The Trans 100

The Trans 100, a list of 100 significant trans people in the style of such lists as the OUT 100 or the Forbes 500, was released recently. Created by Jen Richards of We Happy Trans and Antonia D’orsay, Executive Director of This Is How, the list highlights 100 trans people in the USA, selected from 500 or so community nominations.

While I hold no animosity towards Jen or Antonia, and I do think everyone on this list is worthy of praise for their work, I believe the idea of highlighting small groups of individuals for specific praise is the worst kind of emulation of assimilationist LGB(t) activism. It shows an implicit belief in meritocracy, and erases the collective reality of most (all?) political accomplishments. Accepting this list as a useful reflection of trans lives and the political struggles of trans people without analysis or critique – especially by cis people – seems to me a grave error.

I’ve heard the list was created in response to there not being enough trans representation on the OUT 100, but honestly my response to that is, “Well, f*** the OUT 100.” If we want to free this world from the impact of hierarchal power structures we have to stop creating them. It really disturbed me to read Jen Richards in an interview explain the list’s creation as being at least partly inspired by the Forbes 500. This is perhaps where my politics diverge from those who see the Trans 100 as useful, as I do not see modeling any radical resistance on capitalism and its structures a worthwhile road to go down.

A collage of thumbnail portraits of Trans 100 list members.

A few months ago during a discussion of the list on Facebook one of the creators responded to my concerns by saying that she was glad people like me would keep her accountable. That scares me, and is a huge part of why I can never ever trust these structures. What, me, a white person on the internet in Canada keeping a white person on the internet in the US accountable – for what? That sounds like the worst recipe for unaccountability I can think of.

Politically, my activism is centred in radicalizing the experience of transness, focusing it in things like anti-capitalism and anti-poverty work. So, even if the idea was from trans people, this is a still a slick GLAAD-sponsored cocktail party, and feels entirely counter to that goal. When your activism involves going to parties with entities who work to erase you, I can’t but help but feel you’ve been duped. Even as a public relations exercise, these kinds of lists set up inevitable hierarchies. If we learn anything from the history LGB activism it is that creating a more-palatable version of your experience inevitably leads to people being thrown under the bus later on. We as trans people have experienced that again and again at the hands of the LGB community.

So, again, before anyone accuses me of attacking the list members: The content of this list is admirable. Every one of those trans people sound like they’re phenomenal and have contributed immensely to the lives of other trans people. I think Jen and Antonia did this with good intentions, but the structure and the existence of the list is worthy of criticism. It might just be “a list on the internet of trans people,” but it reflects the culture of inequality it was created in, and thus does its part to prop up that system and way of thinking. If we want change we must push back at these systems, not embrace them.

Choose your victories: Trans rights legislation

Conservative Minster of Foreign Affairs, John Baird, possibly lost in thought while contemplating the rights of trans people.

Canadian Parliament passed a transgender rights bill yesterday that is being hailed in many media outlets as a victory for trans people and progress for a nation, as a handful of Conservative Members of Parliament voted in favour. “18 Tories voted in support of bill” reads the CBC by-line, as if the passing of this bill had anything to do with the austerity measures and the war on the poor that the Conservative Party of Canada has been engaged in for its entire existence. While it might make for a warm and hopeful story to imagine Conservatives voting for trans rights, I again fail to celebrate the theatre of electoral politics granting me rights which I already have, and which I don’t need the state to declare. If any of the Conservatives or Liberals who voted for this bill truly concerned themselves with the lives of trans people they would take measures to eradicate poverty for all people. Trans women are especially impacted by poverty at rates absurdly high compared to those experienced by cis people, even more so when the trans woman is racialized. So while this bill might make things marginally better for some trans people (the sort of discrimination it addresses by its nature benefits those already with class and race privilege much more than those without it), it will only make it better within the system in which it has been enacted. That system is at its core about oppression and inequality, so any gestures it makes towards equality should be viewed with caution and an awareness of the history of capitalism.

A visualization exercise

How power is distributed by cis privilege.

(Image depicts a large bulldozer with the word ‘CIS’ emblazoned across the front scoop, and small stick figures holding a flag with the word ‘TRANS’ on it standing in front of the bulldozer.)

Enforcing context, and the silencing of marginalized voices

I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and my personal experience with it. I’d even started a piece on BDD for this blog, but ultimately scrapped it. I found myself unable to write about how this serious and debilitating issue impacts my life, not because I was uncomfortable with the subject, but rather because of the thousand caveats and disclaimers that writing about a trans life for a mostly cis audience requires. It seemed to me highly improbable that my experience as a person with a body who has BDD would not be overwhelmed by cissexual contextualizing of me as a trans person with a trans body who has GID.

Cis-dominated cultures by nature seek to make the experience of trans women monolithic, while also making one’s transness their singular defining characteristic. This allows the validity of trans women as women to be challenged, and ultimately erased: As long as the ‘trans’ part of ‘trans woman’ is amplified and focused on, the ‘woman’ part is easily dismissed or forgotten. This usually manifests as cis fascination with transness as the root and cause of all experiences for trans women. I rarely engage in discussions of issues such as childhood sexual abuse with cis therapists and others, because in my experience they will then contextualize my transness in relation to having been abused (which erases the validity of my gender – I am not a woman, I am a traumatized man). Similarly, discussions of sexual harassment against trans women can easily be dismissed by cis people as being issues of transphobic harassment, and something significantly different from the real sexual harassment cis women face, regardless of whether the harasser knew the woman was trans or not.

This unchallenged cisnormative thinking has a profound impact on the ability of trans women (and trans people in general) to receive important health services cis people might take for granted. I’ve talked with many trans folks about their experiences with therapy and inevitably the discussion comes around to cis therapists and whether or not they ‘get it.’ The desire to discuss relevant issues becomes secondary to wondering whether or not the counselor will fixate on the client being trans. In many cases, and after many negative experiences, trans people give up ever discussing some issues in a typical therapeutic context, at least with a cis therapist.

As I write this piece I am aware of how my energies as a trans woman are being subverted to address issues of cisnormativity instead of discussing issues important to me, personally. That is how systems erase individuals, and how marginalized voices are silenced.

Men in Dresses: Transmisogyny and Halloween

With Halloween approaching we are reminded again of the the importance of calling out racist and otherwise oppressive costumes. I’d like to add another problematic costume to this list: Men in drag.

While I realize for some Halloween is an opportunity to dress in ways which they otherwise wouldn’t be able to, there is a deeper commentary on trans women in the presentation of some of the men who do it (and I specifically mean men who otherwise have no trans inclinations, and for whom this is not an expression of their gender). Trans women are inundated by cultural messaging that “men in dresses” are ridiculous and worthy of scorn (just watch any TV ad with that meme, or read last week’s edition of The Onion). When the point of a costume is “haha, look how ridiculous this dude looks as a woman” it reinforces transmisogynist attitudes and hate.

Isn’t transmisogyny so funny?

Again, while I realize this is complicated and not as clear as someone appropriating a culture for laughs, there is room for analysis here. If the drag costume is a punch line to a transphobic joke (overtly or implied), then it should be called out as such. And, of course, the deeper implication is straight-up misogyny – that femininity itself is worthy of scorn. As is often the case transmisogyny amplifies cultural attitudes towards women, and gives people a pass to make comments about women in general by mocking trans women specifically.

This Halloween, if you or your friend is considering dressing in drag for the laughs ask yourself (or your friend) why? Why is this funny? What is the point of the costume? If you’re not sure then maybe go as a zombie or a ghost, because otherwise you might be taking part in a spectrum of cultural hate which starts with “men in dresses” jokes and ends with dead trans women.

What we deserve, and cultures of dissonance

As awareness of the marginalization of trans women has grown in cis queer communities there has developed a noticeable gap between the language and ideas of allyship and how those ideas are implemented (if at all). This seems to be a common learning curve when engaging one’s privileges over a marginalized group – before you are able to enact changes in yourself or your communities you will think, talk, and read about the issues. While this is an obvious important step, problems arise when the bulk of energy addressing oppression gets stuck in that thinking, talking, and reading phase. Actual change becomes incremental, despite what might seem like a great deal of awareness of the issues. For those who continue to experience those systems of oppression it creates a dissonance between what others say and what they do.

When that dissonance is reflected in the behaviour of entire communities, these communities become cultures of dissonance for those who are oppressed by the privileges of that community. This is most commonly experienced as lip service, hang-wringing, and fantasies of inclusion created by the privileged and assigned to the marginalized. In the case of queer trans women and desirability it is seen clearly in the gap between the numbers of people who talk about the importance of trans women having access to the same opportunities for sex, love, and desire that cis queers experience, without any real reflection of that in people’s dating habits, or who they see as desirable.

As one is immersed in cultures of dissonance distinct patterns of behaviour begin to emerge. Hang-wringing, for example, is the external expression by cis people of concern, dismay, or even anger about the plight of trans women, without any further analysis, action, or discussion. This is common in social media, where a news story about violence committed against trans women will be reposted again and again, despite the poster having no history of working for trans-inclusion, either individually or in organized movements. While this is a symptom of ‘slacktivism’ in general, and is by no means limited to the experience of trans women (see white social media responses to violence against people of colour), this adds to the culture of dissonance trans women are supposed to engage.

The lip service of desirability is the most common way the culture of dissonance for trans women is maintained. I have been told many times by friends, potential dates, and even lovers about what they think I deserve, a kind of idealized relationship or date, but it is almost always framed as part of a conversation about why they couldn’t provide those things themselves (from speaking with other trans women this seems to be a very common experience). These cis fantasies of trans inclusion work by allowing the teller to feel they are explicit in their support of trans inclusion while not doing any of the actual work to address the systems which both privilege their cis-ness and marginalize trans women. Combined with hand-wringing these illusions of structural support and inclusion create an extremely damaging psychological environment. Further, trans women may be afraid to criticize the support they do receive for fear of losing it altogether, even if it is ultimately insubstantial. The question of “Why don’t I see myself represented?” is drowned out by these assertions that we are, or at the very least should be. Telling a trans woman she deserves all of the things cis people can access (especially in regards to desirability and access to one’s sexuality) resolves the speaker from questioning their own role in supporting the systems which deny those very things. Prolonged exposure to this kind of disconnect between what you’re told and what people actually do strongly reinforces messages of exclusion. Being told you’re attractive or sexy or desirable by someone who does not actually believe those things (or who does not have any intention to act on them) may be more damaging than to not hear the compliment at all. It reduces trust, and makes substantial change even less likely.

As long as these gaps between intention and action exist the value of allies in movements will be shaky. While I experience cultures of dissonance as a queer trans woman, I still have the privileges of being white, among others, so I don’t remove myself from the need to have analysis of my actions as an ally or a friend. Our work as allies to others has to move beyond liking things on Facebook and telling people things we think they want to hear (or we want to believe). We need to demonstrably make space in our lives and communities, close those gaps, and act on the words we use – or be willing to ask ourselves the uncomfortable question of why we don’t.

EDITED TO ADD: This of course does not mean there aren’t already many wonderful cis people bridging those gaps in communities and personal relationships, but there is still so much work to be done. This is also not to suggest that we all aren’t a mix of successes and failures in our attempts to be an ally to people we hold structural privilege over. My goal is not to invoke guilt or defensiveness at having the system pointed out, it is to identify it so we can dismantle it together. I don’t want a list of the guilty, I want to see change.

On taking offense

As we’ve been reminded during the past few weeks, an easy dismissal of critiques of oppressive language and culture is to suggest the critic is choosing to ‘take offense.’ Whether it’s the apologists for a rape culture comedian or the defense of a cis actor for her transmisogyny, ‘offense’ is an easy label to erase otherwise genuine complaints. At its extreme it is that most noxious of well-poisoners, ‘Political Correctness,’ which through sheer volume and repetition has become an acceptable rhetorical tactic for many. It urges on those with similar privileges to sign onto the dismissal while it attempts to silence all others.

I find it incredibly frustrating arguing ideas with people who engage in cheap rhetorical tricks instead of having a discussion (which is why I generally steer clear of conversations with trans-eradicationist radical feminists and creationists, among others). It is frustrating, too, when those making critiques are portrayed as being too emotionally sensitive, with the implication they lack the self-will to rise above a few harmless words. Whether considered an innate condition (as with gender or race), or as an example of broken norms (as with queer or trans), the assertion of sensitivity is inevitably an extension of privileged positions.

I don’t ‘take offense’ like I experience emotional pain, and there is nothing about me being a trans woman that makes me more susceptible to it. Sure, I might feel a great deal of emotional pain if someone I am invested in acts in ways which are offensive to trans women, but that pain isn’t the content – it’s the betrayal which hurts. But ‘offense’ in and of itself? People will sometimes try to be clever and bring up the “sticks and stones” rhyme, and I agree with them completely. Names do not hurt me.

What I am doing, then, when I ‘take offense,’ is acknowledging your encroachment into territory which subjugates me and people like me to people like you. It is that simple. It is acknowledgement of your role in the system of oppression. It might not be intentional, or malicious, and you probably aren’t even aware of it, but your joke, your word, the lie you’ve been sold about my life, each one props up a system of oppression which has real world implications. When your actions or language assert that dominance I will speak up. And if you do engage in it intentionally, you don’t cause me harm – you don’t do anything to me except get on my radar. So, instead of being passive and sensitive, as the person calling out offense will always be painted, I am instead active in my response to my oppression. I am not taking offense – I am pushing back.

Trans and suicide

I returned home tonight after a weekend away to find a number of friends posting notices to their Facebook walls about the suicide of a local trans man. I didn’t know him myself, but many people I know did. They worked with him, and were friends with him. The pain and devastation of their loss is rippling through the city right now, and my heart is breaking for them, and for him.

That is not my story to tell, though. I didn’t lose a friend, a coworker, or a mentor. Still, it resonates deeply: Whenever I hear of another trans person committing suicide I feel the wind knocked out of me, like a punch to the solar plexus. It doesn’t matter if I knew them or had any connection to their lives, it still evokes in me such a deep, painful empathy, and such a tragic understanding that I feel sick. I imagine I have such a visceral response because, truthfully, I have many times thought of ending my life. I was perhaps eight or nine years old when I first gave it serious consideration, and it has been with me throughout my adult life. I would imagine most of us who carry the cultural weight of ‘trans’ have at some point thought about it; I would imagine a good many of us have considered it in some degree of detail.

It is a tragic camaraderie, this relationship with the destruction of ourselves and others like us. It makes me sad, and angry, and so contemptuous of cultures which coerce beautiful people to end themselves. I want to scream and demand something, I don’t even know what, but it all feels like swords against an ocean. I usually don’t like big emotional gestures, but nonetheless: Trans people, we need each other. This world crushes us sometimes, but sharing that experience eases off the pressure some. We can afford at least that for one another. Cis people, we need you. We’re small, we don’t have the numbers to make this world a place we can exist in, let alone thrive in. We need you to help make this a better place for us, so then maybe we won’t lose so many.

To those of you who I knew and are gone, I miss you.
To those of you who I didn’t know and are gone, I am sorry I can never get to know you.
To those of us who are still here, let’s do what we can to make this an easier place to stay.

Much love to you, Kyle.

Uneasy allies: Trans women and Cis gay men

Controversy erupted in Toronto’s queer community recently as Danny Glenwright, a cissexual editor at Xtra, Canada’s largest gay and lesbian newspaper, publicly posted a trans woman‘s birth name on his personal Facebook. After at first agreeing to remove her information, he instead posted a non-apology to Xtra‘s website, sparking further outrage by trans people and their allies. In response, Xtra has promised to engage in efforts to increase trans awareness and inclusivity at the paper, though details of the plan are unclear.

The tragedy here for me isn’t just the incredible disrespect shown to the trans woman by a member of the LGBT media, but that it seems part of a larger pattern of backlash to trans women by cissexual gay men. Whether it is in response to the transphobic actions or words of a Ronald Gold, or Dan Savage, or exploiting our deaths for camp, or even arguing against use of the word ‘cis’, there is a significant minority of cis gay men who make no effort to restrain their vitriol for trans women who demand equality.

This is by no means to suggest all cis gay men are transphobic. Far from it, I myself have many cis gay men who are incredible friends, allies, and community, and many prominent gay men are vocal supporters of trans rights. Still, whenever conflict arises between cis gay men and trans people (trans women specifically), there is inevitably a core of gay voices who respond with anger and hatred. The tactics of belittling, derailing, and dehumanizing occur again and again.

This isn’t limited to trolling commenters on websites, either. Some gay men in positions of real power – politicians and the media, among others – hold at best regressive ideas about trans women, and at worst engage in actively anti-trans behaviour. These men directly affect the quality of life for trans people in their ability to influence laws and culture. Whether it is excluding trans people from legislation designed to protect other LGB people or normalizing our culture’s transphobia, the outcome is the same: trans people are marginalized and dehumanized.

Now, the point of writing this isn’t simply to point out that some gay men can say and do transphobic things, or to engage those men in a flame war. Though it is an uncomfortable pattern to point to, and the conversations to begin addressing this issue will not be easy, they nonetheless need to happen. One of the common derailing arguments of those internet commenters is to suggest that the ‘real enemy’ is elsewhere, and that trans people are misguided in their criticism of transphobia within the gay community. I flatly reject this. We cannot move forward to seek social justice for all if we have rot in our foundation. Allowing transphobia, racism, ableism, misogyny, classism, and other oppressions to go unchecked only undermines our efforts. Only by addressing them will our movements be stronger.

Dating from the Margins: “She’s Kind of Insecure,” or the Catch-22 of Marginalization

This post is part of 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.

The first part of the series is available here: Dating from the Margins: Desexualizing and Cultural Abuse

On many occasions I have heard a friend or acquaintance dismissing a potential date because they’re “insecure,” “too needy,” or seem “more invested.” In polyamorous communities I have often noticed alarm if the person dates fewer people, or doesn’t seem to have much dating history. These value judgements are rarely if ever accompanied by any further analysis, though, and seem to be almost universally accepted as reasons to not date someone.

I have trouble accepting this conventional wisdom for many reasons. At its base this kind of thinking assumes a model of equal access to dating and desirability, which is demonstrably false. Further, it ignores any awareness of oppression models and privilege, and instead works to support those privileged by this model by making neutral these judgements which are nonetheless strongly informed by external cultural biases.

In my last post I presented the idea of systemic desexualizing as cultural abuse, and I stand by that. Especially if one identifies as a proponent of social justice, and of equality in the face of cultural prejudices regarding race, disability, queerness, body type, gender identity, etc., the understanding of the impact of desexualizing and denying desirability is of paramount importance to dismantle oppression. I cannot imagine describing the systemic denial of food, or sleep, or shelter to be dismissed as unchangeably innate and apart from oppression models, yet we do this with desirability all the time.

When I hear someone say their rationale for not dating someone is because of their “insecurity,” or some other easy pop psychology reasoning, I always hope they’ll have a flash of understanding and compassion, and say, “Though I imagine their insecurity might stem from a set of cultural oppressions which I can’t begin to imagine.” We cannot expect progressive social models to ever take hold if we accept the denial of an arbitrarily defined subset of people to the basic right to access love and sexual expression. This zero-sum thinking is the essence of capitalism, and encourages us to hold tight our own privileges while denying the exclusion of others.

When we stigmatize the symptoms of cultural abuse and marginalization (which is what most of the described “insecurity” is), especially in relationships where that same cultural abuse and marginalization privileges us, we are agents for that system of oppression. To identify ourselves as proponents of anti-oppression yet still engage in language and attitudes which apply negative value judgements to people without acknowledgement of the roots of those judgements undermines the very point of anti-oppression activism. It denies the impact of that abuse.

While we imagine ourselves capable of dismantling such oppressive systems as capitalism, sexism, racism, and classism, I find it deeply sad that we are unwilling to commit resources to the dismantling of desexualizing and exclusionary desirability. This is the truly revolutionary, and the truly radical.