Guest post by "Karen" First off, I have to tell you how happy I am that I found "The Princess" again. Kept trying the DD website for months, finally quit trying. Then yesterday I was going to delete the bookmark, but decided instead to search a bit harder. Eventually I found theduck.com but it wasn't any further along than DD had been. A side bit I did learn: the people that had DD had the website pretty much dumped on them. They had no money, no tech person, and very flaky site. In the end they just threw up their hands and quit. In the meantime a group of artists staged a coup and got control. They changed the name to eliminate the "drunk" reference. Whether or not it survives is up in the air right now.
But I posted on BC about "The Princess" and I was given this link. Yea!!! I'm all caught up and ready to see what's next. I say that because having just everything from Oct. 2012 to now may make things a bit muddled, not that I need any help there!
My observations, from having just caught up: Sarah undoubtedly got her strict binary outlook on gender from her mother. Think about how she has expressed herself. She has flipped herself within the rigidity her mother has taught her. All those "lessons" are deeply ingrained, mom's you can't do that, only girls do that has morphed into Sarah's girls do this and I'm a girl so I do it too, and the corollary this is what boys do so I don't do that. Within that structure there is simply no provision for people who are genderfluid. Sarah has no way of knowing that Irma's behavior is anything but part of the mind games Irma has been pulling all along. I doubt the nuances of trans and genderfluidity have ever been explained to either one. They're just kids, a lot of adults have trouble understanding this.
So I get that Sarah hurt Irma's feelings, but did Irma ever try to explain herself to Sarah? Doesn't look like it. So Irma shares part of the blame here also. Irma made the assumption that Sarah knew what was going on and you know what assumptions get you. Then there is the problem summed up so well by Sheriff Buford T. Justice: "What we have here is a failure to communicate"! Yeah, I'd say so! Irma's mother knew what her daughter was going through, why didn't she take 5-10 minutes and explain things to Sarah? Shame, a real teachable moment lost. Kids aren't born magically knowing this stuff, they have to be taught. So Sarah only gets a small bit of the blame, and her ignorance of the topic mitigates most of that.
So I'm going to lay most of the blame on her mother, Irma, and Irma's mother. All three of them ignored Sarah's ignorance, especially her mother who taught Sarah a very rigid binary belief system.
Two notes: If it sounds like I'm covering known ground here, please excuse me. I'm not intentionally trying to bore y'all to death. Really! Second note: I intentionally decided to use one name for each one. Trying to run double names based on their gender at the time is too much hassle when your comment is being written on a touch screen tablet.
PinkBat, I am really sorry for the crap life has been throwing at you. It sucks and there is no way to defeat it a lot of times. Big hugs to you, hon!
