we’re either wrong or we’re right

[sophiaserpentia]

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

I have a feeling that there is going to be an intense blogosphere backlash over the cancellation of the showing of “the Gendercator” at a GLBT film festival a couple of weeks ago, and just today, of Bitch’s performance at the Boston Dyke March.

It is being said that this is our doing. Or, if it isn’t our direct doing, it is our indirect doing because transfolk have colonized the lesbian community so thoroughly that lesbians now regularly act against their own interests and uphold surgically-altered men over their own kind.

Well, maybe. Or maybe it’s just that we’re… well… you know… kinda… a little bit… sorta… right. In which case, lesbians (and the rest of the queer community) have been colonized with the truth.

Either possibility has the power to explain both the Gendercator incident and the Dyke March incident.

The first position relies on the presumption that our experience is delusional, or that we have misinterpreted our experience or have been misled by others for their gain, or, worst yet, that our motivations are base or even downright evil. Did i miss any possibilities? So at the outset, we are wrong either because we are crazy, or because we are ill-informed and manipulated, or because we are evil.The first position erases what we have to say about our lives and the only strategies that come even close to dulling the pain we feel; the first position starts by silencing us, and goes on from there to demonize us.

If you think i’m crazy, or manipulated, or evil, what won’t you believe i am capable of?

If we’re right, then the matter is simple; it is simply the truth tending to win out. But our detractors hold that we are wrong; and, see, for a wrong idea to flourish and spread, it must be propped up by some form of injustice.  To maintain the insistance that we are wrong and they are right, they must offer increasingly sinister explanations for the flourishing of our viewpoint.

It might be that many in the queer community judge us to be not crazy, nor manipulated, nor evil. It might be that after hearing us describe what we have to go through to get through the day, that they listen and even come to feel compassion towards us. It might be that they think our detractors see the world in terms that are too simplistic. It might be that they have come to understand that it is wrong to silence and marginalize us (or themselves, or anyone). And if that’s the case, maybe the natural thing to do is to stand with us in solidarity against people who go out of their way to say things which hurt us.

As i told another galla today, someone i consider a close friend, these incidents suggest that, in the queer community, transfolk aren’t the underdog any longer. I want to sit with that thought for a moment. It’s not that we’ve “won,” but that we are actually respected by our friends and peers. It’s not my desire to see anyone’s contributions cut down and to that extent i’m sad about what happened to Catherine Crouch and to Bitch. Maybe we can make some good come from these events by having some discourse on how we can respect the voices and experiences of transpeople while at the same time allowing voices of controversy or unpopular inquiry.

And hopefully that will give us the chance to move on and take on our real foes for a change instead of spending so much energy arguing with ourselves.