Ian Thomas Malone

Monthly Archive: January 2018

Sunday

21

January 2018

1

COMMENTS

Transgender Storytime: Electrolysis Woes

Written by , Posted in Blog, Social Issues

Transitioning changes your life in many ways, both on a grand scale as well as the smaller stuff. For transwomen, facial hair represents an obstacle that requires attention on a daily basis. I used to be a big fan of night showers, but the stubble presents a constant roadblock best dealt with in the morning hours. I’ve recently started electrolysis treatments to end this war between follicle and razor once and for all.

Electrolysis is the process of permanent hair removal by electrocuting the base of the hair follicle, destroying it at its root. Essentially tweezing using a cattle prod, or destroying a Death Star by firing a proton torpedo through an exhaust port. Not fun.

The hour-long zapping sessions aren’t really the worst part of the experience either. In order for the process to be successful, there needs to be enough hair growth for the cattle prod to be able to tweeze, a conduit that allows the mother lode to reach its target. Given that my hair growth has slowed due to HRT, I need to abstain from shaving for about four days prior to treatment.

In order to speed up the process since, I’ve been doing two sessions a week, usually on consecutive days. Each session only covers a small area of growth, and most follicles need more than one session before permanent removal is achieved. To sum up, this process is painful, expensive, lengthy, and requires me to be unshaven for most of the week. Oddly enough, that last one has been the worst part of the experience.

The whole “transition” element in this journey can be a bit of a misnomer in the sense that while many of the physical aspects of my body are changing from male attributes to female, it isn’t really this Pokemon-style evolution. I am female and go about day to day to life as such, with breasts that would be difficult to hide, if I ever wanted to. There is no “boy on some days, girl on others,” even when I’m wearing ratty old clothes I owned before this journey started. Since coming out and undergoing HRT, the feelings of gender dysphoria have almost entirely subsided. I can be myself.

Facial hair makes feeling like myself much more difficult. It’s why it gets shaved off in the morning, or zapped with a cattle prod so it can’t come back. Facial hair is not welcome in my life, yet it gets to cohabit my face with the few makeup products I can use that won’t irritate the areas that have already been treated.

To set the image, Ian in a dress with blush, mascara, shadow, eyeliner, and a load of stubble and patchy skin. Charming isn’t it? That’s the new normal for the foreseeable future. I’m only on session six, and we haven’t even gotten to the chin yet. Whole neck area to deal with, plus additional touchups for the areas with surviving follicles.

I’ve never been too concerned with the concept of “passing,” which is one of many reasons I kept my birth name. My life is spent in accordance with my own comfort, not with an arbitrary set of societal guidelines dictating the person I’m supposed to look like. I am an unapologetically proud transgender woman.

And yet, I feel bad being in public with stubble on my face. I hate it. My version of “passing,” or whatever you call it, does not involve facial hair. You get a certain look, however subtle, from Starbucks baristas when you say “Ian” for the order, or bartenders when you hand over your ID. I could change that, by changing my name, but I don’t because that doesn’t bother me. Facial hair does bother me. It has no part in the future I envision for myself, even if it currently plays a larger role in my present that I would like. There will come a day when it doesn’t, and I’m very fortunate to be in a position where I can undergo this expensive treatment.

I want to make the intentions for this article very clear, in case comments pop up accusing me of whining about my situation. This has nothing to do with wanting to vent or complain. I accept that, for the next few months or so, my face will not look the way I like it to look for most of the week.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. It does suck. The kind of suck that is in service to a greater good, but is still a kind of suck.

The feedback I tend to receive the most comes from allies who urge me to keep being vocal with these uniquely transgender experiences. There are plenty people out there who genuinely believe that transgender people are a bunch of phonies who live this way to fulfill a fetish or to become internet celebrities. I didn’t write this article for them.

Self-esteem is a lifelong process. Transgender people often face a steep learning curve in that realm, as feeling trapped in the wrong body tends to not be very helpful toward establishing one’s own sense of worth. Transitioning marked the beginning of a journey that sought to correct that error. The act alone cannot be the sole solution.

Temporary facial stubble does not make me depressed. Part of the benefits of undergoing HRT is that it puts your mind in the position of being able to differentiate the shitty parts of life from the catastrophically horrific. Not being able to shave falls under the former category and that’s okay. A girl with visible breasts is allowed to be annoyed that she has to walk around in public with prickly little hairs sticking out of her face. That sucks, and that’s okay.

Wednesday

10

January 2018

3

COMMENTS

Luke Skywalker Never Changed

Written by , Posted in Blog, Star Wars

Note: This article contains spoilers for The Last Jedi.

Luke Skywalker is not a great character. He whines all the time, whether it’s at his uncle for making him do chores, his teacher for making him do swamp cardio, or at his father for not being around when he was little. He is almost always the worst person on screen in Star Wars, constantly upstaged by Han, Leia, R2-D2, Vader, Yoda, Chewbacca, Bib Fortuna, and the Jawas. He is by far the lamest major character in the original trilogy, beating runner-up C-3PO by a wide margin.

People are mad about the characterization of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, suggesting that his behavior was inconsistent with the earlier films. I don’t think so. Luke was a whiny little boy who grew up to be a crabby old man. What’s inconsistent with that?

Luke is a coward. He waited until everyone else had died before attempting a trench run on the first Death Star. He escaped Hoth through the back door, avoiding all the Star Destroyers that everyone else had to face. He ran away to his daddy instead of attacking the shield generator with Han and the Ewoks. It is no surprise that he refused to leave his Porg island to face Kylo Ren and decided to die rather than help his sister rebuild the Resistance, which had dwindled to a size that could fit comfortably on the Millenium Falcon. When disaster strikes, Luke has never wanted to be around.

The distinctions between Luke’s exile and those of Yoda and Obi-Wan further reveal Master Skywalker’s cowardly nature. The latter two Jedi exited stage left after becoming hopelessly outmatched against Palpatine, serving only as liabilities to those who would offer them sanctuary. Luke got upset after getting caught being paranoid about Kylo Ren and left, though presumably, the New Republic had enough firepower to deal with the budding Snoke situation, especially considering how weak a villain the Supreme Leader turned out to be. Obi-Wan returned to the fight when Leia called for him. Luke shrugged and went looking for nipple milk.

The entire plot of The Force Awakens is driven by a map to Skywalker, a man who doesn’t even want to help. What was the point of that movie? What does it really say about Luke’s character that he would allow people in the Resistance to die to protect a map all because he was too selfish to leave a forwarding address?

There is something to be said for the idea that Luke disconnected from the Force because he thought it had caused nothing but problems. He is essentially correct, though in this case abstinence would hardly be the best prevention as the Sith would still exist to reek havoc. Humanity has a lot of bad apples. We as a collective body keep going. The Force keeps going, even if Luke was too lazy to put in the effort to bring about real change. The Force cannot be bad simply because Luke does not care to be good.

The Last Jedi has its problems. The fuel shortage/slow speed chase plot is incredibly weak. Snoke is pathetic. The casino subplot was boring and unnecessary. None of these complaints have much to do with Luke Skywalker. His part was fine.

Luke had one job in The Last Jedi: to pass the baton. Luke is not the hero of Star Wars anymore. The idea of his character sticking around as a kind of mentor to Rey conflicts with his status in the franchise. As the “chosen one,” he can’t retire, not when Leia, Chewbacca, Nien Numb, and company are still in the fight. He shouldn’t be the center of attention, but it’s hard to successfully marginalize a character with abilities as strong as Luke’s in a narrative. He’d be a major whiny distraction in a franchise with no shortage of interesting new characters, even as the death of Carrie Fisher brings an unfortunate end to Leia’s arc.

Luke had a good send-off. He got to phone in a pretend battle and quietly fade away. Sure there are plenty of old fans who wished Luke could do backflips and hang upside down from ice shackles in a Wampa cave, but those days are over. There will be new adventures with new characters who don’t whine as much and certainly don’t need to go to Tosche Station to pick up power converters.

Star Wars is not about Luke Skywalker. It’s about the various predicaments that prevent C-3PO and R2-D2 from hanging out. Luke stayed consistent from his first appearance on Tatooine to his final pretend battle with Kylo Ren. His arc in The Last Jedi should be celebrated for bringing an end to a character whose immaturity has always been a detriment to the franchise. Yoda’s skepticism was well founded. Finally, we have cut our losses.

Tuesday

9

January 2018

0

COMMENTS

Call Me By Your Name is an Unapologetic Celebration of Emotion

Written by , Posted in Blog, Pop Culture

Call Me By Your Name is a difficult movie to summarize. It’s a love story that is more about the idea of love than actual romance. It’s an LGBT movie set in the early 80s that eschews many of the hardships that gay people still face to this very day. Despite the age difference between the seventeen-year-old protagonist and the graduate student staying with his family at their cozy villa in Italy, the problematic power dynamic between the two never presents itself in a way that today’s current climate might otherwise call for.

In other words, Call Me By Your Name belongs entirely to itself.

Elio is a closed off teenager. He’s brilliant, but he’s a loner who doesn’t look entirely comfortable in that role. Books, piano, and a stable girlfriend are not enough. Something isn’t quite right.

Oliver is living the dream. A graduate student spending his summer holiday working with a professor in a quiet Italian town where everyone travels by bicycle and dances to the Psychedelic Furs at night, he’s got no complaints. Everything is quite right.

Summer love possesses a peculiar power to intensify emotions and make each day seem like an eternity on the brink of collapse. A time of the year where one can seize each moment because there is nothing standing in the way, except time. There’s a reason people hate September. It brings an end to the world where one can stay up all night and sleep all day, forcing one to reconcile with the loss of that magic, stripped with no regard for the relationships it brings crashing to a halt.

Call Me By Your Name takes all the emotions of summer love, and tosses in both first love and forbidden love, where its time period makes its biggest impact. The movie builds up this pressure cooker of emotions, giving its audience a first-hand glimpse as to what it really means to feel for the first time. The particulars are not as important as one might think. It doesn’t matter if summer love or first love may not be “real love” in the sense that love of that sort doesn’t come with a happily ever after ending, unless it’s guided into a fresh peach. Summer love is still a powerful emotion and deserves to be experienced as such.

There’s one scene in the film where the characters discuss the nature of being closeted that particularly resonated with me as a transgender woman. When you hide who you really are from the world, it takes a natural, if not always visible, toll on your relationships. You can’t fully love someone unless you love yourself. Call Me By Your Name fully stakes out this territory as its own. Love is messy. Best to enjoy it with a strong helping of Sufjan Stevens, whose music is absolutely perfect for the film.

This Oscar season has more than a few legitimate contenders for Best Picture. The Shape of Water, Ladybird, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri are all deserving films which will make it challenging for Call Me By Your Name to win the top prize. As someone who’s still annoyed that Brokeback Mountain was denied its rightful win over the far inferior Crash, I’d especially like to see a truly great LGBT romance recognized as the masterful piece of art that it is. Regardless, the movie is a triumph for being unafraid to feel. Emotion isn’t always great and it isn’t always rational, but it’s better to allow yourself to experience it rather than to fight a losing battle of repression. History is full of people who lived their full lives hiding from who they are. Call Me By Your Name often shows the messy side of authenticity, reminding us that there’s beauty in joy as well as tears. Love wins.