P.J. Fox's Blog, page 15

How Do I Decide Which Book To Write Next? And…

How can you, the reader, affect my choice?

The first issue is inspiration.  I almost never write two books from the same series one right after the other.  To sit down and know, as I put my fingers to the keys, that I’m doing my best work, I have to know.  Deep inside.  That I’m inspired and that, for all the reasons that come together to make a good book, I’m capable.  But, putting artistic integrity aside, there are other issues as well.  Boring issues.

Financial issues.

Let me explain.

I have bills, and a family who insists on eating (at least) three squares a day, too.  My son is constantly outgrowing his clothes and my dog is constantly eating his action figures and all the same stuff you’re dealing with at your house, we’re dealing with here, too.  We’re a two income household and, like most two income households, we rely on both incomes to make things work.  Which means that as a matter of practical survival I need to prioritize the series that sells the best.

The Black Prince is ahead of Predators In The Mist, because while there are fans of both series (and I love you all), those of The Demon of Darkling Reach, as a series, are a) more plentiful and b) more vocal.  I’ve sold–I don’t know precisely off hand, numbers aren’t my department–something in the ballpark of twenty times as many copies of The Demon of Darkling Reach as I have of The Price of Desire.  There just aren’t as many people waiting for Predators in the Mist and those that are waiting aren’t–at least, to the knowledge of the Publishing Gods–waiting as eagerly.

So what can you, the reader, do to change all this?

Fortunately, a couple of things!  First and foremost, you can tell people you like the book.  Leave a review on Amazon.  Recommend the book on Goodreads; add it to a list.  Tell other people to check out the book.  A book doesn’t need to become a NYT bestseller to support an author and it doesn’t take a lot, believe it or not, to convince people that this is a book about which there’s some good buzz.  Conversely, though, it also doesn’t take a lot for the world–including the author–to decide that this book, and this series, is pretty much moribund.

So am I going to write Predators in the Mist?  Of course.  But unless the series as a whole suddenly becomes a lot more popular, not for another–I’m guessing–year.

One Year Ago…

I’ve made quite a few changes in the last year.  I took a break from writing, I went back to writing.  I went back to designing jewelry.  I wrote a post on supporting one’s transgender friends wherein I self-identified as gender normative.  People have died.  Some people, including best friends and family members, might as well have died for the completeness with which they excised themselves from my life.  For being the wrong religion (that was the first wave), for supporting my queer family members (that was the second wave) and, most recently, for coming out as queer, myself.

Although that last revelation wasn’t exactly a shocker to those closest to me, for everyone who actually uses their innate powers of discernment there are nine more who hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see.  Which is why I think it’s probably a good thing, on the balance, to take time to “come out” once in awhile.  As whatever you are.  It can be dangerous, in certain environments, assuming that the “you” you know is the “you” your loved ones know–or, indeed, even want.

I do wonder if I’ve failed as an ally, in the sense of, I liked supporting the team so much that I joined it.  Of course, some of us go far longer without realizing that our affinity for a certain group may run deeper than just really, really liking civil rights.  “Gosh,” I used to wonder.  “So many of my friends are queer.  They seem to really understand my struggles in a way that some of my other friends just don’t.”  Did this clue me in?  No, not really.  Social conditioning–especially what you’ve been taught to believe about yourself–can be a bitch to get over.

It took me a long time, too, to realize that being married to a man didn’t mean I had to turn in my queer card.  I remember, years ago–in high school, actually–a friend came out and before I could stop myself I blurted, “I know.”  He immediately wanted to know why, if I’d known, I hadn’t told him!  A reaction I didn’t understand at the time but do now.  I think we’d all–regardless of our orientation–be pleased as punch if validation just arrived, like an acceptance letter from Hogwart’s.  You are this.  You are wanted here.  This is a place where people like you already are and with whom, even if you all hate each other, you can still be confident that you belong.

Found on the interwebz, proper credit needed.

Especially growing up in a cult conservative Christian environment, there’s such a strong focus on appearances.  It’s “okay” (relatively speaking) if you’re gay, so long as you pass as straight.  Plenty of people are closeted.  So if you manage to successfully marry someone of the opposite sex there’s this sense of relief from your peers like, you made it.  You jumped over that viper pit and landed safely on the other side.  There’s really no room for, “but I also like women.”

Your identity is entirely circumscribed by what some random group of white men–and yes, they are all white and they are all men–have decided is “okay.”  There’s no point in celebrating any aspect of yourself if you aren’t planning on acting on it, and since acting on it is a one way ticket to Hell why would you?

And forget trans.  Or even gender nonconforming.  Girls can’t even wear pants.  Pants, just pants, are considered a dangerous foray into the masculine.  Into the prohibited.  Wear pants too often, and you might decide that you want to do something other than cook and clean.

So saying, even to yourself, not only do I want to wear pants, I don’t want to wear skirts is like OH MY GOD.  At this point, my hair is an inch long all over my head.  Plus green.  A delightful mix of Manic Panic’s Atomic Turquoise and Enchanted Forest.  You should try it sometime.  I know perfectly well that however much I claimed to love Jesus, or wanted to get to know Him better (which I don’t, because I’m all set with Christianity, but this is a hypothetical situation), I wouldn’t be allowed into the building.

“I am going to remain married to this individual man, because I love this individual man and more than that, consider him my soulmate, but I am also going to cut off my hair and wear men’s clothes because, separate and apart from any relationship, that’s my identity” isn’t a thing in fundamentalist Christianity.

You have to, in essence, choose your “straight form” and then, making matters that much worse, ensure that “straight” comports with highly rigid, stereotype-based gender roles that have nothing to do with expressing your own individuality (which is sinful) and everything to do with proving that the church’s stance on marriage and family is correct.  I’d say “antiquated,” but that wouldn’t be accurate.  Because these ideas, and the fears behind them, are actually pretty recent.

A year ago, I wasn’t there yet.  I’m still not there yet.  But I’m a lot further along from where I was.

That love isn’t about genitals but about hearts is, sadly, something that many in my life have yet to learn.

It’s perhaps impossible to write romance, or write stories, however horrifying, with a romantic component and not consider these issues.  But, by the same token, there’s only so much real life change a person can take before they’re forced to reevaluate.

A year ago, I was sitting in this spot, on this porch (although in a different chair), writing the first draft of The Prince’s Slave and wondering anxiously whether anyone would like The White Queen.  Which was released last August 26.  It’s a scary thing, a sequel.

Now, I’m working on The Black Prince.  I think it’s some of my best writing to date.  As a writer, you can’t help but see yourself in your work, see the chronology of your life played out in thousands of pages.  Couplings, uncouplings, births and deaths and new chairs all influence your thought process.  Each book is its own life form, sprung from a well deep inside that nothing can touch, but it’s also a record of daily existence.  Like in Plato’s Cave, the ultimate truth of your story is brought into shareable consciousness through the medium of you, the writer.  The imperfect, shadowed medium.

Ever changing.

Cheers to another year.

Last Day For Free Porn!

Remember, this is the last day (for awhile, at least) that The Prince’s Slave is free for Kindle.  This book is obviously a sex fest, but it’s also about much more: about change, and growth and, dare I use the term, redemption.  There’s enough billionaire BDSM out there to last me, and everyone else a lifetime.  I wanted to write something real.

If exotic locations and existential angst aren’t really your bag, then probably isn’t the book for you.  The Prince’s Slave, like several of my books, focuses in part on the experience of being a fish out of water; in Ash’s case, an Indian who is both proud of his heritage and at war with the culture that it’s produced.  At war with himself.  And Belle…well, you’ll see.

Why do half my characters appear to be from Gujarat?  Well, you’ll have to draw your own conclusions about that one.  But in the meantime, I have to get back to writing…

Wherein Fox Comes Out

My biological mother, who I lived with off and on until she ultimately kicked me out for failing to meet her expectations of what a child should be, used to ignore my pleas to shop in the boy’s section and call myself by a different name.  My birth name, which has several strikes against it, has since been changed.  Because, as I was first told in foster care but didn’t truly realize until long after I was officially an adult, your name is something you can change.  And, more than that, you deserve a name that suits you.  That represents, to you, who you both truly are and what you wish to become.

Instead, she exclaimed over how much I “loved” dressed and other stereotypically “girl” things.  Talk about dysphoria.  Who I was–who my friends knew I was, who I knew I was–didn’t exist in my family’s eyes.  My interests, my very personality was invisible.  The person they interacted with–the only person they interacted with–was a pretty, popular, what 90’s movies would call a “cheerleader type” who just loved pink.

What they had was a chunky, stringy-haired goth who felt increasingly like a failure for wanting to be herself.

Who was told by family members, most notably her grandmother, to just “close off” that part of herself–the part that laughed at subversive jokes, the part that couldn’t stop seeing truth, the part that wanted to write–and “let it die away.”  If I were “nicer” and “sweeter,” my family reasoned–i.e. if I’d only turn into a different person–then they could love me.  “Unconditional love” meant, in my family, explicitly, that you had to earn love by being a certain way.  “I wanted to love you unconditionally” my aunt told me once, without irony, “but you made that impossible by being different.”

“Nicer” and “sweeter” had nothing to do with it.

My mother used to tell me all the time how it was “such a relief” that she “knew” I wasn’t gay.  She was firmly of the belief, by her own admission, that you could–to use her exact word–“brainwash” people into being a certain way.  When I started to show signs of the dreaded “gay,” like preferring woodworking to–I don’t know, whatever straight girls are supposed to do according to this fucked up logic–I was treated to the delight known as “reparative therapy.”  Wherein I was told that my “problem” stemmed from having too many male friends and role models.

I’ve never felt the need to “come out” before, because pretty much everyone who knows me in real life is…not confused.  Although I myself, at times, have been confused.  I’ve had to work through a lot of religious and, for lack of a better term, “rule book” baggage to get to this point.  But I like both boys and girls, and I don’t really identify as either.

I’m extraordinarily happily married to my best friend, who is to me the most attractive–physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually–person in the whole world.  He’s the real life inspiration behind many of my romantic leads and certainly the love in all my books.  He’s who first taught me about love and, through him, I’ve discovered what real love is.  So when people tell me that fairy tales aren’t real, I disbelieve.

Being bisexual doesn’t mean that you can’t tell the difference between boys and girls or that you aren’t capable of fully loving either.  A commitment to a partner is still a commitment and fidelity has never been about lack of options–which is true whether you’re gay, straight or purple.  To say that, because you also fantasize about women, you can’t be ecstatically, head over heels in love with a man is like saying that no straight up, 100% straight person can ever find love because there are other straight people wandering about.

Love is love and people are people and some people, too, find that this whole “pick a gender” thing doesn’t work so well for them.  I use female pronouns and am (more or less) happy with my body the way it is, although the longer I’m around the more I realize that “female,” as a term, feels really limiting.  Gender just…isn’t relevant to me.  Not with regard to me, and not with regard to anyone else.

For the longest time, I had no idea that this was recognized set of feelings, for which there was a recognized term.  That anyone else felt the same way, or could.  I just felt defective.

My desire to have a relationship with my family–which never acknowledged their lack of desire to have anything to do with me–my own ignorance, stemming in part from a cult-like upbringing, all of it left me confused.  Which is why I ultimately decided to write this post.  Not to tell anyone who knows me anything they don’t already know (to them, this is probably going to read like the article where Ann Burrell was “outed”), but to tell you, readers who don’t know me and who maybe are struggling with some of the same things, that it does get better.

“It gets better” might, to some, seem like an overused phrase but it’s a sentiment that, in the lives of many, is absent.  And even if it’s heard, the belief in its truth is absent.  How can things possibly get better, when your very existence is wrong?

We all know of traditionally gay, or traditionally straight, or traditionally male, or traditionally female people for whom it got better.  Whether they’re celebrities like Dan Savage or people at work.  A lot of people have overcome a lot and that’s great; this isn’t a competition.  Transpeople are becoming more visible, too; but what if you’re less like Jazz Jennings, confident in her identity since the age of three, and more like…you just don’t know?

You don’t have to know.  As one of my favorite people pointed out once, not too long ago, you’ll always have haters.  But the people who love you, will love you no matter what.

I don’t, at this point, know how to label myself.  I don’t know that labels even matter.  I do know that the courage of the friends and role models in my life has helped me to be more open and honest with myself.  To begin to love myself enough to believe that I deserve this openness and honesty.  So if you relate to this, please know that I am happy.  That the lack of labels doesn’t mean the lack of opportunities and this journey doesn’t have to start and finish within a week.

Or even within a year, or a decade.  The people who love you, will still love you.  And the people who, after meeting the authentic you, can’t bring themselves to love you anymore…yes, that hurts.  The loss leaves a void.  A void which, in time, you’ll realize isn’t a void at all but a space for opportunity.  To welcome new people, places, and things.

New loves.  New passions.  New ideas.

Your journey is your life.

If you need help, please visit translifeline.org and the It Gets Better Project.

The Omnibus is OUT!

The Prince’s Slave, omnibus edition is out now.

Finally, the entire book in one place!  No more cliffhangers!  You can read the first five chapters here.

Wherein Fox Smells

A few weeks ago, I decided to go natural.

Well, not too natural.  I still wax.  But spend enough time learning about pretty much any ingredient of our modern world and you’ll realize, as a doctor friend of mine likes to joke, that it can probably give you cancer.  She, herself went through a natural deodorant phase before concluding that the resultant smell was unfair both to her and her coworkers.  Not every hill is–hopefully metaphorically–worth dying on.

Balance.  Organic strawberries.  Right.

Even so, I–for reasons I can’t even explain to myself right now, dear reader, let alone to you–decided that I absolutely must greet our first real heat wave of the summer with an aluminum free deodorant.  Hundred degree weather and unrestrained sweat?  What could possibly go wrong?

It turns out–and, again, I’m putting myself through the torture of these experiments, not to mention the shame of recounting their results, so you don’t have to–that the smell was the least of my problems.

The first product I tried was Tom’s of Maine Long Lasting Men’s Deodorant in the alluringly titled “mountain spring.”  Now I am a woman, not a man.  But I think gendered products (with the exception of tampons) are stupid.  And this one was the best deal on Prime.

It smelled…okay.  But not only did it not work, I swear it made me sweatier.  And the smell of my pits was significantly worse, with this product, than it was without it.  Now you may be remembering the earlier part of this post and thinking “heat wave,” but I spent my first day with this product sitting at a desk, writing, in air conditioned splendor.  After an hour of writing I smelled like I’d just run a marathon through sun-baked goat urine and that is not what’s supposed to happen.

So clearly, I did the only intelligent thing and tried a different Tom’s product.  After giving “mountain spring” a few more days to not work, during which my family gave me a wide berth.  Let me tell you, this is the product to try if you want to bring a complete halt to your sex life.  I like to fondly refer to it as man/woman away.

The “honeysuckle rose” variety didn’t work either, and made my pits swell up like balloons.  I don’t have particularly sensitive skin, either.  Seriously.  They hurt.

After the swelling went down, I tried Weleda’s Wild Rose Deodorant.  It comes in a spray, that never dries.  Weleda is a name I’m familiar with; I have a general sense of fondness for their products.  My son uses their toothpaste.  But…oh sweet Gods above.  It gave me hives.  Hives.  Terrible, massive, “itchy” is like describing a gunshot wound as a slight inconvenience-level hives.  My arms didn’t lower correctly for two days.

So then I tried Green Tidings.  It came in a nice lavender scent.  I like lavender and grow quite a bit of it in my home, an herb with a storied medicinal history.  Lavender is a great natural antiseptic and, while some people have been known to experience an allergic reaction (lavender is part of the mint family and some are allergic, just as some are allergic to onions) I’d never had a problem before.  Indeed found lavender quite calming to my very, very occasionally irritated skin.

I will say this for Green Tidings: it does work.  By, apparently, irradiating your pits.  You can’t stink there if there’s no skin left.  And no, I’m not exaggerating.  I got a serious chemical burn from this stuff.  Serious enough that some treatment was required.

Anecdotally, lavender oil is supposed to be good for burns (although please, for heaven’s sake, consult a real medical doctor if something is wrong with you as blogs are not medical advice).  But I’ve had serious burns, puncture wounds, and I like ink.  Getting my spine inked did not hurt as much as this.  Not to mention, when I revealed the affected skin to my husband, he almost passed out.  So, handily, I probably won’t be sweating too much for the rest of the summer.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

If you’re considering one, then I wish you well on your organic journey.  But, as I pointed out to my husband, terms like “vegan” and “organic” don’t confer the free pass that some people think.  Belladonna (and other fun poisons, too, like cyanide) are organic.  Check out The Poison Garden for more fun thoughts on this matter.  After all, as I’m fond of pointing out in my history-heavy books, people have been killing each other with plants, and quite successfully, for thousands of years.  We don’t need Montesanto to be stupid.

So after concluding that, screw the horrible smells–and they were horrible smells–hives and chemical burns weren’t actually improving my health as much as advertised, I returned to an old classic: Dove.

Or will, when it’s safe to use deodorant again.

Fantasy-Faction Reviews ‘Exile: The Book of Ever’

pjfoxwrites:

Mr. PJ’s book!

Originally posted on James Cormier:

The award-winning fantasy website Fantasy-Faction reviewed Exile: The Book of Ever Part 1 and liked it!  The review was part of Mark Lawrence’s Great Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (#SPFBO), an ongoing tournament-style competition where a number of well-known genre websites review and choose the best of a long list of self-published fantasy novels.  Sonia Grace of Fantasy-Faction gave Exile 3.5 out of 5 stars, and had this, among other things, to say:

James Cormier’s Exile pleasantly surprised me…Cormier’s story grabbed my attention right away, and within a chapter I realized that I’d be reading the whole thing without putting it down.

…

The writing was solid and the characters had distinct voices and personalities. I loved the post-apocalyptic setting in particular; it was well thought out and well executed. I hope that in future books we learn more about the history of what actually caused the collapse of the world…

View original 61 more words

Coming In August

 

The omnibus.  All three volumes in the series in one place.  The dark, disturbing retelling of Beauty and the Beast that, I like to think, only I could imagine.  Fairy tales are cautionary tales, which I think people sometimes forget.  But, at the same time, they’re also meant to teach.  And they can–just like much of modern horror–impart a message of hope.  Read the blurb here.

To My Naked Neighbor

Dear Naked Neighbor, Who Lives Down The Street,

I know you’re trying to sell your house.  I commend you in that endeavor.  But you shouldn’t do it naked.

When you tack the “open house” sign over your equally slipshod “for sale by owner” sign, the one that’s been lopsidedly decorating your yard now for months, you do so to attract strangers.  Total and complete strangers.  Who may not wish to enter a dimly lit house on a quiet residential street, where there isn’t much through traffic, to be in the company of a naked man.  Approaching up the path, imagine their shock when their eyes lift to the front door and there you are, arms crossed and man-flag flying as you survey the scene.

This may, in fact, make them leave.

Oh, Naked Neighbor, please conduct open houses with your clothes on.

I know, you know, we all know that you like to be nude.  Because, like the rest of the neighborhood, I’ve seen you relaxing on your front stoop in full view of God and country, beer in hand.  Just about the only activity I haven’t seen you conduct nude is mowing the lawn, which might possibly be because you don’t mow the lawn.  Potentially you fear to do any activity with your clothes on, and thus are concerned about grass clippings.  They do itch.

But even if you looked like Channing Tatum, which you don’t, I wouldn’t take advantage of your open house.

Sincerely,

That Commie Pinko Liberal You Flip The Double Eagle At

Things I Wish My (Trans) Friends Knew

Welcome to (out) womanhood!

Now, you know and I know that you’ve always been a woman but the rest of the world is only starting to recognize you as such.  Which is both a boon and a curse.  You’re finally getting to live life as your authentic self, but, as you’re also discovering, this world is a tough place to be a woman.  Yes, discovering, even if you thought you understood before.  Because it’s one thing to witness something and quite another, of course, to experience it firsthand.  You’re going to discover, and discover, and keep discovering, and it’s going to be wonderful and it’s also going to suck.  This is about more than saying goodbye to male privilege.  Which, for some, is finally only recognized in the missing.  You get to deal with everything from slut shaming to body hair.  Copious amounts of body hair.  Talk about adding insult to injury.

It’s also about confusion.  I’ve listened to so many girlfriends talk about these, and other, issues and worry that they’re experiencing what they are because they’re not fully accepted as women.  But I’m here to tell you that it’s because they–you–are.

Now I’m not denying the issue of prejudice.  Transwomen face a wildly disproportionate threat of violence and every educated person knows this.  No, what I’m talking about is much more mundane.  Public spaces are men’s spaces.  “Street harassment is part of a larger system wherein men feel entitled to comment on women’s bodies based on their appearance and mannerisms.”  Just being out and about makes you vulnerable, because by leaving the house you’re tacitly agreeing to a certain amount of objectification.  Which means that whether you’re trans or cis, everyone and their uncle feels free to comment on how much of a woman you are.  Cis women get told that they’re failing at being a woman all the time.

It would be great if being a woman meant being accepted as a woman, but–to much of the population–it doesn’t.  This has absolutely nothing to do with your genitals and everything to do with how our society as a whole thinks about women.  Women–all women–are “supposed” to be a certain way.  To conform to certain standards, both of appearance and behavior.  Cis women get told to lose weight, gain weight, get bigger boobs, get smaller boobs, wear more makeup, wear less makeup, and look less mannish.  Look at Serena Williams: the biggest insult any of the media pundits can come up with is that she looks like a man.  She’s cis; no one is criticizing her genitals.  Rather, they’re criticizing her right to self identify as a woman, because she fails to honor society’s rules about what does and does not constitute femininity.

If you’re used to being misidentified as a man, then entering this new sphere is going to be quite shocking.  And probably frightening.  You’re going from being perceived as a co-owner of public spaces, and of the right to categorize women, to being categorized.  But until our society learns how to respect women as equals, you’re going to experience this kind of thing.  Not because you’re not passing (and I hate that term, for all that it implies, but I haven’t yet come up with a better one) but because you are.

Again, this is not to dismiss violence specifically directed against transwomen but to highlight the violence that all women face, both direct and indirect.  Physical assault, both sexually motivated and otherwise, but also the more passive and pervasive forms, like catcalling and slut shaming.  All women experience a degree of violence in their lives and this is wrong.

Fortunately–or unfortunately–many of the problems (all) women face are a lot more mundane.

Like facial hair.

This is another wonderful aspect of womanhood that bonds you with your cisgendered friends.  All women have facial hair.  Up to 30% of cisgendered women grow beards.  Yes, really.  I have quite a voluminous beard, myself, that I wax regularly.  And I’ve given several of my girlfriends (cis and trans) advice on how to remove theirs.  I am a veritable walking encyclopedia of hair removal techniques.

Don’t be afraid to ask your cis friends for help!  If you’re experiencing something horrible–whether it’s chin hair, crotch sweat or sore nipples–don’t assume that this is some kind of trans-only problem.  Chances are, it’s not.  And there’s no sense in continuously reinventing the wheel.  But even if it is a trans-only problem, women as a group love discussing problems.  The grosser, the better.  Not every woman is going to face the same set of challenges, of course, but that’s what makes life–and conversations–interesting.  We learn from each other, our friendships deepen, and so does our character.

Which is important, ’cause you’re going to need that honesty when it comes to…clothes shopping.  And dating, and other, more serious issues, too.  But if, as I’ve heard said, honesty is the highest form of intimacy, then get ready for a love fest.  Men’s sizes are pretty standardized.  Women’s…aren’t.  Women’s clothes are, I’m pretty sure, are designed to make women of all shapes and sizes feel horrible about themselves.  If you’re tall, like I am (5’9), then you have to be a US 6 or smaller or you can’t buy pants.  And if you’re short, you must be fat.  Either that or a US 00.  All women are apparently supposed to have small feet, too.

So if you leave the mall feeling like a hulking, disgusting man-ogre, know that you’re not alone!  We all do.  Especially us tall girls.

There are going to be guys, who’ll seem like they really like you and then take you out and tell you they don’t like you halfway through the date.  Or maybe it’ll seem like you had a great time and they’ll never call again.  Maybe it’ll be because of your genitals or maybe it’ll be because of some other shallow thing or maybe you’ll never find out at all.  When I was a US 4, in college, someone I met at a party told me he liked me okay but “wouldn’t date obese girls.”  I, and friends of mine, were constantly told things like, that we’d be dateable if we learned to shut up.  There’s a whole subset of the (male and female) population out there who live for explaining to others, in lurid and crushing detail, what’s wrong with them.

Forget them.

You don’t owe anyone anything.  The fact that you’re trans (or anything else) doesn’t obligate you to “understand” other people’s prejudices.  You don’t deserve less, simply because someone in your life wants to convince you that you do.  You are perfect just the way you are.  Learn to respect yourself enough to walk away from any person, place or thing that no longer serves you.  If you aren’t being treated with love and respect, continuously and reliably, by the people in your life, then check your proverbial “price tag.”  Have you marked yourself into the bargain bin?

It’s you who tells people, by how you treat yourself and how you allow yourself to be treated, what your worth is.  Ill-fitting clothes or catcalling men or transphobic lunatics can hurt your feelings, but they can’t make you worth less.  So climb out of that bargain bin!

What it means to be a woman varies from woman to woman.  There is, despite what certain, rather backward, elements of our society might claim.  You’re a woman if you self-identify as a woman.  Your genitals don’t make you one, and neither does a pair of high-heeled shoes.  Makeup and long hair don’t make you a woman.  And neither does others’ approval.  Because trust me, if being a woman had, as a requirement, living up to society’s standards of womanhood, none of the women I know in real life would qualify.  I certainly wouldn’t.

And you know what?

That’s okay.