After writing yesterday's post, I noticed something interesting, at least to me.
I began this blog twelve years ago. You might say that I spun it off from an earlier blog, Transwoman Times. I started that blog a year before my gender-affirmation surgery and continued it for several years after. About a year after my surgery, I--and at least one reader--noticed that I was also writing about my rides and bikes, and cycling in general. I didn't think bikes or cycling were out of place in TT: After all, they--and the fact that I couldn't ride for a few months after my surgery--were an important part of my gender affirmation process, as they have been in my life.
After I started this blog, I wrote less about cycling-related stuff on TT. So, perhaps not surprisingly, I found myself posting less on that site as I had less and less to say about my gender affirmation. That is to say, rather than a process of affirmation, my gender identity became a fact of my life.
But now I find that I'm writing more about, if not gender-related topics, then political, social and cultural issues, on this blog. Those subjects are, of course, related to cycling, especially if it's your primary or a major means of transportation. You know that from my rants about bicycle "infrastructure" planned, designed and built by people who haven't been on a bicycle since the day they got their driver's licenses.
I also, however, see that gender-related issues are "creeping" into this blog. In one way it seems ironic, or at least odd: Am I coming full-circle (or cycle)?, I wonder. Then again, this shift in focus, if indeed this blog is moving in that direction, is a fulfillment of what I say in my masthead: I am--as always--a woman on a bicycle--and something else I say in my profile--this is a blog by a transgender woman.
While I haven't posted on Transwoman Times in a while, I have no plans to let this blog lie fallow. I just hope that the twists and turns of this blog, and my journey, continue to interest you, and others. But I must warn you: I won't stop being "political." I can't.
