Pride 2020

Before I begin I want to make clear that as I write this People are protesting the institutional racism of the police force and the horrendous brutality they employ against black people. I have been stalked by white supremacists and had to get the British police involved when they started sending things to my house. White supremacists have literally set up a wiki dedicated to harassing me and my family. They are complete and total scum who deserve to suffer. I am cis gendered and white so despite everything else I still have some relative privilege and I believe that Black Lives Matter.

Vote out Trump. Vote out the Republicans. Reform the Democratic Party to not be neoliberal conservatives and demilitiarize the American police force. If American people want to claim that I shouldn't get involved in their politics by suggesting that they follow their own damned constitution then I would remind them that it was American white supremacists who became obsessed with me. Being anti-fascist is to be human. Being anti-white supremacists is to be normal. I am not interested in debate or discussion.

Oh and if this does get posted to that white supremacist hate wiki about me and any neo nazi reading this I would ask that they think long and hard about what happened to the nazis in the second world war. Fascism is a con that is doomed to failure and pain for all concerned.

All that said here's my story of how I realised I was bisexual for Pride 2020.

Pride 2020

By
Alexander Gordon Jahans

As it's Pride I thought I would share my story of realizing I am bisexual.

2009 is the year I was reborn as a Doctor Who fan. It is also the year I started to grab a handle on my sexuality but given I was still years from knowing I had Kallman's Syndrome and getting treatment it was hard for me to feel anything for women, let alone the few specific kinds of men I'm into. Then Moffat's Doctor Who turned up.

It is no secret that I love Amy Pond but it was years before I realized there was a sexual attraction there. Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor however had me hooked from the start in a way I felt since primary school. There were always certain men that I looked up to , admired and wanted to be close to, wanted to like me. Given I was an autistic loner bullied by so many I thought it was just a desire for friendship. Whatever the case I felt that with Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor.

Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor is my taste in men. He is cute funny and innocent yet simultaneous capable of being calm, in control, ultra knowledgable and a flirty freak. He is slim, good looking and wears a suit well. He also is part of what I have since realized is as type for me: He is a trickster manipulator.

So Matt Smith's Doctor got me smitten and kind of turned on the heat underneath my sexuality so things could start to bubble.

Then I watched Farscape and fell in love with John Crichton. First it was the innocent "Oh I really like this character" then it was "Oh he's sexy and cute, I want to look like him" I started working out as I watched Farscape saying "I will be beefcake" then slowly I realized I was attracted to him.

It wasn't easy realizing my sexuality because this was happening during university when my parents began to finally separate and the nazi trolls were just starting to become obsessed with me.

I am still trying to understand myself and it is something that has to go on the back burner because the world keeps burning down around me. It's hard to focus on my sexual education and self realization when life keeps throwing shit at me.

Toxic Masculinity

Toxic Masculinity
Or
Why Being Good Matters To Me

by
Alexander Gordon Jahans

I keep revisiting the guilt over that damned fanfic in my mind. I wake up at night thinking about it and wishing I could apologise. Wishing I could make it right. Everything I write seems to evolve into a reprocessing of my grief and guilt about writing it. Why? At the very time that was going down I was being diagnosed with Kallman’s Syndrome, suffering from depression and nazis, literal goddamned nazis were sending stuff to my house. Even my own father was taking his frustration at being divorced out on me. Yet it’s the fucking fanfic I keep coming back to.

Let me be clear, I am not a saint. At school I was bullied relentlessly and my own desperate frustration and anger caused me to have anger issues that would sometimes cause me to explode at others. In hindsight my naive crushing on women was perhaps expressed so awkwardly at college and university that while I know my actions never harmed anyone they may well have freaked people out. They didn’t know who I was and what I was capable of after all. So I have regrets, serious regrets, but it’s the fanfic that haunts me and I don’t know why. Why this thing? Why is this what causes me so many sleepless nights?

I think it’s because the fanfic is the clearest instance I can think of where my actions caused harm and I knew at the time that the inclusion of THE problematic scene was risky. This is like living with low level anxiety your whole life and one time you ignored it and things went disastrously wrong. Except did it really go disastrously wrong. The fallout certainly feels it but I have no proof that anyone was harmed by what I wrote. Indeed the person who most saw things wrong with what I wrote seemed an impenetrable strong personality that gave no fucks and just decided it was a messed up thing to have written that indicated things about my character. That’s the key though. The thing I wrote was stupid and I felt that was possible at the time and these people proved it then effectively decided that it was proof I was unsafe to be around. That I was unworthy and not a good man.

I regret many things about how I handled those events but I absolutely do not regret championing the cause of trans and/or non-binary people who want a safe space. People deserve to feel safe and if that means shutting me out then so be it. Safe spaces are important even if they are denied to me. I think though that it is the implication that I am unsafe, that I am not a good man that burns with me.

You see at university I went by Gordon Jones to distance myself from my family and my bad experiences art school but when I entered my final year of university I took up the name I had in school as a reminder to myself that I could survive no matter how bad it got. Alex Jahans the boy had survived more than a decade of relentless bullying and I knew I would need that strength when university ended. Becoming Alex Jahans again was a promise to myself that I would survive because it would be tough and I needed that strength so much because I had no idea just how much shit was waiting for me as university ended. The problem is that implicit within that promise was the idea that Alex Jahans is good, pacifist, he does no harm.

You see at school I was bullied by everyone and then I would get home and my father would scare the hell out of me with his shouting. Let me tell you the word ‘Sugar’ is goddamned terrifying when your dad is towering over at you and bellowing at the top of his lungs as he is literally foaming at the mouth with rage over some stupid bullshit. I defined myself as a pacifist and better than other people because I had to be.

The last few years have seen me come to terms with the fact that my memory works such that I can see through the cycle of my father’s abusive behaviour where my sister can’t. She sees the latest bridge of abuse to get past. I see every bridge my father has ever forced me to cross. I am not blind to the complexity of the situation. There are things I miss about him and he isn’t wholly evil and sometimes his actions are understandable. They aren’t justifiable. They aren’t normal. They definitely are not good or acceptable but sometimes I understand how desperation, frustration and anger has driven him to such actions. The problem is that none of the good of my father is worth a damn while his pattern of abusive behavior remains. He is a dangerous man and the bogeyman me and my mother define ourselves against.

One of the quiet joys of recent years has been watching how my mother has bloomed and developed into a different more rounded, happy and productive individual without my dad there to stifle her dreams, confidence and desire to improve things around the house. I am sure that part of my improving mood can be owed to fading scars of his behaviour. Slowly the effects of him upon our lives are being assessed for their worth with the bad parts being discarded and replaced with better stuff. We are healing.

So that’s why not being a good person cuts so deeply. That’s why the possibility haunts me. That’s why it used to madden me that I had no explanation for what they accused me of. Without an explanation of what I did wrong I can’t stop doing those wrong things, I can’t become safe again, I can’t become good again. Except maybe I never can. Not to some people. After all if you knew a man murdered someone once it wouldn’t matter how reformed he was you wouldn’t feel safe around him so why should a trans person feel safe around someone who once wrote transphobic things?

Even if there was some simple explanation that I could easily work with they don’t owe me that. Victims of oppression don’t owe their oppressors compassion and explanations, even if those oppressors did so accidentally. I fucked up and this is my mess to deal with. The problem is that I still don’t know how to deal with it. That cis privilege comes with ignorance of the perspective of a transgender person. I can do research but I can never truly know how it feels to be trans and/or non-binary so now every time I am around them I have anxiety that I am going to fuck up again and cause my social life to disintegrate and I know that sometimes when I ignore my anxiety things go very badly wrong.

This incidentally is why disagreements on twitter have caused me actual panic attacks before and why I have withdrawn from it. My autism means I am playing a continual game of Russian roulette whenever I talk to people online. If you fuck up and say the wrong thing in person you can apologise and learn from the experience. You fuck up and say the wrong thing on twitter or facebook and people will be sharing screencaps of it decades later.

Maybe that’s right? Maybe it is better this way but what the fuck do you do if your past is littered with such literary landmines of stupidity? I know myself and I know what I have or have not physically done but my autism means I can never be sure what I have said will be taken how I intended it. I have had other autistic people say they would not have made the mistakes I made. Has it been codified somewhere medically that autism causes a lack of social skills but always leaves someone mentally cognizant of any and all possible ways they might unintentionally be discriminatory or bigoted so such actions are definitively due to wilful bigotry and not unintended misunderstanding?

Heck there is another complexity to this that sometimes I have called women out for bigoted statements and they have called me sexist for daring to say a negative thing to a woman. How the fuck do I take that? What is the response to that? I am an autistic person with Kallman’s Syndrome and Growth Hormone Deficiency who has been bullied, abused and stalked by nazis. Surely I have a right, a duty, to call people out for being bigoted? At the same time I am a cis white man who likes women and was raised under the patriarchy so I am privileged and probably have some latent sexism, racism and heteronormativity to fight against.

This isn’t easy. Which is why I think the deconstructivist era of the 90s sticks with me. I don’t get to pretend I am definitively a good guy anymore. I have a black mark against my name and I have to live with that and the possibility that I might fuck up again. Women get to have golden age superheroes who are beacons of hope and love. Cis white men have to live with the complexity of being part of the patriarchy whether we like it or not and how we fight against that toxicity within ourselves and within our communities.

Right I’m going to get some tea.

Writer's Block

Writer's Block

How To Fight It
By
Alexander Gordon Jahans

So, what are my qualifications to talk about this?

Well I’ve been writing on and off for myself since 2009, producing short stories, scripts and novel length pieces of prose. Most of them haven’t seen the light of day, some have been deleted and none have ever been sold or won awards. I did do a BTec in Media and TV Production and got a 2:1 at Creative and Professional Writing and Film Studies but this isn’t about the quality of my writing. This is about the advice I have regarding the great demon that tortures writers, the eponymous block. To that end it is relevant that you know I am now too disabled to work and write as often as I can because it provides escapism and a sense of purpose. When I have not been able to write I have noticed my mood is affected and the dark days come more often. I have to fight writer’s block because when I don’t make progress in my writing I feel it.

Defining Writer’s Block.

It is always good to define terms. Someone I recently got into an argument with on twitter got angry with me for asking them to define the basic writing terms they were speaking about but it is important. One woman’s Mary Sue is another man’s Protagonist Hero. Something particularly true given I am autistic.

Writer’s Block is an inability of the creative writer to create. Simple as that. The words don’t come.

What’s interesting and important for the purposes of this piece though is that Writer’s Block itself is peculiarly vague and different for every person and at different times. The brain is a complex machine and creativity is a complex process. Writer’s Block describes a symptom that feels like a problem. The reason I think people struggle so hard to fight Writer’s Block is that they are trying to problem solve at the wrong place.

Types of Writer’s Block.

So if Writer’s Block in fact describes a symptom with multiple causes we need to outline them before we can begin to attain solutions.

Creative Block:
All things are equal but you don’t know what to write.

Energy Block:
You know what you want to write and how to write it but when you get to the writing you can’t focus and get stuff done.

Creative Insecurity:
You think you know what you want to write but every time you start to write you end up deleting everything because it’s just not good enough.

Energy Insecurity:
You can’t focus on your writing because you are tired from stressing about other things in your life.

Solutions:

Now that we have outlined some types of Writer’s Block lets discuss possible solutions.

Creative Block:
Writing is a process. It is not just output. The writer needs to take in ideas from the world around them then digest them.

If your creativity is stumped then first you need ideas. Read more, listen to audiobooks, watch letsplays, play videogames, talk to your friends and take an interest in politics. Inspiration is something you have to find in the world for yourself. It’s when you find an idea and say “I want to explore that.” When I need inspiration in a hurry I watch fanvids because they are like idea concentrate. The ideas of actors, writers, directors, editors and costume designers compressed into a few minutes with music to provide a uniting theme.

Next you need to think on those ideas. Think of it as though you have harvested the grapes from the vineyard and now you need to let them ferment before they can become wine. I find that walking while listening to music helps for me but others like showers or doing chores. Procrastinating by doing something dull like cleaning the house is actually leaving your mind free to think about your story and how the characters, setting and plot will all interact.

Then you need to flesh out what actually happens. Fermented pulped grapes are not wine before you have filtered out the pulp. This is called Pre-Writing, figuring what happens when and getting that all important starting sentence to work from. You don’t have to write anything down to Pre-Write. My process often involves doing some walking while I run through different takes on how I want to write the scene so that when I start writing I know where I’m going. That said don’t be afraid to make notes and flesh out where the story is going. I like writing long multipart stories with ensemble casts and multiple plots going on at once so sometimes it can help to first outline the plot in brief in terms what characters are doing in each scene when. That way I can go back later and focus on continuing the emotion of one set of characters arcs through their particular plots.

Energy Block:

Creativity is a complex process arising from a complex muscle that has a lot of complex tasks to perform. If you don’t think your brain has a lot of complexity to coordinate because you feel your life is dull then break down how many individual steps there are in making a cup of tea. This is why human like robots are a long way off. Our brains are fantastic machines that work hard and fast so it is normal and understandable for us to come to a task, know exactly what we want to do but be unable to fulfil it because our brains don’t have the energy.

Energy is not simple either. You can’t just write when you get up. For me I need the right mix of being fresh from waking being caffeinated by diet coke, having eaten breakfast so I have slow burn energy and nutrients with a kick from the adrenaline of exercise. I know well that sleep is hard to come by and exercise is hard to do but even pacing around the kitchen for a few minutes can help get those endorphins flowing and remember to eat and always have a drink with you. Dehydration will make you tired and if the temperature is too hot or cold for you that will drain your energy too.

Creative Insecurity:

My favourite writer, Douglas Adams, was infamously plagued by this type of Writer’s Block, to the point where many tales are told of his producers or publishers effectively locking him in a room with a computer and a deadline to force him to just get something out. One of my friends quite clearly has this type of Writer’s Block too, forever fretting that their writing isn’t good enough. Heck I’ve had a version of this too. After a fanfic I wrote caused me to lose friends I became so terrified of writing something that could be perceived negatively that I kept deleting what I wrote and worrying that it wasn’t good enough. 

The solution - stop panicking and just write damned thing - is far easier said than done. So I have more practical solutions. Chiefly, I think the goal is to attain a flow state. In a flow state you aren’t thinking about yourself. You are lost in the moment, focused on your task. How do you achieve that though?

Well, I use a process that is almost ritualistic in nature. There is comfort in ritual. Writing is scary, a leap into the unknown with your heart on show for all to see and snark at, but ritual is comforting. I have my favourite cardigan and my favourite dressing gown. I have places I like my favourite drink placed just so and I have my prewriting ritual so I am pumped and know what I want to write before I arrive at my desk.

This is actually important, trying to write from a blank page is hard so write something. This is part of why I like prologues in medias res but just get something down so you aren’t staring into the void and never just arrive at your word processor with no idea of what you want to write. The page is your stage and it is very easy to get performance anxiety if you walk on to the stage with no idea of what you want to perform. This might seem obvious but I think it bares stating.

Another thing I do, is I listen to music that is thematically appropriate to what I write. I have it turned down low so I can write but it stops the awkward silences when I think of what I want to write next from allowing negative thoughts to creep in because there is no awkward silence there is just the music that continues the theme I want to tell.

Energy Insecurity:

As I mentioned about I recently had a big bout of Writer’s Block because I felt anxious about whether my writing would offend people. I ended up getting a prescription for anti-anxiety meds after I deleted a half a million word story and the backups once I had completed it. It is natural and normal to not be able to focus on your writing if something else is weighing on your mind. This is why I can’t write when I am angry at somebody or when I am having a ptsd attack.

I do however have suggestions to help with this kind of Writer’s Block. Having a ritual before writing can be calming, the familiarity bringing serenity and prioviding a break from the outside world. I also use a programme called Focus Writer so I’m not distracted by anything on my computer and I have big over ear headphones so I don’t hear notifications or people calling to me. Shout ther distractions and sources of anxiety.

Anyway, I hope this helps people.

Remember a bad draft can be edited later, a non-existent draft can’t be made better.