Open letter to Feministing

This open letter to Feministing from meloukhia‘s this ain’t livin’ blog is well worth repeating:

Dear Feministing,

I’ve been reading you guys for a while now. I haven’t always liked everything you do or say, but I think that you bring some important issues to my attention and sometimes some good conversations happen on your website.

But, you know, in recent months I’ve become increasingly disturbed by the exclusionary language and attitudes I see on your site, most particularly in reference to people with disabilities and people in lower social classes. You have a pretty poor track record on even covering disability issues, and the casual ableism which I see in your comment threads and sometimes in your very posts is extremely grating. It is especially irritating to see dismissive responses from site administrators when this issue is brought up.

Today’s post on chivalry was the last straw. Courtney used the line “If having my car door opened makes me feel like lover man thinks I’m an invalid, not so feminist.” This is offensive.

I’d like to point you to a piece I wrote recently, “Why Inclusionary Language Matters,” because I think you need to read it. Using ableist language is not just offensive, it’s antifeminist. And I would really appreciate it if y’all would stop doing it and stop tolerating it in your comment threads. I would also love to see y’all including more posts talking about topics related to disability and disability issues.

Please address this. Feminism includes people with disabilities. Disability is a feminist issue. Please make Feministing more inclusionary.

Thank You,
s.e. smith/meloukhia (meloukhia at gmail dot com)

I couldn’t agree more.

ETA: Facebook group, Ableism, Racism, Transphobia: Feministing is not my Feminism

ETA: If you haven’t seen it yet, quixotess‘ call for boycott.

Cissupremacy: The Hollywood Edition

Or Hollywood Actress Gains Serious Acting Cred by Playing Trans, Yet Again. So Nicole Kidman is the latest in a series of cissexual Hollywood actors who have stumbled down that path of ignorance and bigotry which leads to playing a trans person. In The Danish Girl she will star alongside a number of other cissexual people in the film adaptation of a fictionalized account (by a cis person) of the life of an actual trans woman, Lily Elbe. Don’t worry if you don’t know anything about Lily Elbe, by the end of this film you won’t either. From Variety‘s item on the film:

One afternoon in 1920s Copenhagen, Greta, a portrait painter, asked her husband to stand in for an absent female model. Slipping on a dress, stockings and woman’s shoes began a metamorphosis into Lili. When the photos became wildly popular, Greta encouraged her husband to do more, but a harmless game evolved into something deeper that threatens their marriage.

Oh, my stomach already hurts. I could do a sentence by sentence deconstruction of why this is transmisogynist and cissupremacist (“metamorphasis”, the list of clothing, etc.), but that would just make my stomach worse. Of course there is heteronormativity – THREATENS THEIR MARRIAGE!!! – but before you cis queers hop on that bandwagon, remember it is heteronormativity done in the service of transmisogyny. I’ve seen and heard more than my share of heteronormativity come out of the mouthes of cis queers at the expense of trans women, so I’m feeling a bit conflicted about sharing this platform with you right now (I’m looking at you, Mr. Cis Gay Man at the Pride parade who had to loudly opine “Why would you get a sex change and be a dyke?” as the Dykes on Trikes rode by). Before I get into the nuance of discussing portrayals of trans people in cisspremacist media let me make this point clear: A cis person performing as a trans person is bigotry. There’s no “good” way to do it, it does trans people nothing positive, and it is at best ignorantly complicit with a system which at its extremes kills trans people to keep us in line. Apologists need not bother engage me on this. We’ve been through this before, of course.

Transamerica was the product of a cissexual writer/director, a cissexual producer/director, with a cissexual lead, all allegedly telling the story of a trans woman’s experience. I’m sure the special effects artists who prepared the silicon penis for cissexual lead Felicity Huffman to wear was cissexual, too. It was given awards and praise from the cis LGB community, but I didn’t know what exactly I was supposed to take from this film that couldn’t miss the point of my experience any further if it tried. That’s not the point, though, is it? Films such as Transamerica (and as The Danish Girl will be I am sure) are for cis audiences, to reinforce their fears about trans women, and to laud their own for acting out their culture’s bigotry. I have made the point before: Cis dominance and control of the narratives of trans lives is the central mechanism through which trans people and trans women especially are marginalized. It provides the framework for apologists to our assaults and murders, and justifies cis fear and hate. Whether it is a Hollywood film with real movie stars, or the straw man ranting of transmisogynist feminists making effigies of lives I never come across as described by actual trans women, it denies us real experiences and voices to keep us apart and othered, less than human. It sets an acceptable standard for often fatal violence to reinforce this system. Think about that before you pay one dollar to see films like these, please?

Passing

The often cringe-inducing “Queers United” blog posted another bit of transphobia-as-allyship last night, this time in their ‘Word of the Gay’ segment. Luckily, you can skip a visit and thus avoid accidentally reading any of their other infuriating posts, as I can repost the entire entry here:

“Passable” is a term used among the transgender community and admirers to describe a person who is seen and treated as their desired gender identity.

Since posting the author has backpedaled into the typical responses of blaming trans people for being bothered by this, derailing by making accusations against individual trans women, and wondering aloud why we can’t all get along, as we’re all in this together (as well as changing the original and far more offensive “passing as the opposite gender” to “who is seen and treated as their desired gender identity,” which insinuates the same DECEIVER! tone, only in more-polite language). He doesn’t seem to get why this is offensive, as cis people rarely do. For his sake, and any of those of you who aren’t getting the why out of this either, here’s the point:

Passing is a system used by cissexist cultures to control trans people, to ostracize and justify violence perpetrated against them.

It is used as either a cookie (the “I had no idea!” fawning) or a staff (the hateful, transmisogynist commentary from all cisgender communities, gay or straight), but in all cases it is used to shape trans behaviour and expectations to cis-dominant choices.

Because of this external imposition, passing as a concept is central to cissexism, not trans identity or trans community. Although it is framed as a trans pursuit, particularly in cisgender portrayals of trans women, it is not something which trans women are allowed to consider on their own behalf; Passing is purely a qualitative value imposed by cis people or other trans people acting as their agents. By design it denies trans or gender variant people any agency by making cisgender or cisgender-appearing as the only “real” gender presentations, and it creates division among trans people by placing more value on some atypical gender identities than others.

We all pass as one thing or the other perhaps hundreds of times a day. I seem to exist on a fulcrum of two class levels, and depending on the environment I’ll either be hassled by security guards, or they’ll smile and hold the door for me. The world is a fuzzy place which, despite the assertions of some, has few distinct lines. The idea of passing as one thing when being another only becomes relevant, however, when it disrupts the hierarchy of a dominant group. Cissexism relies on tagging trans people and either alerting other cis people of their presence, or intimating to the trans person that, even if others don’t, they know (and thus have the power to enact the first option at any time).

Simply put, “innocent” posts like the one at Queers United are anything but. They are part of systemic trans oppression, and serve those who would keep us apart and in fear.

The importance of telling our stories, part 2

In my last post, I touched on a point about the lack of contemporary personal narratives by trans women for trans women, and how that was a symptom of a cis-dominant culture which gained by refusing us identities beyond those they supplied. This unceasing assault against our most basic access to self-identification has served to erase generations of stories of trans women and replace them with a cis-enforced and cis-beneficial debate. I have been transitioned something over fifteen years now, and the argument hasn’t changed. Sure, cis is replacing non-trans, and some of the theory has shifted in response to bigger cultural movements, but ultimately I could not date a post on the Michfest boards if I didn’t know when it was written and there were no other clear identifiers of date (how much enthusiasm the poster has for Ferron as some kind of lesbian atomic isotope decay maybe?). 1996, 2001, 2009 – the arguments are the same, and the hatred of trans women is a constant.

During my fleeting career writing for cis-LGB media I presented an editor with an idea for a story on essentially this topic, but was told it was probably too academic. Considering my inch or two of column would be alongside phone ads with photos of white gay men holding their cocks I could see her point, but I still felt the irony of having a cis person telling me no to my story idea on how cis people enforce trans identities. My thesis now remains as it did then: Stick figures and straw men in dresses are the easiest target for transmisogynists, and as long as we ignore that and try to fight a different fight, we’ll be stuck. Cissexist media has almost completely dominated trans women’s narratives into a handful of caricatures, and transmisogynist anti-inclusion cis-feminists don’t extend us much beyond that. Their hatred and fear influence cis people who would otherwise think themselves progressive and supportive of trans women, because there are no other portrayals of identity which they can counter to the haters’ version. I have seen the dynamic of “arm’s length inclusion” because of this, the peripheral inclusion of a trans woman or two in a community, who nonetheless rarely seems to date or take any central part in activities. Like person of colour tokenism, this trans woman tokenism allows people’s conscious need to think of themselves as progressive to mask their subconscious ickiness at our presence.

A side note: I am always aware, when writing about trans women, of the dangers of being coerced into oppositional stances with other trans women. The good tran/bad tran model is designed to shame us into shaming those like us, and I have made it my personal goal to divest from that as much as I can (which is still hard, having grown up in the transmisognyist culture I did). This extends to taking the position that any trans woman’s self-identification is hers alone, and I will not criticize her for taking it. I will criticize some ideas, sure, but not the people holding them. That is the goal of a cis-dominant society, and I do not want to be a tool to achieve that. So, for the purposes of this essay, and as the general brand of trans identity empowerment I’m dishing out, I want to be clear that above all I believe in the self-determination of trans women, even when I do not agree with them as individuals. I have fallen into that trap of cis-serving essentialism before, and all it did was make me feel less of a person.

Denying us our stories as individuals further serves cissexism by keeping us apart. You’re far less likely to scream your point at someone if you know them: The heightened emotions of some discussions within the trans community reflect to me not an internal struggle about trans identity, but are rather a distraction to maintain focus solely on cis dominance (even the HBSers are trying to enforce a transphobic, cis-supremacist model of gender). The positions we’re left defending inevitably are defined by the cissexist debate we’ve been forced into.

I think next time I’ll write down a few thoughts about trans autobiographies as consumables in a cisgender marketplace.

Trans women: Tell your stories

As I have discussed before, I am approaching one of those personal milestones that arose from our ability to tell time. The thing I keep returning to, as a source of amusement, is the memory of thinking I could never trust a trans woman in her 40’s. I felt this strongly when I was in my early twenties, after some abuse and a great deal of alienation in my attempt to find community. Looking back (from nearly 40), I realize much of my frustration was that – although I hadn’t yet formalized the idea – I had never come across a trans woman who was transitioning to or living the sort of life I wanted to live.

As I look back now I see the first trans women I came across with whom I felt a deep affinity for (through our atypical approach to the prescribed narrative of being trans) were my contemporaries (a fantastic group of women who probably saved my life). Our personal contexts as women were deeply rooted in either a formal feminist self-analysis or one which would nonetheless assert the right of self-determination in identity for trans women; Although we may have had experience with the old HBSOC approach and formalized gender clinics (as I certainly did), we rejected that approach and claimed our lives for ourselves. Those are lofty words, it seems, but that was what it felt like. Now I can look around my communities and see dozens and hundreds of trans women whose experience I implicitly understand, even if the details of our lives are on the surface tremendously different (even if I find some of them frustrating and misguided).

It was the lack of older trans women in my life that motivated me to start writing here. I’ve been around for a long time, mostly glad to let others take the mic and keep a low profile, but I was lucky to take part in discussing and formulating some ideas that while they are now becoming commonplace were once revolutionary (I spent countless hours explaining to people why they needed to put a space in trans woman!). I’m most excited, though, to live in a community in which there is beginning to be that sort of historical context. Even though I don’t know many trans women from the generation before me who would have fit easily into these ideas, I am sure they exist. I hope the internet will find a venue for their stories.

I feel like most of the writing we do – or at least most of the writing done by trans women whose writing I enjoy – is done in the arenas of feminism, and in debating our rights with those who would and do other us and put our lives in peril. I believe this focus itself is a function of cis-dominance, transmisogyny, and marginalization. It saddens me, though, as it deprives us of sharing our experiences with one another. That is when community really begins to weave tightly: Not in the exhaustion of defending our rights, but in the ability to see others who are living lives like us, and are happy.

Make this your new radical stance: Stop arguing in their debate. Well, take a break from it sometimes, at least, and talk about yourself. Give trans women the chance to see the real lives of women like them, not the ones cis-dominant media portrays, and maybe pick up some of the cis people who sense the way things currently are isn’t how they should be. Give history more than just the fact you were right.

Tranny, again, what the f***?

So, after spending the past few months rethinking my strategy to that minefield that is well-intentioned cis* people, I’d decided I wanted to start writing here again. I was waiting for something to come along that inspired me to speak up, and then this trainwreck hit my radar:

When are trans men going to realize the only claim they have against ‘tranny’ is the first four letters? And when will cis* people realize the claim they have against it is nothing? When you spell it out it’s a slur against trans women, and this insistence on forcing it into use shows the depth of transmisogyny in the queer community. You are not ‘reclaiming’ it for yourself, you are enforcing it for cis* dominance, and at the expense of trans women.

I would doubt there are many premeditated murders of trans women in this world where the killer did not call his victim a “fucking tranny” at some point. This word is a culturally condoned form of dehumanizing trans women, from Conan on up it’s a spectrum of laughter, invective, and violence. It is not used at all in a similar way when applied to trans men, and you wouldn’t throw it around like a cool retro T-shirt if it was. This isn’t being radical, this is being selfish and crass.

If this post pissed you off, go talk about it elsewhere, because queers need to be talking about this elsewhere, not on the blog of some pissed-off trans woman. I’m not interested in talking about it, and if you want to derail it into abstract arguments about language and meaning and intent, sure, whatever, that’s privilege fine, but I have things to do (I’m always astounded at the number of closet libertarians there are amongst progressives, ready to storm out for their rights as individuals over all other concerns, like the back cover of an Ayn Ran paperback or the liner notes to a Rush album). In any case I’m done arguing for the right to be offended at a word which has been used to violently marginalize women like me, trans women. The argument itself is an extension of the oppression, and I’m not engaging anymore.

(Before anyone throws out the same brilliant counter-arguments as dozens have before you, go read this thread from Livejournal a few months back. Trust me, someone has though of it first, and someone smarter than you has already dismantled it. Oh, and if you want to whine that you’re a trans guy who doesn’t use tranny, well, good, but my friends who are trans men don’t expect me to pat them on the heads for not being assholes.)

“Tranny” is violence against trans women. Say this over and over and over until you get it. Then you can start apologizing.

The road to hell…

At Feministe, Bint posted what seemed at first a useful thought experiment:

Do you have a tendency to exhibit certain kinds of bigoted behavior? Ablism? Racism? Transphobia? Classism? Sexism? Homophobia? Xenophobia? Something else?

What kinds of bigotry are the easiest for you to spot others engaging in?

Are there any situations where you have engaged in a behavior and then looked back and realized that it was really bigoted?

However, as I feared, it quickly became an excuse for privilege, cis privilege especially, to come out in full force as suddenly it was okay to say really triggering things as part of “processing” (from a comment):

I guess what I fight most is transphobia– because I have so internalized “don’t cut genitals” from my vehement opposition to FGM, male circumcision, doctor’s “sex assignment” at birth of the intersexed… it’s very hard for me to “turn that off” when the person in question is actually asking for GRS. Living as the other sex? sure. Hormones even? ok. Asking a doctor to conduct surgery on your genitals? aaaeeeiiiii!!

I am a trans woman of surgical history. Yeah, aaaeeeiiiii!! I’d like to be shocked by this comment, but I am not. Transmisogyny enforces narratives on the bodies of trans women that are not our own (“Hormones even? ok.” When was it for you to decide?), and act to other us. Our bodies are traditionally depicted as freakish and disgusting, or merely comical, and although this has been stated in the framework of “owning up to” transphobia, I fail to see why the commenter thought what they said was at all appropriate? It is this steamrolling of theory over lived experience that allows transphobia to flourish in feminist discourse. By refusing to allow me to have my own body, and instead forcing me to have genitals that provoke disgusted squeals I am completely erased as a sexual person, for sure, and a woman, of course. In that narrative I am mutilated.

That place you aaaeeeiiiii at is where I let lovers touch me, if I trust them to, which isn’t often (and can you wonder why?). My body isn’t a tool for you to work through your shit, and feeling entitled to use it as such shows the real depth of cis privilege. Get a private journal or therapist like the rest of us and deal with it on your own time.

I am sure Bint didn’t intend this with her thread, and I don’t want people stirring shit on my account, because there are many positive conversations happening. There is, however, a distinct difference between owning your -isms and having productive conversations to dismantle them, and speaking openly in the language that enforces your privilege. I hope the post will address this before more marginalized groups get shit on in the name of “owning up.” This is nothing to pat yourself on the back for.

Your processing !> others’ triggering.

ETA: I want to clarify that I think the idea of Bint’s post is good and important. Admitting to one’s -isms publicly is often a valuable step in dismantling them. Doing it in language that reinforces those privileges and prejudices, though, doesn’t acknowledge anything. It just gives a “safe space” to say fucked up things under the guise of process. Most of the commenters seemed to get this.

First off…

I’m finally getting myself some proper digs.  While I tinker with colours and widgets and such, you can read me at http://gudbuytjane.livejournal.com/. I’ll be “simulblogging” (I just made that up, although I bet if I Googled it someone else beat me to it) with my Livejournal for a while.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, the username doesn’t mean anything other than the fact I like obscure British glam rock bands and that thinking up usernames is hard.

(I’ll be adding some backdated posts for archival purposes, untouched in the name of transparency, even to the point of leaving typos and grammar errors that annoy me to no end.)