Dating from the Margins: Desexualizing and Cultural Abuse
This is the first in an informal series on dating as a marginalized queer identity. The focus will inevitably be shaped by my personal experience – being white, a trans woman, fat, poor, polyamorous, and a survivor of sexual violence and abuse – but I hope it will resonate to some degree with whose experiences aren’t similar to mine but who nonetheless feel marginalized by their communities. These posts arose from conversations with a number of people on various points of the continuum of queer cultural desire, and I am deeply grateful for those folks. They give me hope these conversations can happen more often, and on a much larger scale.
I am often frustrated by people who are otherwise invested in understanding and opposing systems of oppression, but who nonetheless exclude dating and desirability from analysis or self-critique. This is especially frustrating when they are privileged by those very systems. This lack of analysis by those who have access and who are prioritized as desirable by their communities effectively silences the experiences of those whose trans status (or having a disability, or not meeting cultural beauty standards, or any of the markers of undesirability imposed by external systems) limits or completely denies access. In many queer, sex positive, polyamorous activist communities I have experienced those with access treating their privilege as the status quo, something which is never discussed, is neutral from criticism, and to which all are assumed to have access. This is done with an often startling ignorance of those who do not.
Understandably, who we are attracted to is a very sensitive topic for most of us. We want to believe our desires are our own, unshaped by the media, patriarchy, racism, ableism, transmisogyny, or other oppressive systems. This is even more challenging when one’s identity is based in ideas of activism, social justice and equality; We don’t want to feel like we’re upholding oppressive standards, or engaging in systems which sometimes violently desexualize marginalized identities.
Conversely, those who do not enjoy much dating capital face an incredibly challenging and vulnerable process when discussing desirability. You can’t help but wonder how much will be dismissed as sour grapes, or what judgements will be made about you to justify your undesirability in the minds of others. This furthers the silencing, and prevents the discussions which can begin to address these inequalities.
And the inequalities are considerable: The systemic desexualisation of any group of people is abuse at the cultural level. Though the idea of being privileged by a culture which abuses the sexuality of others is sure to provoke knee-jerk defensiveness, much like white people who respond to the idea of being privileged by living in a racist culture by saying “But I’m not a racist,” this isn’t about individuals. Refusing to engage with the systems which privilege us because we’re uncomfortable with that sort of self-reflection, however, allows those systems to continue, and makes us complicit in their existence. The effects of desexualization are nonetheless real, and cause much emotional damage for many people.
This isn’t to say we can simply reprogram our desires for the sake of a more egalitarian community, but waving the discussion away with “I can’t help who I’m attracted to!” isn’t the answer either. What we do need is discussion and acknowledgement, not as a defence of our desires, but to perhaps understand how external forces narrow their scope. Acknowledging the prioritizing of certain bodies and identities is just the beginning, and will lead to many difficult conversations I’m sure, but ultimately can only lead to more understanding, more inclusiveness, and stronger communities.
Next: “She’s Kind of Insecure,” or the Catch-22 of Marginalization
Progress
I have read a few things lately by trans women who are I suppose a generation younger than me (I don’t say that to imply any ageist shit, but rather to say that time has surely passed a fair bit for me). Some were public essays1, and some were just Facebook updates, but they resonated with such a common frustration at the biases they faced as trans women. I was really moved by how honest they were with their pain and disappointment at queer communities they’d hoped would be better. It struck in me a sadness I’d grown so used to I’d nearly forgotten it, and I didn’t know how to respond. It all read so true.
Often over the years I have tried to convince myself that my many challenges with living a trans life in a cis world were just the inevitable scars of having faced so much resistance to making queer space for myself. Still, they felt like important scars, reminders of space I’d made, we’d made, so many of us, and that maybe we’d made some more room for those who would come after us. Now, I’m not sure much has changed, and I’m not sure how much space we actually made. And I’m wondering a little bit what some of those scars were for.
Lately I have wanted to write so badly something that spoke to this deep alienation, not just for myself – and there is a great deal of personal catharsis to writing this out, mind you – but to add another voice, not to Trans Woman as a monolithic idea, but as a reminder that we are a diversity of women (I know such an array of amazing trans women, but it is a function of transmisogyny that we are nonetheless so often reduced to the singular). We are a diversity of women who nonetheless face a common experience of discrimination. It is perhaps the most tragic part of this system of oppression that we must expend so much of our time responding to it, and those hours are lost forever to generations of writers, artists, musicians, everyone.
I commented on one blog that the piece read a lot like something I might have written ten years ago, and that is such a frustrating realization. I was talking tonight with some friends about that frustration, about having said these things again and again, and now not knowing what new there is to say. One friend said she’d been reading zines from ten to fifteen years ago, and they were talking in radical communities then about the same things we’re talking about today: racism, transphobia, sexual assault in communities, ableism, and so much else. I don’t know how to feel about that; perhaps things are getting better, but slowly? Still, it makes me think we need new tactics, new responses, or maybe just new conversations.
I think we can do better than to gauge our progress by decades.
1Such as Morgan Page’s “Just Call Me Hunter,” which if you haven’t read yet you really should.
SNL and my lack of surprise
GLAAD has begun making noise about Saturday Night Live’s deeply transphobic “Estro-Maxx” sketch broadcast on January 29th. The sketch, if you haven’t seen it, is below (though I honestly can’t think of any reason to watch it if you haven’t already – it’s the typical transmisogynist “men in dresses” trope):
Since its airing I’ve seen many people state their shock and surprise that SNL would show something so offensive. I can’t help but think that is missing the point, however, and I wasn’t surprised at all. This kind of “humour” is directed at trans women all the time (men in dresses and cis people vomiting after having sex with a trans woman are two of the more popular punchlines). It is always clearly rooted in cultural hatred of trans identity, and its intent is always meant to ridicule, dehumanize, and assert cis narratives of transness over the lived experience of trans people. There’s nothing to be surprised about here, because this is the dominant portrayal of trans women in the media.
I suppose the GLAAD petition might make a few people think a bit more deeply about why the sketch was transphobic, but the cultural conversation that needs to happen is about themes and hatred that run much deeper than what the staff writers at SNL think is funny.
Intersections and organizing
I have long held the position that while I am a trans woman (an inevitably political identity in a culture which seeks to eradicate us) and I do a great deal of what one might consider trans activism I always consider myself a social justice activist first. I march for things like poverty and immigration rights, and against the occupation of Palestine and corporate governance because I believe any significant improvement in the lives of trans people can only come if we engage social justice for all. As such, I quite enjoyed this piece by Proma Tagore, from No One Is Illegal Vancouver‘s blog on Queer organizing and Pride.
A quote from the essay:
Let us reclaim the radical foundations of Pride, in which people of colour, poor and working class people, and transgender and transsexual communities have historically led the struggle. These histories are often erased or co-opted by the white middle class.
Amen to that. The sad truth is that when I see concerted effort by LGB’s to erase or subjugate the lives of trans people and trans women especially, it is generally white, middle class cissexual gays and lesbians who are driving it forward. That is not to say I have not experienced transphobia from a range of people, but the ideological underpinning of LGB anti-trans sentiment is almost always by white people of economic privilege (Janice Raymond, Ronald Gold, to name two).
This often unconsidered aspect of class privilege is especially denied in western economies, where those with the most material gain (i.e. gay white men) are the most likely to defend that as the result of a meritocracy. In its extremes we see capitalist greed create groups such as the Log Cabin Republicans, LGBT people willing to engage those who would otherwise have them erased, purely to position themselves for material gain.
The essay I linked to calls for people of colour to organize, re-radicalize, and be visible during Pride, and I’d extend that to all of us marginalized under an LGBT community which has systemic biases against us. I’d be overjoyed if this Pride season we saw queers act up against corporate sponsors, against muzzling of dissent, and if we all remembered that modern queer rights started with a riot.
(Of course this does not mean all white LGBT people of a certain class are benefiting or supportive of this structure, but those folks also tend to know pointing that out is a derail and cookie-seeking and understand why I don’t engage it. If this isn’t about you, don’t make it about you, you know?)
From the Facebook group Boycott ‘Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives’ at the Tribeca Film Festival:
Media Advocates Giving National Equality to Trans People (MAGNET)
Press Release: For immediate release April 4, 2010“Protest/rally Against Tribeca’s Decision to Premiere Transphobic Film “Ticked Off Trannies With Knives”
What: A protest/rally demanding that Tribeca Film Festival remove the transphobic film “Ticked Off Trannies With Knives (TOTWK)”. Melissa Sklarz- Director of New York Trans Rights Organization, celebrities, elected officials & LGBT activists will be speaking. A candle light vigil for trans victims of hate crimes will also be held.
When/Where: Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 6:30-8:00pm @ Tribeca Cinemas @ 54 Varick Street, NYC
Dan Savage’s transphobia, back again
Dan Savage has a long history of transphobic commentary in the advice column he writes for Seattle’s The Stranger. Yesterday he took his transphobia to a new level, mockingly suggesting that Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna is trans (he’s not). In Savage’s world view being trans is so shameful it is something to slur right-wing politicians with.
Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna, who Savage has decided looks like a trans person and as such should be mocked for that.
Having grown used to “Ann Coulter is a tranny” slurs from the folks on the left for the past decade, this kind of behaviour strikes me as typical of many cissexuals who otherwise would consider themselves progressive. Typical, too, are the responses to trans frustration: the angry tranny trope, trans people need to get a sense of humour, to focus on the “real fight,” and all of those other derails that only aim to avoid responsibility for the privileged and phobic comment.
I am sure Rob McKenna’s policies are worth criticism, but if that’s the case critique policy. Savage’s response weakens any real criticism of McKenna because the right can now point to this stupid diversion. Further, it fractures response to McKenna by alienating a segment of people who might agree but find mocking trans people to make a political point reprehensible. So Savage isn’t just transphobic, he’s a shitty political activist, too.
Past initial outrage what will the response be, I wonder? I’m expecting Savage and his supporters to dig in, that’s nothing new, but this is a hard point to gloss over for those trying to remain ‘impartial.’ I’ve heard a lot of lip service from cis allies over the years, but I’ve rarely seen them give up something they like consuming – I’ve had people flat out tell me they know Savage is transphobic but they’re going to read him anyway. The kind of transphobia Savage engaged in by making those comments about McKenna has real life implications for trans people. I wonder how many more passes he’ll get.
Lady Gaga sets the record straight
This used to be an article criticizing transmisogyny in Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video. A LOT of people read it, more than anything else I’d ever written here. After a while, though, it became clear people were linking to it and sharing it not to criticize the transmisogyny, but to criticize Lady Gaga. The vast majority of hits to this page have been cis people using it as a “source” to argue with other cis people. ABOUT LADY GAGA. Yawn doesn’t begin to describe it.
So I’ve taken it down, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. We’ve all got better things to talk about than another rich, white pop star.
gtj, 2013/11/06
TransProtect
Boosting the signal:
TransProtect is “a community dedicated to protecting the rights of transgendered people, their partners and families. We have created TransProtect in response to seeing members of our community, unable to advocate for themselves after serious injury, placed in positions that are directly contrary to their wishes and the way they lived their lives.”
This is a fantastic project for trans people by trans people, I’m really proud of how the community has come together. Check this out and support however you can.
Yesterday the trans blogsphere/twittercloud exploded in frustration at a post published at the Bilerico Project, a self-styled blog for LGBTQ “community.” Written by Ron Gold, an ageing cis gay rights campaigner from the 1970’s, “No to the Notion of Transgender” (ETA: The post has been removed by Bilerico) is a hateful screed, based not on the lived experience of trans people (let alone empirical evidence), but rather taking the stance that trans people are delusional and self-mutilating. It recycles many dated and fabricated prejudices against trans people under the guise of being a “challenging” opinion.
The tragedy here is that to see this sort of hate expressed in the queer community is not surprising. I’ve linked to sites before (a practice I’m not going to do anymore, as I don’t want to increase someone’s site traffic for being bigots), and it doesn’t take much effort at all to find examples of blatant hate speech existing in queer or feminist spaces without any analysis or outcry from cis people. In the process of alerting people to the problems with pieces like Ron’s trans people are inevitably called hysterical or over-sensitive by those whose goal is not to allow us to respond to the hate we face, but to silence us and leave the original message unchallenged. Often someone will apologize, half-heartedly, or give disclaimers for intent on behalf of the transphobe (as site editor Bil Browning did, after the piece went up), but only after the transphobe has had their say. This happens again and again, so I don’t see the point of deconstructing this specific incident (the many smart commenters on the original post did that far better than I could hope to).
For the past week or so I’ve been writing an article on domestic violence, specifically on my experience of having been abused in a queer relationship by a cis woman and how it has taken me several years to speak out about it. It has been a challenging piece to write. As I’ve been writing I’ve realized a strong undercurrent about my reluctance to talk to cis people about it, especially cis queers, because except for very few individuals I don’t trust cis queers to not erase my experience. Hate commentary by people like Ron Gold and Julie Bindel, held up by a community as ‘discourse’ or ‘challenging,’ adds to my assumption ignorance and hate, or at best ciscentric privilege. According to people like Gold and Bindel I am both delusional and a self-mutilator, so how could I be expected to provide an honest account of my life, let alone an honest count of abuse?
You might not see the connection there, but that is fallout from unchecked hate speech and erasure. Ron Gold’s commentary doesn’t just disagree with any particular point about trans people, he outright denies we exist. It is worth noting the page is named transgender_a_disease_that_doesnt_exist.php, which leaves me wondering if Bilerico’s editors thought that simply renaming the article made it responsible commentary. Look at that original post name – Transgender: A Disease That Doesn’t Exist. That suggests to me far more clearly than the watered down “No to the notion of transgender” Ron’s real ideas about trans people. This is the the most basic tactic of dehumanizing a group, and justifying violence against them – deny they exist, and violence against them seems less real, because they’re less real. To see that printed on an LGBTQ site, and to be justified as “challenging” commentary is appalling, and no amount of reactive editorializing will make it better.
Ultimately this isn’t about Ron Gold or Julie Bindel or any of the many hateful anti-trans voices out there, this is about a community which does not condemn the idea of transphobic hate at its core but instead responds to incidents of it. I suppose this allows cis-LGBQ communities to believe it isn’t a deep, systemic issue, but just the ranting of a few hateful cranks. It isn’t isolated, however, and until that is accepted by all queers, cis and trans, all we’re going to see is a cycle of hate, reaction, repeat.
Suicide and trans women: Beyond systems of oppression
Sadly, this past Friday it was reported that sportswriter Mike Penner had died in an apparent suicide. Penner came out as a trans woman in 2007 and undergone a very public transition as Christine Daniels. In the past year, however, he had reverted to using the Mike Penner byline. There has been some thoughtful writing about Penner’s death, and some genuine and touching effort to respect the complexities of Mike/Christine’s life. It is a sad time for friends and colleagues, and refreshing to see that for the most part the story is people trying to get it right.
News of Penner’s death came while I was working on a piece about the suicides of trans women, and sadly the story seemed too familiar. Transition is an effort many of us expect to ‘fail’ at, not because there is anything inherently flawed about trans women, but because our culture actively works to keep us from existing. The narratives we have forced on us from our earliest age tell us repeatedly that to transition is to lose all – friends, jobs, lovers, relationships, and most of all our hopes for a life in the way we want to live it – and we have those narratives repeated to us our entire lives. My own decision to transition came with a handful of pills in one hand, having decided that if it all went as horrible as I had been told it would then I could go back to the option of those pills. I’ve heard similar stories from many other trans women.
Although many will mourn the loss of a trans woman to suicide, this is clear from the commentary on Penner’s death, it isn’t enough. While it is systems and institutions that maintain oppression, and while individuals are not inherently transmisogynist for existing in or benefitting from a transmisogynist culture, I do not believe in models which remove personal culpability. They offer too many outs, too many shrugged shoulders, and too much wringing of hands without any change.
For allies to fully engage the oppressions we benefit from we must accept active responsibility in the structure of that oppression. As a white woman my anti-racism work is fuelled not by a passive sense that, gee, it sucks that our culture is systemically oppressive for people who aren’t white, it comes from acceptance that I am part of that system and that I actively benefit from that system. I don’t like that I am part of that system and that I do benefit from it, but it keeps my focus clear when I feel a direct and personal responsibility. I can’t hide behind a faceless system of oppression.
In this active view, then, we cannot discuss the suicides of trans women as merely being a result of the transmisogynist culture we live in, but also as the personal responsibility of anyone who benefits from that culture (and if you are not a trans woman you do benefit from that culture). We cannot change cultures or systems comprised entirely of unnamed others, so we must be willing to count ourselves.
Now, my suggestions here might frustrate or anger you as an ally, but I’d suggest that is a good thing. If it motivates you to do more than just shrug your shoulders at how unfortunate it all is, and if you instead feel that guilt and as a result act to make positive changes for trans women, then it is a worthwhile lens to view your allyship through. Feel the sting of the implications of your privilege. Does your community include trans women? If you answer is anything but “yes, trans women are fully engaged and accepted in my community as equals, it is not uncommon to have trans women as friends or partners,” then you’ve got work to do. Existing in communities where that isn’t the case adds to the social ostracizing that for some trans women leads to suicide. Remember that.
Even if we never know why Mike Penner died, it is a disturbing erasure to assume his transition and subsequent detransition had nothing to do with it. To ignore the intense cultural hatred one must face to transition, especially in such a public way, is willful ignorance. The truth is trans women die often at our own hands, not because we are trans but because living in a culture that hates us and tries to erase us for being trans is sometimes too much to bear. That will not change until the culture and communities we live in change, and part of the responsibility to make that change lies with you – the vast majority who are not trans women.
gudbuy t'jane 