I’m not wickedly prolific. I calculated this summer that I type at about the average office speed for a typist working for 4 hours.
I’ve got this friend who is wickedly prolific. She writes romance novels. She puts a new one out every few months to a year.
We’re both writers, and we’ve been in the game for a very long time. Though I can’t say for sure since we never talk about money, I think she might actually make money off her work, though.
It’s sort of always been this way. There have always been office typists putting out poetry or romance novels and receiving more or less acceptance or financial stability from their trade.
I would absolutely love that for myself. I absolutely would love my trade as a writer to be more successful and for my poetry book AZALEAS & Other Edible Flowers to be a big hit, but that is not why I am writing this.
You may be curious why I am opening with this little anecdotal story about me and my romance-writing friend. Because society has always had a place for women and trans people, and it is very difficult to make a living off writing.
Pre-midterm elections, I assessed the chances women and especially trans people stood in this climate and found it very unamusingly ironic to only find corn and a bible near a radical coffeeshop in a little free library’s stock. I quite easily enough recognized the utter transparency in this delivery. You’ve got one of two options here if you are desperate: porn or the churches. They make it so utterly impossible to become independent of abusive familial and state and corporate structures that they literally leave women and trans people with only those two options if they fall on hard times: do a porn or go to God.
I don’t know why women choose to do porn other than that perhaps they feel somehow there is more power or control in being the curator of that narrative than sitting in church with a male god who decides if they get to eat that night. I am fully aware that there is a lot of violence in the porn industry as males often break the rules of engagement and consent. The same goes for being in a church or being a part of a patriarchal household, though. Men are literally deciding if their women get to eat.
This is absolutely unconstitutional as it clearly is not separation of Church from state or industry, and in fact, I would wager that Church has every hand in creating these industries and power dynamics. When literally all the resources that are not purchased by the individual through state funds are run by the churches, it sets up an incredibly abusive system.
State funds are only mildly abusive as they will vary on budgets up to $20 each month, which is a lot of money if you only have $300 for expenses. That’s like $5 less each week toward a grocery bill of $50, which if you have ever had to make a $50 grocery bill stretch in this climate that is actually a feat in itself.
I’m writing this from a position of being extremely underemployed this year. This year is my first year in several that I have actually struggled with resources since I have always worked 2 jobs at a time. I actually find it remarkable how employable I was pre-transition legally and physically. I’m not saying that women are more employable than men in MN because that is certainly not the truth—just walk into any grocery store or look at who is the CEO of almost any company. What I am saying is that I was more employable before I was legally recognized as a male (transexual).
Why am I saying this? Let’s return to the fact that I can actually type at the average office typist rate—not everyone can. I have a higher education degree. I have several years of experience in higher education. Teachers are still considered some of the most formidable leaders and shapers of the most brilliant minds in the country.
Let’s return to what I just emphasized as the problem: I am a transexual. I am a male. I do not have the correct narrative experience in MN for what people want to hire.
They only want to see us in gay porns, mental institutions, or in church pews begging for food. I am not being paid to write this humiliating piece about the culture because they only pay you if they are the ones doing the humiliating. Isn’t that right, women?
Is that a system you want to continue perpetrating?