You do not see me . . .

Like an avatar in many ways, this body of mine is fundamentally constructed to allow what I am a visible embodiment, a “place,” a both physical and metaphysical point of reference that is at peace with the consciousness that inhabits it and the world through which it moves. Indeed, I now have the oddest of relationships with it. As I experience it, no one part of it is any more or less sacred than any other part. Aspects of it are indeed “prosthetic” as they are constructed to simulate what our species finds familiar in the natal female form.

In quite detached fashion, I regard it holistically such that I am often tempted to disrobe fully to answer the prurient and the thoughtless – arms wide in challenge, “this is who I am unashamed.” Note my avatar’s form, the swelling fullness of my hips, my full breasts, the face whose features are softened and realigned, the softness of my skin, the subtle distribution of subcutaneous fat, my vagina where, how and as it should be. It is at once crisply articulate and in the same breath warmly sensual. I feel, I sense with this body and I hide behind nothing.

Unashamed in my nakedness, I am fully what I am – complete. It is “me” of course, but it is also an implied challenge to you, to all who behold me. – For you play out your fears and violence upon my body. In our culture’s enslavement to the stultifying concept of gender, we do not “see” each other. Our imaginations are so limited and our prejudice so clumsily and painfully evident that we cannot help but attach our value judgments unbidden upon the bodies of others. You take from me, assigning meaning from what you have appropriated from a place of almost complete ignorance. I would have you “know” me rather than stumbling though this life missing entirely the texture and nuance of an existance that is linked both to the spiritual and the physical in a unique singularity.

In my nakedness, I regret nothing that I have done, I do regret that you cannot or will not see me.


Oel ngati kameie . . . I see you


I see myself


Renee Thomas ©2009 All Rights Reserved