? Is it still exploitation if they gave informed consent?

And now, in the moments of coming out as trans, I was thinking about consent in terms of my own life and body: did our souls choose us and our lives? We never asked to be born. We didn’t ask our parents to have us. Yet, is our current manifestation of our lives here on earth an ongoing conversation of consent with the Universe? Are we forced into our current situations, or did we choose them? And is the transformation that occurs with hormones and surgery of a queer person consenting with nature and the Universe to change the body back to the way it was always meant to be? How is the adoption of Sam into my life part of my consensual relationship with the Universe to evolve into my Highest Self? 

All of these question haunted me. I told Brie I wanted to write a book about it. She said, why don’t you start with a blog post? So here I am. 

Yes, we all live within constraints, and often constraints with real material effects including institutional and structural inequality: gender, race, and capitalism just to name a few. But within those cages we have some time and space to move around--the time is exactly one lifetime, the space is the earth. What have you been wanting to do or be in your life? Do you think your life and your body right now are under consent or coercion when it comes to yourself and the path you are on?