The premise of this project is to broaden the Mudd community's perception of what gender is, and what gender norms are. The thing that bothers us the most at Mudd in relation to queer issues is the complacency of the community in ignoring gender variance on its campus. This project hopes to address this problem by confronting the narrow construction of gender. It draws on the ideas of performance and performativity, and embodies a queer aesthetic by queering the campus through forcing people to see aspects of their peers that were formerly invisible. This is the reason we have decided to title this project Gender Pending. It draws an analogy to title pending, as well as gender bending, and further queers peoples' expectations of a well-defined gender. We hope that this project will spark discussion on campus revolving around gender.
If you have something to say, please comment! We'd really appreciate it.
I think you have done a great job with this project. It really helps to get in people's faces about some of this stuff. It's a shame it was raining on Monday so no one could stop to read the signs...
ReplyDeleteThis is fantastic. I wish I was on-campus to see it.
ReplyDeleteYou condemn one convention and demand the institutionalization of another set of behaviors, the act of which would create another convention.
ReplyDeleteIs this what you're getting at? I'm pretty sure this is what you're getting at.
Assuming you're not a hermaphrodite, you are either a male or female of the species Homo sapiens, regardless of whatever nonsensical parlance you come up with to describe yourself. I honestly fail to see the point of any of this.
ReplyDelete@ ______ I wouldn't say that we are demanding the institutionalization of another set of behaviors, but rather we are getting at the idea that a binary approach to gender is the wrong approach. I suppose you could say that the convention we are trying to create is a lack of conventions.
ReplyDelete@anonymous there is a difference between sex and gender. What you are discussing is sex, the things between one's legs. Gender is in a person's head, it is what they feel they are rather than what they see when they look down in the shower.
@Skye: Thank you!
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: I'll add to Lowell's comment and note that hermaphrodite is an outdated term and that intersex should be used instead.
@______: I'm not sure I understand your post entirely. The project does indeed condemn the convention of binary gender, because it doesn't adequately describe some of us. The only behaviors we (transgender+allies) are asking for is respect for ourselves, our identities, our experiences, and necessarily our gender as a part of all these things. I'll be happy to discuss this further with you if I haven't gotten your point.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: Imagine this wildly unlikely scenario. One night, you are kidnapped and subjected to surgery that replaces all your reproductive organs and secondary sex characteristics with those of the opposite sex. When you wake up, you are effectively of the other sex.
What has changed about you and what hasn't? We (I believe I speak for everyone on this project, but I hope they'll correct me if I shouldn't do so) would say that your sex has changed, but your gender has not changed. Your brain and thus your perception of self, all of your memories, your experiences, and your beliefs are all intact. These are some of the factors in what we call "gender".
How might you feel about this? You might feel that your natural state was that of a man/woman, and the way your body looked after the surgery did not reflect the real you. People might start to treat you as something that made no sense to you, because they would determine your gender role by your appearance. You might not meet the expectations people have of your new sex, the way you "should" walk, talk, relate, behave, express emotion, etc. and you might not want to either. I would guess you'd be pretty upset.
The subjects of this project feel that people are identifying us the wrong way too, trying to assign us to gender roles that make us uncomfortable and don't fit with who we are. The point is to raise awareness of our experiences, and eventually (we hope) to gain understanding and respect from those who haven't had similar experiences. To me, personally, although I don't know who you are I would consider your understanding & respect very valuable, and I hope you'll keep discussing gender with me until you are willing to respect me, however long that takes.
If I might venture a suggestion, I think the problem might not be gender identification so much as gender roles? We have these preconceived notions of what men and women do, and some people don't fit into that. I feel that the way to deal with this problem is not to consign the people who don't fit in to a separate set of genders, but to redefine the existing gender roles so that they can fit in.
ReplyDeleteI think all the lovely people behind this project understand where I am coming from...? I just don't like putting all the people who don't fit in into a box labeled 'genderqueer'. Especially since I was taught that 'queer' is Not A Nice Word, sort of like the N-word, but to a lesser extent.
Anon: Totally dig it.
ReplyDeleteAs a note I'll say that I believe the word "queer" has been largely reclaimed as a word to be proud of, so it is no longer Not A Nice Word, in many contexts.
Anyway, you're awesome for suggesting an alternative way of viewing this whole thing. I tend to think that gender roles are ridiculous to begin with, so my thoughts are to ignore them altogether.
An important point though is that gender roles are prevalent in society and many people grow up wanting to self-identify, in part, with something pre-existing, rather than build up an entirely original identity from scratch.
@skyler: You say "The subjects of this project feel that people are identifying us the wrong way too, trying to assign us to gender roles that make us uncomfortable and don't fit with who we are."
ReplyDeleteAs Bea's poster said, Gender Identity != Gender Role. To my mind, if your only problem is you think tradtional gender roles are too narrow, you're more cisgendered than transgendered. (I do support your struggle, but it does feel to me like you're attempting to appropriate the trans identity.)
There are voices in the queer community that want to tell trans people that they just need to get in touch with their genderqueer side and be happy living in the middle. And honestly, if you love the middle, feel free to live there, but not everyone wants or needs to be there.
Rebel against gender roles, engage in genderfuck, be genderqueer. But please don't misinform people about the trans experience.
I have never stated that gender identity is the same as gender role, only that having gender roles pushed on us by society upsets those of us whose gender identity is incongruous with our sex. I also don't think that gender roles are my "only" problem. You're making a lot of assumptions from my post which was an attempt at a simple explanation for a confused Anonymous.
ReplyDeleteI think you're making quite a few rude assumptions about my gender identity and my knowledge of trans issues. To be quite frank, I am VERY offended that you would suggest I'm "appropriating the trans identity." If you want to know the details of my gender/personal experience that led me to my beliefs, you can start by addressing me with a modicum of respect and an open mind.
@skyler: I had a problem with your explanation to Anonymous, because they said some things which were pretty much out of the ususal societal anti-trans playbook, and you responded with stuff about gender roles, which to my eyes just muddies the waters.
ReplyDeleteWe could both get offended at each other, but I think it's probably best to assume that no one is actively trying to be a jerk.
I don't know you. I don't fully understand where you're coming from. I made some educated guesses based on what you seem to think are the important issues. If you're willing to say a bit more about your situation, I'd obviously have a better idea about where you're coming from.
reilly,
ReplyDeleteLooking back on my first post, I agree that it suffers from a bit of poor wording. I wrote "gender roles" where I didn't exactly mean gender roles. My intention was to state that among the purposes of this project is to make the Mudd community aware of the people of non-standard gender on campus, so they don't make us uncomfortable by treating us based upon our sex, which they may consider equivalent to gender.
If you did in fact merely have an objection to my wording, I would not take offense to your post. I'm sorry to lead you through the "how would you feel if you were me" process, but seriously please re-read your post and consider how you might have greatly offended me. You have accused me of
-lying,
-spreading false info,
-not really being trans,
-pretending to be trans to spread my "lies".
You claim that you "support my struggle," but the rest of your words say something different. By your own admission, you don't know me, and you don't understand where I'm coming from. I strongly advise you not to try to "correct" someone you do not know about eir own identity. Normally, I am willing to share my personal situation and how I came by my views on gender, but I'm not about to share such deeply personal and painful experiences with someone who has only shown the intent to offend and demean me.
Furthermore, your lack of knowledge about my experiences is no excuse for insulting me, trying to contradict me about my own gender identity, and trying to undermine my credibility and sense of belonging as a member of the trans community. Normally I do assume that no one is "actively trying to be a jerk," but I can draw no other conclusions from your aggressive tone. At this point it is not possible to un-offend me, and I suggest you start by apologizing if you want to carry on a civilized conversation.
David: If you ignore gender roles, why do you care about gender identity? What is gender identity but an identification with a particular "set of things this gender does" -- i.e. gender role?
ReplyDeleteNot trying to pick a fight, just confused.
@skyler: I also know you through what you sent out in the in the "Gender FAQ" you sent out to everyone. In that, you said: "Many transgendered people are uncomfortable being referred to as "he" or "she" because of the implication of male- or femaleness respectively." You did add that "some" transgendered people don't like spivak pronouns, but I felt that the way you placed "many" and "some" seriously misrepresented the trans community.
ReplyDeleteI've said I'm not trying to offend you. I'm sorry you're upset. I'm upset too. If all you're going to do is claim that I'm a nasty person, we're through in this coversation.
@ JR: Do we know whether there are more binary-identified or non-binary-identified trans people? Unless we do, I'd advise both using similar qualifiers for both groups ("most" and "most", or "some" and "some") and not getting too irritated when one group of people thinks non-binary-trans people are more common and another thinks binary trans people are more common.
ReplyDelete@Anon: There is more to a gender than a gender role. For example, consider a woman who is a tomboy. She's not conventionally feminine, but she'll probably be at least a little confused if the guy at the check-out counter calls her "sir." In contrast, a trans man would feel comfortable with the guy at the check-out counter calling him "sir."
The problem with discussing gender is that there aren't a great deal of words to explain how, exactly, one "feels" like a boy or a girl or a something in between or a something else entirely. I have known for a long time that I am not a girl, but it's difficult to explain how I know that, or how that feeling manifests itself. For most of this time period, I liked skirts, dresses, the color pink, nail polish, and other "girly" things; nevertheless, I was upset when people referred to me as a "girl", because that wasn't who I was.
@JR: Skyler's word choices may have been subpar, but most of the points were still sound, and, while the less-than-poor wording may lead to some confusion with people unfamiliar with trans issues, anyone familiar with these issues should have been able to understand eir point just fine. Now, granted the intended audience was those unfamiliar, so unfortunate wording is an unfortunate situation, but it is certainly no reason to make assumptions and accusations about Skyler's own person. To make the leap from poor wording to, for example, Skyler misidentifying eir gender is completely unwarranted. Whether this was your intention or not is immaterial. Ey has already taken responsibility for eir own problematic wording, and you really should do the same.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, as an outsider to this conversation looking in, it looks no different than this hypothetical exchange:
"You are going to hell, queerfag!"
"Hey, that hurts!"
"Well, it sucks that you hurt, but if you're just going to claim I'm antagonistic, I'm not going to talk to you."
I may be cis and, therefore, not worth listening to on trans matters, but I'd rather take Skyler's mistaken words over your mistaken attitude as a representative to inform me on trans issues based off of this thread alone.
@Skye: You ask: "Do we know whether there are more binary-identified or non-binary-identified trans people?"
ReplyDeleteI read lots of trans things on the Internet, blogs, youtube, etc., and none of that puts rebelling against the gender binary as the most important concern. Mostly, it doesn't come up at all.
But I agree with you that trying to count who there is more of isn't the point. We shouldn't be saying that one group is better than another, and similarly we need to be really careful about saying things like "most trans people like kittens but a few trans people like puppies instead".
Trans people ought to have something in common though. If anyone who is just messing with gender roles a tiny bit can lay claim to the trans term, then cis people (who there are way more of) can drown out the voices of people who really need a safe community space.
Thank you for sharing a bit about your own story. If you're willing to share a little more, I'm curious how your feeling of "I'm not a girl" relates to your body image.
@Chris: Even if you look at our comments and decide that you like Skyler more than me, it doesn't mean that Skyler is a more accurate source of information.
ReplyDeleteYou ought to be skeptical of the things I say and the things Skyler says that aren't about our own personal experience. For general information about trans topics, you don't have to listen to just her, me, or both. There is plenty of information out there on the internet. Wikipedia, LGBT blogs, etc.
@JR: I'm not saying that Skyler is a more accurate source of information by any means, but even if you were far more informed and knowledgeable than em, a more open and accepting attitude and a willingness to help explore goes a lot further than someone who has all of the answers but takes a more hostile attitude.
ReplyDeleteAlso, just because you take a look at the comments and decide you don't like Skyler doesn't mean that ey isn't a good source of information. Even if the _only_ accurate information ey could offer was eir experience, that's far more valuable than you seem to care to admit.
Sigh. I just noticed that a possible pronoun issue in my last post. That was absolutely not cool, and I am genuinely sorry about that. If I could edit my post to remove the pronoun, I would.
ReplyDeleteSorry Skyler.
@Chris: Actually, I like Skyler a lot. Skyler is willing to be very visible and I respect that. My beef isn't about whether I like Skyler. It's about whether Skyler is making it harder for some trans people by telling people "this is how it is to be trans" when that isn't how it is, at least for a significant segment of the trans population.
ReplyDelete@JR: If you take that frame of mind, no trans person should speak about their experience, since it necessarily won't apply to a lot of trans people. The best we can really hope for is honestly a collection of stories and "here's how it is for me"s rather than hoping for a single spokesperson who can speak for the One True Path of Trans. Trans people, just like people in general, have a few characteristics in common, but really form a large group of very different people.
ReplyDelete@Anon: I personally don't care much about gender identity either. A person can identify any number of ways, and I don't think gender necessarily has anything to do with that. For many people, it does, so I can see the use of generalizing some gender identities as a crude description of many people (as long as you don't try to relate these generalizations too much to the individual). But really, if you want a very accurate description of the person, the only way is to get to know them personally.
ReplyDeleteThank you for asking questions. Always happy to explain.
@Chris: I'm not saying "no trans person should speak about their experience". I'm saying exactly what you are, that people should say "here's what its like for me", rather than try to speak for everyone.
ReplyDelete@David: As Ozzie's poster says, gender isn't a good predictor for much (if you draw the bell curves for gender norms for men and women, there is a lot of overlap). But, as illogical as it may be, even if it might be more sensible to ignore gender and just look at people as people, gender still seems to matter to many people.
ReplyDeleteHere is one everyday example of how gender matters to most people. Logically, we should all just choose the partner who was the best fit for our interests and our life goals, regardless of their gender. So logically we should all be bi and consider each potential partner as a unique individual. But it doesn't work like that for most people. Who we're attracted to is less about logic and more about primitive drives.
Gender identity is a similarly primitive. It's the internal sense that tells you "I'm a guy" or "I'm a girl" (or maybe that tells you that you're not a boy or girl), and also the desire to be seen that way by others.
Cis people have a gender identity that is congruent, so they really don't ever need to think about it. Congruence means that their gender identity matches their birth sex, chromosomes, gender role, etc., which makes it harder to grasp what gender identity means. It's not about masculinity or femininity. It's not about who you sleep with. It's about what how you'll feel if the clerk in the store calls you "Sir" or "Ma'am", even though there doesn't seem to be much logical reason why that should matter at all.
@A.J.: You are absolutely right. I didn't mean to say that gender identities shouldn't matter, or don't matter to the vast majority of people, just that I don't personally think that gender identity is a useful descriptor of a person. Much more useful is what sorts of things they like and don't like to do, how they act and react, and of course their fourth favorite primary color.
ReplyDeleteThose are my views, not generally accepted ones.
Internally: I think gender identity is definitely important to some people and not to others. Defining your gender is certainly one way to define yourself, but for some people, identity is unrelated to gender.
If someone called me Ma'am I wouldn't be offended, just amused. Again though, personal thing. Most people would be.
@David: You say, "I think gender identity is definitely important to some people and not to others. Defining your gender is certainly one way to define yourself, but for some people, identity is unrelated to gender."
ReplyDeleteBeing able not to care too much about your gender identity is one of the privileges of gender identity congruence.
Here's a more familiar example. If I asked you to list your top ten important defining characteristics, I suspect that you wouldn't put "Not a stinky person!" as one of them. Not stinking just isn't on your radar, and generally whether or not someone has body odor says nothing about whether they are good at math or like climbing mountains, it's not really a useful indicator of anything. But if you woke up tomorrow, and you were aware that you stank in a way you found totally disgusting, you'd probably realize that how you smell actually does matter to you. You might still care even if other people said, "Yeah, you're a bit musky, but a lot of people smell like that and it's totally okay". You might not want to be a "musky person", even if musky people are "totally okay".
It's only if you're aware that you don't smell the way that you think that you should that you realize that smell is actually something that matters to you.
@A.J.: I don't think that analogy is quite right. I've never thought of myself as particularly masculine or feminine, even while growing up in a small and closed-minded town, and even when I had never heard of gender identity and gender expression, and never talked about gender role. And that was never not-OK with me. I've always just been me (see Katie's poster).
ReplyDeleteObviously that's not the case with everyone. I don't claim to speak for anyone but myself.
Just to make myself clear, gender has never been part of my own self-identity, and my identity has very little (positive or negative) correlation with my sex. But again, I speak for no one but myself.
@David: (Masculine and feminine relate to gender role, not gender identity, so I'll ignore that part of your reply.)
ReplyDeleteYou didn't like my analogy, but you didn't actually say what was wrong with it. Within that analogy, essentially what you're saying is "I don't really seem to have a smell, and I've never worn perfume, so my smell isn't really important to me."
Skyler captured this issue pretty well with the following thought experiment (quoted):
"Imagine this wildly unlikely scenario. One night, you are kidnapped and subjected to surgery that replaces all your reproductive organs and secondary sex characteristics with those of the opposite sex. When you wake up, you are effectively of the other sex."
"What has changed about you and what hasn't? We (I believe I speak for everyone on this project, but I hope they'll correct me if I shouldn't do so) would say that your sex has changed, but your gender has not changed. Your brain and thus your perception of self, all of your memories, your experiences, and your beliefs are all intact."
Unless someone actually does this to you (or unless that story fills you with happiness at the prospect), we can't know much about how important your gender identity really is.
Maybe you'd be all "Cool, no big deal, getting my period sucks, and I miss peeing in the snow, but whatever". But maybe you'd start to feel that something fundamental about you wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Turns out that your penis was more important to you than you thought. Turns out that you get wistful feelings when you watch a group of guys joking around; you can try to join in, but the dynamic subtly changes even if you're a tom-boy who is "one of the guys". You look in the mirror and see a cute girl, but for some reason, you wish it was a young man looking back at you from that mirror. You think of your future, and somehow the idea of your being someone's mother seems wrong. It shouldn't matter, but somehow it does.
In a lot of ways, it would be pretty interesting to take people who say "yeah, my gender isn't a big deal to me" and forcibly change their sex to see if that's really as true as they think it is. But both the current state of technology and law/ethics make the experiment unlikely.
@A.J.: Forgive me if I have made a mistake in terminology. I am under the impression that gender role relates to a person's actions, and gender identity relates to how they feel, and that masculinity and femininty relate very much to both of these. It's possible that I am mistaken (if that sounds sarcastic, it isn't).
ReplyDeleteI interpreted your analogy as saying that my gender identity was consistent with... I don't know, my sex? and I had thus never had to think about my gender identity as something that deviated from what it "ought" to be, and that's why gender isn't important to me. And furthermore, if my gender identity had not matched my sex, I would have noticed and it would have been important to my self-identity.
My response was to say that I had formed my personal identity independent of my sex or expected role in society, and that gender wasn't something I considered in forming this image. I said that I had never related much to either a masculine/male or feminine/female personality (those being the only choices I had been introduced to in my small town as a child), so for me, "gender identity" doesn't mean anything. It's just "identity". Or in terms of smell, I assert that I don't much care how I smell if that's who I am. Does that make sense? Have I misinterpreted your analogy?
Clearly certain things would be different if I had been born into the female sex (or if I was kidnapped and reassigned). For instance I think I would wear skirts often (especially to the machine shop =), as opposed just sometimes for Halloween. And I would probably walk around alone at night less often. But I claim that these are superficial differences, and that the important stuff is separate from gender, and would remain the same. To me. Once again I do not claim to speak for anyone else, just myself.
@David: As I understand it, traditional notions "masculinity" and "femininity" relate to how well one conforms to (and feels comfortable with) societal expectations of gender. In that sense, someone can be a woman who adopts traditionally masculine behaviors and attitudes (these women often get called butch or tom-boys) or a man who adopts feminine ones (these men often get called effeminate, effete or camp). But these people are still butch women and effeminate men. If you go up to a butch woman and say, "So, do you want to be a guy then?" and she says, "No way! I just don't want to be constrained by society's expectations!", then that woman has clear female gender identity even as she acts in masculine ways.
ReplyDeleteEverything gets a bit more confusing when you add in the idea that some people might want to interpret "masculinity" and "femininity more broadly than their traditional definitions. If you ask a butch woman "Are you feminine?", she might say, "I think I am, it's just my unique kind of femininity." You can actually use gender identity to understand that too. Her gender identity says "I'm a woman", and her logic is that therefore it must be feminine if she does it, because she's a woman.
You are saying that you have a weak/nonexistent gender identity (and a weak/nonexistent smell identity). Maybe you're right. Maybe if you woke up tomorrow and have a strong musky scent, you'll just think, "guess I'm musky, no big deal", and if you woke up to find you'd been transformed from male to female, you'd be all "no big deal". If that's really what would happen, you're right about yourself.
But what I'm asking you to consider is the idea that maybe your gender identity isn't as nonexistent as you think. If you've taken a psych class, you might know that we don't always know ourselves as well as we think. The only way to really know how important being a guy is to you (or not stinking is) would be to do the experiment.
What I think we can agree on is that your gender identity is sufficiently weak that we can't measure it without an experiment that no one wants to perform.
@David: I spent some time thinking about this topic some more, and I decided to write more about the gender switch kidnapping scenario.
ReplyDeleteSuppose you woke up tomorrow, and somehow though means unknown, you'd been physically transformed from male to female. Initially, there is quite a bit of hoopla about how it could have happened, and you get subjected to a battery of tests which just show that you're genetically, hormonally, and every physical way a normal human female your age. Thankfully, you manage to retain your privacy and prevent it becoming a media event, and after a lot of being prodded and probed, you finally manage to be back at Mudd, with only minor celebrity/freak-of-the-week status, and even that fades quickly enough.
You seem to be fine. You're happy with the new wardrobe flexibility, and you joke about how you always wondered what having breasts was like and now you've got a set of your own to play with.
A trip to the DMV lets you change the name and sex on your driver's license to something more appropriate, and other than that it seems life will go on little changed. As a girl, you seem a bit awkward perhaps, and maybe a bit butch, but you still fit in just fine, especially in a place like Mudd. A.J. was wrong about your gender identity and you were right about it, or so it seems.
A month later, everything still seems fine on the surface and you still say that you're in essence the same person. You claim to be just fine as a girl (although now you notice sexism in places you didn't see it before). But relationships seem to be a bit of a problem. You used to have a clear idea of who you'd date, but now not so much. You had one abortive lesbian encounter early on, but you're not sure you want to date a guy either. That part is all a bit confusing. And looking at you, you just don't seem to be as happy as you were despite your claims that everything is fine.
A year after the change, you are more withdrawn. As you walk to class, you pass groups of boys laughing and somehow you feel more alone than ever. You notice someone checking you out, and you still hate that. You know your period is about to start, and somehow dealing with that seems to get worse rather than better. You notice that you're late for class and start to run, but as you run your breasts bounce awkwardly and annoyingly. Who thought that these things were a good idea? Sitting in class, you gaze into space, idly thinking about suicide methods. You don't plan on killing yourself, that would be stupid and dumb, you're just thinking about the topic for no particularly good reason. Since it's your one year anniversary, someone asks you about your gender identity, and you respond with your party line, that gender doesn't matter to you, and add that if they want to explore gender themselves, how about they go fuck themselves and quit asking you about it. And as you go to bed at night, you wonder, as you always seem to these days, if whoever changed your sex will be back to switch it back.
Facing up to the idea that you're less happy as a girl than you were as a guy is hard. It doesn't make a lot of sense. You're still just a person. Why would it make any difference at all beyond superficialities? Yet, you really are hoping that whoever changed your sex will change it back. But that doesn't seem like it's going to happen. Somehow life has become like water torture, each drip is only a drip and shouldn't matter, yet over time it is becoming harder and harder to deal with.
At that point, you've discovered that you do seem have a male gender identity, and living as a girl, any kind of girl, masculine or feminine, gives you gender dysphoria.
I'll end the story there. I expect that you will think it would never work out this way for you, and maybe you are right, we'll hopefully never know, but if you can empathize with the story just a little, you'll be starting to understand what it is like to have a gender identity that isn't congruent with your sex.
@David: One more thing... In the story above, you still have an advantage over most gender dysphoric people, you know that something was done to you, and you have a past that can be used to legitimize a claim to male gender identity. Most gender dysphoric people don't have that luxury. For some, the path seems obvious, for others, self doubt cripples them and they agonize over just what they really are and how they can possibly trust what they seem to feel, and for others, there seems to be no possible path that leads anywhere good.
ReplyDelete@A.J.: This is all very interesting stuff. I suppose I think about identity in a very different way than this. Gender just isn't something I think of when defining myself, and it's not due to sex-gender congruence.
ReplyDeleteBack to the scenario. I don't think that nothing would change if I were transformed suddenly into a member of the female sex. There are things about being a guy that I am able to take advantage of and there is a somewhat different set of things I would be able to take advantage of if I were sex-female. I would wish sometimes to be male again, because I've grown accustomed to being male, but I think (and I can't know for sure) that I would accept female-dom. There would be much to learn, and things I'd miss, but I don't think it would be as difficult as you have supposed.
Of course I can't know that, I can only postulate.
Perhaps if what I conjecture would in fact be the case, then I am privileged. I have never meant to reduce the situation others go through, or to be unsympathetic to it. It's easy for me to suppose it's not as hard as it sounds, but I haven't gone through all that, so I can't know.
(At the same time, no one else can know how it would be for me because they're not inside my head. So it's a question that can't be solved without the scenario coming true.)
I guess all I can do is to offer idealistic words of encouragement to those whose identities are at odds with their bodies. Embrace yourself, regardless of gender, sex, and preferences. And embrace others the same way. In an ideal world, these things wouldn't be issues that people would have to think about.
Thank you for taking the time to discuss this in length. You certainly have given me some things to think about.
@David: Thanks for the thanks. I've enjoyed the opportunity to share what I know, and talking to someone with an open attitude.
ReplyDeleteI'm pleased that you understand that the scenario could turn out as badly as I described even though it seems highly unlikely to you given what you know about yourself.
One last piece of food for thought: some gender dysphoric people say, essentially, "I don't understand why this matters so much to me. It shouldn't matter but it does." In essence, politically their views on gender are much like yours, but something deep inside them makes a mockery of those views. They want to just be themselves and not care about gender, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
I'm a transgendered student on the 5Cs, and as I've been looking at these posters, one thing has really bothered me: the way that the anonomys posters have been handled, it looks as though they are supposed to speak for the entire community. I know that this was not the intended meaning, but because there is no assignment to even "A student" or "Anonomys," it seems like it's something nebulous.
ReplyDeleteI felt personally offended by a few of these anonomys posters, and I think that if they hadn't been in the context of this project, they would have been considered bias incidents. I know that these were not meant in an offensive sense, considering where they are coming from, but they bothered me personally. I think that they would have bothered me so much if there had been some assignment to a person saying these things.
I think that some of this gets back to things that have been said earlier in this thread: we can only talk about our own personal experience. If someone else who is trans/genderqueer wants to use something that I would consider a slur to identify themselves, that is something that I don't want staring out of a wall at me without belonging to anyone. I would be incredibly offended by some of the things that were on those posters if they were adressed at me, but if someone else wants to identify that way, that is their perogative. There just needs to be an indication that that does not go for everyone in the community.
-- An FTM Trans Student
@Skyler, Skye, Justice, Chris, A.J., David, and the Anons: thank you all for your comments throughout this blog, and thank you for keeping it mostly civil. You all pretty much made this project worthwhile by engaging in fabulous discourses around gender.
ReplyDelete@FTM Trans Student: Thank you for your thoughtful comments. (We'll address the other ones on the posts they're on) First off, it looks like you've been hurt by this project, and I'm really sorry for that. It was never our intention to cause anyone emotional distress with this project. I don't really know what to say, except that if I ever do something of this sort again I'll be sure to take your comments to heart.
@Bonny: On the page about the girlyfag poster, you said "I don't see a trans community on campus." and then added "That doesn't mean there isn't one, and if there is I think it would have been a good idea to be in communication with the people in them."
ReplyDeleteI think you deserve a lot of thanks for helping to foster whatever trans community we have in the 5Cs with this project.
One of the tough things about trying to have a trans community is that not everyone is willing or able to be out. If someone depends on their parents paying for college and fears their reaction to having a trans child, that person may not feel able to be out in a public way, but still might feel comfortable posting here under a pseudonym. If someone has gender issues they are trying to work through, but doesn't feel like they could endure any public scrutiny, they might still be comfortable posting here. If someone is intersexed or a post-transition trans person, they may be granted cissexual privilege by most people and not want to give that up. And so on...
If you'd tried to have a discussion about the posters at a Friday Forum, I think you'd have seen different participation because people who aren't out have to worry about their exposure.
But even in this space, there could still be people who are too afraid to post here or even read pages. Are IP addresses of visitors or commenters logged? If so, that could track back to someone's dorm room unless they're careful. Similarly, some people have learned to be very very guarded about showing any interest about these topics, and having a friend see your laptop screen with this page open could lead to a conversation they don't want to have.
Creating safe spaces is hard, and we'll always miss some people who aren't yet ready to be part of the conversation, but I think your project and this site is a good start.
(On a related note, if we ever wanted to try a more interactive conversation, there are sites out there that might be able to host something, such as http://www.anonichat.com/. I haven't vetted that one, but I heard about it the other day and I thought about these kinds of conversations.)
I'd like to add a little bit to Bonny's response to "An FTM Trans Student." I'm also sorry that some of the posters were so hurtful to you, and I'm glad you commented here on the effect the posters had on you.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's important to mention that we are coming from a different place in terms of the politics of our gender(variance). Neither of us (Bonny or me) are interested in "passing" as the other gender, we are more interested in making our identities political. And maybe that's where some of the hurt stems from? Because when we put up a political poster about gender, where we're coming from it is more political than it is an attack? I don't know if I'm being very articulate in this, I'm sort of thinking as I go.
Beyond that, I'm not sure how to respond except with an apology. Of course, it's impossible to cover all the bases in a project like this. There are many things I know that I would do differently if I were to do a project like this again.
L
@Lowell: I think there is some interesting material on the politics aspect in the "I love being trans" thread.
ReplyDeleteTo both Bonny and Lowell, I knew that you didn't mean it in a hurtful manner, which is why I wasn't pissed off about this, just a little bit upset. Thank you very much for your words here, they make me feel better, even if I still don't like some of the posters. Partially because I think that they were missing a large part of the spectrum. Though that indicates that maybe I should have responded to your initial emails. (Why I didn't comes back to me being a very private person, and I didn't want to give quotes without them being assigned).
ReplyDeleteThank you.
--An FTM Trans Student