Well, several reasons. One, it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, and two it would be rather smelly. Who needs smelly when you can be radioactive?
Radioactive. It’s a marvelous word that encapsulates far more than the sum of its syllables, certainly. It’s one of those nice words this language bequeaths to us as a gift for minds to twist into new shapes like so much play-doh or taffy. It can be very literal, or very figurative. This unicorn’s radioactivity is best described as figurative, but with very literal consequences.
Why don’t I start from the beginning, hm?
Nuclear unicorn was something that a close friend called me not long ago as we were giggling about something both macropolitical and personal. The fact that I could, apparently, threaten the world. It was in response to some news story, one so generic that the specifics melt away in the sea of samey text and dogma. Another bull handed down from His Infallible-ness The Pope about how those who defy gender norms are as big a threat to the human race as loggers are to the rainforest.
Apparently I have the power to destroy humanity.
My friend and I found this wickedly funny and in a pique of her particular brand of womanly wit remarked “You’re a nuclear unicorn, Quinnae!” Rare, special, almost mythical, and yet evidently packing enough heat to destroy a large city and render it uninhabitable for centuries. Naturally my first thought was “…hot damn, I’m awesome.”
That covers the nuclear bit. But from whence comes the unicorn? Well, the story her and I were laughing about gave you a hint. I defy gender norms.
This is not something I say with smug pride or that I tote around like some perverse ideological iPod or political accessory. Some might think it makes me trendy. They’re idiots. No, I just say that this is what I do as a point of fact; a la ‘I breathe’ or ‘I use the bathroom’ or ‘when I fart it smells like almonds.’ It’s not something to be proud or ashamed of. It just is.
I defy gender norms because I’m a transsexual woman. Therein is another mere, if irritatingly relevant, fact about who I am.
That’s just something about me. Like my hair colour or height. According to some, however, by dint of that fact I can destroy the world. So the question becomes, do I use this power for good or for evil, for justice, sin, or for the last slice of pizza? Well, if my super special power is to destroy the world, a girl just doesn’t have many options, now does she? It’s like I got bitten by a radioactive nuke when I was a baby, and really, is there any other kind? How unlucky could I be?
But them’s the breaks, so let’s get to it.
I can be harnessed for good purposes and that’s the ultimate thrust behind this journal. (The word blog is so hopelessly trendy that I’m going to trap myself on a moebius strip of self contradiction by being anti-trendy and calling it a ‘journal’, capesce?) My life by itself gives me a lot to talk about that is, as Janis Joplin would say, of great social and political import. Of course, this spirally horn on my forehead, how others perceive it, and how it affects my life isn’t the only thing I have to talk about.
Feminism and women’s issues, healthcare and welfare, war, terrorism, sex, drugs (mostly Tylenol), rock and roll, death metal, and Hello Kitty, these are a few of my favourite things… to talk about. They’ll all get their turn, you’ll all get to know me…
And hopefully after a little while of hanging out with me you’ll all glow in the dark.
Cross With You 