Look at me.
You may think you see
Who I really am
But you'll never know me.
Every day
It's as if I play a part.
Now I see,
If I wear a mask,
I can fool the world;
But I cannot fool my heart.
Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me?
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?
I am now
In a world where I.
Have to hide my heart,
And what I believe in;
But somehow
I will show the world
What's inside my heart,
And be loved for who I am.
Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me?
Why is my reflection
Someone I don't know?
Must I pretend that I'm
Someone else for all time?
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?
There's a heart that must be free
To fly,
That burns with a need to know
The reason why.
Why must we all conceal
What we think, how we feel?
Must there be a secret me
I'm forced to hide?
I won't pretend that I'm
Someone else for all time.
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?
These are the lyrics sung by Fa Mulan in the Disney film Mulan.
This song means quite a lot to me, as you can probably imagine from even a cursory inspection of the lyrics.
Too, the film Mulan - perhaps unsurprisingly - means a lot to me.
Mulan as a character - well, she represents a lot of different things to me ... possibly more than could be covered in any one essay.
But I'm writing this one anyway.
I hope you'll bear with me on this, and I hope you'll see how a character like Mulan can connect with the real world.
But I'm writing this one anyway.
I hope you'll bear with me on this, and I hope you'll see how a character like Mulan can connect with the real world.
Of course, I'm ultimately writing about the real world in all of my essays. In this case, the inspiration for this piece came directly from a conversation I had in the real world - albeit through Twitter - with a woman called Aoife. I know that this isn't the first time I've mentioned a specific Twitter user in one of these pieces, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go check out her Twitter feed here.
She's a fascinating woman, so you should read what she has to say. You may or may not agree with everything - or anything - she says, but you'll gain new insight about another person's perspective. And perspective is what this piece is ultimately about in the first place.
You see, I consider Aoife to be an online friend of mine. And I value friendships. I value people not as commodities, but as human beings. And I try to stand with my friends when they're wronged or hurt by others. Bonds of friendship are - to me - what builds true community.
As you might observe, I make that distinction "online" because it does make a difference. There is nothing - nothing whatsoever - like face-to-face friendship. But, I find, the more we can make contact with people outside our own circles, the greater we build our understanding of our own world. This seems obvious to me.
And, more and more, I see this being lost in the world of online "sharing." I've even written an essay about it - which you can read over on the Huffington Post. I'm fairly proud of getting an article posted there. This one is called "Achievement Unlocked: Twinkies for Everyone." You can read it here.
It's all about junk food.
And I can extend the junk food metaphor to many so-called online "shared" "communities" - and please note the scare-quotes.
Really, though, they're more like quotes of disdain.
And what I have disdain for is the idea of people who think they've built a true community, when what they've built instead is a Doozer network of sugar sticks that has about as much substance and lasts just about as long.
I call this kind of phony idea of community the "cult of agreement." I don't think I need to run deep into an explanation of what I mean by that. The term pretty much speaks for itself. It's about people who join together into fragile, interconnected groups that rely on harmony in order to exist. These are the kinds of "friendships" where everyone has to think the same way and behave the same and share the same opinions of everything - on punishment of banishment from the community, or social pariah status within it, or maybe even just astonishing abuse.
It's about being expected to live in a "family" where you're told how to think, who you are and what you should be thinking about or talking about at all times. It's about having your mind made up for you by other people about your ideas, your processes and your destiny.
And, well, that's pretty much what starts the story of Fa Mulan.
You see, Mulan lives in a family where she's expected to conform to the expectations of others. She's told that she exists not to have her own opinions, but to please others. She's expected to fulfill certain obligations she never asked for, to smile and nod when her entire life is mapped out for her. And the biggest concern that she's told she should have is not to bring dishonor upon herself by having her own goals or opinions. She's not afforded the opportunity to speak out about what she wants, either. In fact, the characters that make up her family community behave as if what they want is surely what Mulan wants because it's surely what everyone like Mulan must want. They assume that Mulan would, of course, want the life they offer her.
Except they're wrong.
Because that's not what Mulan wants. At all.
And that's where the song at the beginning of this article comes into play, as Mulan laments the situation of being in a group of people who not only don't want to accept her for who she is, but who have no interest in finding out who she is. This is a group that goes beyond mere ignorance of Mulan's hopes and dreams and have instead put up active barriers toward the dissonance her ideas would create in a closed system of a community that has decided as a group that it knows best what its individual members want.
And that's the same thing that sometimes - often, really - happens in internet communities when it comes to groups seeking social justice. Everyone in the community is expected to conform to a particular narrative. Everyone is expected to go along the same path. Everyone is expected to hit the same talking points in the name of solidarity. And when someone deviates from those points, that person is attacked with ridicule - or worse.
But, you know what? I don't put up with that. And neither does Mulan.
The way Mulan doesn't put up with her situation is a little different from my own. I don't have a scenario where I have to go to war to protect my father when the Emperor calls on a man from every family to fight in the war against the Huns.
But the thing to remember here is that Mulan made this decision not for some kind of rebellious thrill of the moment. She did what she did because it was the right thing to do - and at her core, Mulan needs to do the right thing for others.
And for herself.
And that's the key that keeps me from accepting these cults of agreement. I have to do what's right for me, every single time, in everything I do. I am inspired when I watch Mulan for so many reasons, but one of the biggest and strongest is that Mulan always makes the choices she makes because they're right for her. She doesn't do things because of a feeling of obligation for the community. She doesn't go to war just to save Fa Zhou because she feels she has to. She does it because it's the right choice for her.
And that's how I am with every decision I make. It's how I am with everything I see online. It's why I wear the clothes I wear. It's why I do my hair the way I do. It's why I picked out my glasses. The frames may have been inspired by Barabara Gordon's Oracle, but they were ultimately my choice. Being inspired to take action isn't the same time as being given an obligation to take action.
Besides all that, my clothes and glasses make me look cute.
And, like Mulan, I've got a name. And it's a boy's name, too. The name on my birth certificate is Dennis Ruane Michael Elms. Even as a kid, though, I used to sign my art Dee Emm Elms, because I preferred the name Dee. I ask people to use it. I know some people won't use it. I know some people won't respect me. And you know what? That's okay. Call me Dee. Call me Dennis. I'm still the same person.
And so is Fa Mulan, whether you call her Fa Mulan or Ping.
And whether you call her Fa Mulan or Ping, she's still a brave warrior that can't be directed toward any particular destiny you want. She has to be true to herself - and what she is inside is a woman with a warrior spirit.
And part of having a warrior spirit is being unwilling to let fear get the best of you, and standing up for what you believe in when it comes to expressing yourself - even if there is a cost.
And that cost is often exclusion from the "cult of agreement." It's exclusion from a closed circle that only allows you into its embrace if you surrender your individuality.
No, thanks.
Let's use an example - the one that inspired me to start thinking about Mulan in the first place.
It has to do with a piece written by the aforementioned Aoife. Read it here. I'll wait.
Back? Great. Let's proceed.
Here's my opinion on what Aoife said -
I've had a pretty easy life.
I'm white, for the most part able-bodied ... and while I wasn't exactly rich as a kid - quite the opposite, really - I never went too hungry for too long. And I was given what many people call male privilege. And now you know.
And please note that I didn't ask for that privilege. I don't even like the term "privilege" as a describer, though I agree with many of the concepts behind it. I think "advantage" is a more accurate term - and one that's often used to define "privilege" when it's used in the cause of social activism. I'm autistic, and as a result I take words very much at their literal meaning - and I think "advantage" works better grammatically than "privilege." So, please don't think I'm backpedalling when I avoid the use of the word privilege from this point onward. It's just my personal preference for the most accurate term.
And I was one hell of an advantaged kid, being white and suburban and perceived as male and likewise not having any visible disabilities that significantly altered the structure of my body or its functionality.
And I recognize that I had all those advantages. And I'm thankful for the life I had, even when it was incredibly painful. I had food, shelter, and even enough food to have curves.
Would I have preferred to have been seen as a girl and treated as one? If you've read the rest of my blog, you know the answer to that. Hell, yes, I would've preferred that - and it would've eased me out of a lot of pain. And was it difficult to see my body go through masculine puberty while I was dreaming of getting breasts and being able to have a baby? Hell, yes - it was excruciating.
But it would be a lie to say I wasn't afforded ANY advantages in our society because I was perceived as a boy - even if that perception was wrong.
Which brings me back to Mulan.
And here's what I need to point out to those who say transwomen don't get ANY of the advantages a male gets just because of the pain we go through in our lives.
You're wrong, because Mulan.
And here's why -
Mulan poses as a man in the military, taking the name Ping and training to fight against the Huns.
And you know what? She succeeds brilliantly - because she's afforded the chance to succeed ... by the other soldiers.
She isn't dressing up as a man because she's transgendered, either - though the agonized feelings expressed in the song "Reflection" are very much a representation of the feelings of a lot of transkids and of myself in my own childhood. She's dressing as a man because of the advantages it will afford her in her quest to do the right thing in her life.
Her goal in becoming Ping isn't merely to be seen as a man. She's doing what she does because she's driven to protect her homeland and to protect her family. And the only way in her time and place and life that she can do this is to pretend to be male. And by the mere act of pretending to be male, she gets the advantages of being one. And, as a result, she's able to achieve what she sets out to achieve.
And this happens because she is successful enough in her disguise that other people - men, mostly - afford her the agency she requires to complete the mission she's given herself when she begins her quest.
Note that I say she is given and afforded these advantages.
I use those terms because Mulan can't simply take these advantages. They have to be given to her by those who are in positions of power, because of her disadvantaged state of reality.
It's as simple and obvious as that. Perception equals reality to a lot of people, even though those people are wrong.
And the same is true for transpeople.
When you look at a picture of me, I don't care what you see. I don't care if you see a man or a woman. I know who and what I am. How I dress and how I "present" myself shouldn't be the source of how I get agency or advantages - but it is, even though it makes me sad that we live in such a world.
When people see me, many times they perceive me as male. The fact that I can't and don't take hormones contributes to this. But I'm not a male wearing a disguise, any more than Mulan was a man wearing a disguise. I'm transgendered. That means something about who I am, despite the efforts of many people to tell me who and what I am in these "cult(s) of agreement" online.
And if you will only afford me agency because of how I dress or how I "present," you're no better than a high-schooler who's being mean.
It's all about gaining perspective into other people's lives - and the only way to do that is to accept that people have different views if you want to get that different perspective. Anything other than that is brainwashing and cult-like behavior.
And I refuse to let trans-exclusive radical feminists tell me I don't have a right to exist or to call myself a woman. And I refuse to let trans activists tell me that I've never been given male privilege.
And I stand against both views, because it's the right thing to do, and - like Mulan - I'm on a quest to do the right thing. And for me, doing the right thing means educating people about me - so they will gain perspective ... so that, in the end, we can all be that much closer to each other, share that much more community, share moments of real togetherness despite our differences in upbringing and culture and everything else that makes us different.
Mulan used errors in perception that gave her male advantages to save her family and her people. I use errors in perception that give me male advantage to make inroads to groups and places where I can make the truth about transwomen known.
We're both skilled woman warriors, in very different fights.
And we're both determined to win the fights we choose.
Mulan is a woman no matter how she presents.
And she has a warrior's heart no matter how she is dressed.
But she was given a man's training and a man's knowledge by others.
She took the life she had - with the resources she had - to break the rules and conventions of her world and fight the necessary battle.
And I do the same thing every day.
As does Aoife. As does any woman who puts her thoughts and her ideas out there - raw, real, unvarnished, inharmonious with the cult of agreement - into the world for others to experience, to agree with or to disagree with as they will. All women - trans and cis - fight this battle every time we struggle to be heard. So this begs the question: if you're fighting against women being heard, whose side of the fight are you really on?
I'm on the side of giving all women a voice - whether I agree with them or not - whether I stand with them or oppose them - whether they agree with me and like me or think I'm awful.
I want to hear all women's voices heard - because right now, they're not being heard.
And does this mean that there will be voices that vehemently disagree with me? Yes. And they can shout as loud as they want. It won't deter me. Bigots and hateful people will always be. There's no way to fully extricate that bigotry from the human heart. And there's a bottom line that certain people will never accept transwomen as women in their mantra that "biology matters," their candied understatement regarding my lack of a working vagina. But I'm not looking down at them. I'm looking skyward at what I hope will be a new horizon of freedom for transpeople. I don't like to look down on other people. I like to look up at the sky and see the hopes for a new day exploding across the sky.
So yeah, I wear comfortable shoes.
Yeah, I wear jeans and a t-shirt.
But do you get to decide who I am? What that means? Only for yourself - not for everyone else. You have a right to your own opinion - not mine or anyone else's. And you know what? My attitude is as "meaningfully trans" as my own life has meaning. Who is anyone to suggest that anyone's life is meaningless? Isn't that the same attitude that tells Mulan she has to be one specific thing in order to live her life?
I don't want someone else to hold a mirror up to themselves and tell me I have to conform to what they are.
I want to make my own path.
I want to wield the sword I've forged by my life experiences and use it to cut away injustices, not to cut down other people. I want to use it to stand for something, not just against something - to be a symbol of hope.
It's a tough mission, but it's the one I've chosen.
And I'll use whatever tools are at my disposal to do the right thing.
Because the kinds of battles Mulan faced in her time aren't all entirely different from the ones I face today.
A woman who is disguised as a man can get male advantage.
But that doesn't change who she is.
It doesn't change what kind of person she is inside.
We have the choice - each of us - to live as we are, or struggle to be what we want to become, at every moment. Some people have advantages over others that make those choices easier. Is that the way it should be? I don't think so. But it doesn't change the reality.
And if you sign up for a life that is true to yourself, expect it to be troubled. Expect problems. Expect strife. Expect that there will be battles to be fought, if what you're fighting for is worth fighting for - and know that, no matter what, your life itself is always worth fighting for.
Don't let other people tell you that you don't mean anything, because you do. Don't let other people tell you that you're not who and what you know you are, because knowing yourself is so important. Stand strong and tall and proud, whether you wear jeans or carry a parasol - or both.
Bring honor to yours.
Doing the right thing is what brings that honor - not how you dress, how you present, or what people say you are. It's who you really are that matters, whether you're a soldier or a scholar in the fight.
And above all else, reach out to other people.
Make contact. Be willing to step up and be the one someone can call on when they have doubts or questions or are unsure.
Don't let others overcome your life - but be willing to listen.
We all share this world together.
We all have meaning.
What's yours?
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