On getting down to the nitty gritty...

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang!

I am sorry but I am getting a bit fed up now. Slightly sick and tired of how incapable people are of seeing what this is really about. The fact that what I do still evoke so many strange feelings. Why is it that there are so many things we handle better than this…
Why is it so hard to respect personal choice, why is it so hard to respect that the consensual choices of others might not be what you like. But, the opportunity for others to make those choices and turn away from lives prescribed to them by gender, class, race, age, size…whatever you would like, is what makes this world worth living in.

I am sorry but we must get personal now. This here world of assumptions of femininity is not big enough for the both of us. I am telling you, dear creators of “open” and “accepting” spaces, do not fuck with me… and beware, cute is a scare!

……

I am in the tackiest of clubs. I have told her to sit up straight to make it is easier to endure the strange feeling of being a zoo animal, little girls don’t come here. Little girls with frames don’t come here. They don’t wear silk blouse. They don’t wear silver crosses. Amongst leather pants and whips hanging from a belt, amongst eyes that measure me as a falsely conscious little girl not yet having found her place at the feet of the patriarchy.

I survive that evening because I cling on to her physically. When they look at us I look at her. There is a fatigue in her eyes the same as mine. A tire of those eyes that invade us, that measure our bodies and what we do.
When she is preoccupied with other things and I roam the vast club on my own I seek the eyes of other Ladies.
A woman with her boi on sofa…the knife slowly caressing hir fingers… She looks at me with that same fatigue, we sigh and I nod at her. I know what it’s like.

That’s when he approaches me. I must confess I didn’t like him that much prior to this either. He is the invasive kind, the exploiting kind, everyone in a space like this are vehicles for lust and that is his lust, he thinks.
I have been waiting for her which I clung to, who I told to sit up straight so that something would be endurable in this place, he looks at me with that icky middle aged man smile.
“Aaaw, little miss…” he says. “How are you?”

I am shocked. I am shocked at how easy he does it. How easy he belittles and ignores me. I am sure he knows what I do. I am sure his partner, who has seen me work stripes into shivering strong backs many a time before, have told him what I do. I am sure he knows that even if I am a girl I am no one’s girl.
I hope my eyes burn with that famous black soot I have been told they have when I tell him that I feel fine although I haven’t been able to play here since I didn’t feel safe.
Yet when I leave I am turned off, furious, hurt and sad. My invisibility was so hard to face. His, the middle aged man’s, part in that so obvious it stung my eyes.

…..

Let’s talk a bit about what he couldn’t cope with. Power. Girls with power. Let’s talk a bit about why the idea of the dominant woman is still scary. What have I done? What are we doing?

I grew up in an environment that respected my femininity, and the power I ascribed to it. I call my upbringing a matriarchy – my mother and her sister, my cousins and me, formed a bond of femininity and power. It stemmed from my grandmother and her sister, from a strong sense of survival and belonging.
I never knew of no patriarchy, I never knew that women were not allowed to have power. I never knew I wasn’t allowed to decide for others if they wanted me to do that.

And I was always just as puzzled when I saw the mindfuck in their eyes. In the eyes of men and women alike, when it didn’t match. When my body didn’t match my mind.

Or that’s not right, I match perfectly find with all my expectations of myself. It’s their expectations that I don’t match.

You see it’s not about exploitation, not about abuse and not about oppression. The way she cooks for me and the man, always a man, peeks in at us and asks me if I shouldn’t do that – as the girlie girl.

I don’t tell him to fuck off. I tell my glorious butch girl to tell the “nice” man that that is not how we do things. And she does because she loves me. She loves me when she squirms under my touch, when she bends her neck for me. And I love her when I do it, I love her the most when she gives all of her to me – I love her the most when we rip that patriarchy up by the roots, when I insert the matriarchy that fed and clothed me into the void that the loss of man-made worlds made in her.

I never understood why this was challenging. I never understood why women, girls, I, couldn’t do this? What prevents me? What would force me to do otherwise?

I am sorry but my mother, the Pentecostal, married, heterosexual mother of two, never taught me any of this. She taught me to hold my head high and give myself with love to others, and they will love me too.

So please, put your assumptions, your false notions of female sexuality and femme identities elsewhere. Please don’t put them in my lap – and mind you, don’t force them down my throat. I don’t really do that shit you see.
Ask the girls who have been mine, butches, femmes, bois and grrls alike what they felt when they were with me. What we did when we shared that love my mother told me to share. How we catered to one another.
Ask the patriarchy if it hurt when we ripped its roots.

…..

I leave that club numb. We agree it was bad night, a really bad night. I give her a quick hug before I get in the cab. I tell her she will pay for dragging me all the way there…. She knows I am more serious about then I look. I giggle as she blushes.
On my way home I write a letter of memories and paths travelled for all the women and men that ever giggled sweetly at me assumed I was nice and humble only because I was cute.

To patriarchy with love, best wishes - little girls of the matriarchy!

On resistance and success....

I know I said last year that this blog would grow to be less private and more of my comments, on all things femme and crip and fabulous. Yes, I realise that that involves a certain amount of private, but I no longer wished for this space to be the selfabsorbed rant that it was. I wished for my life to get better than it was this fall and winter. And I had great hopes, I really did.

Right now I am not sure though. It could be this cough that I have been draging around with like a wheelbarrow of tiring pain, it could be the fact that I have had to reduce my student loans and that I am financally not safe at all. Or it could be the feeling that there is very little reciprocity in my life. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of it in some places and from some people, and I am hoping to get remarkably more of it from others in my life. And I am grateful nowadays for all that comes without a fight.

However, last night I reduced was to a wailing mess. There was very little understanding and I felt the pit that I had been in for all of winter open up again. Things are so far away here, I never seem to do enough, or be well or focused enough to do enough. And aparently it's my fault. There is very little understanding of what my body and I need in order to form that team that other peoples bodies form everyday, all the time, from birth. And it hurts the most to be less than understood by someone I imagined would be close.

I have only just realised this myself. How much I need rest, how much I need activities that fit me and make me feel good, how much I need activities in my life that work for me instead of againts me. That invigorate me instead of draining me. I have just now begun to realise myself just how hard I have always pushed myself to keep up, and what a rest it has been to be around people who genuinly understand, especially since the people who really do aren't even disabled themselves.
It's uncomprehendably painful then, to be told

Well dont you think you need to get out...?

Especially since I have just been out, especially since I had no need of getting out. And you know what it doesn't matter. I have coughed my heart out, I have an exam next week and I will stay in as much as I would like. You see I don't go for a walk all that much, in fact I don't walk all that much, or well, in case you hadn't noticed.

Lately I have been thinking about a wheelchair. I haven't told anyone, but right now I will tell the ether. I haven't told anyone since it is such a lifechanging descion. It will limit me, limit where I go, where I live, who I see and when, it will limit my sense of my body, of agency and saftey and it's a descision you will never have to make.

I am far too nice, I know. I am far too generous, no I am not generous at the worst of times, I am stupid. It's true I am a died in the wool provider, and I care through giving and put others ahead of myself. And it's truly one the assets that I am most proud of when it comes to myself. However, right now I just wonder whenever I will get back, and why it always comes to this, why I work my providing knees to the bone paving the streets with gold for other until I realise.

I don't really have time to write this post though, eventhough I needed it. I need to hit those books again, because you see, yesterday, bawling between the sheets I realised that true work and progress is the best kind of resistance. Success' the only thing I have got, and it will demand hard work, and it will demand prioritizing - me!

On lovely PAs

I took a walk in the campus park today; I had to go to University to pick up sickly expensive literature on folklore and dress, which I am sure I will sell as soon as I have finished the exam on this part of the course.
Anyhow, I was accompanied to University by my new butchy PA, I call her the butchy PA as to distinguish her from all my other PAs, and she is indeed a butch.

I am actually quite swoon by her; she is gorgeous and has just that right bulky aura around her. Although she has only worked with me for a bit last weekend and then today we have really bonded. I guess I found it so nice to have a PA that would understand all the queer quirks of my constitution that I just rambled.

We spoke a lot about the notion of passing, I showed her pictures of my butchy period in life and called it my butch-fail, she laughed in shock. She said she was a bit bummed by the fact that everybody assumed that she was trans, that being this butch could only mean that she wanted to transition. She spoke about girls freaking out whenever she went in to the ladies room in a restaurant or at the movies, about being referred to as “the boys” when she was out and about with her brother. The awkwardness that manly-men felt around her, not knowing what to say or not…the many heavy taps on her back, the misogynist jokes and laughs.

I felt that I was such a femme with her. Even though I am swoon I do not ‘want’ her, still I could feel my movements growing to be slower and more assertive, I was conscious about my legs and how they looked in my short skirt, my fingers around the locks of my hair, my cleavage, my perfume.

She hung a heavy door back on its hinges for me and changed my light bulbs, I dreamt of a butch valet to open my doors and carry my purses and shopping bags. I dreamt of strong shoulders and glistening blue eyes.

Today I might have had that; although she was still my PA (and I doubt she will be anything but that…) she did all the things that above mentioned butch valet would have done. And as we went walking back to the tube through the autumn colours and crisp winds of the park I couldn’t help but smile. I pondered what other people saw as they saw us. If they saw two girls, if they knew the saw a femme and butch, did they think they saw a man and a woman?

She’s funny, she laughs when I make jokes and apologies ever so sweetly for even the slightest mistakes. Can I clone her?


Just to illustrate, a photo by Catherine Opie from her exhibition “Girlfriends” found in an article on AfterEllen.com

On hijabies and me, crip-femme meets Islamic Fashion....

I am doing a lot of research today, so inspired by the first real good lecture at University on Islamic Fashion. Got hooked on the hijablog, a Norwegian ‘hijabie’ (veil wearing Muslim woman) who lives in London and blog on Islamic Fashion trends all night.
The slightly paradoxical practice of covering up something that is assumed to be alluring and tempting but replacing it with something that stands out even more in a crowd fascinates me a great deal. For the hijablog blogger it is obviously not only a religious statement but also a very clear fashion statement, that involves and industry that cater to Islamic Fashion and magazines, blogs and fashion shows that project what’s new and trendy.

For me this lecture was especially good since it is the first one on this course that clearly deals with identity not only as being part of a certain, religious, context but also as an identity important to the self and expressed through clothing in as many ways as there are hijabies.
The personal relationship between faith and practice is very real to me as I have grown up in a very religious (by religious referring to Christian spirituality, and not necessarily conservatism) context, and ascribe a lot of my identity and my actions to my faith.

The modern hijabies of today speak about the hijab as something very feminine and something that emphasises strength and personality in its bearer. One of the women that took part in the ‘Islamic Fashion’ show in Stockholm in 2008 said this about her vivid use of fabrics and patterns in her hijab.

“When you go out you know people look at you anyway, so why don’t really give them something to look at, in a way I think that is disempowering to many of the prejudices that comes with “Islam”…”

I really felt I could relate to that, very much as a crip-femme. I know people study me, I know people turn too look at me one extra time when I pass by. And I understand that, I would look too. First off I am tiny, my walker is purple, and I am loud. Secondly, I dress smartly. There is again that contrast that I spoke about in the stone femme post.
What did you see, a little girl or a woman? Can you look at the disabled woman’s cleavage; is that a politically correct action?
If you know they’ll look at you, make them look again…

Yesterday I went to interview two girls who I hope will be my new PA’s when I settled in in this city. I choose my meeting attire with the greatest care. Often I am a bit too much then, I wear very short skirts and my favourite flowery tops for example. I choose jewellery with greater care than I would otherwise, and if my complexion is in a stable place (sadly it hasn’t been recently, more on a make-up free femme appearance later in this blog) I wear make up. The only thing that did fail me yesterday was my nail polish, I still haven’t got to buying a remover and now I just re-polish and re-polish and that gives as somewhat tacky look.

So yesterday, I wore:
-A black, short sleeved top with a small flowery pattern, my absolute favourite although it is giving out a little nowadays…
-The shortest skirt I own, a black jeans skirt that reaches mid-tigh, the most.
- Black cotton stockings, perhaps it’s something rural, I don’t wear nylon all that often.
-Black plastic pearl necklace.

Usually I joke about the reason for me wearing that skirt being that I can do that Basic Instinct thing, but I have never pulled it, and with the cotton stockings I doubt there would be much excitement. I do think though, that that skirt is a very sensual if not sexual statement, to show that I am safe about being sensual in the way I dress, and even a bit more than that. That I have control over my sexuality is shown by my choice of that skirt I hope. And since sex and disability is very rarely connected I think it’s important not only to speak about sexuality as a crip but to be confident about it.

Also, I think my choice of attire is again playing with that contrast of my physical appearance and what I project with the way I dress. Being a short tiny woman often makes for me passing as a girl. So I have learnt to dress in a way girls wouldn’t dress, I wear tight fitting blouses, pencil skirts, and again tops that shows a lot of cleavages.
I distance myself in that way from a physically girlie appearance that I haven’t been able to choose myself.
However, there are also times when I choose to enhance that, and in a way the outfit described above is a kind of combined girlie/sensual outfit. In that it mixes ‘girlie things’ such as cotton stockings and flowery patterns with the colour black and the very short skirt.

Dressing in that way for a meeting gives me confidence, it gives me confidence to know that I accept my body and am willing to show it off in a sense. It also gives me confidence to know that I embrace the fact that my body is frail and tiny, but my mind is not.
In a way I think my way of dressing in these meetings is a kind of reverse to what the modern hijabies do, covering up what is assumed to be alluring but in way becoming much more alluring by doing that in a certain way.

In a way I do cover up, by wearing an all black outfit I do project a certain sense of propriety, as does the cotton stockings. The clear cut top is also a very ‘smart’ garment even though it does show a bit cleavage. I choose to cover mostly, but the short skirt draw attentions to my legs, the part of my body that is most obviously disabled.
What I thrive on in wearing these outfits is just that, to dis-empower my disability by clearly drawing attention to it in a way that I choose myself. But also to raise multiple questions in my observer’s mind apart from my disability. Why is she wearing all black? How does she carry herself in that skirt? (The truth is, I don’t ;) )

To express the disabled body as sexual and the disabled person as self assertive and confident in that way is my biggest asset in coming across as what I ultimately am, so much more than the connotations ascribed to the disabled female body, and mind.
These are just very cursory thoughts that came up just after the lecture. I am planning to return to the Islamic Fashion and my on Pentecostal background and its fashion in a later piece. I just need to look through the archives and pick out nice photos for you all before I write.

Below is a picture taken from the hijablog, the models wear fashionable turkish 'high'-hijabs. I love it, I think it's a bit "If Victorian England had been a Muslim culture..."

On northern livings and stories, and muses...

Yesterday morning, or day since I don’t get up in the mornings these days, my actor-wifey-muse My had written a great comment about this blog on Facebook.
I was so touched seeing that she reads my words and that they have an impact on her. It made me miss her madly and I spent most that day reminiscing about the time we spent up-north.
Rambling about the poor quality of our education at the moment, opening up like we had never done before, outlining the future and realizing that there were no ‘plan b’s’.

So, fröken Ström, this is for you:





I miss you.

I miss the miserable sate of our kitchen; do you remember that pan that everything stuck in? Do you remember how the heating system used to howl, that sofa with that iron piece in middle of it, how my back used to hit that as I threw myself down a bit too bravely?
I miss your cooking wifey, I miss that wasabi-lime spice, do they have that in Finland?

I miss the times when you stopped smoking. How the sparks would fly around you, how your green eyes would burn deeply. And I used to giggle. I am sorry.
On that black floor we shaped our dreams. And we spoke about them in that sofa, in that grimed kitchen. We frowned upon the exercises we did, we reached deep within our aching, acting souls…

We marvelled all our odd neighbours, I wonder what happened to them, like Anders? Is he still there, does he still look like he was brought back straight from the 80’s? Has he found love? Does he still eat that crappy food?
And why did he really move back from Australia?

I used to wait up for you when you were at taekwondo practice. You’d come back all bulky, in that white suit and eat with a passion. I had never met anyone which such a sense of routine. I could never beat you to that “let’s break it up, I need my sleep…” thing. You’d eat noodles and I’d ramble, ramble, ramble.

I shaped myself through those ramblings with you, if it wasn’t for those talks that we had I wouldn’t know half that I know about myself now. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have written all that I wrote. It was because I could share it with you that it broke out, that river, that flood of words.

You were my mirror; you were the actress on which I could base my ideas about directing. On that black floor, in that kitchen and that canteen, I saw a vision in your acting. I saw a fire under your skin, and you made my knees weak and my skin shiver with joy as I saw you.

Do you remember the Tudors, the cinnamon rolls? How we fattened up when you could practice and we just ate and rambled.
Do you remember all that red wine that would make our hearts widen? Do you remember my speakers and your mp3-player? The chilly winds under our coats as we smoked on the balcony? The drunken kisses.
My notes on your door? That I made coffee while you crept out through the corridor, your brain shattered by that hang-over?

The snow. The silence. The Nordic light. How I used to read you scary stories from the Bible.
My name is legion, ‘because we are many….

Spring. Dreams of Finland of, dreams of leaving. Your cargo pants. My dresses.
“Oh wear that one your daddy brought, the chequered one”
(Haha, aww! Sweet you!)
You brought me back from that ‘acting is dirty’ crash. You told me that it was beauty, pure beauty.

I missed you when you returned to Malmö to do those tests, I was sure you were back in bad habits when you got back, all skinny and sun-kissed and happy. But love had touched ground.

I still keep that poem you wrote me, as you studied me on the floor, do you remember that night? One of the best, we played cards. You wrote about me, you wrote about the veil that covered me. That my beauty was only for certain people to see.

Do you remember you used to unzip my dress when I couldn’t do it myself?
The manly men would give us puzzled looks as you’d follow me to that. Do you remember you’d say that hugging me made you feel huge and tiny at the same time? Do you remember you and me and Isak all those nights?
You two were my test, and you assured me I had done well. That I actually could make words into flesh.

You remember we still have stuff do to, don’t you? We still have projects to work out; I still want to direct you again, and again, and again. You still need to cook for me again. I still need to share cigarettes and sips of deep red wine with you. I still need to look into your eyes as they glisten from sedation. I still need to see you on stage ‘til I die.

I know you’re busy, and calling is expensive. I hope you take care. I have mailed that letter now but it will take a few days. I hope you feel you’re doing all the best you can in a good place. I hope your fire burns as deep as ever.
And if you ever feel the need to quit smoking, please tell me and I’ll tell all your new classmates what they can await. ;)

But more importantly, fröken Ström, remember I love with all my heart. Remember those days of work and evenings of talking; remember the yogi-tea and the chocolate. Remember what we made then, the land that we measured and mapped, the rooms we built, the stories we shared, and the stories we wrote and acted.

The stories we lived.

On stone-ness...

This post is inspired by Sassafras Lowrey’s post on stone-ness on The Femmes Guide.
The post, in case you’re too lazy to read it, in which case shame on you, is about stone-ness and the identifications of stone butches and femmes. Lowrey discusses the idea that the sexuality of a stone-femme is determined and decided by the link to a stone-butch, and ultimately the sexuality of said butch. That femme's who identify as stone-femmes and/or confess to being attracted mostly by stone-butches in doing so, are portrayed in relation to their butch partners rather than on their own. And reaches the conclusion, that (of course) that is not all there is to it...

In the end of the post there is a question.

How about all of you, do you identify as a stone femme? If yes, how do you define it?

So I thought I’d be a good blogger and answer that, plus it will give some extra time away from my University reading which I really cherish at this point. Lazy schoolgirl as I am.

So, my femme identity. It’s very much built upon force, and the force ascribed to the feminine appearance. This comes from growing up in an environment that very much credited power to femininity and strength to womanhood. In my rural matriarchy the woman was never inferior but seen on her own and valued separately from whomever she chose to part with.
My mother brought me up with a strong sense of dress, she knew that she was no less a woman wearing pants, and I was no less an emancipated young woman wearing skirts. She taught me to bring consciousness into the way I dressed.
To think about how I looked and how others saw me, and she delighted in me playing with that. Having the ruffled skirts collide with a strong sense of power and a sharp mind.

I would say that my femme identity is about contrast in many ways. It’s about a very girlie appearance paired with a demanding power; it’s about enhancing my crippled body and my crooked legs and tiny hands with alluring cleavages and tight fitted skirts. It’s about enhancing what is hot about my own body and what is hot about my mind. It’s about combining my giggling and my fondness for ruffles and flowery tops with those rugged pairs of jeans and that chequered short-sleeved blouse, the three top buttons unbuttoned.

It’s about embracing sexuality, sensuality and strength. But it's also about allowing me to find piece within the fact that my body is frail and weak, that it is petite and in need of shelter from others at times. My femme identity has helped me combined all these things into something that feels good for me, that there is no juxtaposition as such in being strong, girlie, and alluring.

I would call myself a stone femme.
But that doesn’t have anything to do with stone butches, or any butches at all.
I am a stone femme since femme is my major identity, it’s that umbrella under which all my other identities, my rural-hard-working-blue-collar-Pentecostal sense of self, my crip ideas of self, my power and ideas of dominances, my longings to be weak, to crash and be lifted sheltered and comforted, can exist without any problems.

On the latter part of that sentence, I think that that longing to be sheltered and picked up draws me to people with a butch aurora around them. That I know that they are stable and strong enough pick me up not only physically but also mentally.

However, as I have spoken so much about contrast. That sense of power and physical strength within another person also gives me the greatest urge to break that, to know that I am in control of that power and the strength, that it is used to shelter and protect me as I chose.
Furthermore, I thrive on sheltering my partners especially if they are butch-ey, I thrive on that person ‘giving in’ and showing me their own weakness. I long to be that strong sense of ‘home’ and ‘safety’ for another person, I love running my fingers gently over my lovers strong back and tell them that all will be fine.
As much as I long to feeling that persons arms around my own shivering body.

To argue that

‘stone femme’/... / [is a] /..../ sexuality tied exclusively to that of /.../ butch partners /..../,

is not fair.

Not to the femmes who describe their stone femme identity as an attraction to stone butches since it insinuates that the femme is only valid through the butch, and hence marginalizes the femmes and femme as an identity of its own.

Also, it’s not fair to stone femmes as myself. To which the concept stone is not valid in relation to any other person femme, or butch, or whatever, but solely as that centre of me. That place deep inside were I am at rest, where I don’t question myself but accept all that I am. Where all that I am co-exist in every breath that draw.
My ‘stone’ is a cave, a room, within my soul.

A room with a magnificent closet, where linen blouse and massive silver jewellery hangs alongside tulle skirts and tailored power suites, leather gloves and knitted mittens, tops with their sleeves cut off, all my push-up bra’s and my knee-high socks.
Where my heavy perfume and make-up sits next to the Bible and the icons my aunt brought me from Krakow, where there is a place for me to kneel and give praise, where there is a place for me to shout and embrace the fierceness and overthrowing power that my religious conviction is.

It’s a room where I can laugh ‘til I am a wet puddle on the floor. It is a room where I can rest, a room where I can lay down why a sweet soul brings me tea and salty snacks. It’s a place were I kept the secrets people tell me, and the ones I have told them.
It’s a room with a bed where the sheets are never neat, only wet and tangled. It’s a bed where backs are arched and shivering before the hit the mattress. It’s a room where my glitzy nails can make maps on backs, where they pluck gently at the soft hair of slumbering guests.

It’s a room where sun shines in from the window making golden squares on the floor. A room that smells of lavender and sits amongst mountains and fair green shadows. A room that throbs when my heart beats. A shelter, a refuge and the origin of all my dreams.

On doubt...

I wrote this while waiting to attend a lecture at University. I guess I was not so chirpy yesterday.

Recently I have been feeling so shattered, and recently it has been so slow. So far from what I imagined it to be.
Recently my skin has been giving up on me.
Recently I have been existing solely in English.
I have fenced myself in by everything that is foreing.
There is a vacuum, I don't know when and how and why.
There is very little respite for me here. I am often just tired, sluggish, slow and feverish. I should get some engery, I should get some chocolate, I should get some love.

I worry about ending up outisde of the system. I worry about becoming lonely- isolated. A shattered piece of glass shivering in bed while the forever ongoing sounds from the road right outside my window just keeps pounding and pounding in my templates.

I worry I was not built for this kind of life after all. That there is a rural failure, built in from birth.
It has soon been a month, I have neglected the fact that I am behind on so many things.
It is fall, and I am detergerating, dying.

Moody, why am I so moody? What is this drive that forces me to exist outside my own cultural frame? There is a certain alienation that comes with posessing these 'abilities'.
I worry that I am fake, nothing but a fraud. Nothing but a dreamer.
Am I only good with words? Only good with the internal and what goes on inside my own head.

I must learn to become a maker, a doer.
I am wondering wether I am only an academic person because I have been forced to. If I read and wrote out of necessity rather than interest.
Where is my body in all this? Where is the validity of physical experinces this? Where are the people, the sweat, the blood, the tears, the laughter - the wailing.
Do I fit here?

On internal Sir-ness....

I have always been a really pretty girl. Like a real pretty one. It was what I was dressed up to be growing up, and what I liked being when I was a child. I was smartly dressed in chequered dresses white blouses and patent leather shoes by my mother. I chose tops with roses and tightly fitting jeans when I became older.

Then suddenly, as my body was filled with growth hormones, a jolly mixture of testosterone and steroids and my puberty was put on hold, there was a shift in me. I will not credit it only to the hormones because I believe that is a way too easy escape route, it also had to do with me leaving a context that had very subtly kept me in line.
I was sixteen, I left my village I spread my wings and I shaved my head. I looked at myself in my first ever own bathroom mirror and I said: Look I am a BOY!
I loved my shaved head. I loved what it did to my face and for sometime I did like what the hormones did to my body, it made me bulky, something I had never been and but somehow always felt like.

You see, there had always been a longing for power within me, and I had become skilled at practicing some parts of it. A subtle power of the mind, a power driven by words and tones of voice was already mine. However, this was something else. This was a kind of masculinity that I had never felt. And for a short period of time I thrived on that.

Then, as I have said in an earlier post I became unhappy with the way the hormones made me look, the bulkiness made my arms stiff and I didn’t recognise myself in the mirror. Coming off the hormones I returned to being that rose-top-fitted-jeans kind of girl again. I was home; I had just been out of my own skin a bit.

But as I look back on that period of my life and what I took with me when I came out of that I can really see what I gained. This period, even though I couldn’t see it myself then and I am sure no-one else did, allowed for me to explore a masculinity that had been ascribed to a certain kind of force and power in my culture, and it bred within me secret room where that is stored.

For it’s true, when ever you see me as girlie as I can ever be there is till that notion of a very masculine force within me.
I think it comes out the most obvious if I look at my own taste of music, below is a picture of American Folk singer Tim Eriksen, I just love that man. There is softness in his voice and the way he carries himself that just melts me. I wish I had his voice, in a sense I wish I could be him.



I speak about that a lot, the longing for a somewhat deeper voice. To not be so girlie and frail. To be able to be physically overpowering. I think it comes from a need to be taken seriously, to not be seen as tiny and sweet all the time, an urge to have others see that confidence in me all the time.

I know people say that it’s nothing that I need, that it doesn’t matter how tall you are or what you wear if you handle the world like I handle the world. I am grateful for such compliments, but even if so it’s slightly oversimplifying I think. Of course it is so that I don’t take up as much space in a room naturally as a person who’s taller than me. I need to fight to take that space, and I do that gladly and somewhat on autopilot nowadays. But that is only because I have had to do that, not necessarily that I have wanted to do that all the time.

The Sir in me is sparked by Tim Eriksen’s singing. By lyrics like this:

One bright summers morning as the fields were a-dawning
Bright Phoebus had rose and shun over the lea
I spied a fair maid as homeward was riding….
I stood in amaze and said I, bonny lassie if you’ll only consent and go to Jamestown with me
No other in this world will be mistress of my castle, there none will go clothed more finer than thee
-Lass of Glenshee, adapted by Tim Eriksen.

It is sparked by the whisky-cokes I drink when I am letting my hair down, it’s sparked by seeing butches giving me ‘the look’ when they see my glistening nails and ruffled skirts. (I instantly think “Oh I’ll show you girlie :P”)
It is lit by the limelight, and by grabbing my tits on stage as I speak of my ideas of femme in said limelight.

Even though hormones did fuck me up pretty badly during the time I took them, I think the changes of my physical appearance were important for me to realise this. To allow a certain kind masculinity to flourish, and then tucking it in were only I could see it, was crucial for the way I see myself nowadays.
For the choices I have made and how I speak of my constitution. I wouldn’t go as far as to say there was any kind of transition within in that, even though there were noticeable changes of the way my body looked and what I felt and did during that time.

What has scared me a bit when I look back on that time though is that I wasn’t given a choice as such with this. Of course I could have chosen not to take the hormones but that would have made me sickly short. It scares me that even though I assume what I got was a pretty low dose of testosterone I could still very clearly see and feel its effects. It scares me that no-one told me that this might happen, that my body as I had known it would not be the same during the time I took the hormones.

As it is today I love my female body, I cherish its frailness and the fact that I am petite. Recently, I have come to learn that my boobs are not as small as I always thought though, and I struggle a bit with wrapping my head around how to handle their alluring power ;)
But most of all I cherish my female appearance and my femme-ininity since I am confident that there is always more to me than what meets the eye.

That even though I am still that girl I was when my mother dressed me up in chequered dresses and socks with lace, I know that there has always been, and will continue to be a very feisty ‘man’ within that. One I could only see shadows of growing up, but who I carry with me close to heart these days.

Here am I, the girlie girl. Inside me is Sir.

On friendships, ending

I did not think that I would devote time to this on my blog but recently it has been, yeah, pissing me off.

I have this friend, or more so I used to have this friend. Our parents knew each others from the Pentacostal Congreations they where part of but my parents had left. My friends aunt and my mother are best friends, right now hiking in the hills, I hope they're having a good time.
Anyhow, we became friends in middle school. I am not sure how it happened, I guess I broke away from click from kindergarden and then I was seated with this person and one of the funniest boys I have ever know, Robin, they made the otherwise horrendous time in middle school okay.

Then we where BFF's until I moved away for the IBO programme and kept up our realtionship through out that time and up to this year.

You see, now this person is totally ignoring me. She won't replie to my congratulations on her engament on Facebook or answer any of my messages for her, even though I see she replies to others. I have send her multiple texts and emails and have gotten nothing back.

I think this is really odd since I see such a clear cut between being friends and then not being that all. Or more so acting like we have never been. There hasn't been a conflict or an issue between us, she hasn't been angry with me, neither I with her.

Having traced this down with my mother I have comed to the conclusion that this person clearly has a promblem with what I have 'becomed', she has not said, it that's, true but I feel it.
I have felt it over the last couple of years, I know I have kept silent and I haven't spoken up about the real me. I couldn't spread my wings inside that heterosexual monogamus cage. And I am sure they knew. In fact they were the first people the assume that I were, or would be a lesbian.
Please people, I am not a lesbian unless I say I am, okay!!

Recently I have been ticked off by people deciding for me, telling me what I am or not listening to me when I say I dislike certain kinds of identies that they ascribe to me. It's been trickling down on me, nibbling on my stamina and making me warry. Please when I tell you about something I don't like, don't say it's "nothing" only nothing is nothing.

To return to the initial subject. I understand that this person and the kind of click that she, and I used to, belongs to are having a hard time to wrap their minds around me these days. It's not that I don't get that. And I would rather not have them in my life if they are not accepting of they way I will lead it.
However I would like for her to speak up about that, to say that she cannot realte to what I am doing right now, and then we can have a discussion about that. I want her to say "Hi!" at least or "thank you for your kind words concerning mine engament..."

For now I mourn something that we once had. But it is also somewhat of a double nature, I mourn having her in my life, yet I know I was not all I could have been then.
I am sad it had to come to this. But I do know that if she won't accept me they way I am , that is no friendship.

For my very real and caring friends.
Here is a verse from the ever so lovely Tim Eriksen's song "Friendship" from his newest album "Every sound below" (I am obessed with that man)


Friendship to every willing mind opens a heavinly treasure
There may the sons of sorrow of find sources of real pleasure

Thank you!

On living in the Capital

Here is an open letter to my new home town

Hello Capital,

I am here now. But I am sure you have seen me around and out and about in you. I mostly get around in yellow cabs, but it doesn’t make me feel like a New Yorker. You may not have known that but I wanted to live in New York when I was younger. I bought a map over New Yorker City and spread it across the floor of my room among the Blue Mountains. I traced the boarders of Manhattan with the tip of my eleven year old finger; it’s purpled nailed polished chipped away. I had used the same nail polish to paint hearts on the red leather of my wallet it never held much money in its belly, but it held all my dreams of a new and vibrating life.

I longed to grow up, I long to write whenever I wanted to – and have the chance for others to read it. I longed to walk down a street with red and yellow autumn leaves soaring above my head. To open the door to any kind of room where art happened, to step into the dark of theatre, the serenity of a writers den or the messiness of an artists studio. Then it was just as much the images that those ideas conjured within in me as the actually activity that took place in these spaces, that intrigued me.

And you see Capital, it’s happening now. I am here and I soar in cabs. I get asked to speak my mind at dress rehearsals of friend’s productions and I must say you, dear Capital, spark my imagination. I see people I want to tell about, I hear conversations I want to finish in text. There are places that need to be filled here. There are venues that I can use; there are people who want me to use them.

I feel awaited now that I am here in you Capital. People are happy to have me here. It feels good when actually getting to live here is still hard. Because you see Capital I am still struggling not only to survive here. But to live.

The people I have been in touch with have a hard time wrapping their minds around how I want to lead my life in you. They say:
“What… are you saying you don’t know how your days will be scheduled from day to day?”
“Ah meetings you say, talks about creative processes, lectures, rehearsals….and you want that to be flexible…oh yes…”

I don’t know in what kind of life these people live, if them and I even share the same city. Dear Capital, you for one should know, do we?

I want to ask them if they plan every day to the minute, if they would feel okay with not deciding about their own time.

It’s a struggle, this really is.

But I keep confidence that once all this struggle is over and I have finally settled down here. All will be as I wished. I long to make art in this city. I long to work with people who love me and respect me and se me for who I am. And I know I will…I know that the projects that I have planned and the subjects I want to dive down into with my studying. Thing are coming together really good in that sense.

And I think that is necessary to keep my head up during this time. There is an army for me and it’s a damn good army.

So Capital, for the two days that I have made you my home here a lot of things have happened. Good things and not so good things. I soon have my own home and I hope that once I really fight Babylon it will be over with swiftly.

I know this is a fight but I always fight – all art is fighting all fighting is life.
Other people have travelled this before, they have made it and I will make it. There are memories from these people sprinkled along the path, there is a history for me, voices produced by throats in bodies with tensed muscles that whisper “It can be done…and it can be done well.”

So for my next meeting with the Babylon I will bring with me the shadows of other spasmodic fighters, they will see them guarding my back if they look close.

Bye for now then new home, look out for me while I am in you.
Love, Kittin.

On the joys of writing and "other" languages

Having picked up on blogging again just now, and through it being given the joy to move on with all my other writing which I haven’t taken time to write recently. I have come to realise again just how much I love writing. And I have realised just how important it is to have a space like this blog, where even though others can read what I write I am free to ramble as much as I want.

I am writing a new Fiction for the FFF project, or more so a new chapter to the initial story that made that project up. It has been resting for quite a while since there have been too much stress around to really get the chance to write. But as I write on it now, I see it might have been just what I needed when things were the most stressful, to escape in its purest form into a world that I know and that I create as I go along in it.
However, I know my process of writing is not like that. I need a pretty long time span to build up a world within in me, a world with places, rules and peoples that I can explore once I sit down to write (writing happens mostly in stream of consciousness, which is in itself a form of escapism) hence, I can’t write before I know at least something about what I need to find out while doing so.

While attending my creative writing class in Bollnäs (reminds me that I still haven’t told my teacher I can’t follow trough with that as well as University this autumn…must do that) we were often given tasks to write quickly, in ten, fifteen minuets or so. I always managed to do really well then and it’s puzzled me. It wasn’t that I went around with a mapping for several stories in my head just waiting for that ten minuet chance to spit them out. Usually, when being alone in front of my computer that approach wouldn’t have worked.

Then I realised it was about being forced to write. That when not given any escape route but rather a very blunt entrance into the world of words my mind was made blank. And through that blankness other thoughts, those I hadn’t planned and hadn’t thought about for nights on end when laying awake in bed, had the chance to emerge.

Having done it often enough while in class I now do it every day. Take ten to fifteen minuets to clear my mind and just write. I have found that there is a theme to all of these writings even if they shift with my mood for the day. Sometime I might look through them and make something of it.
One of them have already become a stage piece entitled “Är det där min kvinnlighet…ska jag betala för den?” (”Is that my womanhood….will you charge me for it?”) and was preformed early this spring. (See the blog post entitled “On absolute identities”)

I feel like I am wandering off. I wanted to say that having found that blank space in my mind is really such an advantage. Now I find I plan as much as before, but then enter that ‘blank’ space when I actually write. So that I have all the ideas within but make no deliberate choice about what comes when and where, the process of that is a true delight and such escapism it makes my heart flutter. Also, I find it gives me a much stronger lust for writing since I too want to know what will ‘happen next’, so to speak.

In this space, as well as in the fiction project, I write in English. I am a self-proclaimed linguistic anglophile, that is to say English as a language is my biggest ‘turn on’. The English culture not as much, mostly it puzzles me or makes me laugh nowadays. But written and spoken English has a very special place in my heart.I don’t fully know why it is so. I guess it has a lot to do with being born on the 4th of July and being told America was awesome when growing up because of it. But I think it lies even deeper within, that it is one of those things that perhaps I shouldn’t know the reason for. That it’s a quirk in some sense, something that constitutes me but on the other hand shouldn’t be looked into in search of “why’s” and “how’s” since there will likely be no reasonable answers. Other than it’s that escapism again. That English served well in a time when I daydreamed a lot (like I am not still…) that it created a parallel to the well known, but yet a space which I could learn to master.

I think of the two languages as two rooms that mirror each other. I find the two ways of expression very similar and in some ways I find that they mirror various sides of me, my thoughts and feelings. Usually I know if a feeling serves best to be described in one language or the other. I know some thoughts and feelings are only good in Swedish and the other way around.


Anyhow, it doesn’t matter how much pretentious rambling I build up around my fascination of the English language
(I wonder where the need to do that comes from. I suspect it come from an inherited idea of rural inferiority, a feeling of shame and guilt, like I am possessing something that is truly not mine and somewhat above me, when I speak of the English language as a part of me. I find I justify my likening of the language and my vivid use of it whenever I do, saying things like ‘it’s not cause I want to be cool, it’s a soul thing’. And it is…) when it comes down to the nitty gritty it’s all about pleasure. I love the sound that the English language makes when someone speaks it. I the love sensation of it as it rolls of the tip of my tongue. I love how’s it’s composed and how its words look when printed in ink or on a computer screen.

Mostly I love to try and tame it, to make it what I want it to be even if it’s not my mother-tongue. To be frank Swedish as I know of it now is not my mother tongue either, it’s a language full of “ô”’s and “he”’s and “je”’s.

“Je kan’t säga va sûm gjer Äng’skan tä ett tôcke vakescht språk,e. Me je vät att ho ä he.”

”I couldn’t say what it is that makes English such a beautiful language. But I know it is.”

On my army

In my large novel style project ’The Mermaid’, which has rested this summer and rightfully so, I write about the gathering of an army. An army which sets out to fight death. Usually when people set out to fight death in fiction I just get the feeling they are really seeking it. All the dare-devilistic things that people come up with as exciting and assume is living life to its fullest is often just really stupid. Not to say that you wouldn’t be slapping death on its fingers now and then by doing really crazy stuff, but I would guess that’s mostly of out luck.

I have tried to focus the attention of that army that I am building on making the most of every moment and trying to build a collective that would withstand all deaths trials. And I think I have done pretty well in building an interesting mixture of characters that from the outside doesn’t seem to have any thing in common at all (that was also my major theme for the text, to show that even though we don’t think we share anything we all share as much as we are willing to admit we share…) but that ends up beings closely intertwined for one major reason.

They have all suffered loss: Loss of ability or an appearance that they used to have, loss of a beloved or loss of a place or time. Death is the one who possesses all these things, and hence, in order to, not so much regain them but to teach It that It cannot go around nicking other peoples abilities just like that, they set out to fight It.

Anyhow I wanted to say, that as I wrote that text I began to think that it would be really nice to be part of such an army (even though I do have a flare for taking the lead I wouldn’t have to be the rallying force ;) ) that it would be amazing to be part of such force and such determination.
I realise now that I was very foolish in having these thoughts. Since the truth is that I am already part of such an army.

These past days I have realised that even more. Since I struggled to be able to survive in the Capital I began to see that so many people cover my back. That even though I didn’t know if they understood truly what my life has been about they give me proof again and again of knowing just what I am, and loving me dearly for it.
In this maze that bureaucracy is and amongst all the vipers in the grass that the bureaucrats are I know they walk ahead of me and behind me. To smash their machetes against growing branches threatening to choke me and pick me up when I fall.

I am sorry if I am making it out to be like I didn’t trust you to understand me, it is not so! Just that when I deal with these people telling me my disability isn’t major or consistent enough I wonder if anybody sees that within me.
If anybody sees the struggling that this is. I have known all the time that you have, I am just so grateful to see it now. In my time of need.

So this blog post is to be about my warriors. Those who walk ahead and behind of me and the people that have made up the army I longed for but didn’t see until I was desperate for it.

I have already spoken about my brother in this space, but I will gladly speak about him again. My brother Carsten and his fiancée Emma deserve all the credit they can ever get for always sticking by me and telling me to keep my head up. My brother deserves multiple thank you’s for his never ending fire within, for taking time to ramble in anger with me about how unjust all of this is and for keeping me on the ‘take no crap’-path.

The following where already part of my army before I knew I needed one. They are spoken about as a unit because I really think we are.
Katarina, Kicko and Marie. Thank you for always being interested in what I do. For brining forth your righteous anger with me when it’s needed, for helping me lay down my burdens by the whisky-cokes and the throbbing dance floors of tacky bars. For laughing with me and making comparisons to other well known crips such as Timmy and Jimmy from South Park and the magnificent Andy Pipkin from Little Britain (if Andy get’s a PA as good as Lou then I must be okay in the end…)
Thank you for seeing above and beyond my disability but never neglecting the fact that it’s there. Tämmy! TäKåKå!

My soon to be land-lady Ulrika, thank you for opening your home whenever it’s needed and especially in such a desperate time, for allowing me to bring all the mess that this has been into your life too and welcoming me with such open arms. True generosity.

Vata-Sister, Hillevi. Thank you for understanding from just the same spot how important a well balanced body is. Thank you for allowing me to ramble for hours on end about spasms and anxiety. We are so alike it scares me at times, but it’s very comforting to know that whatever I say you have felt it too. Long live the achy-shaky vata-hearts!

Last but not at all least my muses. My and Josephine. (in a way you are all my muses but I like giving people titles…okay ;) )
Firstly thank you both of you for an ongoing feast of inspiration whenever I come to think of you. You both share an aura of force and vulnerability than intrigues me deeply and sparks all my artistic fires.

Thank you My, for all your love and your support. For understanding what the important things are and never minding sharing them. For including me in what’s important to you and cherishing my thoughts and ideas. Thanks for bringing me to lovely places to see lovely people for making me part of their lives as I have become a part in theirs. For believing me when I say that I can do this. And reassuring me when I doubt. For sharing faith and strength with me and making me tea when I needed it the most.

And finally, thank you Josephine. For seeing all the facets that make me up and telling me that they are valid. For bringing a somewhat holy wrath to this fight and offering a very hands on support, for sharing ideas, thoughts and memories and building me up. Thanks for allowing me to be vulnerable when I need to and for seeing the absolute force that is me too. Thanks for your never-ending support of my work and your brilliant witty mind.

I have faith; after all I was injected with a massive load of faith growing up, that we shall conquer this. If you stand ahead and behind me now I promise cross my heart that I will do the same whenever you need me! Thank you again – the academy, Gawd, my parents, and my army!


Xoxo, Kittin! (Timmy, Jimmy, Andy Pipkin, Sally, Anne Bonny!)

On cripness, gender and sex.

Haven't written anything here in ages, other writing has been consuming a lot of time, as has plain living.
Weeks ago I had a plan to follow up on cripchick and wheelchairdancer's blog posts on disability and gender, I wrote something but didn't think I did well. Today, as I was reading through old things lying around on my harddrive I realised it might have been okay anyway so here it is.

Following in the footsteps of cripchick and wheelchairdancer I will try my best to write about my take on ’crip’ as an identity, its relation to power and sex.

Firstly, I would like to say that it has taken me a while to find myself as a crip-girl. Honestly, my disability even though it is at times very crippling has not been a major issue for me and not until the last year’s part of my identity as such.

I credit this to my childhood and my ideas of myself growing up. Even if I knew there was something different with me, I was never told that different equalled bad.

Growing up in a very including Christian environment I was often told my disability was a blessing. Later I came to know that was not always the take on disabilities amongst other Christians and certainly not amongst other Pentecostals, as my family was.

Growing up in a Christian environment also meant that the ideas of sex and sexuality were different than others. I often found it puzzling that Pentecostals would devote themselves so physically to God and the Spirit while at church but be afraid to touch subjects that I thought alike, lust and pleasure. It was not rare when I grew up to see women hiss the name ‘Jesus’ between gritted teeth as their bodies shock. And when finding out about the Spirit myself I likened it to an orgasm.

Because I had always been told my disability was a blessing, meaning that God had greater plans for me and brother and had let us live even if it wasn’t possible, I grew up believing strongly, and still do - that all that is good within me comes from God. Hence, the love I felt for both boys and girls wasn’t a trouble.
Finding out I was both a crippled and a bisexual I started to asses myself at a very early age, thinking about what I like and disliked. Linking fantasises desires and wishes together I also discovered I was Dominant. (Will this odd-ness never end?)Again, seeing that it was in me and was a good thing since it sprung from love and also couldn’t exist without a submissive counterpart and a consensus from that person, I accepted it.

As a Dominant-crip-pseudo-lesbian I struggled to find an identity that fit me. Combining the weakness and frailness of my psychical condition with the force of my mind and my ‘sinful’ love for other women.

For a substantial period of time I was on growth-hormones since I was way too short for my age. I am still pretty short but without the hormones would have been even shorter. The hormones, a jolly mixture of steroids and testosterone, sent my body off on a post-adolescences joyride. I bulked up like I had never done before; I was longer frail in appearance even though my body was.
In an attempt to mend the gap between my physical appearance and my mind I went into a period of being a very butch girl. Shaving my head and trying desperately to find out where this rollercoaster was to take me I went from crazy unisex tops and shirts to dresses and back again. All the time feeling uncomfortable in an appearance that I didn’t know.

Getting of the hormones I dropped 8 kg to 38kg for my final 145 cm and finally recognised what I saw in the mirror. I went back to the clothes that I had worn as a girl, I indulged in skirts and flowery tops, flaunted my tits and tried my very best to make my body sexual and owned by me, rather than an asexual object owned by doctors and syringes filled with steroids.

As a crip-girl I believe that is my biggest struggle. To believe that my body can be desired through the eyes of others. That it isn’t something freaky but something hot, mostly because I myself through active choice in my appearance and manners make it so.
I thrive on being raunchy and outspoken about my body and my sexuality, since it breaks a long lived idea of crippled people as asexual, making use of it as I would like. Learning to make it work its best to give me and my lovers the most pleasure and so and so.

Through this process of ‘returning to the roots’ I discovered my last add-on identity so far. I was not only a Dominat-crip-pseudo-lesbian; I was also a ‘femme’.
Putting my ‘invalid’ body on display because I chose to, doing it with the tools of a feminine appearance altered to fit my needs (see crip-chick’s post on altering the tools of femininity, such as clothes, to fit the needs of our bodies) allowing myself, with very little physical force, to Dominate through the mind, and enjoying that, gave me the cornerstones of the subversion that now constitute my femme-identity.

However even though I am a ‘fiercely femme Lady’ according to beloved Sister Hillevi, I find I am rarely viewed as that by people who don’t know me. Again it’s that asexual image of disabled people and certainly disabled women that gets me. Also, my ‘classically feminine attire’ combined with a well expressed Christian faith often boxes me in as a sweet-Christian-girl. Not to say that I am not but there is certainly more to me than meets the eye in that sense.

In order for a discussion to take place around disability, gender and identity society needs to acknowledge disabled persons identities not only as homogenous disabled group but see that all kinds of identities fit within the disabled ‘community’ as well as in the able bodied.
That even though I am a disabled person it is not equal to my disability being the cornerstone of my identity.

My crip-identity as it is today took me years and years to build and it was through my other identities that a sense of subversion of my crippled body arose.
When I call myself a crip today, it gives me a space to joke about the quirks of my body, my spasm, my freakishly tensed muscles, a space where I can promote photos as the one here on the blog where I kiss the chrome on my walker.
Also, it gives me a space where I find strength in a world that is made to fit the able bodied, it gives me a sense of community and support, a renewed sense of what my body needs and strength to acknowledge that these needs are different than my able bodied friend’s.

(Might be brainy, might just be ramblings)

On Christiano-phobia

Due to a piece on this on Swedish Tv’s (SVT) program ”Existens” (http://www.svtplay.se/) I thought I would blog about the phenomena, if there is one.

In the piece they interview Swedish Pentecostal Christian politician Lennart Sacredéus who says he has experienced this kind of phobia. That he knows people who have been ridiculed and persecuted for their Christian faith.
Sacredéus says:

“It is when they have displayed a traditionally Christian point of view in
certain questions that they have experienced this kind of “critique” from
others, in their work environment, in their schools, amongst ‘friends’.”

As an example the program brings up the standard traditionally Christian “points of view” as pro-life and homophobic statements. Of course nothing about people being persecuted for what I believe is the most traditional Christian point of view: Love thy neighbour.

This made me wonder, is it so that when challenged for certain statements of their faith right wing Christians will now go around calling it a phobia? And have I experienced that phobia anywhere?

Firstly, I do well believe that when challenged in the more conservative areas of their faith Christians like Sacredéus (part of the Swedish Christian party which opposes gay marriage, gay adoption and abortion for a start) might well be crying wolf about a phobia spreading through the land. There is no phobia! There is critique on what kind of view on other people and their autonomy these kinds of groups present.
In the same program the former Arch Bishop of Sweden KG Hammar says:

“It is only ridiculous to assume there is a Christo-phobia, what is happening is
that conservative Christian values are given critique, like all other things are
critiqued. As Christians we must all be ready to take critique our self if we
critique others.”I agree, I think KG Hammar is actually one of the most
reasonable Christians Sweden has ever seen. If the conservative Christian
movement needs to go on about homophobic and oppressing ideas they can well face
up to being critiqued on that, as they critique the lack of “morality” in the
secular world.

I agree, I think KG Hammar is actually one of the most reasonable Christians Sweden has ever seen. If the conservative Christian movement needs to go on about homophobic and oppressing ideas they can well face up to being critiqued on that, as they critique the lack of “morality” in the secular world.
However, I find there actually exists an other kind of Christiano-phobia. One that has nothing to do with the ideas that specific Christian’s present but with the concept of being Christian.
A phobia that makes me, a highly progressive bisexual Christian, as bad as any conservative bigot ever was.
It has nothing to do with what I believe, only the fact that I do believe!
A phobia that tells me that it doesn’t matter how many autonomous choices I make in life. How much I try to break away from bigots and other foul “religious” people. The pure fact that I accept Christ as my Saviour (oh my- really?) is enough to make me a stupid and un-emancipated girl. One who is fooled by doctrine and patriarchy into submission and silence.
If the people telling me these things knew the least bit about me they would see how ludicrous there statements about me are.
(I use my vast knowledge of the Bible in ways they could never imagine- Hah!)

I often experience a stiff silence when I come out as a Christian (yes I really feel I need to come out about it.) When I tell people I was brought up in the Pentecostal movement it’s often even worse. I find I start every conversation on my faith with an excuse.
You see I am not….
Even if they say...
My point of view on this is not…

Now I wonder who gave the conservatives the right to patent my faith!?
Also, who makes it perfectly okay for non-believers to tell believers believing is a sign of weakness!?
(I will not speak about my “favourite” non-believer Richard Dawkins here; I think that man has had enough publicity already!)
In my life as a Christian I seek opportunities to actively do good for others, I seek opportunities to be friendly and help, to be supportive and to speak up in anyway suitable when things are not as they should be. I try to love my neighbour. Sometimes I fail, of course I do.

But I try my hardest to love the homophobes, the patriarchal oppressors, and the pro-life madness people.
I try; I really, really try to love the mad and mean Richard Dawkins. In my love for the people behind the arguments I find it natural to speak up about the wrong that they do.

All of you – YOU GIVE CHRISTIANITY A BAD NAME!