affinity language

Originally published at Monstrous Regiment. You can comment here or there.

I’ve written a bit in the last few months about affinity politics and how it differs from identity politics.  This morning i was thinking about the language we use and how it affects the way we think about identity, affinity, and “who” or “what” people are.

Take the term “LGBTIQQ:” Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Questioning, and Queer.  This term has grown like a snowball because of attempts by activists to grow a coalition from scratch.  It started out as “Gay and Lesbian,” which (anyone alive during the 1970’s can tell you) was not always an obvious alliance.  The other terms were added as the coalition grew, in recognition of affinity between various groups, and to prevent re-invention of the wheel with regards to addressing similar political needs.

But the term feels unwieldy now because the community is changing its approach from identity politics to coalition of affinity.  If we want to be more inclusive, we can’t just keep tacking letters on (how about a P for polyamorous and a K for kinky too?).  Yet if more people join the movement, they deserve to be recognized somehow.  (At the same time, a danger here is that the needs of some of us could be lost in the wash — see Marti’s posts on the Transadvocate main page for insight about this.)

The difference between affinity and identity could be compared to the difference between analog and digital.  “Analog” looks at the world and sees continuous spectra; “digital” breaks the world down into discrete, distinct units. “Digital” makes it possible to condense information, but a lot of information is lost in the process.

The human brain looks for shortcuts.  It prefers digital over analog because categories make it possible to make decisions and draw conclusions without having to juggle a lot of possibly irrelevant information.  But when we do this to a person, we write over a lot of who that person is, and draw a lot of conclusions, possibly incorrect, about what they are like or what they think based on just a small amount of knowledge about them.

Our brains learn to break people down in a very digital way: “man” vs. “woman,” “gay” vs. “bi” vs. “straight:” distinct categories which we speak of as attributes that a person “is.” This leaves no room for contrary information (”How can he be ‘gay’ if he’s dating a woman?”) and it leaves no room for change (”You’re dating a man? I thought you were a lesbian.”)

We meet someone and then file away in our brain that this person “is a gay man” or a “is a straight woman.”  And then whenever we think about that person we pull whatever thoughts go along with “gay man” or “straight woman” and, accurate or not, apply those thoughts to that person and even write them as expectations of that person. We also treat these people according to the rules and dictates of society, many of which depend on this categorization of people.

Earlier forms of the liberation movement have reacted to this treatment by questioning the stereotypes without questioning the identity.  Affinity coalition is the next obvious step: questioning the discreteness of identity. It’s helpful to be able to describe where we are in our lives right now without having to be saddled with an identity forever and ever; a lot of these things change. Indeed, liberation depends on the loosening of categories just as much as it depends on the loosening of categorical expectation.

A few people around me have taken to describing themselves using numbers along the Kinsey spectrum rather than say they are “gay,” “lesbian,” “bi,” “straight,” “pansexual,” or what have you.  And they might say, “At this point in my life i am a Kinsey 3, but when i just entered adulthood i was a pretty firm Kinsey 0.”  Being able to express this variance-over-life is important because it helps to reduce the chance that someone will assign us to one category for life (and then have to deal with dissonance when we change). I’ve also heard the word “spectrum” being used to refer loosely to categories of people: for example, “female spectrum” as a term loosely referring to anyone who feels they are anywhere on the female side of totally androgynous.

I think this is a step in the right direction, but i wonder if terms like “spectrum” aren’t inherently dualistic.  We often think of a spectrum as a range going from A to B, and so i wonder if it’s still too easy to fall into dualistic or digital thinking.

To this end i pondered a number of other possible terms, which do not necessarily imply linearity: cluster, community, constellation, galaxy, nebula, orbit, set, sphere, universe, web.   Another factor is, if i use the term outside this journal, someone would have to intuitively know what i mean; this rules out some of the terms above.

I think i like “galaxy.”  If i were to say “the MTF galaxy” versus “the MTF spectrum,” you’d know roughly what i meant.

“bad idea,” part 2

Originally published at Monstrous Regiment. You can comment here or there.

Last week i wrote a long post in response to the online posting of an essay by Dr. Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins. Then yesterday i encountered again the idea of ‘autogynephilia’ among transsexual women, this time in the context of J. Michael Bailey’s work.

Yes, THAT J. Michael Bailey. A number of people far more capable, connected, and knowledgeable than i have undertaken the task of demonstrating the holes, shortcuts, and ethical breaches in Bailey’s research, so i’m going to take a different tack — to explore the subtext and presumption behind this controversy.

When i wrote that post my reaction was fueled by indignation at seeing my life and experiences, and those of many people i care about, reduced to something immoral and pathological. But my reaction assumes the same moralistic paradigm. To respond properly, i need to take that paradigm head-on because i believe that moralism and respectability were self-servingly constructed in order to suppress dissent and oppress minorities. Indeed, we gallae know this well; the iconic story of our life is to have fingers pointed at us in accusation by the very same men who accepted our favors the night before. We, being visible, cannot hide behind the notion of respectability which allows people of privilege to hide from accountability for their deeds.

‘Autogynephilia’ is a model promoted by Ray Blanchard, who coined the term; Michael Bailey, who promoted it; and Anne Lawrence, a post-op TS who lends legitimacy and the weight of further research. The word was defined by Ray Blanchard as “a man’s paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman.”

Look at that definition. The real meaning, which all but literally drips from this statement, is, essentially, “They’re being naughty.” And furthermore, the arguments made by Blanchard, Bailey, Lawrence, McHugh, et al., is that sex-reassignment therapy is a misuse of the medical profession’s sway over the public to promote naughtiness; that transsexual women (where are the transmen in all of this? nonexistent of course) cause psychiatrists and surgeons to be unwitting participants in the acting out of their sexual fantasy.

It’s a funny thing, arousal. In my time, i’ve toyed with the idea that arousal is one of the body’s ways of telling us that something is good or right. I can lay beside my partner, or walk down the street holding her hand, and feel my flesh get warm and tingly, you know, down there; i’ve even heard that women sometimes feel arousal when breastfeeding their child. Affection and breastfeeding are good, and if they should be accompanied by arousal, why should we conclude that there is suddenly something immoral going on? Why shouldn’t the body be able to respond positively to encourage us to seek more of something, when after all, the body is also capable of reacting with physical repulsion or sickness?

This doesn’t mean that arousal is always good or right. But maybe, even just sometimes, it can be a reflection that we are doing something right.

Furthermore, and here’s the point i am really heading towards: even if some or most of us do happen to be aroused at some point in conjunction with of our transition, it does not necessarily follow that transition is therefore invalid, or improper, or unhealthy. It does not mean we are lying when we say it is what we need.

I find particularly moving this essay by Margaret McGhee, who was a participant in a now-defunct online autogynephilia support group. I was going to quote from it, but i’d rather anyone interested just read the essay.

She arrived a conclusion not unlike my own, that gallae live our lives adrift at sea, tossed this way and that by competing ideologies and narratives that silence us and re-write our lives in their image. There is not a single paradigm for answering the “transsexual problem,” but there are instead numerous competing narratives. If we live our lives in resonance with one, we run afoul of another; there is no way to win. In the spaces between competing paradigms, our lives, our bodies, our minds, even our sexual favors, are bargaining chips.

An underlying implication of this conflict is that gallae are not allowed to be aroused. This is a running theme: it is a likely reaction to medicines and surgery; it is a prominent theme in many a galla’s sex life and is often found in galla-objectifying pornography; and then we see moralistic, pathologizing condemnation like this if it does occur. Sexual arousal is the prerogative of the ruling class.