(Untitled)

Aug 14, 2008 15:26

The plumber's just been to fix the boiler. He didn't do any work, blamed the problems on the previous person to work on it, and said the words "reset switch" and "activation code". Which doesn't bode well ( Read more... )

trans, boiler, dilemma

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jeremy_m August 17 2008, 18:47:51 UTC
Friended you back - I particularly like the fact that you've studied my two main academic interests (biology and computing), which I haven't, though I've done some nice work/play in the crossover of evolution simulation :-)

> I think it would've been better to either a) tell no-one, or b) just not care at all.

Not knowing quite where you are in the process and not wanting to be rude, I think in many cases telling no-one doesn't help, because people's perception of (and interest in) identifying gender cues is extraordinary. For example, in "Becoming Drusilla", the biography of my best male mate at school, who changed over in her forties, the biographer works out that Dru sometimes doesn't pass just because he (the biographer) is acting as though he's with a man. If only people could apply such subtlety in other areas of life.

Though at the more encouraging other extreme, one of my ex-sweeties, when she was exclusively lesbian, had a lover for several months before finding out she was trans despite, as she put it, ample opportunity to inspect the surgeon's work close up.

So I'd lean toward not caring at all, in the sense of treating it as nothing weird that needs to be outed as such. That's what I do with being poly these days, just assume it's been around long enough that grown-ups should be able to deal with it as part of everyday life.

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possiblenonsens August 17 2008, 20:19:06 UTC
Hehe everyone always thinks I want to go into bio-informatics, when I'm really more interested in development or virology. It's amusing when you find analogies between the two subjects though. I actually wasn't aware you were so interested in Biology til I looked at your profile, but was pleasantly surprised. I've never looked into physical anthropology with any depth before, so it's really quite new and interesting to get some details. Where and how did you work on simulations of evolution? I've seen limited desktop simulations of bacteria but never found them very detailed. Also what do you now do professionally?

Thank you for your feedback on my trans dilemma - I spend 99% of my time as a male, so telling no-one has been quite an easy solution up to now. But it's perhaps not the best I could do. I suspect I will have some schism where I will be fully open to the more interested people at uni, and I will deal with everyone else on a need to know basis. Rather than rubbing everyone's faces in it, as I did when I was 18, a little misunderstanding could be rather interesting.

How do you bring up being poly? Do you reveal it at a roughly relevant gap in conversation, or just as it becomes relevant, or from the outset?

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jeremy_m August 17 2008, 20:50:22 UTC
> Where and how did you work on simulations of evolution?

As a hobby, I just write the programs and put the results and interpretations on LJ. If you scan back through my journal entries there are some recent ones (about pixies) on co-evolution with a program to download and play with, and going back much further there's one about the purpose of males and the evolution of separate sexes (anisogamy). Most of the other entries relate to biological topics of some sort too.

> Also what do you now do professionally?

I retired from being a manager earlier this year, so now I do programming, writing fiction, and looking for more girlfriends - a far more productive use of time than working!

On outiness, I think people usually take their cue from how you present things, especially if they're not used to the idea, so if you treat it as nothing to worry about people tend to just accept it as normal.

> How do you bring up being poly? Do you reveal it at a roughly relevant gap in conversation, or just as it becomes relevant, or from the outset?

These days I tend to meet people online first, so they can see it in things like my OKCupid profile, or if they're reading LJ it just comes up in normal conversation without being a big thing. And if I'm talking to someone who doesn't already know, I treat it as just the way things are, e.g. if they asked how I know Sashagoblin I'd say she once had a date with my wife's other partner and then we got to know her too.

Or in the example above, I mention ex-sweeties without specifying concurrency with other relationships. If people care they can ask or work it out, but I don't draw attention to it any more than I'd mention my mother and immediately have to add that I do actually have two parents.

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possiblenonsens August 17 2008, 22:14:55 UTC
That sounds like a good life :-)

> they can ask or work it out, but I don't draw attention to it any more than I'd mention my mother and immediately have to add that I do actually have two parents.

Good examples, and it makes sense. It's just a little harder to apply to my situation, because it doesn't come up unless deliberately brought up. Since it's also a surface change that directly affects interaction to some degree, it seems there's bound to be a reaction of "HEY LOOK!!" or "Who is this new person? ... Oh...". It's something people have to deal with even if they don't actually have an interest.

Treating it like it's no problem sounds good, I'm just not sure exactly what to say yet. On the plus side I already feel that it'll be oddly liberating again, after all this time.

I will definitely give your program a try, and read your journal in more depth, I'm just a little exhausted right now. To Boldly Go looks rather interesting too, the play by mail aspect particularly appeals to me. Did you ever play a quite obscure space empire game called Stars! ?

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jeremy_m August 18 2008, 00:32:45 UTC
> It's just a little harder to apply to my situation, because it doesn't come up unless deliberately brought up.

One type of example which might come up is talking about the past in the form "When I was a little boy/girl", where it might be tempting to fudge the past to fit the present, or it can be used to acknowledge the change without making a fuss if you prefer.

Dru specifically chooses to be "she" right back to her birth, on the grounds that she was always female, independently of not having surgery until she was 43. So the book about her is full of constructs like "when she was a young boy" and "and then she became a father".

It mostly makes sense, except when I apply the same principle to my first wife (who is now male) and talk about when he first met Dru (who was male then) and they competed to be alpha male (female?). Very confusing :-)

> Did you ever play a quite obscure space empire game called Stars! ?

No, I think not. I played traditional postal games from about 1975 and was big in Diplomacy at one time, then shifted to the internet in the 90s while keeping the long turn rhythm for detailed negotiation and planning.

TBG has been running about 11 years now, which is unusual for a single non-role-playing game, though almost all the original players have been replaced several times over the years.

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possiblenonsens August 18 2008, 10:07:55 UTC
I'll really have to read that now, I have seen it around but I haven't made much time for non-degree related reading in the last few years.

It must be quite significantly improbable that both your wife and best friend would be trans? I guess there could be any number of reasons for that though, even just that knowing somebody else can you make you more likely to embrace it.

Did you have children with your first wife? If so, what was their reaction/how did they find out?

Stars! was also turnbased, and could be played by mail online. You could send messages and trade ships/minerals/technology, but it fell down in that the computer couldn't negotiate, and there was a lot of repetitive micro-management. Every planet needed the same strategy, and so you were really just running algorithms by hand.

Hehe 11 years seems a long time, until I realise that was 1997, which still seems oddly like yesterday. I guess it shows it was very well designed. Most MMORPGs only attempt to retain players by continuously rewriting the rules, so turnover is quite natural.

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jeremy_m August 18 2008, 18:33:05 UTC
> It must be quite significantly improbable that both your wife and best friend would be trans?

I would think so, particularly as they're of my generation, dating from a time when it was less common anyway. They only met a few times and their gender "issues" go back to childhood, so I'm sure they didn't influence each other in that area, it's just coincidence.

> Did you have children with your first wife?

No, we don't like them :-)

> Every planet needed the same strategy, and so you were really just running algorithms by hand.

It is odd how badly designed so many games were and are. For computer games it may relate to how they're tested, just checking that each function gives the correct results rather than playing it for a long time to see whether it's any fun. But for paper/board games there seems no excuse but stupidity.

> I guess it shows it was very well designed.

It was very much designed to last, partly as a response to the various "open-ended" games of the 90s, which typically collapsed in a heap within a year. So it's full of mechanisms that aren't literally open-ended, but do last for a long time. It also allows new and old players to interact in reasonable ways, unlike games where the old ones just kill the new ones until everyone loses interest and drops out.

The oldest players have managed more than a thousand turns, at three a week.

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