sophiaserpentia | Entries tagged with gender and sexuality

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.

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.

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

This diatribe by Paul McHugh, at one time Psychiatrist-in-Chief of Johns Hopkins University, against transsexualism is not news. But since encountering the text of it online last week, i have been pondering how to respond. I think the best response i can give is a line-by-line answer.

When the practice of sex-change surgery first emerged back in the early 1970s, I would often remind its advocating psychiatrists that with other patients, alcoholics in particular, they would quote the Serenity Prayer, “God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Where did they get the idea that our sexual identity (“gender” was the term they preferred) as men or women was in the category of things that could be changed?

McHugh is a gender essentialist. That is, he believes that at some point in our early development it is determined that we will be a man or a woman, and once this differentiation occurs it is complete, profound, and eternal. Furthermore, this differentiation is based on externally-verifiable clues; in cases of ambiguity an answer can be imposed on someone by society or by an expert with absolute certainty.

This external imposition has nothing to do with one’s individual experience; experience is squishy, unreliable, not to be trusted. Individual variation is seen as aberrance, which is most properly dealt with by being corrected in accordance with the proscriptive norm. For example, the woman who is not subservient or sufficiently maternal is aberrant and must be corrected.

This position is normative; it breaks the human experience down into categories by which individual experience and performance is given a value judgment as “normal” or “aberrant.” In other words, in the gender-essentialist view of the human condition, you are either a “normal man,” a “normal woman,” an “aberrant man,” or an “aberrant woman.”

This position does not recognize transsexualism. People who report an experience of gender incongruence between their body and mind are aberrant, in that we must be delusional.

Once that the gender essentialist declares that i am delusional, there is nothing i can say to him or her. The gender essentialist, confronted with my account of my experience which cannot be reconciled with his or her belief system, has chosen to resolve the dilemma by putting his or her hand over my mouth. So we know from this that the entire article will consist of speaking at transsexual women rather than speaking with us.

Prepare to be depressed. This is long, so i’m putting it behind a cut.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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

I wrote a filtered post in my LJ about it a couple of years ago, but i haven’t really made it public knowledge that i have an intersex condition. This may come as a surprise, but i don’t actually make it a habit to talk publicly about certain parts of my body. It was diagnosed at birth and i remember when i was eight attending a consultation with a surgeon who talked about ‘correcting’ it surgically.

Yes, i am intersex AND transgender. My secondary sex characteristics are pretty unambiguously male yet my identity is female. But the last couple of days i’ve been pondering the link between these two things.

All my life people have acted as though there is something off about me. Even before i began laser hair removal therapy, it was not uncommon for people i encountered on the street to gender me as female, even if i hadn’t shaved in a week. Then they’d look up at me or look again and ‘correct’ themselves or just look very confused. So, something about me sends ambiguous gender signals to people. I’ve long presumed that maybe i was giving off some kind of unconscious behavioral signal of my feminine gender identity. But what if it’s because i’m intersex?

The gestational estrogen exposure which caused my intersex condition was possibly responsible for the overall female shape of my face and body. People who meet me find it difficult to believe i’ve never taken hormone supplements. My height is about average for a woman, though i have a broad masculine upper body. It’s possible i smell female to myself and others, too; in this regard i’ve heard mixed accounts from different people close to me.

My voice, too, is ambiguous. I have been working with a voice training program my therapist gave me, and while i can speak in female registers without my voice straining or cracking, i have the vocal resonance of a man and comfortably sing tenor. Heck, i could write a long autobiographical post about my voice alone - i have never liked the sound of it and have tended to soften it to the point of whispering - but suffice it to say my voice has never helped convince anyone i was male or female.

I’m going to veer into controversial territory because i’ve been skating on the edge of it anyway. It’s one thing to wonder if my physical ambiguity is due to estrogen exposure during gestation, but quite another thing to wonder if that same exposure affects psychological ambiguity too.

There are those who advocate calling transsexualism an intersex condition. I’m iffy on this for two reasons. First, there is a wide variance in what brings people to where they will say they are transsexual; the desire or need to transition stems from many different things inside many different people, and i’m not comfortable supposing there is one single identifiable root cause.

Second, any proposed causality from biology to psychology is problematic. We can examine the brains of male and female cadavers and find statistical differences between them. But what causes those differences is unclear. Genes paint the shape of the brain in broad brushstrokes; beyond that the brain is shaped by experience. Without clear experimentation (which would be, to say the least, unethical) we don’t really know where to draw the line between nature and nurture.

But as my wife is fond of pointing out, when it comes to treating people with respect it shouldn’t matter whether these things are inborn or cultural. So i am not offering the question of, “Was i born this way?” in the spirit of then saying, “Because if i was born this way, then you should treat me fairly.” You should treat me fairly anyway, even if i have chosen something you don’t like. In the end it’s not scientific evidence that will end discrimination (the anti-gay right has been adjusting their religious argument to accommodate bio-psychological arguments) it is our account of what it is like to be us.

No, i’m just trying to understand why i am the way i am. 37 years of this and i don’t really think i’m any closer to understanding.

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

The officials who run the Miss Spain pageant have changed their eligibility rules so that mothers and transsexual women are allowed to compete.

It’s a strike for… equality?

Won’t it be a shining moment in transgender history when, say, three to five years from now, a galla wins the title of Miss Spain and goes on to have a huge public tussle with the people who run the Miss World pageant?

Eyup, i’m looking forward to it.

It’s kind of sad that the right to be equally objectified alongside women-born-women seems in some ways like a step up. I could write a lot here about the origins of beauty pageants, their fundamental heteronormativity, reinforcement of the male gaze, and, and let’s not forget that modern pageants exist to sell products by bathing suit companies. That stuff is not really what i want to write about today, and it’s easy enough to research if you care.

The average galla, like the average WBW, wants to feel that people think she’s pretty.

I don’t mean “hot” or “doable” or “sexy,” or “i’d hit that.” I’ve been told many times by numerous men that i am an acceptable recipient of their transitory lust — as long as i promise not to say anything to their wives. Few of them bothered to waste the air it would have taken to call me pretty.

So at this point in life i am not concerned about whether or not someone will invite me to bed. But do they think i’m pretty?

Prettiness is… i don’t know. I shouldn’t call it “validation.” It’s more a kind of acceptance, a kind i’ve been starved for my whole life.

I don’t know whether it’s something we’re taught while we’re growing up or if it’s just a reflection of a natural desire to belong and be accepted. It doesn’t matter; either way, it’s too often used as a way to manipulate girls.

It’s not that i think it would confirm that i’m a woman to be told i’m pretty. But most girls, i suppose, are told at least a few times while they’re growing up that they’re pretty; but your average galla, at least those my age, were never told it.

I think my mom said it to me once when i was 14, or at least something to similar effect. I had come out to her, and at first she kind of freaked out. One night, though, she showed me how to brush out a wig, and gave me a few other pointers on dressing and presenting a bit more femininely.

How can i express what that felt like after 14 years of being firmly repressed?

And how do i square this up with what many of my feminist friends have told me, of how it was drilled in their heads non-stop from the time they were small that they had to spend a lot of their time primping so they would look pretty? It is no surprise when WBW meet gallae and hear us “squee” because someone told us we’re pretty, and conclude that we’ve just bought into the social superficial nonsense surrounding femininity and have no idea what it’s really like. I can’t blame them; they were overdosed on the thing which we were starved of, and not only does either treatment make us all pliable it also divides us, causes us to mistrust each other.

Honestly, i don’t find it ‘liberating’ to spend more time in the morning making myself presentable, or to pay thousands of dollars (and cry many tears) to have facial hair removed so i will be more acceptably pretty. But it is ‘freeing’ in the sense that it means i do not have to continue to abide by the course that was set for me by god and country during the first two decades of my life. From my perspective, it more closely resembles the freedom to live life on my own terms.

I am jumping from the fire into the frying pan.

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

A few days ago i described the amazing energy i feel whenever i’m around young queer people. There’s a vibrancy there that brightens the day and gives me hope.

But i’m also very worried because queer youth are in deep trouble. If you’re young, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, you’re in crisis. I’m especially concerned about young people of color in our community.

Statistics. They never tell the whole story, but pretend i’m writing about real people here:

83% of queer youth experience damage to their property, personal attacks, or verbal insults. (83%? Just pretend this refers to every young queer person you meet and you would basically be right.)
40% of queer youth experience physical harassment.
26% are forced out of their homes due to conflicts with parents and family over sexual identity. That’s one in four. I’m sure that’s what Jesus really wanted, right — your kid on the streets?
Between 25-40% of homeless youth are queer. Since queer people make up somewhere around 5% of the population, this means that a queer young person is five to eight times as likely to wind up homeless than a straight young person.
Homeless queer youth are often prostituted, and face discrimination in the shelter system. Only a few small shelters have been designed to meet the needs of homeless queer youth.
The hate-murder rate of transpeople may very well outpace the per-capita rate of all other hate killings. Most of this is happening to young adult transpeople of color.

A few sources:
Health toll of anti-gay prejudice
Southern Poverty Law Center: ‘Disposable People’
Gender PAC: 50 Under 30
Transgendered Youth at Risk for Exploitation, HIV, Hate Crimes
After Working the Streets, Bunk Beds and a Mass (NYTimes, reg. req.)

Here in Massachusetts, there was some “controversy” last year over Youth Pride. I put “controversy” in quotes because, unless you are ex-Governor Mitt Romney, Brian Camenker of MassResistance, or some other reactionary Republican or Catholic, you can either see the need for Youth Pride (see the above if you have any doubts) or it doesn’t put you out very much.

Mitt “i’ll be a more effective champion of gay rights than Sen. Kennedy” Romney thought it would look good for his 2008 presidential campaign to take this class of exploited, abused kids and add his own kick for good measure. He moved first to kill (that didn’t work), then to gut, the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth.

This after using his line-item veto to kill (the very meager) state funding for AIDS programs and GLBT domestic violence programs in Massachusetts.

Kicking someone when they’re down. Mmm, very compassionate.

(Connected to this was the decision of 39 commissioners, advisors and past members of the Governor’s Commission on Sexual and Domestic Violence to express “no confidence” in Lt. Governor Healey as the head of that Commission.)

As you might guess, i have a problem with people who can look at a class of vulnerable people who are being routinely harassed, beaten, kicked out of their homes, prostituted and otherwise exploited, and killed, and think that the compassionate thing to do is to treat them like a political football, to point a finger at them and talk about what is wrong with them.

Of late i’ve been finding my perspective shifting much more towards the situation young people are in. For those of us who are over 35, our job really is to pave the way for them and to not screw up their lives. They’re not just “the future,” they’re the world. And those who lead our society should be deeply ashamed at how low they have prioritized the needs not just of young queer people, but of young people in general.

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

Transfascism (n) (related to BiFascism; both being subsets of QueerFascism)(def) hysterical whining tantrums accompanied by maniacal shouts of ‘Oppressors’ or ‘Hitler” while calling for the banning/shunning/hitting/hating of any gay man or lesbian (LG) who does NOT embrace forced “inclusivity” of everything BTQ. source

Oh, yes, bi people, transfolk; fascists. Now that you point it out, i totally see the connection. Silly that i missed it before, especially after we took over the government, rounded up dissidents, and silenced the journalists. And we look smashing in tall leather boots. Yes, it’s plain as day.

This week has been very instructive. Watching events unfold regarding the Dyke March, and seeing the aftermath, observing what is said and what is not said… oh yes, very instructive indeed.

Let’s start with a basic truth: you can’t force anyone to include you. Unless you have a gun, ha ha.

But men and women of color and white women could not have simply barged into polling stations and cast votes, and thereby solved the problem of disenfranchisement. Women cannot simply barge into the boardroom and start voting on corporate decisions and thereby shatter the glass ceiling. When you have been excluded, disenfranchised, written out, all you can do is stand outside and talk about how wrong it is that you have been excluded.

So, when the fifteenth and nineteenth amendments were added to the US Constitution, it was not just a victory for men and women of color and white women — it was also a victory for the white men who saw the wrongness of exclusion and acted to change it. (Not that this is worthy of a medal or a cookie, since the exclusion should not have happened in the first place. But it is never too late, as they say, to do the right thing.)

For better or worse, though, it is the excluded Others who get the credit, and the blame. The excluded Others are perpetually salient; they are the ones who get the scrutiny. The dispute was “about them;” funny how it was never seen to be “about” the ones doing the excluding.

Now, it is a different story when we are talking about the machinery of society on one hand, and small private groups or gatherings on the other. You can’t make a convincing case for exclusion in the first case. In the second case, it may be warranted. For example, gay men might want to have one hotel, one lousy little hotel, where they can… you know, do gay male bonding things without having others come and watch. And women might want to have one festival, one lousy little festival, where they can gather and camp for a week with no men around.

It’s not the same as being excluded from the right to vote or the economic infrastructure of society. It’s not necessarily wrong or inappropriate either.

So. Here is the popular conception of how the inclusion of excluded Others happens:

1. Excluded Others perform “hysterical whining tantrums accompanied by maniacal shouts of ‘Oppressors’ or ‘Hitler’”
2. Excluding in-group gets fed up and lets the hysterical whining protesters in.
3. World goes to shit.

And this version is probably a bit closer to reality:

1. Excluded Others express disdain at having been excluded. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they demonstrate, sometimes they wear tape over their mouth, sometimes they whine or shout.
2. Increasing numbers among the excluding in-group come to understand the wrongness of what they are doing and push for inclusion of Others until it happens.
3. Life goes on.

Let’s look at 1. “Hysterical whining tantrums accompanied by maniacal shouts” is the perception the in-group frequently has of protests by Others. Others are supposed to remain silent; so even when they speak they are already out of line. Let any anger creep in and suddenly they are whining, screaming, being shrill, and so on.

Feminists are “shrill.” Sound familiar? It’s because whenever a feminist speaks, she is by definition speaking out of turn.

Part 2, and this is really what i’ve been building up towards during this whole post. I opened with the basic truth that Others cannot make the in-group include them, except maybe by violent force.

What i saw unfold before my eyes, here in Boston, was an action largely by members of the in-group (mostly women-born-women) expressing their solidarity with transgender Others. It appears to have been a woman-born-woman who initiated the call to remove Bitch from the performing line up; it was mostly women-born-women on the committee making the decision to do so; it was mostly women-born-women who i saw in the crowd cheering when a committee member read the announcement.

Why would they do so? Maybe they have transgender friends or lovers they hoped would feel more comfortable about going to the March with them. Maybe they just think in principle that transfolk should feel welcome at the March. I’m sure there’s as many reasons as there are folks who participated. I’m sure there are also just as many different levels of comfort with the decision as well.

And yet, this is how the world sees what happened:

lesbian rocker Bitch was removed from last Friday’s performance roster at the Boston Dyke March, due to complaints by transgender activists. source

For better or worse, we transfolk got the credit. We transfolk got the “credit” for pulling the film “The Gendercator” from the lineup at Frameline, even though this decision was also made by non-trans-people.

Does it seem, i don’t know, histrionic of me to point this out? I know it’s inconvenient and people want to pretend that it’s all being done by transpeople, that it has nothing to do with any women-born-women who have expressed solidarity with us.

It’s remarkable that no matter how many times i’ve pointed out this week that this was an action largely performed by people who are not trans — it is pointedly ignored. It is not convenient. It is easier to say we Others are being divisive, whiny, pushy than to acknowledge how many in the in-group agree with us and want us in there with them. Never forget that the in-group is invisible.

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

I just came back from the Dyke March. My clothes had to be peeled off (it was a warm and rather muggy evening) and so i am sitting here naked trying to cool off. Whoo, naked tranny-girl flesh!

Ahem. Anyways. The Dyke March is a living embodiment of the affinity politics i wrote about a while ago. “Dyke,” at least as it manifests here in Boston, is a term of affinity and not of identity. Tonight, a “dyke” was anyone reasonably woman-centered who showed up and participated in this vibrant community. (Except for one guy who was there to pass out Jesus tracts.)

My girlfriend Cowgrrl was with me, and she explained that she had been in Dyke Marches over 20 years ago. Things were, of course, much different back then: then, there was big controversy over whether to invite bisexual women along. She wasn’t even sure when the Dyke March had become trans-friendly; it was after the last time she’d been.

How had things changed so much? We had only to look around to see the answer. These kids! These kids today. Let me tell you. They’re freakin’ awesome, and they have worked out all this stuff that we oldsters are still tripping over. So i am preparing myself for the switch to being one of the “community elders,” which basically means standing back and watching while these amazing young people do things we never dreamed of doing when we were that young.

These kids have a friend who is an Asian-American lesbian who does boy-drag and reads erotic poetry for GenderCrash; they have another friend who’s a lanky gay boy with bleached-blonde hair, who’s dating someone who just came out as a transman; they have another friend who’s dating a boy and a girl at the same time and who wears size 20 but dresses in a bellydance costume to dance on stage with Big Moves; and they have another friend who is a Latina transgirl who had to change schools when she transitioned.

And you know what? When they go to an event, they want all of their friends to be welcome there. They don’t want to see any lousy racism, they don’t want to see any lousy sexism, they don’t want to see any lousy sizeism, they don’t want to see any lousy homophobia, and they don’t want to see any lousy transphobia. It’s even better if things are handicapped-accessible, environmentally friendly, not too corporate, and generally pro-peace.

Before the March started i spoke with Gunner Scott of MassTPC to, you know, say hi, and find out what he knew about the decision to pull Bitch from the artistic programming.

For those who don’t know, Bitch was controversial because of statements like this about the policy of galla-exclusion at MWMF:

[I]t’s not trans people being marginalized. It’s people who were born as men. The festival is for people who suffered a girlhood. That’s all it is. They’re not trying to redefine what women are. … I’m so over it. I think it’s totally the patriarchy and it’s complete ageism. … If my elders want to say for these six days only these kinds of women can come, then I need to respect that. It is so against our nature to respect women for having boundaries. I think that’s exactly what’s happening.

Gunner told me the decision was made at the last minute because of considerable agitation in the community — but none of it had been started or directed by transactivists. MassTPC, he said, specifically stayed out of it. Transfolk had been involved of course; but Gunner didn’t know who started it. The person he’d first heard about it from was a woman-born-woman. At first it was just a call of attention to the incongruence between the Dyke March’s policies and Bitch’s politics. The movement to ask the committee to disinvite Bitch appears to have been basically spontaneous.

Once it started, though, it picked up momentum; MassTPC was going to pull out of the event; so was The Network La Red; probably others as well; it sounds like things became very intense in just a few hours. Finally the committee pulled the invitation to Bitch.

But iiiiiiii know who it was. Not specifically, i mean, but figuratively.

At the Dyke March i saw something i’d never seen before: most of the people there doing volunteer work to support trans rights (we have a bill before the Massachusetts legislature right now) were non-trans.

That’s big, folks. Big. These were kids who were tired of seeing their transgender friends being messed with and having their options limited for no good reason.

And they were the ones behind the withdrawal of the committee’s invitation to Bitch. Not Teh Evul Transfolk.

(Gunner was also pretty sure that my vision of Bitch “leav[ing] here talking about having had a great experience in a community that welcomes and includes gallae” was a pipe dream. I maintain that it would be better if things could go that way. I know. I’m a freakin’ hippie. It’s my nature.)

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

So i’ve been making plans for weeks to go to the Boston Dyke March tonight. And in my inbox this morning i see that there is a last-minute letter-writing campaign to ask the Dyke March committee to disinvite the artist Bitch, who is scheduled to perform for us tonight, on account of her performances at Michfest and her stated approval (or non-disapproval) of their policy of excluding gallae. Others are planning to turn their backs to her during her performance.

I’m feeling a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, it is really touching to see that so many in my community are willing and eager even to fight for my inclusion. But i also find it heartbreaking.

Despite what Bitch has done or said regarding MWMF, she has to be aware that the Boston Dyke March is explicitly galla-positive. It’s right there on the front of their webpage. I have heard mixed things from local gallae about how welcome they actually feel there, but the stated policy counts for a lot. Knowing about the policy (i presume), she has chosen to be here with us anyway.

So it seems to me that if she really hated gallae, she could have chosen to perform somewhere else tonight. Or, maybe she’s just an equal-opportunity opportunist, but i think that is an unfairly cynical thing to assume.

She’s been asked about the policy of exclusion at MWMF; i wonder if anyone has even asked her what she thought about the policy of inclusion at the Dyke March. Heck, if i get the chance, maybe i’ll ask her myself. Assuming, that is, the sight of dykes turning their backs on a dyke doesn’t break my heart so much i have to leave.

Suppose the committee disinvites her. Suppose she hears about the protest and stays away. Suppose she feels pressured into making a statement of support. Are any of these things victory? I don’t think our community wins by making one of our own feel they have to back down or silence themselves under pressure.

Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to see her leave here talking about having had a great experience in a community that welcomes and includes gallae? Having seen how a dyke community which includes gallae can be just as woman-affirming and healing and vital as the community she’s experienced at Michfest? Otherwise i’m concerned that she could leave here with a sour taste and see the whole thing as evidence that those who say gallae are here to undermine and sow seeds of discord are right.

I’m not saying we should back down. I’m saying that there’s a bravery in solidarity that goes beyond the bravery it takes to protest. Are things really so adversarial over this issue that this is now and forever an “us versus them” situation? I mean, protest is what you do when there is no hope that the other party will listen to you. If i’m just a hippy fruit-loop with delusions of compassion where it will never be, break it to me gently, will you?

ETA. Bitch is no longer scheduled to perform. I don’t know any more than that; more as i learn it.

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

I’ve often felt that, with regards to what we can bring to feminism in terms of our experience and our awareness, that transfolk have a unique contribution to make and are in a way the best of both worlds.

Oh, i don’t mean that in the creepy sense that we’re so used to hearing it from trans-fetishizers. But let me give you an example of what i mean.

I participate in a number of feminist forums online. With reasonable regularity men come along, and their reactions are so similar, so predictable, that feminists like Ginmar have joked about making bingo cards. But you know, in the 90’s that was me; i was the guy going to feminist forums and making all of the same predictable comments. “But not me!” “But patriarchy hurts men too.” “But most victims of violence are male.” “But men get raped too.” “But how can you attribute motivations to me that defy my own experience?” And so on.

Having heard these objections many times already, and taking them to be tactics of dismissal, feminists often react kind of harshly. And men who say these things in feminist contexts usually leave feeling they’ve been excoriated.

What’s going on here is that feminism, beyond being a collection of views and theories and actvist movements, is at its heart a different way of communicating. It takes time, and a willingness to listen, to grok this. In large part, feminist forums are about giving voice to thoughts and feelings which are silenced everywhere else. The purpose is to allow women, who have been told all their lives to shut out certain ways of thinking, to learn how to think feminist thoughts and express them. These thoughts are not always rationally perfect or grounded in evidence; sometimes they carry a lot of anger; but women have to be allowed to express them anyway, because they can’t anywhere else, and because it’s the only way for them to learn about sexism in a more nuanced way.

Most guys come to feminist forums not really having experienced what it is like to be silenced on account of their gender, to be expected to defer and placate. They are used to “debate” and have been raised on the idea of “the free marketplace of ideas.” Feminist forums are not a place for debate so much as they are a place for mentoring. Sometimes women say outrageous things there; but such things are said and we sit with them because women need somewhere to express their feelings and experiences if they are ever going to learn more seasoned forms of expression.

It’s not just men who have to learn how to listen to anger in feminist settings. I’ve had a number of women tell me, when i asked them why they hate feminists, something like this: “Oh, a feminist once told me i’m betraying womankind by marrying a man and being a stay at home mother!” Well, yeah, sometimes statements like that are made in feminist forums. But you learn over time to see such words in the way they’re meant; you don’t take them personally, but instead you listen to the anger and look for the source of it. I’ve never met a seasoned feminist who would make a statement like that; but maybe they did when they were just setting out on this journey. Instead it sounds very much like something one says when they are just starting, after a lifetime of never being allowed, to express their rage at the scope of sexism.

Anyways, men, however well-meaning they may be, have to understand that when they bring debate and nitpicking and exceptions and logical analysis to feminist forums, this feels to everyone else there like a projection into feminist space of the misogynistic methods of silencing they came there to escape. Telling someone “You’re wrong, here’s why,” is not really the way people learn in feminist forums. So they find themselves becoming instant lightning rods. It’s not pleasant for anyone concerned.

Before i stopped being “offended-almost-feminist-guy” i had to shut up and listen, a lot. I was fortunate in this regard to have a feminist partner who was willing to take the time to explain things to me. It wasn’t really her job to do that; but she cared enough to, and i am grateful.

The feminist woman i am today looks upon the almost-feminist guy i used to be with compassion, and sees him in every guy who comes to a feminist forum where i participate. I know the way he thinks — or at least the way he thinks he thinks. I see it as a kind of special contribution i can make, some good i can make out of my unusual experience, to take the time to explain to him why he just needs to listen for now.

Mmm, insomnia!

A bit over a week ago i posted about the controversy over a 15-minute film scheduled to be shown at a GLBT film festival titled "The Gendercator." At the end of a vibrant and fascinating conversation

akaiyume wrote this:

Sometimes I think maybe highly gendered people don't really get the in betweens. And this could be a bit of a stretch maybe, but I'm thinking to go through all the troubles and risks associated with transistioning a person has to be pretty highly gendered. By the same token, maybe inbetweens don't get gendered people.

I've been pondering this since. I think there's a lot of meaning in that paragraph, and it goes a long way towards explaining a considerable amount of misunderstanding that goes on in the communities i belong to.

Among feminists and gender-studies scholars there's a fair bit of attention given to the question of, "what is gender?" Many feminists argue that gender is functional -- that is, it exists to serve a social function -- rather than essential -- that is, that gender 'just is' a fundamental essential aspect of the human condition.

Each of us experiences our own gender in some way. Most people don't really question it. I mean, they might question what it is to be a man, or to be a woman, or what it is like to be either, or what makes someone one or the other, and so on. But it seems like many, or most, people have a more or less a priori sense of their own individual gender.

Consider the case of David Reimer. His circumcision was botched, and his parents and doctors decided that the most compassionate thing to do was to amputate what was left of his penis and raise him as a girl. David however never accepted this, never felt like a girl, and at 15 started to live as a boy. There was something about the way David saw himself that could not be changed, no matter what efforts the people around him put into changing him.

I could say something similar. I mean, during my whole childhood and much of my adulthood there was a concerted effort to make a man of me. It didn't work. The image of myself as fundamentally female was not affected by all the socialization or pressure in the world.

What all this points to is, i think, that there is something 'more' to gender than social function. It is not simply a caste system or a cultural artifact.

But i think that when we say this we also have to recognize that there are people for whom there isn't a strong gender identity. That is they are, as

akaiyume put it, in between. And it's time i recognized that someone without a strong gender identity could easily believe that gender is entirely a cultural artifact; and that such a person would rebel against gender roles for different reasons from someone who is transgender; and that someone who feels that way could easily interpret transgenderism as "a program of enforcement of the gender-binary paradigm" rather than "a reflection of innate gender identity."

Recently i learned that among young women today, particularly in the lesbian community, some have reported that they are under pressure to be transsexual. When i first heard this, it kind of reminded me of the pressure bisexual people are given to "just pick one already." IOW there are many people who accept homosexuality as a sexual orientation just as valid as heterosexuality, but who cannot comprehend that some people fall in between. Similarly there is an increased acceptance of transsexuality as valid, and along with this has come, apparently, pressure on in-between "fence sitters." It seems that for increasing numbers of people it is more transgressive to be genderqueer or androgynous than to be transsexual.

This explains a lot. The director of the film in question, Catharine Crouch, recently said: "My anxiety is about the amount of women I see transitioning into men and how fast it seems to be happening. I wonder about this sudden escalation. They are women, or they were women, and now they are not. They seem like me, so I am not understanding what is the difference between them and me."

Crouch, who is a butch lesbian, seems to be coming from the in-between point of view. So she feels this pressure to "pick a gender identity, even if it be trans"; she sees many of her friends from the lesbian community coming out as transmen, and, drawing from her experience of gender as something that is not inherent in the way she sees herself, finds transsexualism to be indistinguishable from other factors in society which corral people into normative gender behavior.

In her movie, set 40 years in the future, transsexual surgery is mandated by the ruling Christian government for people who cannot fit into their birth gender. Only someone who is in-between could postulate this scenario as feasible, not because most Christians today strongly oppose transsexual surgery, but because they do not understand the experience of feeling your gender as an innate part of you. To an in-between, gender, all gender, even transgender, seems like brainwashing because that's what's been attempted on them, and that is how they experience gender.

Transsexuals do not want sex reassignment because we're brainwashed -- brainwashing didn't work on us. No part of gender brainwashing involves someone saying at some point, "Oh, well, okay then, if that doesn't work for you, just go ahead and switch to option B." We have an inherent experience of our gender that differs from the way our bodies are seen, and no socialization worked to undo it. If going androgynous or genderqueer was sufficient to resolve the dilemma, than we'd have stopped there because, as observed above, sex reassignment is a tremendous amount of trouble to go through. Sex reassignment is not something the medical community readily and easily hands out, even after almost 60 years of clinical research and treatment of gender dysphoria. Sex reassignment is not, will never be, can never be, a tool of gender caste enforcers; but rather it exists in spite of sexual stratification. It is an option that was granted us only after great reluctance and much lobbying.

Now that i've been introduced to the idea of "affinity politics," i am strongly tempted to say goodbye to identity politics forever.

The problem i've always had with identity politics is that it is based on an idea that can be twisted into something divisive. It works like this: people A, B, and C all identify as "X," and qua "X," they all have the same concerns. So they should band together!

It sounds great, but it is all too easily turned around. "You're not 'X' enough." "You're not a true 'X'." "I want to do W, but if i do, i'm not an 'X' anymore and my X friends will reject me." "I'm not X, but i'm Y, let's call this the 'XY' coalition." "Hey, i'm a 'Z,' you left me out."

Affinity politics does not parse the world in terms of how people identify themselves. It is still a form of Critical neo-Marxism, but the coalition is not based on how one identifies, but rather on where people find themselves in the web of oppression. The basis of affinity politics is the conscious formation of a coalition, rather than the realization of an identity within oneself. You are free to coalition with people who are like or unlike you; therefore it does not matter if everyone in the coalition shares a single characteristic, or performs that characteristic dutifully enough. No more being expelled if you aren't X enough or you want to do W.

It is the next step in consciousness raising beyond identity politics. Each of us begins in a state of unawareness of the web of oppression around us. Then you start to notice that everyone who is female, or who is gay, or who is black, is mistreated in certain systematic ways. You get together with other people who are female, or black, or gay, to talk about these things. So you start to think that everyone who is female, or black, or gay, has a unifying experience that makes you natural allies.

And then you're disillusioned to discover that this is not the case! So you're tempted to go back to step one and just give up on the whole thing. But a better next step is to form an affinity coalition. What binds the people in an affinity coalition is a similar point of view, and a similar desire for action, based loosely on having the same identity. An affinity coalition is inclusive in the same way that an identity group tends towards being exclusive.

My first encounter with such an idea was the use of the term "wo/man" by feminist theologian Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza:

( Read more... )

The downside is that when you're forming a coalition you can find at times that the people around you make you very uncomfortable. Bernice Johnson Reagon gave the quintessential description of this in 1981:

( Read more... )

Despite the difficulties, i think the future of radicalism is in affinity politics rather than identity politics. Let me give two examples of affinity orientations: "Women of color," and "Deep Lez."

Donna Haraway is often credited as calling attention to the idea of affinity politics in her Cyborg Manifesto. From that piece:

( Read more... )

"Deep Lez," a concept put forward by activist and performance artist Allyson Mitchell, is envisioned as a renewal of radical lesbianism. Mitchell's description of Deep Lez, from an interview, carries the same "oppositional consciousness" noted above by Haraway.

( Read more... )

The past few days i've been watching a controversy in the trans and feminist blogosphere about a movie called "The Gendercator."

( Read more... )

It's unfair to jump to conclusions about a film without seeing it, so what follows carries a caveat: it is a reaction to what has been written about the film which may be shown to be moot, incorrect, or off the mark by the film itself.

Does anyone think there's anything strange about transsexuality being portrayed as a tool of reactionary Christianity? I mean, take a peek behind the cut to see how reactionary Christians are portraying transsexuality right this minute:

( Read more... )

Conservatives think our proper place is not in the world, trying to figure out how to play the hand we're dealt, but "howling" in a padded cell, straitjacketed and dosed with thorazine for our whole lives.

These people are in a very literal way out to get me.

And yet this director, Catherine Crouch, like me a member of the queer feminist community, makes a film in which she directly insinuates that transsexual treatment is indistinguishable from patriarchal gender normativity. She comments:

Things are getting very strange for women these days. More and more often we see young heterosexual women carving their bodies into porno Barbie dolls and lesbian women altering themselves into transmen. Our distorted cultural norms are making women feel compelled to use medical advances to change themselves, instead of working to change the world. This is one story, showing one possible scary future. I am hopeful that this story will foster discussion about female body modification and medical ethics.

Maybe this comes from a place of concern that hormones and surgery might not be the best thing for me. I have my own doubts in this regard, and have a conversation with myself every day of my life about this.

But does this statement reflect any genuine concern about what is best for me? Is there any indication that the director is willing to admit or even consider that maybe for some of us, being androgynous or "just doing our own thing" is not going to cut it? That it is not quite the same thing as having a boob job? We can talk all we like about feminist utopias where gender has been abolished but that is not the world we live in.

Furthermore, does this statement reflect any acknowledgment of our experience as transfolk, as recipients of horrific ongoing discrimination? It is irresponsible to blend in transsexual issues with misogynistic beauty standards and those who take advantage of it for profit. There are similar forces and patterns at work, but these are not the same issue.

Her idea for transfolk is that we should eschew medical treatment and "work to change the world." That's great. What in the holy hell does she think we've been doing? The image of transsexuals as ex-GI-June-Cleaver-wannabees is a little out of date. In between taking hormones, many of us have been actively railing against oppression. She thinks we're part of the patriarchal status quo. The same status quo who equates us with caricature 6-foot-5 drag queens in 6" heels and howling asylum inmates.

Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Okay, done howling now. Time for my thorazine.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, feminist blogger, has chosen to resign from the presidential campaign of John Edwards after being embattled (by certain right-wing zealots) for several weeks. The final straw, in the eyes of the Catholic League's head, Bill Donohue, was this comment in her review of the movie Children of Men:

The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal, where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels.

This apparently qualifies as a "vulgar" and "intolerant" anti-Christian comment. To say that critique is intolerant shows an utter misunderstanding of the concept of intolerance, which seems, from the perspective of people like Bill Donohue, to mean, "any act or utterance which offends our oh-so-delicate sensibilities."

The right has tirelessly labored to misappropriate the idea of intolerance, so that people think it refers not to efforts to counter structural power imbalance in our society, but to improve the niceness of language. By focusing on language they hope to take the focus off of actual oppression.

There is absolutely no measure whatsoever by which Christians are oppressed in this country. Keep that in mind. Christians run this country; they utterly dominate the public discourse, the cultural institutions, the laws, the mores, the standards of decency. Isolated instances of anti-Christian discrimination (which do occur) do not constitute institutional or state-sponsored oppression, exploitation, or disenfranchisement of Christians.

So, in order to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of misappropriating the idea of intolerance, they have to make people think that saying mean things (or things you claim are mean) in your blog is the equivalent of a pogrom, or a gay-bashing, or a clinic-bombing. It is insulting to anyone who is working to end real intolerance in the face of violence and numerous other obstacles.

All that said, i also happen to think Amanda is absolutely right about the Christian idea of the virgin birth.

The gospels' authors must have felt some pressure to distance themselves from Pagans, who depicted divine impregnation of mortal women in a sexual way. In fact, Mary herself had to have been immaculately conceived, so that she would not bear the stain of Adam's sin -- because, apparently, sex itself befouls and stains your soul.

Amanda's comment about women only being a vessel applies too, because this was a widely-held belief about pregnancy in the ancient world: women were only a vessel through which men brought children into existence. This desire to cut women out of the picture is the very essence of misogyny. This view is most obvious in the account of the Gospel of John, whose author claimed that Jesus existed long before Mary did, making Mary's womb nothing more than a tunnel through which he passed into this world.

Well, i feel i need to say a few things about this.

The Supreme Court of Canada on Friday declined to hear the case of a transsexual woman who was denied a job at a rape crisis center because she was not born biologically female.

For 12 years Kimberly Nixon has been battling the Vancouver Rape Relief which turned her down for a job at its facility in Vancouver which provides a safe-house for battered and raped women, and a crisis phone line.

from Supreme Court Of Canada Declines Transsexual Case

I don't agree with VRR's exclusion of Nixon, but i disagree MUCH MORE with the decision to take this to the courts at all.

Issues of disagreement between transactivists and radical feminists are not going to be resolved by calling in the state's apparatus of coersion. The state is singularly ill-equipped to handle disagreements between radicals. Adversity in this disagreement should not be escalated -- which is the only way that the legal system really knows how to handle disagreements.

Reconciliation between these two groups of activists is not about "winning victories," because a situation where any radical is forced against her will to submit to a state-enforced "remedy" against her conscience is not anything to celebrate about.

There is no real solution if one comes at this with the attitude of, "Well, i'll bring you around to seeing things my way." That attitude is reminiscent of the society of domination which we are trying to unravel. So the starting place is willingness to find an understanding.

In looking for a starting place for the solution here, i'm thinking of the essay on coalition politics by Bernice Johnson Reagon which i cited a month ago:

I feel as if I’m gonna keel over any minute and die. That is often what it feels like if you’re really doing coalition work. Most of the time you feel threatened to the core and if you don’t, you’re not really doing no coalescing. ... The only reason you would consider trying to team up with somebody who could possibly kill you, is because that’s the only way you can figure you can stay alive.

Running with this... the solution begins with recognizing that you don't really have any choice but to figure out how to co-exist and work towards your mutual goals together. In the case of transactivists and radical feminists, the thing is that individuals from both camps already encounter one another in the community, and their lives are frequently intertwined -- so there is no avoiding one another.

But anyway, if someone will not or cannot recognize mutual need, then that one is not ready to be your ally and there are no grounds to begin reconciling yet.

IMO a good next step is agreeing to sit together, even if silence in one another's presence or conversation about other topics is the only alternative to argument. But i think underlying this there needs to be an understanding that one will not just easily give up and walk out. Togetherness and respect for sisterhood is meaningful, even when there is disagreement, and it can be the foundation for further understanding.

There's a scene in the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch where Hedwig and her boyfriend Tommy are making out, and he reaches into her skirt... and says, "What's this?" And she replies, softly,

"It's what i have to work with."

That phrase really stuck with me because i'm hard pressed to come up with anything else that so succinctly and elegantly summarizes what it is like to be transgendered.

Strained family ties, disapproval from clergy, laughter in the streets, unemployment, homelessness, broken marriages, estranged children, loved ones we have hurt or betrayed in one way or another; disjointed bodies at disparate stages of transition -- the remnants of facial hair as breasts begin to form; anger that has nowhere to go, and despair, and guilt, and untreated PTSD, and dissociative identity, and opening your mouth to speak and hearing someone else's voice come out... these broken circumstances are what we have to work with.

A while back i complained that there is no word for what we are. The word "transgendered" is a compound, a word with a prefix, classifying us as marked -- not real, not something with a true essence, but something else with a tainted essence. It is a medical term, reflecting the view that we are pathological and aberrant, in need of correction.

We direly need a real word. I think i'm going to use galla (pl. gallae). This word is transwoman-specific. I'm sorry, i can't think of anything similar for transmen, and maybe it wouldn't be appropriate for me to propose it anyway. It's an ancient word (so i'm not appropriating it from anyone who will miss it) which refers to a sect whose priesthood bore some characteristics in common with modern transsexuals. It's not a perfect word, really, but... it's what we have to work with.

Well, i never imagined that a proclamation of women's rights would squick me, but the town of Herouxville, Quebec, managed to do just that:

A sign at the entrance of this rural Quebec town says: Herouxville welcomes you. Unless, that is, you plan on stoning a woman to death, sending your kids to school with a kirpan or covering your face other than on Halloween.

The town council of Herouxville, a sleepy town dominated by a towering Roman Catholic church, has adopted a declaration of "norms" that it says would-be immigrants should be aware of before they settle in this town. Among them, it is forbidden to stone women or burn them with acid.

from Quebec town outlines societal 'norms' for would-be immigrants

Salam Elmenyawi, president of the Muslim Council of Montreal, said the declaration had "set the clock back for decades" as far as race relations were concerned. "I was shocked and insulted to see these kinds of false stereotypes and ignorance about Islam and our religion ... in a public document written by people in authority who discriminate openly," he told Reuters.

from Town to immigrants: you can't kill women

Well... i'm glad to hear that the town frowns on stoning women to death, burning them alive, or throwing acid on them. Everyone everywhere should frown on these sorts of things.

But the proclamations and signage are worded so as to single out immigrants, in such a way that it underscores and perpetuates certain racial stereotypes. It has to be read in the larger global context.

I'm especially thoughtful on this lately because i'm currently reading Color of Violence and the first piece therein is a blockbuster dealing with racist stereotype scripts and the way they color bias in the enforcement and creation of laws, particularly in the matter of justice for women.

In this set of "norms for immigrants to follow" is the implication that we are normal, moral people who treat women well whereas you are unschooled and barbaric and have to be told the proper way to treat women.

What is the proper way for westerners, who are concerned about cases they hear of stoning women to death in other countries, or burning them alive, or throwing acid on them, to voice their concerns about these things? The proper way is to tie misogyny and racism in another culture with misogyny and racism in your own culture and understand them both as reflections of a global pattern of oppression. The proper way is to let voices of dissent from the other culture speak for themselves rather than paternalistically speaking for them. A "we are good, you are bad; listen to us, we'll tell you the right way" stance which presumes cultural superiority (in the global context of Euro-American colonization of the rest of the world, no less!) is not the proper way to voice these concerns.

Almost finished reading bell hooks' Feminism is for Everyone. I got to the part where hooks wrote about the divisive debate within feminism thirty years ago over BDSM, and her comments which would place her on what is now (not quite accurately) called the "sex-positive" side of the debate, and reflected that it sounded eerily similar to debates i've read online over the past few months.

This debate is still going on now, and is still dividing people who, on many other issues (such as rape, family violence, wage imbalance, FGM, reproductive freedom, political representation, religious doctrine, etc.) would otherwise be allies.

The debates within feminism over BDSM, pornography, prostitution, and acceptance of transgenderism are important because they go to the heart of two differing -- but let me be clear, not mutually exclusive -- views over what constitutes the best possible feminist outcome. These debates create acrimony because in part they force radicals to examine what it is we are ultimately working for, and who then constitutes our foes.

On the one hand you have people whose main goal is the utter dissolution of discriminatory power imbalance in society. Their experiences have led them to conclude that, humankind being as it is, any expression of power imbalance could be a gateway for domination to enter society. For example, they will argue that the social construction of gender would not survive the dissolution of patriarchy. Therefore any performance of gender reinforces the discriminatory power imbalance.

On the other hand you have people who want to see a world where people feel empowered to express themselves just as they wish. Their experiences have led them to conclude that what ties a person down is any form of restriction on their self-expression. They see as a foe anyone who seeks to restrict them, especially if they are citing an ideological or philosophical point of view.

In a sense, both points of view could be simultaneously true. The first point of view looks at the structure of society at the ideological and institutional level and examines how this affects the individual. The second point of view starts by examining what restrictiveness looks like at the level of individual experience and works upward to the structure of society from there.

Why do these two approaches, then, have so much overlap (with regards to women's rights) yet still they do not meet in the middle? I think the ultimate answer to this question goes beyond the scope of a single journal entry. But i'm going to ponder it for quite a while.

Right now i wanted to focus a bit on the question of BDSM. Critique of BDSM from the first point of view might include, for example, an observation that much or most BDSM practice reflects a culturally-standard male-dom fem-sub arrangement; or a theory that women living in a patriarchal society might so deeply internalize cultural notions of male domination that their sexual fantasies have been colonized, and so women are not truly capable to freely consent to being dominated; or the question of what the difference really is between traditional marriage and 24-7 BDSM, if in both arrangements you find women who are expected to follow orders or face violence if their performance is unsatisfactory?

I don't think these questions are easily dismissed. Nor is the response from the second point of view, which might include, for example, testimony that many women receive enjoyment and satisfaction from BDSM; that in their lives they have found that attempts to suppress these desires are more oppressive than seeking to fulfill them; that there is something important and profound which would be lost if people gave up BDSM; and that women have been forced to give up so much under patriarchy that it is not good or right to make them feel they have to give up anything else, which they enjoy, in order to achieve liberation.

It is relevant to ponder what the unraveling of gender or of male domination would look like. This is still an open question. People who take the first perspective are inclined to believe that any proposed solution which bears characteristics resembling the problem itself are not really a solution. For example, they say of transsexualism that 'sexual reassignment' does not help to unravel gender because it guides gender rebels back into the male-or-female fold -- and therefore it is informed by the gender caste system. Of BDSM, they would say that it leads sexual rebels back into the mainstream sexual domination fold.

The second perspective would suggest that reshaping a system of involuntary caste domination into something more democratic is progress towards greater individual freedom. IOW, when someone comes to the BDSM community, they are taught that they ultimately have the power to consent or not consent to any arrangement -- and that furthermore they are capable, if they find acceptable partners, into a form of power exchange previously unknown to them. In practice this is not always perfect, but i have heard of situations where people were literally able to unravel abusive patterns in their relationship after learning that they had the power in any BDSM arrangement to negotiate the terms.

If we are to ponder the unraveling of the gender caste system as something which will happen in stages, rather than all at once, BDSM might even look like one of several tentative first steps in that process. It is true that in much of the BDSM community we can find defenders of sexism. But in this respect they are no different than the rest of society, and while we should not be silent about sexism in BDSM, we also should perhaps consider that since people have been so deeply colonized by patriarchy, that it will take stages, steps, changes by degree, for human beings to learn how to relate to one another in any other way.

I want to nail this down because most of my friends are not transgendered and do not have a clear idea of what transphobia is. For that matter, i don't have a clear idea of what transphobia is, either, so one of my motivations for writing this is parsing it out so it is clear in my mind.

Frankly, i don't like the word 'transphobia' very much, it's multiply derivative and, at the least, doesn't mean what it says.

I know it is controversial to define sexism and racism as "power plus prejudice," but that is how i define those terms. IMO power imbalance is the most important aspect to consider here. There is an obvious dimension of power imbalance in homophobia (perhaps better called heterosexism). I see transphobia in similar terms: power plus prejudice.

What is the "power imbalance" in question? To put a few things in perspective:

A 1999 survey found that around 60% of the transgendered population of San Francisco was unemployed. Compare this to a 5-7% unemployment rate for the general public.
That same study found that 37% of transwomen had been physically abused in the previous 12 months; over 80% had been prostituted or engaged in survival sex at some time in their lives; 59% had been raped. The figures for transmen were similarly far higher than rates seen by non-transgendered people.
At the time of that study, only 59% of the transpeople surveyed had stable housing.
The hate-murder rate of transpeople may very well outpace the per-capita rate of all other hate killings, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Slurs, harrasment, and even violence directed at queer youth are so widespread and common that virtually every young queer person experiences it.
Underscoring this is a long history of ideological, institutional, and economic marginalization of transpeople: religious pronouncements that we are "abominable," shunning, objectification, othering, shaming, ridiculing, treating us as humor, legal non-recognition, medicalization of us as "disordered," you name it.

But, really, this only abstractly touches on the actual reason why slurs hurt so much. They don't hurt because of all those statistics, theory, and history. They hurt because these statistics reflect the actual suffering so, so many of us have directly experienced. They bring up the trauma of that suffering, the wounds that have not healed... the moments we've spent curled up the floor unable to forgive ourselves for hurting our loved ones; the moments we've spent arguing with parents; the moments we've spent staring at a handful of pills; the moments we've spent pleasuring an ungrateful jerk; the moments we've spent covering up for abusive partners or healing in the hospital or mourning our murdered friends.

When a man calls a woman a "slut," when a white person calls a black person a "ni**er," they are encapsulating all of that hurt in a single word and throwing it in their face. When you have been slurred there is nothing you can do in response. Want to hurt them back? There is no equivalent. Get angry? Anything you say is 'just as bad' and you are exhorted to take the high road. Take it on the chin and show nothing? It eats at you slowly from in the inside.

Another thing about slurs is that you don't have to be privileged with respect to the other person along every axis of privilege there is. A black person could be college-educated, well-connected, and affluent, and still be slurred by a middle-class white person. A lesbian may not be in many ways (or at all) socially privileged compared to a transperson, but she does not have to be privileged in order to hurtfully invoke the social and personal history of transphobic oppression... any more than a transperson has to be privileged to do the same to a lesbian.

So, what constitute slurs against transpeople?

Some people find "tranny" offensive. I personally don't -- at least, it is no more offensive than the term "transgendered" itself, in my opinion. That term has its limitations (there is no actual word for what we are, just this glommed together one) but it does not, for most of us, seem to bring up the pain. I would say with this one, use it sparingly around transpeople you know, or ask if it's okay, or don't use it at all.

"She-male" (at MTFs) definitely is. It reflects particularly the history of sexual objectification of transwomen, particularly those who have been prostituted. It further implies that transgenderism is a disguise, a garment of sorts one wears to cover up their "real" gender.

"Really a man" (at MTFs) or "really a woman" (at FTMs) -- and variations on this theme -- can also be, depending on intent, a slur. This is where it gets a bit complex, because it is not inherently transphobic to question the underpinning of transgenderism. There is a vast difference between expressing honest doubt or opening philosophical discussion, and deliberate invocation of oppression-trauma with the intent to wound. Still, awareness that this is often is used as a slur against transfolk means that anyone who really cares about open discourse should be sensitive to that when discussing transgenderism philosophically.

ETA: I'm going to add this point, because i need to. The first source above does not break down the figures for discrimination, abuse, exploitation, and violence by race. But from everything i've seen, that pain is felt in OVERWHELMING proportions by transpeople of color. The disparity is notable, and has to be marked.

Subversive literature arrived in the mail last night, always a cause for celebration. :-D

I received Feminism is for Everyone by bell hooks, and Color of Violence: the INCITE! Anthology.

In the intro to her book bell hooks calls it a short primer she could give to anyone who wanted to know more about feminism, but 10 pages into it i disagree that it is any sort of primer at all. It's too polemic to be a primer. See, i can tell that hooks is the sort of person who, very much like me, thinks that getting people to agree with her is primarily a matter of explaining the facts and theories clearly enough, and that with understanding will come agreement. And while i agree with the picture she paints of careerism and white privilege undermining the feminist movement's momentum (my own first exposure to feminism was in the academic environment and it was not the most positive experience), her words on that subject, this early into the book, make it into the sort of book that i would not hand to someone inexperienced in thinking radically. If it was me, and i was writing a book nominally directed at everyone, i wouldn't put controversial stuff like this at the very beginning where it's more likely to turn people away.

The anthology looks like deep academic stuff that i'll probably have to digest in small bits. But i'm eager to dig in because what i've seen of INCITE!'s perspective excites me a great deal. Also i've come to the conclusion, after everything i've seen at the Network La Red, and in the blogosphere, and in other places, that radical women of color are the best allies that transpeople have. Transactivists have spent a lot of energy forming alliances with the gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities but i think we need to consider their willingness to sell us short to meet their own goals.

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sophiaserpentia

December 2021

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The Serpent's Wisdom

Eat of this fruit; your eyes shall be opened, and you will be as Gods.

Entries tagged with gender and sexuality

“bad idea,” part 2

affinity language

because it’s never too late to challenge a bad idea

intersex and trans

the right to be equally objectified

have you hugged a young queer person today?

“inclusion fascists”

these kids today (also, bitch and the boston dyke march)

are things really so adversarial?

the best of both worlds

in-between or highly-gendered

affinity politics: women of color and deep lez

time for some howling before my early-afternoon dose of thorazine

misogyny, then and now

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two feminist perspectives with regard to bdsm

what constitutes a transphobic slur?

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December 2021

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