This was one of the posters that I felt particularly need some sort of assignment, even if it was just "An anonomys student" or something else similarly vague. I'm glad that you feel that way, whoever you are.
I'm FTM trans, and I feel to some extent like I am a victim of circumstances. I don't love being trans, actually, I hate it. I wish that I had just been born a boy, it would have made my life a lot easier. That being said, not everyone feels the way I do, good for them.
This was a poster that it hurt for me to see a little bit because it felt like it was trivializing what I have had to deal with.
For what it's worth, I believe this one was in specific reference to a discussion Mudd held about the Transgender Day of Remembrance and contrasting it with the various "Pride" Days/Weeks/Months/{Time Period}s, and how trying to make trans people into victims in this context could very well be seen as another form of discrimination, by making trans people into something different from everyone else.
And, yes, the actual content of this post is one sentence long, even if that sentence is about the length of a small paragraph.
You know, if the poster had in some way indicated that context, it wouldn't have bothered me half as much. It's actually more the "I love being trans" half of the statement that I felt needed to be given an owner because most of the trans folk that I know don't love being trans. Maybe I just have a skewed sample, but I don't think that this is a terribly representative quote at least in that half.
Thank you for telling me that this had a context, it makes it seem a little bit better. I still don't like the way that the poster itself was executed though.
@FTM Trans Student: I think part of the problem is that our objectives are different. This project was obviously created with a political goal in mind. I consider my identity political, and I get the feeling that you don't. As the Anon said above, yes this was a response to a lot of what I heard around the 5Cs about how depressing TDoR is, as well as a thread on community-l criticizing the day.
The idea was not to trivialize the experience of being trans. I don't know how anyone could read this poster and walk away thinking: Oh, trans people have it pretty good. It was the idea, that trans is not a pathology. Trans people are not your victims to have pity for.
Maybe you disagree with this. And I think I've realized that although we tried to get at many aspects of gender, we did miss a large portion of the trans community: the ones whose identities are apolitical, who just want to pass/transition.
@anon: Thank you for the explanation, I probably should have updated the post with the context to begin with. I'll do that as soon as I can.
@Bonny: Everyone who is posting here is making a political act.
While there may be some apolitical people, please don't confuse someone not wanting to do the same political acts as you with being apolitical.
In the gay and lesbian community, we can see two camps, one that is largely okay with heteronormativity and one that would like to fight it (admittedly, I'm probably oversimplifying). For a long time, the anti-heteronormativity people were a major force in defining the public face of the gay and lesbian community. The pride parades, the slogan "we're here, we're queer, get used to it", etc. all embodied a political stance that people needed to get over their fear of otherness. Today, the lesbian and gay communities are in a fight to obtain for themselves the ultimate bastion of heteronormativity, marriage. In doing so, they fall into line, abandoning any advocacy for other models of sex and relationships, and turning away from some of their allies in "nonnormative sexual behavior", such as bisexuals and members of the BDSM communities.
Both are political. (My own opinion is that while people ought to get over their fears of otherness, that kind of fear is fairly common, so politically the best strategy may be to avoid stressing otherness. In other words, politically, it may be better to say, "I fall in love just like you" than "So, I'm a freak, get over your limited notions of what is acceptable".)
I think there is a similar schism for cisnormativity. Some trans people want to emphasize their otherness and others want to minimize it. Each is a political stance. When one trans person says, "I'm a trans person; it's Thursday so I'm neither a boy nor a girl, use ey as your pronoun" (maximizing eir otherness), another trans person may be horrified. For example, an FTM trans student who might have been considering saying, "Actually you didn't know this about me, but I'm actually a trans person; really though, I'm a guy just like other guys, please treat me just the same" (minimizing his otherness) might now think, "Fuck it, there is no way I'm outing myself now, everyone will think I'm a freak!"
I don't have any good answers for resolving these tensions. Everyone has a right to their own identity, but it does seem that even within the same community, the political actions of one subgroup may be exactly opposite to the political stance of another subgroup.
@A.J.: Your way of looking at things helps me clarify some of my own thoughts on why I had a problem with some aspects of this project and other trans activism on the 5Cs.
Many of the points of view presented emphasized otherness. The message that cis people were getting about trans people was very much trans = queer = other. But the queer activist trans people aren't the only ones in the community, just the ones most willing to put themselves out there.
Otherness minimizing trans people have political issues, and those issues weren't well represented in this project, which isn't surprising given its focus and membership. I am disappointed that as a result we never saw a poster saying something like "I'm a trans man. That doesn't mean I'm really a woman, it means I'm really a man."
The vast majority of the trans deaths we remember on the TDoR aren't deaths of politically active genderqueers who want to be called Cherry Coke on Friday. We may be uncomfortable with focusing on death, but it might have been good if this project could have spent some time trying to accurately present the issues faced by those who died.
@ Justice Reilly: I think that I commented on this somewhere else, but when I saw the initial emails, the reson that I didn't respond is that I am a very private person. I do try to explain what it is like to me, but I don't like to do it in such a public forum.
One thing that this has taught me is that, for all my desire for privacy, I should have responded to these emails. Because the much quieter part of the trans community is not likely to say anything.
I am a guy, I happen to have been born in a female body. I'm working to fix that, but it is a slow process.
I like the comments that have been made about the dual political nature. I am of the opinion that trying to relate my experiences to what is considered "the norm" is the most effective way to get my point across.
I hope that some of my comments have been useful in seeing a different aspect of the trans community/political body.
I just realized that this was not stated on our posting about "methodology," but as has been alluded to here, participation in the project was opened up to everyone in the school through an email to students-l. We were originally hoping to have more people participate (ideally we would have had 15 or so people).
@AJ/Justice Reilly: Sorry for the erroneous usage of apolitical. And thank you for your comments. As I've stated in my comment above, we did miss out on a large other portion of the trans community, which is problematic.
I think one way to help resolve the schism would have been to place posters like the quotes you all just gave us, like "I'm a trans man. That doesn't mean I'm really a woman, it means I'm really a man." I'm not sure how much it would help though, as it seems to me it would still skew towards the side of the "queer activists." Or maybe that's just me being self-centered, it's hard to see outside of your own bubble.
I guess this poster is a pretty good example of the schism. I do know people who do love being trans. I don't know people who hate it, but now I have that perspective. If I had put up a poster that said "I hate being trans, I am a victim of circumstances" (to paraphrase from FTM Trans Student) would it have been too contradictory and confusing though? Arrrgh.
"...politically the best strategy may be to avoid stressing otherness..."
My thoughts on this are very confused and complex and more about racial otherness but in the end I think I would disagree. But that's okay, both strategies can and do exist. Like my friend said, they'll be the good cops, I'll be the bad cop.
"...it might have been good if the project had spent some time trying to accurately present the issues by those who died."
Yes, although I think doing it in a way that doesn't invoke death would have been good, as I think TDoR fulfills that purpose and that there does tend to be a lack of other happier things about transpeople.
@FTM Trans Student: "I hope that some of my comments have been useful in seeing a different aspect of the trans community/political body."
Yes, definitely, thank you very very much. Without your comments I think we never would have even considered this other aspect.
Which brings me to a question for everyone: As you can tell, Lowell and I don't have very much experience or insight into transpeople who minimize their otherness. Any ideas or resources for how we can broaden our knowledge? Most of the resources we've delved into have been pretty radically "other" - Nobody Passes, Gender Outlaw, etc. Be more inclusive? Be more sensitive?
I'm going assume that the people most likely to want to minimize their otherness are transsexuals and intersex people.
As was mentioned in one of the threads on community-l, the book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano will give you some pretty good insights into how things are for transsexual women, and I think you will find that she is anything but apolitical. (In addition to the book, she also has a number of essays on her website, but it's probably best to start with the book.)
@Lurker: Cool links. But even cooler that you showed that you can post links in the comments, so now I'll do some more.
@Bonny: The internet has a lot of content that shows trans issues from a perspective that isn't genderqueer centric. For much of the internet population, trans, tranny, and transsexual are synonymous, even though we know trans to be a more inclusive term.
If you go to sites like reddit, you'll find a number of non-genderqueer trans people posting both in the LGBT subreddit and in the transgender subreddit. Here is a link to one comment thread from a recent discussion that itself contains more links to other articles.
(For questions about any minority group, sites like reddit let you reach out to a large population. No matter what your question about human experience, you can usually ask it there and find people willing to answer.)
You can find a lot on blogs. The Bilerico Project, an LGBTQ blog that in theory supports trans people, was in the news recently because they posted a transphobic article, "No" to the notion of transgender. Reading the comments might be useful (in my browser, it takes a while for them to load because there are so many); the original article was pulled but a copy of the text can be found here.
Even though it's mostly tangential to the points I'm making, since I'm mentioning YouTube, here are three cool transition videos: Marie, Aaron to Erin, and Erin to Aaron (not the same person as the previous one!).
@Bonny: I'm still struggling to express what I'm uncomfortable with about your project. Here's another attempt, inspired by you mentioning racial otherness. I figured I could try to make an analogy to race. As with any analogy there are ways in which it fits and ways in which it doesn't, but I hope that you can try to empathize with the ways in which it does rather than be distracted by the ways that it doesn't.
Imagine a project about race. The students participating have little problem passing as white, but claim to identify as mixed race. They don't like racial discrimination. They want to blur racial categories and act politically to encourage people to ignore race. They put up posters saying things like "I love being a racial minority, don't make me a victim", "Chink?", "Simple statistical calculations show that assigned race is the 36th worst indicator of individual identity", and "Just because I'm african-american doesn't mean I don't like sushi", "Black? White? 8 Page Essay on My Race?", "I don't like how it is more acceptable for a white to earn more money than a black person", and "Monday I'm White, Tuesday I'm Black, Wednesday I'm Japanese, Thursday I'm None of the Above, and the rest of the time I'm Cherry Coke".
On the one hand, these hypothetical students have a legitimate desire to be politically active on race, and they also have a legitimate, if slightly tenuous, claim to be mixed race and thus a racial minority, but when you look down the check list of white privilege, they can check off pretty much every one. If ever they're in a situation where being white helps, they can check their activism and their claimed racial identity at the door.
If they try to enlist the help of one of the few black students on campus, maybe that student will be helpful, but maybe that student will have zero interest in joining in with a project that seems like it trivializes race into an art project for privileged white students to play with until they get bored and move on to something else.
But since most of the campus is white, most of the feedback the students get is positive. Some people will want to join in and call themselves mixed race now (or even use racial slurs to refer to each other), and other people will see project as reinforcing their view that racism and reverse-racism are about equal, and that racial problems would go away if we all said "I don't see race".
If a student stands up and criticizes the project, saying "I don't think you fully get race and racial oppression", or "Please don't appropriate the term racial minority", plenty of other white students can pile on and say "No, you are the one that doesn't get it, you need to stop racially oppressing us!", and "Fuck you, how dare you be mean to us!".
If you can see the parallels, it may help you see why some people would be uncomfortable with your project. The characterizations may be judgmental and unfair, but I'm sure that some people see your project in similar ways.
Warning: Post is so long that I had to break it into sections...
@several Anons, and whoever may be quoted on this poster: At first I read this poster the same way "FTM Student" is reading it: The speaker loves being trans (as in, wouldn't choose to change if ey could redo eir entire life) and doesn't want other people to see em as a victim or someone deserving of pity. I was surprised that someone would profess this view because I also feel that trans people generally are victims of circumstances out of their control. Some trans people (but certainly not all) take on the process of changing their sex because the incongruence of their birth sex is so upsetting. (I've seen quite a variety of opinions on whether or not completing the transition process makes one "not trans anymore," but suffice it to say that we certainly do not all want to continue being trans.)
Because I would hate to call someone's quote wrong or inappropriate, I wonder if we should consider a different interpretation: "I love being trans" meaning the speaker is proud to be who ey is, loves eir life as a trans person although it may not be something ey wants per se, and asks of the general population "Don't make me a victim" i.e. don't victimize me, don't make me the victim of discrimination, hate crime, or any such thing. I agree that this quote would have been best placed with the image of a particular person, and I'd be willing to attach my face to this poster. Although I do feel like a victim at times, at this point in my experience I do love being trans, and wouldn't want to give up such a vital part of my identity.
@David: You're a deeply thoughtful person, and I am very thankful for your willingness to speak out with a different view of gender than most of us. I do see a problem with a very few things you have said and I hope you won't fault me for pointing them out. You say, "I [have] formed my personal identity independent of my sex or expected role in society, and gender wasn't something I considered in forming this image." I think that's a feat no one can achieve because gender/sex is so deeply ingrained in our culture. Society divides us strongly based upon our sex, and really tries very hard to define what our gender identities "should" be. You can't simply avoid the gender patterns that are pushed on us all, because almost every object and person you see embodies and supports those patterns. If you have a "mom" and a "dad," their roles as your mom and your dad are strongly gendered, and they were no doubt critical in forming your identity and personality. If you've ever been to a pair of public bathrooms, and entered one of them, you've made a decision based in some part on your gender identity. As A.J. mentions, if anyone has ever called you "sir" (I'm assuming that's what you get called because your name is David) and that was okay with you, in some small way you accepted the gender people ascribe to you. And if the gender people ascribe to you based on your sex doesn't make you uncomfortable, it's probably similar to your gender. Having said all that, I admire you for speaking out on this blog and I encourage you to continue ignoring gender roles and to wear a skirt to the machine shop.
I haven't been as forgiving on this site as I should have been, because I was upset, and now that my feelings are not so strong I'd like to try again. Since I am already "out" to everyone on students-l (at the minimum), I'll start with some honesty. @JR, you offended me, but some truly excellent people have helped me see that it wasn't intentional. Your comments hurt me deeply in a way that you could not possibly have anticipated. Although I know you've said that you're done conversing with me, I hope you'll at least read a bit about me as you did ask for some information.
As Bea's poster says, gender identity != gender expression. I have a male* gender identity with mostly female gender expression, though it's changed a lot before getting to this point. I have a female body and that defined my identity until I learned to separate sex from gender. As a kid, I could only conceive of myself as a "defective girl" who did not get along with either girls or boys of my age. I tended toward all of the classic nerdy pursuits that are considered stereotypically masculine, but I'm not sure if this is important or merely incidental. I became very unhappy with my sex during puberty and started to express a desire to be male, but I was unaware that this might be an indicator of my identity.
When I finally "discovered" the transgender condition I began identifying as FtM and I attempted to present as male, but I rarely had any success because physically I appear obviously female. I was very upset by my inability to pass and i started going to a gender therapist to qualify for hormone treatment. If there is a reason I can't entirely explain it, but instead of starting transition, I just sort of shut down and wallowed in self hatred. I can't quite bring myself to write up some of the things I thought and did.
Eventually I got to where I am now and I can't entirely explain how I did that either. *I see myself as a male mind inhabiting a female body, raised female and now recognized simply as trans. I feel like the sex congruent with my gender would be male, but I'm not willing to go through with reassigning my sex having gotten to where I am in life. I'm not glad to have a female form but I accept it as my own, and I find it preferable to the current state of FtM surgery and the risks of trying to pass given my stature and figure. For those who are receptive to my gender identity, I prefer not to be labeled with female terms and I mainly go by the GNP, but I would never object to male terms and pronouns if anyone used them for me. For those who are not I realize that in their view I am just a thing with a vagina and that necessitates female terms. Accepting those is generally not as stressful as trying to explain to everyone who/what I am.
As a result of my changing perspective and expression I feel like I've been in both segments of the trans community discussed above: I've been a pre-op transsexual who focused on minimizing my "otherness" and being recognized as a guy like all other guys, and I am now a no-op genderqueer individual still trying to find an appropriate stance on how "otherful" I really am. I'd carry a slogan like "I'm here, I'm trans, get used to it," not because I believe people will overcome their fear of otherness, but because queerness and otherness is the only viable option I see for myself.
@JR, it upsets me to hear you classify me as someone who "loves the middle," because I don't. To be honest I feel like "the middle" is the most painful place to be, especially on a permanent basis. Those who are in the middle are fighting not only against their position in the gender binary, but the very system itself, which seems an insurmountable goal. We are perhaps the most visible place on the transgender spectrum and to some degree I am comfortable being visible, but a little bit of me is afraid. I'm afraid of being attacked for not complying with gender norms and also for not complying with transgender norms. By that I mean being not a "textbook case" of a transsexual individual like my therapist said I was, but a nebulous, weird othery *thing* that just, as you say, "muddies the waters."
It also hurts to be called "more cisgendered than transgendered," because I have never received that judgment before from another transgendered person. I expected to be accepted as a trans individual even if I choose to wear dresses and grow my hair long because I see the trans community as the only group of people who looks beyond my sex to the way I define myself. I'm not "attempting to appropriate the trans identity," I'm just trying to hold onto my trans identity despite all of the pressure from the world stating that I am what's in my pants, and apparently some additional pressure from the trans community telling me that if I won't put said physical parts under the knife, I'm not really trans.
I hoped I'd be in a position to speak for both the binary and non-binary identified segments of the trans community, but instead I've been accused by both of misrepresenting the community as a whole. I'd like to think I'm not, and in order to avoid misrepresenting anyone I've tried to use sufficiently vague qualifiers that nobody is excluded. Obviously I haven't done that very well. In particular I'd like to amend my assessment of the trans community's position on the GNP:
The goal of the gender neutral pronoun is not to describe only those people who consider themselves non-binary-gendered. It can also be used, like in my very first paragraph, to describe someone whose gender is unknown, someone who does not want to disclose eir gender, or a hypothetical member of the human race to whom a gender need not be ascribed. I am surprised at the response from people for whom it is not in fact a neutral term, and I'd like to apologize to everyone, since one of the reviewers of my gender FAQ anticipated this, and I didn't pay em enough heed. The original version of my document did not state that some trans people dislike the GNP, because I did not realize that for some people, this is more like "the genderqueer pronoun" and having it applied to themselves is an implication that their genders are non-binary. I never intended to indicate an inequality between binary and non-binary identified transpeople; the "some" clause was intended to cover the (I thought small) group who object to the use of the GNP for males/females.
All of this should really be part of a greater apology for my naivete. I used to perceive the community of transgender people and their allies as a would-be united whole. Now, it seems to me like the community is so divided that an individual belonging to one of the segments may not even want to allow another segment the same right to be called "transgender." I am simply shocked, and I am so, so sorry. I hurt people, and as much as I felt I was justified in everything I said, I absolutely did not want to hurt transpeople with my words or deeds. And in return, the trans community let me down, because I expected it to be a true community. Instead, it's a motley crew of scared, defensive, private individuals, and I am retarded for not seeing that in the first place, because I am just another one of these.
Despite that I'm going to try to state the little I know about trans people.
As far as I can tell from my research and my trans acquaintances, the most common and inclusive definition states that all people who see a difference between their birth sex and their gender identity are transgendered people. Some transgendered people are also "genderqueer" people, some are also "transsexual" people, some are members of the innumerable other subgroups with different identities and goals. Some of us want to change our bodies, some of us want to change society, and some of us run over the others of us because we're sure we're doing the right thing.
@JR in particular, your comments on the "transgenderedness" (I don't know a better word for that) of the people participating in this project don't sit well with me. Again, "transgender" is a blanket term, covering many of the people participating in this project, it is not some sort of privilege that you must qualify to obtain. Bonny and Lowell for example, who are of the female and male sex respectively but are genderqueer and have a mixed presentation, are not any "less" transgendered than you are. When you say,
"Trans people ought to have something in common.... 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." This disturbs me because all trans people need a safe community space. Most of us have suffered deeply because of our identity, even if our experience has not been the same as yours. In your race analogy you characterize the people on this project as easily able to pass as male/female, yet we "claim" to be of non-standard gender. That is because we are transgendered and how easily we pass does not determine how transgendered we are. Implying that some of us are cis people trying to "lay claim to the trans term" is hurtful and damages the fragile community we have. It feels as though you are trying to be the bouncer at the trans party, kicking out those of us who haven't been "invited" by the severity of our incongruence. If you want a term that genderqueer folk do not use to identify themselves, there are many such terms (e.g. "transsexual") though I don't know which one in particular describes you. Again, I'd like to ask you (and everyone else) to accept at face value what anyone says here about eir own identity. In short, ey knows and everyone else doesn't.
As we see from the fallout surrounding this project, it's very difficult for a few select people to speak for the entirety of the trans community. I agree strongly with the anonymous FtM student here: people in other subgroups of the trans population need to speak up as well, because only they can truly articulate their experiences.
@FTM Student, A.J., JR: Your discussion on the people absent from this project touches on something that's really important to me. If we can only speak about our own experience, what can we do about the people who won't speak? I want to say something for them, even though I will never quite be successful in relating their experience, to get them the respect they need. They won't tell the community their own story because they don't even have enough respect to feel safe speaking up. No one is truly in a position to speak for these people except for themselves, but I hope my efforts will do more good than harm in getting them into a comfortable environment where they can speak. Inevitably I will say things that are wrong, false, and unbelievably stupid, because I'm human and I make all too many mistakes.
[tl;dr] But I want to state something as clearly as I can: When I make an effort to get recognition and respect for transpeople, it's for you, all of you. If you consider yourself transgendered, my long post here is for you, my not so successful Friday forum was for you, my visibility on the 5C's is for you, and all my future efforts will also be for you. I love you and I want the very best for you, including and surpassing complete acceptance, universal respect, and a body and a gender expression that makes you happy. If you are a trans person, please consider me your ally, and if you are a trans ally please consider me your ally as well. I'll do my best for you and I'll try not to let you down again.
@JR: I'm not going to be able to respond to you civilly in a way that encourages discussions. That is all.
You sound like you're accusing me of not identifying as transgender by making an analogy to privileged white students playing with race. I don't spend 20 to 30 hours of my life on projects on issues I feel are playthings for me. Also, hell fucking yeah I love being Asian/a racial minority.
@Skyler: Thank you. Thank you for your generosity in sharing your story. Thank you for your insightful analysis. Thank you for listening to your friends who said continuing the dialog was worthwhile. Thank you so much.
I am very sorry for having hurt you.
(I hope to write something longer, but I want these sentiments to stand by themselves be cause they are more important than anything else I'll write.)
@Bonny: It looks like I have a knack for upsetting people. I probably also have a knack for totally misjudging people and situations.
I did explicitly state that I thought my analogy was probably "judgmental and unfair". You understand where you are coming from but I think it's reasonable for me to try to make you aware of how much wiggle room you have left for there to be other interpretations.
I am telling you about at least one of these interpretations precisely so that you can knock it down. It would be nicer and less stressful if I left things alone, if I pretended to "get" everything that I don't get, but it would also be dishonest.
I'll freely admit that my thoughts are muddled by a variety of factors, some of them strongly emotional, my analogies weak, and my understanding woefully incomplete.
I really hope that you'll continue to engage with me. I've said it before, but I really do regret hurting people with the things I say. My only hope is that I learn from each misstep and that others will be able to forgive my errors as I learn.
@Skyler: (Your posts covered a lot. I don't think I can respond with a single coherent reply. Hopefully I can manage a few semi-coherent replies.)
Your story of how you got to where you are now moved me a lot. My hope for you is that you do indeed find a way to live in the body you have. My fear is that the place you have found proves to be an untenable one for the long term. Transsexual life stories are littered with people who thought they could handle it, who thought they could suppress or sublimate the way they felt, but it only worked for so long.
Regarding the viability of transition in your case, the effects of T tend to be pretty dramatic, and the majority FtMs have little problem passing. But many of those effects are also irreversible, so it isn't something to rush into.
Although it's painful for you to recount, and I respect your desire not to go into details, I find the part about how you turned away from hormones at the last moment is one of the most interesting parts of your story. First, your feelings can be very telling; paying attention to what makes you happy and what depresses you can be a very good way to gauge what your deeper needs are. Second, it isn't unusual at all for people to balk at some point in the process. Some people aren't ready yet and need a last hurrah of denial before they can move ahead. Presumably, on the other hand, some people realize that transition isn't the right next step for them.
I don't envy you your search for a comfortable place to exist on the spectrums of sex and gender. I really hope that you find something that that lets you be happy long term.
@Skyler: You say "Instead, [the trans community is] a motley crew of scared, defensive, private individuals, and I am retarded for not seeing that in the first place, because I am just another one of these."
This is sadly true. At least you stand up and try to do some good. It is surely better to act, to try and fail and pick yourself up and do it again better than to sit in the shadows and not speak up at all.
You say "It feels as though you are trying to be the bouncer at the trans party, kicking out those of us who haven't been "invited" by the severity of our incongruence."
This is a very apt criticism of some of what I've said.
I think a part of me doesn't get genderqueerness at a fundamental level. If someone's problem is with the social construction of gender, and in particular the constraints of normative gender roles, it seems to me that the right approach politically is to fight to reclaim gender (roles) from such a needlessly restrictive construction. To me, you don't say, "I don't feel like a girl because I do a lot of stereotypically masculine stuff, but I'm not a boy either, I'm queer", you say, "I'm a girl who does cool stuff, get over it". I have a hard time not classifying genderqueerness in non-transsexual female-bodied people as a form of internalized misogyny. I'm sure that makes me an idiot, and an offensive one at that, but there you have it.
@Skyler: You said "Most of us have suffered deeply because of our identity, even if our experience has not been the same as yours."
I think that's part of the issue for me. This comment thread is beneath a poster that says, "I love being Trans, Don't Make Me A Victim", which is at odds with what you're saying about the project participants suffering.
You said I was acting like a bouncer, denying some people admission to the trans party. Part of it may be that if I don't see some evidence of having suffered somehow, I want to turn those people away. That troubles me. Is it really the case that I'll seek to delegitimize people who aren't wearing their suffering on their sleeve but are actually trying to be trans-positive?
@Skyler: Thanks for such a wonderful post I appreciate all the efforts you make. It is people like you that help to create community.
You ask what to do about people who don't speak. I spoke a bit about some of the issues in a comment on the "about" thread. No one really replied to that, but I think it does stress some of the issues.
Online we can at least somewhat conceal our real life identities if we choose to. In the real world, we have real lives, and real lives are complicated.
You said you didn't know which trans subgroup JR would claim to belong to. Based on what I've seen here, I think we could all speculate, but it's probably not okay to single out JR, or ask any of us that question. If we're ready to say, we'll say, but I think in every possible subgroup there could be reasons why someone wouldn't disclose. Trust and risk are issues for some people, not just trans people but allies too.
I am censoring what I write to some extent for reasons I don't feel comfortable disclosing at this time. In doing so, I'm erasing trans people and trans experiences, and that feels wrong to me. But I feel like I am in a situation where none of the options are good ones.
This was one of the posters that I felt particularly need some sort of assignment, even if it was just "An anonomys student" or something else similarly vague. I'm glad that you feel that way, whoever you are.
ReplyDeleteI'm FTM trans, and I feel to some extent like I am a victim of circumstances. I don't love being trans, actually, I hate it. I wish that I had just been born a boy, it would have made my life a lot easier. That being said, not everyone feels the way I do, good for them.
This was a poster that it hurt for me to see a little bit because it felt like it was trivializing what I have had to deal with.
--An FTM Student
For what it's worth, I believe this one was in specific reference to a discussion Mudd held about the Transgender Day of Remembrance and contrasting it with the various "Pride" Days/Weeks/Months/{Time Period}s, and how trying to make trans people into victims in this context could very well be seen as another form of discrimination, by making trans people into something different from everyone else.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, the actual content of this post is one sentence long, even if that sentence is about the length of a small paragraph.
You know, if the poster had in some way indicated that context, it wouldn't have bothered me half as much. It's actually more the "I love being trans" half of the statement that I felt needed to be given an owner because most of the trans folk that I know don't love being trans. Maybe I just have a skewed sample, but I don't think that this is a terribly representative quote at least in that half.
ReplyDeleteThank you for telling me that this had a context, it makes it seem a little bit better. I still don't like the way that the poster itself was executed though.
@FTM Trans Student: I think part of the problem is that our objectives are different. This project was obviously created with a political goal in mind. I consider my identity political, and I get the feeling that you don't. As the Anon said above, yes this was a response to a lot of what I heard around the 5Cs about how depressing TDoR is, as well as a thread on community-l criticizing the day.
ReplyDeleteThe idea was not to trivialize the experience of being trans. I don't know how anyone could read this poster and walk away thinking: Oh, trans people have it pretty good. It was the idea, that trans is not a pathology. Trans people are not your victims to have pity for.
Maybe you disagree with this. And I think I've realized that although we tried to get at many aspects of gender, we did miss a large portion of the trans community: the ones whose identities are apolitical, who just want to pass/transition.
@anon: Thank you for the explanation, I probably should have updated the post with the context to begin with. I'll do that as soon as I can.
@Bonny: Everyone who is posting here is making a political act.
ReplyDeleteWhile there may be some apolitical people, please don't confuse someone not wanting to do the same political acts as you with being apolitical.
In the gay and lesbian community, we can see two camps, one that is largely okay with heteronormativity and one that would like to fight it (admittedly, I'm probably oversimplifying). For a long time, the anti-heteronormativity people were a major force in defining the public face of the gay and lesbian community. The pride parades, the slogan "we're here, we're queer, get used to it", etc. all embodied a political stance that people needed to get over their fear of otherness. Today, the lesbian and gay communities are in a fight to obtain for themselves the ultimate bastion of heteronormativity, marriage. In doing so, they fall into line, abandoning any advocacy for other models of sex and relationships, and turning away from some of their allies in "nonnormative sexual behavior", such as bisexuals and members of the BDSM communities.
Both are political. (My own opinion is that while people ought to get over their fears of otherness, that kind of fear is fairly common, so politically the best strategy may be to avoid stressing otherness. In other words, politically, it may be better to say, "I fall in love just like you" than "So, I'm a freak, get over your limited notions of what is acceptable".)
I think there is a similar schism for cisnormativity. Some trans people want to emphasize their otherness and others want to minimize it. Each is a political stance. When one trans person says, "I'm a trans person; it's Thursday so I'm neither a boy nor a girl, use ey as your pronoun" (maximizing eir otherness), another trans person may be horrified. For example, an FTM trans student who might have been considering saying, "Actually you didn't know this about me, but I'm actually a trans person; really though, I'm a guy just like other guys, please treat me just the same" (minimizing his otherness) might now think, "Fuck it, there is no way I'm outing myself now, everyone will think I'm a freak!"
I don't have any good answers for resolving these tensions. Everyone has a right to their own identity, but it does seem that even within the same community, the political actions of one subgroup may be exactly opposite to the political stance of another subgroup.
@A.J.: Your way of looking at things helps me clarify some of my own thoughts on why I had a problem with some aspects of this project and other trans activism on the 5Cs.
ReplyDeleteMany of the points of view presented emphasized otherness. The message that cis people were getting about trans people was very much trans = queer = other. But the queer activist trans people aren't the only ones in the community, just the ones most willing to put themselves out there.
Otherness minimizing trans people have political issues, and those issues weren't well represented in this project, which isn't surprising given its focus and membership. I am disappointed that as a result we never saw a poster saying something like "I'm a trans man. That doesn't mean I'm really a woman, it means I'm really a man."
The vast majority of the trans deaths we remember on the TDoR aren't deaths of politically active genderqueers who want to be called Cherry Coke on Friday. We may be uncomfortable with focusing on death, but it might have been good if this project could have spent some time trying to accurately present the issues faced by those who died.
@ Justice Reilly:
ReplyDeleteI think that I commented on this somewhere else, but when I saw the initial emails, the reson that I didn't respond is that I am a very private person. I do try to explain what it is like to me, but I don't like to do it in such a public forum.
One thing that this has taught me is that, for all my desire for privacy, I should have responded to these emails. Because the much quieter part of the trans community is not likely to say anything.
I am a guy, I happen to have been born in a female body. I'm working to fix that, but it is a slow process.
I like the comments that have been made about the dual political nature. I am of the opinion that trying to relate my experiences to what is considered "the norm" is the most effective way to get my point across.
I hope that some of my comments have been useful in seeing a different aspect of the trans community/political body.
--An FTM Trans Student
I just realized that this was not stated on our posting about "methodology," but as has been alluded to here, participation in the project was opened up to everyone in the school through an email to students-l. We were originally hoping to have more people participate (ideally we would have had 15 or so people).
ReplyDelete@ A.J. Great post, thank you.
L
@AJ/Justice Reilly: Sorry for the erroneous usage of apolitical. And thank you for your comments. As I've stated in my comment above, we did miss out on a large other portion of the trans community, which is problematic.
ReplyDeleteI think one way to help resolve the schism would have been to place posters like the quotes you all just gave us, like "I'm a trans man. That doesn't mean I'm really a woman, it means I'm really a man." I'm not sure how much it would help though, as it seems to me it would still skew towards the side of the "queer activists." Or maybe that's just me being self-centered, it's hard to see outside of your own bubble.
I guess this poster is a pretty good example of the schism. I do know people who do love being trans. I don't know people who hate it, but now I have that perspective. If I had put up a poster that said "I hate being trans, I am a victim of circumstances" (to paraphrase from FTM Trans Student) would it have been too contradictory and confusing though? Arrrgh.
"...politically the best strategy may be to avoid stressing otherness..."
My thoughts on this are very confused and complex and more about racial otherness but in the end I think I would disagree. But that's okay, both strategies can and do exist. Like my friend said, they'll be the good cops, I'll be the bad cop.
"...it might have been good if the project had spent some time trying to accurately present the issues by those who died."
Yes, although I think doing it in a way that doesn't invoke death would have been good, as I think TDoR fulfills that purpose and that there does tend to be a lack of other happier things about transpeople.
@FTM Trans Student: "I hope that some of my comments have been useful in seeing a different aspect of the trans community/political body."
Yes, definitely, thank you very very much. Without your comments I think we never would have even considered this other aspect.
Which brings me to a question for everyone: As you can tell, Lowell and I don't have very much experience or insight into transpeople who minimize their otherness. Any ideas or resources for how we can broaden our knowledge? Most of the resources we've delved into have been pretty radically "other" - Nobody Passes, Gender Outlaw, etc. Be more inclusive? Be more sensitive?
-Bonny Guang
I'm going assume that the people most likely to want to minimize their otherness are transsexuals and intersex people.
ReplyDeleteAs was mentioned in one of the threads on community-l, the book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano will give you some pretty good insights into how things are for transsexual women, and I think you will find that she is anything but apolitical. (In addition to the book, she also has a number of essays on her website, but it's probably best to start with the book.)
Also mentioned last year on community-l was Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality by Anne Fausto-Sterling. It isn't specifically about the experiences of Intersex people, but it does have some interesting points about that and is in general worth reading.
@Lurker: Cool links. But even cooler that you showed that you can post links in the comments, so now I'll do some more.
ReplyDelete@Bonny: The internet has a lot of content that shows trans issues from a perspective that isn't genderqueer centric. For much of the internet population, trans, tranny, and transsexual are synonymous, even though we know trans to be a more inclusive term.
On the lighter side, there is LGBtotheT: Trans facts from A to Z, which is a collection of videos about some basic things.
If you go to sites like reddit, you'll find a number of non-genderqueer trans people posting both in the LGBT subreddit and in the transgender subreddit. Here is a link to one comment thread from a recent discussion that itself contains more links to other articles.
(For questions about any minority group, sites like reddit let you reach out to a large population. No matter what your question about human experience, you can usually ask it there and find people willing to answer.)
You can find a lot on blogs. The Bilerico Project, an LGBTQ blog that in theory supports trans people, was in the news recently because they posted a transphobic article, "No" to the notion of transgender. Reading the comments might be useful (in my browser, it takes a while for them to load because there are so many); the original article was pulled but a copy of the text can be found here.
Then you have YouTube, where you can find a number of people video blogging about their experiences. Here are a just two random trans people who I've seen make various political points about trans people on YouTube: icecoldbath (e.g., Women born Women, How to date a trans girl), TrannyGirl15 (e.g., The Brain and Gender).
Even though it's mostly tangential to the points I'm making, since I'm mentioning YouTube, here are three cool transition videos: Marie, Aaron to Erin, and Erin to Aaron (not the same person as the previous one!).
@Bonny: I'm still struggling to express what I'm uncomfortable with about your project. Here's another attempt, inspired by you mentioning racial otherness. I figured I could try to make an analogy to race. As with any analogy there are ways in which it fits and ways in which it doesn't, but I hope that you can try to empathize with the ways in which it does rather than be distracted by the ways that it doesn't.
ReplyDeleteImagine a project about race. The students participating have little problem passing as white, but claim to identify as mixed race. They don't like racial discrimination. They want to blur racial categories and act politically to encourage people to ignore race. They put up posters saying things like "I love being a racial minority, don't make me a victim", "Chink?", "Simple statistical calculations show that assigned race is the 36th worst indicator of individual identity", and "Just because I'm african-american doesn't mean I don't like sushi", "Black? White? 8 Page Essay on My Race?", "I don't like how it is more acceptable for a white to earn more money than a black person", and "Monday I'm White, Tuesday I'm Black, Wednesday I'm Japanese, Thursday I'm None of the Above, and the rest of the time I'm Cherry Coke".
On the one hand, these hypothetical students have a legitimate desire to be politically active on race, and they also have a legitimate, if slightly tenuous, claim to be mixed race and thus a racial minority, but when you look down the check list of white privilege, they can check off pretty much every one. If ever they're in a situation where being white helps, they can check their activism and their claimed racial identity at the door.
If they try to enlist the help of one of the few black students on campus, maybe that student will be helpful, but maybe that student will have zero interest in joining in with a project that seems like it trivializes race into an art project for privileged white students to play with until they get bored and move on to something else.
But since most of the campus is white, most of the feedback the students get is positive. Some people will want to join in and call themselves mixed race now (or even use racial slurs to refer to each other), and other people will see project as reinforcing their view that racism and reverse-racism are about equal, and that racial problems would go away if we all said "I don't see race".
If a student stands up and criticizes the project, saying "I don't think you fully get race and racial oppression", or "Please don't appropriate the term racial minority", plenty of other white students can pile on and say "No, you are the one that doesn't get it, you need to stop racially oppressing us!", and "Fuck you, how dare you be mean to us!".
If you can see the parallels, it may help you see why some people would be uncomfortable with your project. The characterizations may be judgmental and unfair, but I'm sure that some people see your project in similar ways.
Warning: Post is so long that I had to break it into sections...
ReplyDelete@several Anons, and whoever may be quoted on this poster:
At first I read this poster the same way "FTM Student" is reading it: The speaker loves being trans (as in, wouldn't choose to change if ey could redo eir entire life) and doesn't want other people to see em as a victim or someone deserving of pity. I was surprised that someone would profess this view because I also feel that trans people generally are victims of circumstances out of their control. Some trans people (but certainly not all) take on the process of changing their sex because the incongruence of their birth sex is so upsetting. (I've seen quite a variety of opinions on whether or not completing the transition process makes one "not trans anymore," but suffice it to say that we certainly do not all want to continue being trans.)
Because I would hate to call someone's quote wrong or inappropriate, I wonder if we should consider a different interpretation: "I love being trans" meaning the speaker is proud to be who ey is, loves eir life as a trans person although it may not be something ey wants per se, and asks of the general population "Don't make me a victim" i.e. don't victimize me, don't make me the victim of discrimination, hate crime, or any such thing. I agree that this quote would have been best placed with the image of a particular person, and I'd be willing to attach my face to this poster. Although I do feel like a victim at times, at this point in my experience I do love being trans, and wouldn't want to give up such a vital part of my identity.
@David:
You're a deeply thoughtful person, and I am very thankful for your willingness to speak out with a different view of gender than most of us. I do see a problem with a very few things you have said and I hope you won't fault me for pointing them out. You say, "I [have] formed my personal identity independent of my sex or expected role in society, and gender wasn't something I considered in forming this image." I think that's a feat no one can achieve because gender/sex is so deeply ingrained in our culture. Society divides us strongly based upon our sex, and really tries very hard to define what our gender identities "should" be. You can't simply avoid the gender patterns that are pushed on us all, because almost every object and person you see embodies and supports those patterns. If you have a "mom" and a "dad," their roles as your mom and your dad are strongly gendered, and they were no doubt critical in forming your identity and personality. If you've ever been to a pair of public bathrooms, and entered one of them, you've made a decision based in some part on your gender identity. As A.J. mentions, if anyone has ever called you "sir" (I'm assuming that's what you get called because your name is David) and that was okay with you, in some small way you accepted the gender people ascribe to you. And if the gender people ascribe to you based on your sex doesn't make you uncomfortable, it's probably similar to your gender. Having said all that, I admire you for speaking out on this blog and I encourage you to continue ignoring gender roles and to wear a skirt to the machine shop.
I haven't been as forgiving on this site as I should have been, because I was upset, and now that my feelings are not so strong I'd like to try again. Since I am already "out" to everyone on students-l (at the minimum), I'll start with some honesty. @JR, you offended me, but some truly excellent people have helped me see that it wasn't intentional. Your comments hurt me deeply in a way that you could not possibly have anticipated. Although I know you've said that you're done conversing with me, I hope you'll at least read a bit about me as you did ask for some information.
ReplyDeleteAs Bea's poster says, gender identity != gender expression. I have a male* gender identity with mostly female gender expression, though it's changed a lot before getting to this point. I have a female body and that defined my identity until I learned to separate sex from gender. As a kid, I could only conceive of myself as a "defective girl" who did not get along with either girls or boys of my age. I tended toward all of the classic nerdy pursuits that are considered stereotypically masculine, but I'm not sure if this is important or merely incidental. I became very unhappy with my sex during puberty and started to express a desire to be male, but I was unaware that this might be an indicator of my identity.
When I finally "discovered" the transgender condition I began identifying as FtM and I attempted to present as male, but I rarely had any success because physically I appear obviously female. I was very upset by my inability to pass and i started going to a gender therapist to qualify for hormone treatment. If there is a reason I can't entirely explain it, but instead of starting transition, I just sort of shut down and wallowed in self hatred. I can't quite bring myself to write up some of the things I thought and did.
Eventually I got to where I am now and I can't entirely explain how I did that either. *I see myself as a male mind inhabiting a female body, raised female and now recognized simply as trans. I feel like the sex congruent with my gender would be male, but I'm not willing to go through with reassigning my sex having gotten to where I am in life. I'm not glad to have a female form but I accept it as my own, and I find it preferable to the current state of FtM surgery and the risks of trying to pass given my stature and figure. For those who are receptive to my gender identity, I prefer not to be labeled with female terms and I mainly go by the GNP, but I would never object to male terms and pronouns if anyone used them for me. For those who are not I realize that in their view I am just a thing with a vagina and that necessitates female terms. Accepting those is generally not as stressful as trying to explain to everyone who/what I am.
As a result of my changing perspective and expression I feel like I've been in both segments of the trans community discussed above: I've been a pre-op transsexual who focused on minimizing my "otherness" and being recognized as a guy like all other guys, and I am now a no-op genderqueer individual still trying to find an appropriate stance on how "otherful" I really am. I'd carry a slogan like "I'm here, I'm trans, get used to it," not because I believe people will overcome their fear of otherness, but because queerness and otherness is the only viable option I see for myself.
@JR, it upsets me to hear you classify me as someone who "loves the middle," because I don't. To be honest I feel like "the middle" is the most painful place to be, especially on a permanent basis. Those who are in the middle are fighting not only against their position in the gender binary, but the very system itself, which seems an insurmountable goal. We are perhaps the most visible place on the transgender spectrum and to some degree I am comfortable being visible, but a little bit of me is afraid. I'm afraid of being attacked for not complying with gender norms and also for not complying with transgender norms. By that I mean being not a "textbook case" of a transsexual individual like my therapist said I was, but a nebulous, weird othery *thing* that just, as you say, "muddies the waters."
ReplyDeleteIt also hurts to be called "more cisgendered than transgendered," because I have never received that judgment before from another transgendered person. I expected to be accepted as a trans individual even if I choose to wear dresses and grow my hair long because I see the trans community as the only group of people who looks beyond my sex to the way I define myself. I'm not "attempting to appropriate the trans identity," I'm just trying to hold onto my trans identity despite all of the pressure from the world stating that I am what's in my pants, and apparently some additional pressure from the trans community telling me that if I won't put said physical parts under the knife, I'm not really trans.
I hoped I'd be in a position to speak for both the binary and non-binary identified segments of the trans community, but instead I've been accused by both of misrepresenting the community as a whole. I'd like to think I'm not, and in order to avoid misrepresenting anyone I've tried to use sufficiently vague qualifiers that nobody is excluded. Obviously I haven't done that very well. In particular I'd like to amend my assessment of the trans community's position on the GNP:
The goal of the gender neutral pronoun is not to describe only those people who consider themselves non-binary-gendered. It can also be used, like in my very first paragraph, to describe someone whose gender is unknown, someone who does not want to disclose eir gender, or a hypothetical member of the human race to whom a gender need not be ascribed. I am surprised at the response from people for whom it is not in fact a neutral term, and I'd like to apologize to everyone, since one of the reviewers of my gender FAQ anticipated this, and I didn't pay em enough heed. The original version of my document did not state that some trans people dislike the GNP, because I did not realize that for some people, this is more like "the genderqueer pronoun" and having it applied to themselves is an implication that their genders are non-binary. I never intended to indicate an inequality between binary and non-binary identified transpeople; the "some" clause was intended to cover the (I thought small) group who object to the use of the GNP for males/females.
All of this should really be part of a greater apology for my naivete. I used to perceive the community of transgender people and their allies as a would-be united whole. Now, it seems to me like the community is so divided that an individual belonging to one of the segments may not even want to allow another segment the same right to be called "transgender." I am simply shocked, and I am so, so sorry. I hurt people, and as much as I felt I was justified in everything I said, I absolutely did not want to hurt transpeople with my words or deeds. And in return, the trans community let me down, because I expected it to be a true community. Instead, it's a motley crew of scared, defensive, private individuals, and I am retarded for not seeing that in the first place, because I am just another one of these.
ReplyDeleteDespite that I'm going to try to state the little I know about trans people.
As far as I can tell from my research and my trans acquaintances, the most common and inclusive definition states that all people who see a difference between their birth sex and their gender identity are transgendered people. Some transgendered people are also "genderqueer" people, some are also "transsexual" people, some are members of the innumerable other subgroups with different identities and goals. Some of us want to change our bodies, some of us want to change society, and some of us run over the others of us because we're sure we're doing the right thing.
@JR in particular, your comments on the "transgenderedness" (I don't know a better word for that) of the people participating in this project don't sit well with me. Again, "transgender" is a blanket term, covering many of the people participating in this project, it is not some sort of privilege that you must qualify to obtain. Bonny and Lowell for example, who are of the female and male sex respectively but are genderqueer and have a mixed presentation, are not any "less" transgendered than you are. When you say,
"Trans people ought to have something in common.... 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." This disturbs me because all trans people need a safe community space. Most of us have suffered deeply because of our identity, even if our experience has not been the same as yours. In your race analogy you characterize the people on this project as easily able to pass as male/female, yet we "claim" to be of non-standard gender. That is because we are transgendered and how easily we pass does not determine how transgendered we are. Implying that some of us are cis people trying to "lay claim to the trans term" is hurtful and damages the fragile community we have. It feels as though you are trying to be the bouncer at the trans party, kicking out those of us who haven't been "invited" by the severity of our incongruence. If you want a term that genderqueer folk do not use to identify themselves, there are many such terms (e.g. "transsexual") though I don't know which one in particular describes you. Again, I'd like to ask you (and everyone else) to accept at face value what anyone says here about eir own identity. In short, ey knows and everyone else doesn't.
As we see from the fallout surrounding this project, it's very difficult for a few select people to speak for the entirety of the trans community. I agree strongly with the anonymous FtM student here: people in other subgroups of the trans population need to speak up as well, because only they can truly articulate their experiences.
ReplyDelete@FTM Student, A.J., JR:
Your discussion on the people absent from this project touches on something that's really important to me. If we can only speak about our own experience, what can we do about the people who won't speak? I want to say something for them, even though I will never quite be successful in relating their experience, to get them the respect they need. They won't tell the community their own story because they don't even have enough respect to feel safe speaking up. No one is truly in a position to speak for these people except for themselves, but I hope my efforts will do more good than harm in getting them into a comfortable environment where they can speak. Inevitably I will say things that are wrong, false, and unbelievably stupid, because I'm human and I make all too many mistakes.
[tl;dr]
But I want to state something as clearly as I can: When I make an effort to get recognition and respect for transpeople, it's for you, all of you. If you consider yourself transgendered, my long post here is for you, my not so successful Friday forum was for you, my visibility on the 5C's is for you, and all my future efforts will also be for you. I love you and I want the very best for you, including and surpassing complete acceptance, universal respect, and a body and a gender expression that makes you happy. If you are a trans person, please consider me your ally, and if you are a trans ally please consider me your ally as well. I'll do my best for you and I'll try not to let you down again.
Sincerely and with love,
skyler
@JR: I'm not going to be able to respond to you civilly in a way that encourages discussions. That is all.
ReplyDeleteYou sound like you're accusing me of not identifying as transgender by making an analogy to privileged white students playing with race. I don't spend 20 to 30 hours of my life on projects on issues I feel are playthings for me. Also, hell fucking yeah I love being Asian/a racial minority.
@Skyler: Beautiful post(s).
ReplyDelete@Skyler: Thank you. Thank you for your generosity in sharing your story. Thank you for your insightful analysis. Thank you for listening to your friends who said continuing the dialog was worthwhile. Thank you so much.
ReplyDeleteI am very sorry for having hurt you.
(I hope to write something longer, but I want these sentiments to stand by themselves be cause they are more important than anything else I'll write.)
@JR Your thanks and apology are precious to me, thank you. I'll await something longer from you too.
ReplyDelete@Bonny: It looks like I have a knack for upsetting people. I probably also have a knack for totally misjudging people and situations.
ReplyDeleteI did explicitly state that I thought my analogy was probably "judgmental and unfair". You understand where you are coming from but I think it's reasonable for me to try to make you aware of how much wiggle room you have left for there to be other interpretations.
I am telling you about at least one of these interpretations precisely so that you can knock it down. It would be nicer and less stressful if I left things alone, if I pretended to "get" everything that I don't get, but it would also be dishonest.
I'll freely admit that my thoughts are muddled by a variety of factors, some of them strongly emotional, my analogies weak, and my understanding woefully incomplete.
I really hope that you'll continue to engage with me. I've said it before, but I really do regret hurting people with the things I say. My only hope is that I learn from each misstep and that others will be able to forgive my errors as I learn.
@Skyler: (Your posts covered a lot. I don't think I can respond with a single coherent reply. Hopefully I can manage a few semi-coherent replies.)
ReplyDeleteYour story of how you got to where you are now moved me a lot. My hope for you is that you do indeed find a way to live in the body you have. My fear is that the place you have found proves to be an untenable one for the long term. Transsexual life stories are littered with people who thought they could handle it, who thought they could suppress or sublimate the way they felt, but it only worked for so long.
Regarding the viability of transition in your case, the effects of T tend to be pretty dramatic, and the majority FtMs have little problem passing. But many of those effects are also irreversible, so it isn't something to rush into.
Although it's painful for you to recount, and I respect your desire not to go into details, I find the part about how you turned away from hormones at the last moment is one of the most interesting parts of your story. First, your feelings can be very telling; paying attention to what makes you happy and what depresses you can be a very good way to gauge what your deeper needs are. Second, it isn't unusual at all for people to balk at some point in the process. Some people aren't ready yet and need a last hurrah of denial before they can move ahead. Presumably, on the other hand, some people realize that transition isn't the right next step for them.
I don't envy you your search for a comfortable place to exist on the spectrums of sex and gender. I really hope that you find something that that lets you be happy long term.
@Skyler: You say "Instead, [the trans community is] a motley crew of scared, defensive, private individuals, and I am retarded for not seeing that in the first place, because I am just another one of these."
ReplyDeleteThis is sadly true. At least you stand up and try to do some good. It is surely better to act, to try and fail and pick yourself up and do it again better than to sit in the shadows and not speak up at all.
You say "It feels as though you are trying to be the bouncer at the trans party, kicking out those of us who haven't been "invited" by the severity of our incongruence."
This is a very apt criticism of some of what I've said.
I think a part of me doesn't get genderqueerness at a fundamental level. If someone's problem is with the social construction of gender, and in particular the constraints of normative gender roles, it seems to me that the right approach politically is to fight to reclaim gender (roles) from such a needlessly restrictive construction. To me, you don't say, "I don't feel like a girl because I do a lot of stereotypically masculine stuff, but I'm not a boy either, I'm queer", you say, "I'm a girl who does cool stuff, get over it". I have a hard time not classifying genderqueerness in non-transsexual female-bodied people as a form of internalized misogyny. I'm sure that makes me an idiot, and an offensive one at that, but there you have it.
@Skyler: (In case it isn't clear, "you" in the last paragraph of my previous comment doesn't mean you. I was referring to people in general.)
ReplyDelete@Skyler: You said "Most of us have suffered deeply because of our identity, even if our experience has not been the same as yours."
ReplyDeleteI think that's part of the issue for me. This comment thread is beneath a poster that says, "I love being Trans, Don't Make Me A Victim", which is at odds with what you're saying about the project participants suffering.
You said I was acting like a bouncer, denying some people admission to the trans party. Part of it may be that if I don't see some evidence of having suffered somehow, I want to turn those people away. That troubles me. Is it really the case that I'll seek to delegitimize people who aren't wearing their suffering on their sleeve but are actually trying to be trans-positive?
@Skyler: Thanks for such a wonderful post I appreciate all the efforts you make. It is people like you that help to create community.
ReplyDeleteYou ask what to do about people who don't speak. I spoke a bit about some of the issues in a comment on the "about" thread. No one really replied to that, but I think it does stress some of the issues.
Online we can at least somewhat conceal our real life identities if we choose to. In the real world, we have real lives, and real lives are complicated.
You said you didn't know which trans subgroup JR would claim to belong to. Based on what I've seen here, I think we could all speculate, but it's probably not okay to single out JR, or ask any of us that question. If we're ready to say, we'll say, but I think in every possible subgroup there could be reasons why someone wouldn't disclose. Trust and risk are issues for some people, not just trans people but allies too.
I am censoring what I write to some extent for reasons I don't feel comfortable disclosing at this time. In doing so, I'm erasing trans people and trans experiences, and that feels wrong to me. But I feel like I am in a situation where none of the options are good ones.