the thing is, in both that last needless confrontation and in basically every other conflict we saw, rather than engage with me as an individual, ask questions, attempt to understand where i was coming from kelly consistently treated me as Some Hysterical Woman now in her face.
more than that, she treated me as a proxy for every other Hysterical Woman, every girlfriend who said irrational things and manipulated her emotions. she repeatedly outright accused me of being like "all the others" who played guessing games—as if i of all people weren't direct enough.
in our final argument, i mostly kept my calm. i used an economy of words. i paused extensively to think. i asked clarifying questions to make sure i understood her intent and reasoning (regardless of how she chose to frame it to sound more positive).
kelly did none of that.
it was just wild projection from start to end, grabbing a couple of words. i would take time to address the nature of the misunderstanding and as neutrally as i could, explain my feelings and thought process—and she would grab another handful of words to run with and spin a story.
it went on like this. the stories that she spat at me, the excuses for her vitriol, again and again they had nothing to do with me. they all were generalizations, based on painting me as a gestalt of every Crazy Unreasonable Girl she'd met. like i wasn't in the room.
and, well, i wasn't. there was no conversation, no communication;she just Declared at me. it's like she was firing this long-brewing missive at some specter of her past—things she had been waiting 25 years to say to 40 crazy bitches who were all ever so unfair to her. all while i kept overloading her with unreasonable pressure by trying to explain my complex thoughts and feelings.
so instead of taking the time to listen and empathize and acknowledge what i was saying, she took offense that i was talking to her without her permission—and worse, about unsanctioned, unchill emotions that it would take unscheduled effort and personal will to connect with me over.
i actively and unconditionally demonstrated my trust and faith in kelly, and our friendship, and her desire to genuinely develop our relationship into something lasting and stable and supportive. in return she balked at the presumption she might give a shit then dehumanized me.
like, the level of internalized misogyny (with a helping of transmisogyny, as directed at some of my other partners) that kelly has not just failed but refused to examine and question and work through—the speed with which she Others people whom she's unable to immediately control
(in the case of amethyst, who was offering suggestions and details and possible options to a situational problem, kelly coldly dismissed them when they didn't just instantly follow her orders—then offered a pointedly judgmental "hmm" at my calling amethyst my girlfriend.
once my partner was out-of-sight,
"so this amethyst, she's your—what, now?"
"she's my girlfriend. four-and-a-half months. totally changed my life. they're so fucking good to me."
"hmm, your girlfriend, you say."
"... yeah?"
"mmm... uh-huh, right, okay." she rolled her eyes.
i talk about what a tech-bro dude-brained way kelly has of thinking about herself and others and the world and causality and principles and connectedness and relationships and validity and priorities and justice and privilege and gender and sexuality and a basic theory of self...
a close (cis) friend raised this topic with me, confiding the jeebies he got when i talked this was and how hard he had to think about what i was saying and how bad he thought it would look if he didn't already know me as well as he does and harbor so much doubt at his reflexes.
i know that social media is no place for nuance, but even by their own value i feel that if you actually read my pancakes instead of inserting your own waffles and follow the discussion for what it is, my meaning should be abundantly clear. especially with a glance at my profile.
funny thing here, to me, is whereas kelly has to varying extents been openly transmisogynistic (on the above and other occasions) and dismissive toward transfemmes who don't meet some unspecified personal standard that i don't care to try to disassemble with my precious brain—when i bring up and criticize kelly's way of thinking, go into what makes it "dudelike" to my mind, structurally this conversation ain't about defining and categorizing kelly marine as some object. i'm talking about the effects and systemic failures of her actions and ideology. i'm talking about all the internalized shit that kelly has picked up through the particular privileges and assumptions and biases of her upbringing and life to-date that she's still incredibly failed to recognize and question and work to get past so as to be a better and truer person.
i say incredibly, because, fuck, what is it, twenty years since she embraced her queerness? a decade maybe since her trans awakening? and in all this time it's like none of this experience has made a dent in her perception of the framework that she's been defying with a shrug.
again this is nothing to do with gatekeeping; it's about this one awful solipsistic libertine cunt who cut by cut broke me down then tore my heart out and betrayed me, all while acting with a very familiar sort of oblivious entitlement and lack of concern beyond getting her way—there is obviously and emphatically no correct way to be trans, to be a woman, to be a human being. but knowing, experiencing, being repeatedly wounded by her behavior, it kind of makes sense to me how she has never experienced and fundamentally has never understood dysphoria.
given How Kelly Marine Is as a person, it makes sense to me that to kelly, her big gender transition came after decades thinking of herself as a gnc bi dude, with a special performative preference for feminine clothing because she thought it made her seem more cool and sensitive. it makes sense to me that her big gender "oh" moment and revelation was one day looking in the mirror when she was in drag and thinking, "actually, i look hot like this. though it means backtracking my social narrative, which is annoying, i guess i'll just call myself a girl now. 🤷🏻"
after knowing and observing her closely and trying so hard to talk to her about any serious gender theory or explain my So Common As To Be A Stereotype psychological and emotional problems and uncertainties and fears and hang-ups and neuroses, only to be met with confusion, it is beyond debate that kelly has simply never felt the need to put the work in to examine what it means to be her and what gender means for her, and to struggle in every thought and action to be a better person, the best version of herself, the kelly she wished she could be.
kelly of course is a woman, because she says that she is. and though unnecessary she has gestured toward sort of occasionally taking hrt, when she's in the mood to bother. but like every aspect of her life, it's basically an aesthetic and thematic choice, made in large part to define her social brand.
her gender is a real part of her, to the extent any part of kelly could be said to be real. there's really nothing to this chick but surface. her entire personality and persona (both public and private) are nothing but a carefully-studied and market-tested mask for when she plays The Person Game, that she has practiced so hard at mastering. her neverending improvisational performative bit that she thinks of as a Correct Rational Mature Self™, that she has spent a lifetime minmaxing—she would say it's the result of years of study as to how to socialize and market herself correctly, the same as every normal person does or should do. to fit in.
really what i'm saying is just that, as she will in fact tell you in so many words, kelly hasn't really changed as a person, doesn't feel or behave any differently than before she was kelly. as an ever-recursive adaptive autonomous construct, kelly hasn't existentially or emotionally evolved in decades beyond the contextually absorbed lessons of life as a comfortable white boy.
her current operating system has a few patches and expansions. she's had more than her share of shitty traumas in her adult life. but in 2024 it's still running on the core install and logic base of Unburdened Well-Supported Popular Fiscally Sound Middle-Class White Boy v3.11.
which is to say, beyond pop culture osmosis and a few situational hard times that she may have filed as theory weighted by a cultural dinge of victim-blaming, functionally kelly has no real emotional or cognitive grasp of the notions of scarcity or deprivation or melancholy or despair.
her world filter is still calibrated for, "the world exists solely for your benefit; you can do and have anything if you think positively enough and be proactive in your choices; you exist on earth to enjoy the life you have been given by people who always will have your back."
which is to say, "other people who don't want to try as hard or refuse to look on the bright side are likely to be jealous of what you build for yourself and deny you the joy you are fundamentally owed by your birth and by having the will to want and ask for further success."
which is to say, everything she learned from our toxic objectifying, gamefied. acquisitive, petty dating culture is etched into her synapses like so much low-quality copper—aside from her clever social hacks to send an impression what a good, respectful. unthreatening boy she is.
when i say that kelly behaves and sees the world like a 20-something silicon valley pr douche, when i talk about her "dude brain." i'm carefully describing an individual whom i have studied with the comprehensive holism of an autistic student of art history and literary analysis.
i would, and have, observe(d) the same sort of individual personality flaws and traits, and describe them in the same to-me apt terms, regardless of my subject's sex or gender or sexuality.
kelly treats people, never didn't treat me, in such a way as to conjure this descriptive analogy.
my point in all this aside is, the specific kind of unexamined privilege and presumption and expectation and weird fucking inability to hold a mature and curious and compassionate conversation where the goal is to mutually understand and grow, in favor of "winning" by argument—the sorts of lack of nuance and evasion of any real emotion beyond positive vibes that give her what she wants, the transactional and almost impersonal sort of attitude toward love partners, the demand to be centered in every conversation and scenario including ones not about her—the way kelly treats emerging differences and upsets as emotions that are being unfairly directed at her For No Reason by crazy women, which is the real problem to lecture about, which are for kelly to resolve by finding and speaking the secret magic words then never to revisit—the way any expression of hurt or dismay or concern originating from a woman kelly is dating—budz are another story; they're presumed to be rational entities with their own valid reasons similar to kelly—is received as a wild attack to be countered and debated and shut down... basically every detail in trying to connect with kelly, bond with her, open up to her, be direct and honest, set or enforce a rare-ass boundary, trying to fucking talk to her ever about anything at any moment under any condition not of kelly's own choosing and active pleasure—being in love with this person, being so eager to share myself and my time and thoughts and feelings and discoveries and stories and trust and insecurities, my body my history my likes my dislikes and reasons my principles my activities, and the fleeting rest of my life with her—from start to end, all roughly ten months that we claimed a fond seat in each other's courts, the shapes our coupling took to fill again and again from any angle and despite any effort at my own counter-agency—they struck me, concerned me, frustrated me, scared me, haunted me.
to kelly i was at all times The Girlfriend—with all the weirdly gendered disregard that entailed. all the sidelining, all the dismissal, all the condescension, all the expectation, all the pigeonholing, all the "managing," all the irritation that a Nice Guy brings to a romance.
i'm still not used to people noticing and addressing me—well at all, in any situation, but especially as myself, by my correct gender. but i have had several romantic, sexual, amorous relationships and experiences that have made me glow with a thick fizzy waking-dream euphoria.
it's really something to have a Boy who just, simply and gratefully, treats me as the girl i am. like—just writing this makes me blush, makes my breath heavy, my skin prickle, my pupils dilate. it feels so impossible, like slipping sideways into a myth, and yet somehow there i am.
likewise i've been with Girls who give me this otherworldly affirmation from a different, still-new angle—this stark feminine recognition and acceptance and appreciation, that awakens this altogether-other sort of giddiness in my gender. a genuine lesbian connection is religious.
i've been The Girlfriend in a positive capacity many times now, in many different dynamic configurations—and i barely have the language to express the baffled silly youthful transcendent awe it tends to engender in every fiber of every level and phase of my Being.
i feel real.
what sets kelly apart isn't some dumb discussion about her gender expression, which is what it is and is her business alone and which you couldn't pay me to begin to pretend to care about.
what stands out is the toxicity. it's the particular misogyny—the gendered disrespect.
with kelly, yeah, she sure did treat me like The Girlfriend. and i sure did feel like it. but what that designation means for her, and what that means for other partners i've had these last 18 months, is very different.
and i think, in some ways perhaps tragically more typical.