Lucas Silveira's Blogs

Teacher Fired For Transitioning

2009-10-04T16:47:00.000-07:00

Hey Kids,

Everyday I ask the powers that be to allow for a day when I don’t have to go on a rant about how ignorant and stupid people are. Unfortunately, that day is not today.

Today I have to go back to putting my “Super Tranny” hat on and rant about this situation here in good ol’ liberal Canada

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/10/01/gender-teacher-fired.html?ref=rss

To me, the most incredibly scary thing about this situation isn’t that this man was fired from his job for being transgender.

To me, the scariest thing is that the Greater St. Albert Catholic school board felt completely safe and protected in firing this man based on the fact that he’s transgender as it goes against the Catholic teachings and they feel that it is in fact an acceptable reason to fire him.

Guess what people? The KKK and Nazi’s believe that African Americans and Jewish people shouldn’t exist on this planet AND I have seen KKK psychos go to the bible to prove that black people are not their equals.

Sound completely crazy? Yes, it fucking does. Guess why? Because it is!

IT's CRAZY!

Nazi’s and the KKK have proven to be some of the most vile human beings in existence based on the fact that they are unwilling to recognize that all human beings are worthy of existence and equality…soooo, Catholic Church? Are you following in their footsteps?

And don’t you dare say no, because this is proof. These are the first steps. First the gays, now the trannies. But god forbid you put your diddling Priests out of a fucking teaching job. No, that’s just as forgivable as eating crackers in bed.

Guess what? FUCK YOU.

I would love to know why this Catholic School Board feels it is within their rights to ignore Human Rights laws that are created for EVERYONE to follow in this country and other countries alike. You are not excluded and if you are, then we have a huge problem when the Canadian government allows for personal religious beliefs to topple over basic Human Rights, like being able to keep your job when your are a trans person.

I was raised Catholic by my parents. My parents, were loving Catholics who believed that all people were equal. I quit being a Catholic quite young when I found out that the majority of Catholics weren’t like my parents and that people like my parents were looked down on for being so loving and accepting of others. I like to call myself a recovering Catholic because although my parents attempted to teach me right from wrong, the church I went to when I was in Catholic elementary school and the school itself, indoctrinated me with such non sense that when I was a young teen I actually began to judge my own parents for their ability to be so accepting of others.

Talk about having a mental disorder?

And by the way, being transgender is not a mental disorder in the way that being schizophrenic is. It’s a complex condition where your biological gender state does not match your mental gender state. Disorder typically means something is out of whack in your brain. There’s nothing out of whack in our brains, it’s that our bodies aren’t aligned with our brains. Different.

People can start using that ridiculous way of thinking for trying to excuse firing trans people by saying they are mentally ill. VERY dangerous language people. Transgender people who choose to begin transitioning physically or psychologically, do it based on an individual and very varied personal need to have their gender within their psyche match their gender physically. It is very important to distinguish this between the two.

I believe it would be more truthful to say that we have a Biological Disorder.

As an FYI to our US neighbors I will explain a little bit about Alberta as a Province in comparison to what it might be as a State in America as far as majority belief systems go.

Alberta is the most conservative of all Canadian Provinces, so it is to Canada what,let’s say, Texas is to the USA.

Your ex Republican President George W. Bush lived in Texas when he came to power, our current Prime Minister (unfortunately) Stephen Harper built his Conservative power regime in Calgary, Alberta. Getting it?

And this is an aside, but it doesn’t surprise me that this behavior is coming from a Canadian Province that won’t allow a full gender ID transition from F to M unless the trans man has a hysterectomy, which to me is completely fucking fascist. Yes, fascist.

Why you ask? Well, when a government thinks they have a right to ask you to remove an organ from your body to allow you the safety of having the proper gender on your identification, that’s fucking fascism. And yes, having your gender on your ID not match your gender presentation is VERY dangerous. Especially when crossing borders, traveling or being pulled over by a fascist cop.

Imagine you're a big hairy bearded trans man and your name is Buck but your liscence says F on it and you get pulled over by a cop. You can imagine the rest. Invasion of privacy. Too many fucking questions. Wait for it. Wait for it....being denied basic human rights and decency. Yes. FASCIST.

And oh yes, we can allow the little trans man to be “what it wants to be” but please don’t go breeding. We don't need more of you.

Now, you ask, why do I get so fucking angry when things like this happen?. I’ll tell you why.

When as a trans person you spend 95% of the time that you are in public in absolute anxiety about what people around you will do or how they will react to something as small as you walking into a public bathroom to take a piss, then you start getting a little grumpy when you find out that people are losing their jobs over it as well.

Anyhow, I hope Mr. Jan Buterman kicks ass and takes this all the way to the supreme court and I have faith that he will win!

Call me weird but I actually have faith in the Canadian courts to do the right thing based on the LAW. Yes, the LAW.

This is a good country, and I am by no means a crazy nationalist but I know that I live in one of the best nations in the world, even if it means that Alberta is ass backwards in so many ways.

Oddly, I actually like Edmonton. It’s a beautiful city. As is Calgary. It’s just like everywhere else where the powers that be don’t exactly represent the people who live there. Fight back Albertans! Fight to save the name of your home!

I hope that my faith in Canada will stay strong when this is all said and done.

Too bad the Greater St. Albert Catholic school board couldn’t take a hint from the country that gives it the freedom to exist and preach their beliefs.

Fucking hypocrites.

With all the love in my big ol’ tranny heart,

Lucas

Almost Famous

2009-09-18T05:28:00.001-07:00

Hey Kids,

It's early morning and as I sit here roaming the wild world that is the internet and it's bizarre celebrity web rags, I find myself feeling this very strange feeling that I just can't place my finger on.

It feels like loss. But I'm not sure of what.

So many people are afraid to talk about how they feel for fear of it leaving them vulnerable. I think this is a cautious way of living that can work for some but has never worked for me.

To begin, it's my job to talk about my feelings. My songs are my therapy and that is a comfort that I've always had. When I start editing that to keep up a wall between myself and people who listen to my music, that's the day I stop writing. What's the point?

One thing I can say I've never been able to do is not tell someone how I'm feeling about something that I feel strongly about but lately, I've been holding it all back. I haven't been telling people. Wether they be friend, fan or peer.

Why? Well, to be perfectly honest, I'm afraid. Afraid of what the humanity of emotion will do to me if I expose it to those who are unwilling to understand or accept that I am just that, human.

And let's be clear here, I know I'm not that famous. I have no delusions about how much fame and success I've had. Sure, some people know who I am but I'm not a celebrity by any means, and oddly, this is the part that concerns me.

Having had little fame, I already watch every word I say. I already feel isolated in a particular way I have never felt isolation before. It's specific to the space I hold in the world right now.

Oddly, I'm still in a position where I don't feel vulnerable enough to not talk about it because I am in fact not being watched by a million people. It's sort of a limbo in the entertainment industry. I'm almost famous.

The fear comes in watching the judgement that is laid upon human beings who hold fame and celebrity and how people, having the distance of celebrity, feel that it's not problematic to judge, criticize and lay blame on these famous people for whatever reason they feel they want to.

There is something so inhuman about that and yes, it scares me.

It scares me because I've done it. I've walked to the line up at the gorcery store and looked at magazine covers or gone to Perez Hilton's website and read and judged or watched some celebrity do something ridiculous and muttered out things that I never would have if it weren't for the fact that they were celebrities. People do it all the time. I know I'm not alone in this.

Now, the part that scares me is having been on the other end. Reading once in a while something being said about me that is in fact not true or an opinion that was extremely mean natured or a judgement made by a person who knows nothing about me.

You think to yourself that it shouldn't affect you, but here's the thing kids, it does. And any celebrity who says any different is full of shit. A famous human being is still a human being and unless they become robots at some point in their fame, it's unnatural to not be affected in some way.

Just because someone is famous it doesn't mean they don't have emotions. Most of us know this but most of us tend to lose that humanity towards celebrity because of the nature of the beast.

And that nature is to close yourself to the public and isolate yourself. It dehumanizes you and you're left in a bulls eye position where no one even takes a thought to consider that they're judgement of you could be hurtful, could be damaging, could have the same effect that a close friend saying something horrible to you might.

I sometimes lose myself in this fear.

I heard someone say yesterday that they knew they could never work in the music industry because they were too sensitive, that it wasn't for them and they knew if they did, it would destroy them.

I couldn't stop thinking about it because lately I've been wondering if I'm built for this.

I'll be perfectly honest, I'm not a huge fan of anything in the music industry except for music itself. I've been forced to become a business minded individual when I'm in fact an artist. It's unnatural...but essential.

Imagine trying to work as an artist and then separating the person who is fundamentally you for a business transaction? It's almost the same thing that happens when you stop saying what you want to say because of fame. It's dehumanizing.

So what am I trying to get here? I'm not sure except that I think I'm headed for trouble. I think that most people would tell me not to write about this and post it for people to read, that it leaves you too vulnerable, that you're giving people the weapons they need to hurt you.

I say I don't give a fuck because if they're going to say things that hurt me it's going to hurt me anyhow. Oddly, writing this shit down and being open about it is what makes me feel less vulnerable because naively, I hope that it will humanize me and allow people to think twice before they open their mouth and say something stupid. Not just to me but about others like me.

Duplicity is a dangerous space, both within fame and as someone loving the famous.

It can create such intense isolation that people lose themselves on one side and never get to see the other again. Or it can make you that horrible person that you would never be to someone you know personally.

It makes me think of people like Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley who craved the humanity and got so lost in fame he could never find it again.

Fame is an ugly monster. If you breathe it in too deeply, it can take you over like a drug, an addiction and when you lose it, you'll plumitt to the lowest place you've ever been, perhaps die over it.

For the first time in my life I feel a loss over this. I thought my whole life that I wanted to be really famous and that need is now gone.

It feels strange to let go of that need but it's also liberating to know that I'm over it.

I like the feeling of being almost famous.

Lucas

Caster Semenya

2009-09-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

Ok kids...

I won't pretend I'm even close to being amused at the treatment of this young person or that I am in a reasonably good mood about it while I'm writing this so bare with my rant like blog because I have just fucking had it with the hypocritical bullshit that society deems as acceptable conduct towards gender issues.

To all of you who have no idea as to who Caster Semenya is, please go the following link, read and then come back here and read my rant.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/09/10/2009-09-10_caster_semenya_.html

And to you who don't know what intersex means please go here:

http://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex

Ok, so now back to my lovely opinion.

Who the fuck do these people think they are demanding that this woman be forced to take a "gender test"?!?!?! What the fuck is a gender test anyhow? Oh yes, some chromosome count I'm sure that indicates this and that and the other. Then read this to see how many variations of those counts exist:

http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency

Ok, so here's a little tid bit many people don't know.

Typically, when a child is born with different genitalia than the average bear, as in a penis or a vagina, Doctors will ASSIGN gender with the go ahead of the parents by offering advice to the tune of "Your child needs to have an assigned gender or they're going to end up really fucked up adults who don't fit into society so let's cut or tuck. So what is it? A boy or a girl?"

Insane.

So, they scare the shit out of parents who think they're just doing what's right for their children and then some of these children grow up feeling fucked up anyhow because the body does not forget who or what it is.

So, now back to the Caster Semenya situation. First off, she's 18 you assholes, leave her alone.

Secondly, and here comes the full on rant...Who the fuck do you think you are? You assign gender and then she lives out her assigned gender and then she's chastised for it???

REALLY?

So essentially, the gender assignment is only agreeable if one looks the part but not if that person can't pass a gender test when she is an adult when she kicks ass in a sport?

This is the BS that we all need to get out of our heads here. Gender is not binary.

There are more than 2 genders on this planet if you count on chromosome tests to identify gender. It has been proven over and over again, but society's fear of what this means has kept all gender deviants on the periphery of society and claimed they are genetic freaks or just mentally ill.

I'm sure after reading this rant most people won't think of me as being the most stable of trannies of course. Ha ha.

Anyhow, this kind of thing really, really gets to me. Is that obvious?

We need to stop thinking this way . I'm so sad that it has taken this young woman's privacy to get the message out to the world that this planet isn't just made up of women and men. Wether this is the case with this woman or not, is none of our business and I truly believe this should be looked at as a human rights violation and action be taken towards the people who ordered this gender test and made this entire thing public.

Intersex people in my opinion don't need to be fixed. They don't need to be assigned genders. What they need is acceptance and a place in society just like the male and female gender or the transgender, which is obviously still in need of work. If they decide when they get older that they want to choose a path for themselves outside the intersex scope, then it will be in their hands but it's of my opinion that when people are accepted for who they are, generally, they like to just be who they are and stay that way.

So, if Lady Gaga can accept herself...why can't you?

Ha ha. That last part is of course a joke.

And one last thing to the assholes out there. Stop calling intersex people hermaphrodites and hermes. It's not cool. It's like using the R word for people who are developmentally disabled.

Oddly enough, spell check keeps telling me the word intersex is not a word.

I'm sending all the love and acceptance I can to Caster from my heart and hope that she will be able to find some peace soon from all this insanity.

And that's my rant for today.

Love,

Lucas

Starting Again

2009-09-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

Hey Kids,

Seeing as I actually enjoy writing and apparently some of you enjoy reading my blogs I decided to start my own blog page here.

This comes at a time of many changes as some of you are already aware of, but apparently this has not only been a year of change for me but almost everyone around me. No joke. It's actually getting a little strange.

Is there some astrological weirdness in the air or is it just coincidence that all around me change is happening? People breaking up, quitting their jobs, starting new jobs, changing perspective, moving to new countries, etc... It's all I hear about and it's making things a little eerie. Any changes in your life? Please do share.

I used to be horrified of change. Ironic? Yes it is, BUT I think most people are, I mean, what's more difficult than letting go of a sure thing, something you can rely on the result, no matter if they it's bad or good, at least there are no surprises, right?

I think I was horrified of change because I knew deep down inside that it was going to be the one thing that set me free but led to the unknown and I used to hate becoming involved with something if it wasn't a sure thing. Funny stuff.

That's how I used to think. These days, even though change sometimes comes at a price, it's typically worth it. I can say that there has not been one instance in my life where change has happened for the worst, not that it always feels like that when it's happening or when the decision is in front of you.

An example of that was the end of a long term relationship that I thought I would never recover from. I would have friends tell me things like, "I know it feels like the end now but soon you will see the new beginning." And all I wanted to do was punch them in the face and tell them to go fuck themselves because surely they had never felt what I was going through. Talk about narcissism. "No one knows how I feel WAH! WAH!"

Oddly, it was that experience that taught me that we are all so the same while we are all so unique in our experiences and it is those individual experiences that take us to our next plain. And for the first time in my life I realized that there is a huge world around me that spins with emotions and situations that I have never confronted or had to overcome or accept. It made me humble and willing to understand that when confronted again, I could know that I wasn't alone in going through it. That somewhere out there, amongst the millions of people all over the world that many people had gone through the same thing. It's a great perspective to have.

Change is inevitable. Without it we fail to grow as human beings. It is all these experiences that you go through, good and bad, that make up the person that you are and the person you are constantly becoming.

Imagine who you'd be if you never changed? Take a moment in your life. An age. Think of how you were, think of who you are now.

I I had never changed, I'd be a sad, angry, quiet, lonely girl walking around not knowing who I was for fearing that change would make it worse. OH GOD! That's horrible.

I think when you stop changing you stop living so now, I welcome change.

I stand now in a place with a clean slate and after all the heartache that I endured in the past within The Cliks and outside of The Cliks, I feel a sense of freedom in knowing that I can do it all over again and not repeat the mistakes I made before.

And maybe I'll make new mistakes. So what? Here's the great thing about mistakes...it's how you learn. The key is realizing your mistakes and trying not to repeat them.

I had someone tell me yesterday that it was sad that most people didn't know the real story of what happened in the last 2 years of The Cliks, that I should tell everyone what really happened, that if they knew, they wouldn't be so quick to judge me and the falling apart of the band and that they would most likely see clearly why it happened.

It's easy to sit around and play the part of the victim but to me there is nothing worst than unrequited sympathy. I hate that shit.

I don't need sympathy. I know what happened, I know why and now I move on. It wouldn't make it more or less true if someone else agreed with me. That's me not repeating a mistake. See?!?!?! :) When a person is narcissistic enough that they feel the world needs to agree with them to move on, you're in BIG trouble.

Besides, I'm really lucky and I know it. No need to have anyone feed my ego and affirm some truth that means nothing to me.

Someone sent me an email showing their support to me that had the following quote and it is a great guide to living:

"ever tried. ever failed. no matter. try again. fail again. fail better."
samuel beckett

I would rather die trying and failing than to live the rest of my life wondering if I had tried would I have succeeded. Fuck that.

Lucas