Monthly Archives: July 2009

by

Adventures in Transition: Everybody Cut Footloose Edition

Categories: all about me, teh tranz, This Was My Life

Greetings, ducks! Yesterday I decided to drag myself out of the cave also known as my apartment and force myself to have some of that dreaded “social interaction” people are always on about–specifically, I decided to jerk myself around to a syncopated rhythm while obeying patriarchal orders and occasionally crashing into people.

Yes, I went dancing.

Here in the Metropolis, there is a series of Sunday dances down on a pier during the summer. I used to go to these things long ago, long before my transition–hell, long before my brief metrosexual days. I enjoyed going–I had been one of those people who never thought she could dance, until my then-girlfriend convinced me to take some lessons, and I discovered I could do it, after a fashion. And that I liked to do it.

This time, however, would be different.

This time I was going to be there as a woman.

I managed to miss the free lesson they give before the dance, which was a shame, because not only was I rusty, I haven’t danced that much swing as the follower, and I had to sort out which leg went where. That was one worry.

The other worry was whether or not anyone would actually want to dance with me.

As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to get anxious around highly gendered spaces–and you don’t get more highly gendered than a partnered dance. (To be fair, I did see some women dancing together, but I have no idea if they were queer or just straight people without partners; I know for a fact I didn’t see any men dancing with each other.) So I had my usual uncomfortable thoughts: what if people read me? am I too tall for anyone to want to dance with? am I not pretty enough for people to want to dance with me? will I suck? (that last one wasn’t all that gendered, but an anxiety is an anxiety.)

Fortunately for me, plenty of people did end up dancing with me, some good, some bad. It was interesting to see the various styles of leading–having been a leader, I know how hard it can be to do well. One guy I danced with was maybe the best lead I’ve ever danced with–I always knew exactly what he wanted me to do–but the experience left me a little cold because I felt like I never got to do anything creative; I like to do some of my own moves when in open position, for example.

It was an interesting counterpoint to when I had first started to go out to dances as a man, and had to overcome decades of painful shyness and ask people to dance with me. I’m not sure which is easier, to be honest, to ask or wait to be asked.

I also ran into my ex-wife and her fiance. Which was a little weird; we’re on good terms, but it was definitely an odd interaction. Even weirder is that we met at this very same dance all those years ago (we met movie-cute.) I suppose I cold have upped the ante and danced with her, but I think we both felt that would have pushed the awkwardness skyward.

My anxieties then were mostly for naught. More than that: at one point I stood watching the sunset behind the bandstand, listening to the music and feeling the breezes blow on me, and I was just so damn happy–because this is how I wanted it to go, to finally feel at peace with myself and my body and who I wanted to be, to bask in the same beautiful weather I had enjoyed all those years ago when I went to my first dance, except this time it was so much better, so much deeper, so much more right.

by

O Brave New World, That Has Such….No Men In It

Categories: media tool kit, vive le feminisme, world without (g)end(er)

Greetings, Ducks! As many of you may have guessed by now, this is a blog about gender. (Well, and privilege. Primarily privilege. In fact, when I renamed it, I should have just gone with “Privilege Privilege Privilege…blah blah blah, Privilege!”–but that would have been an even worse url.) As it turns out, however, soon I may need to stop writing here–because my work will have been done!

That’s right, ducks–it seems that scientists have created synthetic sperm! And that can mean just one thing:

Synthetic sperm’ from stem cells raises hope for male infertility

Wait, no, that’s not it! (Though wow, I’d never guess that the first take on this would be how it could benefit men.) No, what everyone is talking about is this:

Synthetic sperm brings mad feminist dream a step closer

The idiotic internet blather following the creation of artificial human sperm evokes the writings of mad feminists who dreamed of a world without men.

Now, let us leave for the moment that there are plenty of women and feminists (and even a lot of people who are both) who like men, just not how so many men behave. (Because of, you know, the oppression.) Actually, don’t leave that, because that’s the whole fucking point: it’s not exactly a mainline feminist viewpoint to advocate for the genocide of one half the human species, except in the mind of Neil Lyndon. (Hint: Maureen Dowd–Maureen Dowd–isn’t exactly an unimpeachable source for your “feminists hate men and want to get rid of them” argument.)

I mean, this is so Old School, so “bra-burning feminist hippies” stuff–I’d almost expect to see a Gloria Steinem reference.

…et voila:

Q: What do you think 21st-century feminism looks like?

It looks like you. It looks like each self-respecting women in the 21st century. It’s not for me to define; the message of feminism is that each of us, as female human beings, define ourselves. There are some generalities that you can see. It’s much more international, I’m happy to say. I think clearly most of the country now understands that women can do what men can do; the problem is that they don’t understand that men can do what women can do, which as I was saying, is the reason why women still suffer from having two jobs

Now, I’ve been reading bell hooks a lot lately, so I’m not such a huge fan of Steinem and some of the other more prominent Second Wave leaders who focused their attention almost completely on the issues of white, middle-class women. Still, the comments section is painful:

Can we have dismissiveness?

A broad with a narrow mind…
Shouldn’t they call themselves “masculinists“? Seems more appropriate.

Mrs. Steinem, please exit stage left…
Thanks.

If you really want to have an honest, cerebral look into a ‘real feminist’s’ mind you should google…Melinda Jelliby
(warning: don’t)

Howabout sexist fauxgressiveness?

You poor saps just can’t take the thought of a woman being smarter than you. I would think you would be used to it, judging from your comments I would say just about everyone above the age of three is smarter than you. Its one thing to be stupid, its another to revel in your stupidity. This guy thinks Gloria is a complete dish and always has been.

Just plain sexism?

woof!

Gloria Stinem is some kind of gal }:>

Aaah, Gloria! You’re still hot but you’re no Sarah Palin. Now that’s a “self-respecting” woman!

Bonus round: a Jane Fonda reference?

I won’t take any gratuitous personal attacks on this woman even though she is nothing more than a mouthpiece for flowery quips and idioms from some 60’s hippie manifesto (which started decades prior to the 60’s actually).

I honestly look at Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and their contemporaries (sp?) today as ironically exploited and in no way empowered whatsoever.

BINGO! What’d I win?

You know, after all that, maybe I’m changing my mind, and we really should look into this world without men thing–I wonder what it would be like:

And why would any of us want a world with no men anyway? Who would carry our heavy luggage up the stairs after getting home from a vacation? After the jump, 15 things we’d miss about men if they ever became extinct.

  1. Their 5 o’clock shadow.
  2. Intercourse and outercourse.
  3. How cute and vulnerable they look first thing in the morning.
  4. The way they reassure us we’re nothing like our mothers.
  5. Their ability to reach the high shelves at the grocery store.
  6. Taking it like a man when we have a PMS outburst.
  7. Their cute little nicknames for us.
  8. Reassuring us we’re nothing like the bitches their friends date.
  9. How well they lie about the size of our ass in our skinny jeans.
  10. How they always know where all the wires go.
  11. The way they look in a suit.
  12. How good they are at killing the bugs.
  13. And installing the AC window unit.
  14. The sound of their voice in the dark wishing us “good night.”
  15. The way they look holding a baby.

Ah, fuckit. Let’s just skip to the whole life after men and women thing then; the planet will thank us.

by

Baron Cohen: Glorious Privileges For Amusement Of Elites

Categories: (un)popular entertainment, hipster irony must die, media tool kit, Outrage

I can’t say that I’m a Sacha Baron Cohen fan. (Now, Simon Baron-Cohen, I can totes get behind.) My niece liked his song in Madagascar, I’ve probably seen Ali G a few times, and other than that I’ve been pretty much indifferent to him.

But that hasn’t been much of an option of late, thanks to this:

A lot of people–led by Liss over at Shakesville–have talked about the, oh, FAIL risk inherent about using homophobic humor to expose…homophobia. Hell, even the New York Times–not my usual stop for cutting-edge progressivism–says as much in a well-balanced review by A.O. Scott:

The film demonstrates, at a fairly high level of conceptual sophistication, that lampooning homophobia has become an acceptable, almost unavoidable form of homophobic humor, or at least a way of licensing gags that would otherwise be out of bounds. An early sequence that graphically shows Brüno and his lover exerting themselves in various positions and with the assistance of, among other things, a Champagne bottle, a fire extinguisher and a specially modified exercise machine, derives its humor less from the extremity of their practices than from the assumption that sex between men is inherently weird, gross and comical. The same sequence with a man and a woman — or for that matter, two women — would play, most likely on the Internet rather than in the multiplex, as inventive, moderately kinky pornography rather than as icky, gasp-inducing farce.

Exactly.

However, here at The Second Awakening, we don’t just do analysis: we do analysis of privilege! (It says so somewhere in the mission statement, which I think The Grey Mouser is using as a pillow right now.) So what can we say about the privilege used, abused, hidden, and sickeningly visible in Baron Cohen’s work? And is that the reason why no matter what, you always feel vaguely icky watching it?

To answer the last first: Yes. Yes it is.

The thing is, both Borat and Bruno1 are humor for privileged people. They let you, the privileged person, laugh at other people who aren’t as privileged as you. To make it funny, of course, we use multiple axes of privilege: so Borat spent a lot of time lampooning white people of different educational or cultural backgrounds. (Most egregiously, the Romanian villagers who provided the backdrop for the movie’s early scenes.)

The way that both these movies mitigate any privilege guilt you might have about laughing at other people (please, please tell me you have privilege guilt for laughing–not everybody does) is by selling you the ultimate privilege: you’re in on it. Unlike the hapless buffoons of the movie’s universe, you get the joke. You know all along that Borat isn’t really a Kazakh journalist, that Bruno isn’t really a gay fashionista–that Baron Cohen is using these guises to draw people out of their shell and show their true colors. Which are inevitably ugly or laughable. As A.O. Scott says,

They — Americans just like you but of course nothing like you — were exposed as bigots either for being outraged at the things Borat did or for politely agreeing with his misogynistic, anti-Semitic or otherwise objectionable statements. Any twinge of guilt you might have felt on behalf of the actual glorious nation of Kazakhstan was quickly soothed by the spectacle of American intolerance and idiocy that “Borat” purported to expose.

That’s not to say that this isn’t a time honored technique (Jonathan Swift, for example, used it to great effect.) But I have to feel that there’s a fundamental difference in, say, attacking the powerful by pointing out they were essentially eating the children of the Irish by oppressing them into starvation, and getting a laugh out of a few ordinary citizens who aren’t hip that they’re being lampooned.

I mean, it’s not like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia (my personal fave) or anti-religious bigotry needs much encouragement to come out; nor is it likely that using a horrid charicature of gayness to draw people into overt homophobia is going to do much to alleviate homophobia. Instead, it’s more oppression masquerading as liberation; a joke for those “good” enough to be in on it, a joke on everyone else.

‘Cause not having privilege is hysterical. For them who have it.

====================================================================
1. I refuse to use the idiotic umlauts; that’s not how you spell the name in German. And you don’t spell “Borat” that way in Cyrillic, which is odd given that the DVD box actually spelled out the English title in Cyrillic characters. Yes, I am a hopeless pedant; you knew that already.

by

Normal

Categories: cis-o-rama, internuts, teh tranz

I have an abnormal relationship with–normal.

For most of my life, I looked normal, but never felt normal. Sure, I moved around the world as a (sorta) guy, even acted like one–ok, hell, sometimes even felt like one; but I was always aware of this thing about me that made me not feel normal: this awkwardness, this discomfort, this constant wondering if I was the wrong gender, and if so, should I do something about it.

Nowadays, I feel much more normal, but to large chunks of my world I don’t look normal: the friends, family and coworkers who knew me before transition now have to look at me a different way, and who knows what they think? And even beyond them, I’m tall for a woman, broad-shouldered…well, you get the picture.

But inside? Inside I feel right as rain.

I bring this up because of the recent controversy surrounding a very short word: cis. This word has apparently caused the Internet to catch fire and burn down. Well, at least my part of the internet–sure, it may only be a studio apartment with a kitchenette, but when there’s a fire it’s still quite alarming.

It all started with this post on Pam’s House Blend, and specifically this comment:

There has always been a certain amount of animosity between the L’s the G’s the B’s and the T’s. We all know this. When I start to tune out of a debate is when someone describes a whole group of our community as “cisgendered, transbigoted, privileged assholes”. Cisgendered is not even a word that gay men identify with but one created by people to single them out in a way that I personally find offensive and derogatory especially when used in this context. Not all white gay men are privileged, nor are they transphobic, lumping them in this category serves no purpose to a greater dialogue.

That’s how it started, but it didn’t end there. There was a huge pile-on in that thread about the use of cisgendered, followed by this thread at PHB (including this now-infamous comment) and then another follow-up at Questioning Transphobia and then the next thing you know cis isn’t allowed to be spoken at PHB but then it is (along with a–sorry, Autumn–“we need to struggle against the real oppressors” derail.) But by then it was all over the internet and even our old friend Carolyn-Ann had to check in.

All over a rather obscure Latin prefix. Color me impressed, I guessed: I mean, even the real c-word has four letters.

By now perhaps you are shaking your head: most likely in confusion. What is this cis you might wonder, and how may I get some? Or, maybe I should get rid of it? What, C.L., is the dish with cis?

It’s actually very simple. Cis– means not-trans.

That’s it.

Would, of course, that it would be so simple.

It comes from Latin, likely via biochemistry, where cis– and trans- are used to distinguish isomers from each other based on where the molecular bonds fall: on the same side, then cis (meaning within or on the same side), on opposite sides then trans (meaning across or on the other side.) The term has been kicking around for about two decades, but gained prominence thanks to Julia Serrano’s extensive use of cissexual in Whipping Girl, her groundbreaking work about transfeminism.

Julia does a much better job than me at talking about why cisgender/cissexual isn’t a pejorative word, so I’ll just quote her quoting Emi Koyama

I learned the words “cissexual,” “cissexist,” and “cisgender,” from trans activists who wanted to turn the table and define the words that describe non-transsexuals and non-transgenders rather than always being defined and described by them. By using the term “cissexual” and “cisgender,” they de-centralize the dominant group, exposing it as merely one possible alternative rather than the “norm” against which trans people are defined. I don’t expect the word to come into common usage anytime soon, but I felt it was an interesting concept – a feminist one, in fact – which is why I am using it.

Yet as the brouhaha above shows, a lot of people–cis people, natch–seem to somehow feel that somehow it is pejorative. That somehow trans people are forcing an identity onto non-trans folk. That somehow it lumps them in with all the other bigots out there–racists, homophobes, chauvinists.

To which I say: you bet your ass it does. That’s the point.

By which I mean not that all cis people are bigots, but rather that they belong to a bigoted power structure. So do I. So do we all–we are all caught in the trap of kyriarchy, and pretending not to see the chains that bind us doesn’t make them not exist.

The thing is, there are privileges to being not trans–I doubt much that anyone is going to fight about that. I’m just going to refuse to agree that one of them is the right to be normal.

Because that’s what it comes down to. I’d have no problem ditching the term cis in favor of another term for people who aren’t trans; I’m just not going to concede that we don’t need one. Because every time I write not-trans instead of cis, I’m calling attention to myself; I’m pointing out that I’m the weird one, the one with a problem, the one that needs to be differentiated. And fuck it, I’m just not going to put up with that forever.

It does not invalidate other axes of oppression to demonstrate that another one exists. Kyriarchy is complicated; it is devilishly difficult to sort out. But that does not refute it’s existence–quite the contrary.

Now, it may well be true that cis is a unique term in one respect: it is being used by a disprivileged minority as a term for a privileged majority–some would say, forced upon a majority. This seems pretty different from some of the other terms that have evolved out of usage, like homosexual or heterosexual–in both of those cases, they were conceived by the privileged majority as decentering terms. But again, I say: good. Because we should celebrate the fact that so many people of privilege (cissexist privilege, that is) are willing to decenter themselves based on the suggestion of a disprivileged group. That’s not tyranny: it’s progress.

Telling other people what normal should be is where the tyranny begins.

by

Another Blog Note

Categories: Uncategorized

We’re back, mostly. I ended up staying an extra day in Montreal–my friend ended up needing to be hospitalized–and yesterday was too burnt out to write much. But we should be resuming our usual schedule around here, i.e.: erratic.

by

Adventures in Transition: Édition Internationale

Categories: all about me, i get around, travels with CL

A dear friend of mine recently had her GRS done up in Montreal. She’s had a long history of complications from surgery, and sadly this was no exception–so yesterday her son and I hit the road and took a seven-hour road trip up to visit her. (It would have been six hours, but I always get lost–also, asking a truck driver for directions to a gas station when you speak a very imperfect French is a wonderfully Dadist exercise.)

She’s doing a little better today, and was surprised and pleased to see us, so I’m very glad we were able to run up here.

It also reminds me of a few things.

This isn’t the first time I’ve visited Dr. Brassard’s clinic; I came here last spring, when I was considering using him as my surgeon. (I ended up going to Thailand when I decided to have more things done; it cost the same to go to India and Cambodia–and fly home via business class–as it would have cost to have everything done in Canada.)

Back then, I still wasn’t sure when I would even want to get surgery; it wouldn’t be until the fall of that year that it would take on a sudden urgency. I ended up hanging out over the weekend with a few of the patients who were waiting to have their surgery done–there was a very pre-op vibe.

Appropriately enough, thios time all the patients are post-op, the last group of surgeries before the clinic’s summer vacation. And it carries me back to my own early post-operative days, the camraderie between me and the other patients who were staying at the hotel. (We had two pizza parties while I was there, and generally hung around in each other’s rooms for a while; I also met the nicest person in the world there, a trans woman who had made the trip on short notice to be with her friend who was having the surgery.)

I don’t use the word comrade lightly, either; we were like any group of disparate people thrown together by a painful shared experience–we bonded fairly tightly while we were together, but our natural differences pulled us apart afterwards. I’ve seen so many different takes on what we went through: from people who convinced this was the most important and transformative experience of their lives to grim-faced agnostics like myself who were convinced that nothing important would change after surgery. (I was wrong, though not necessarily about what the surgery did to me; it was how I felt about myself afterward that was the radical difference.)

The residence where people stay to recuperate here is quite pleasant, and is another what if place for me: because this is more or less what it would have been like to stay here had I done my own surgery here. In some ways, it would have been easier–on the same continent as my family, and my French is about eleventy-million times better than my Thai (and my French ain’t that great, so you get the picture.) Not that I regret my trip, because I got to finally see India and Angkor Wat, and even use my French when talking to Frenchwomen in Thailand for their own surgery. But it is kinda nice to make it up here and see what it would have been like.

Meanwhile, I’m worried about my friend, but happy as well to be able to be up here for her. Send her some good wishes if you can.

by

How Not To Have A Conversation

Categories: i heart oppression, intellectualisimus, teh tranz, the transsexual empire strikes back, vive le feminisme

Greetings, ducks! In today’s Adventures in Google Reader, we have some examples of Talkin’ About Teh Tranz! (Wait, Cat, isn’t this supposed to be Back To Feminism Week at TSA? To which I reply: hold yer horses, ducks! Wait ‘n see!)

First, let us visit Feministe. Now, you may not realize this, but Feministe is indirectly responsible for the very existence of The Second Awakening. That’s because back during my recovery from surgery, when I was beginning to actively avoid trans stuff in favor of reading feminist blogs, I came across this sh*tstorm there. (If you follow the link, you can also see the stuff I was reading at Feministing at the same time–plus BitchPhD’s stupid joke. It was a grand old time to be a trans feminist.)

Feministe has taken that time seriously, much to their credit, and they’ve recently had the fabulous Queen Emily of Questioning Transphobia (one of the best of the trans blogs out there.) Q.E. did her usual bang up job. The comments thread, sadly, was a big ol’ bundle of FAIL:

If there was a pill a person could take that would “cure” transexuality, would trans people take it (even without social pressure to do so)?

Is it transphobic if a cis person will not date a trans?

I’m a college student currently taking a Gender in Humanities course and have been assigned a project to find websites that discuss controversial topics, with which I can comment and converse with lots of people.

So nice to see that a blog post that was specifically requested in order to combat a recent history of people cluelessly mystifying trans people in comments threads…we had people cluelessly mystifying and othering trans people. Sigh. Or to quote bell hooks:

I did not feel sympathetic to white peers who maintained that I could not
expect them to have knowledge of or understand the life experiences of black women. Despite my background (living in racially segregated communities) I knew about the lives of white women, and certainly no white women lived in our neighborhoods, attended our schools, or worked in our homes.

(Theres going to be a big bell hooks-loving post one of these days, soon.)

At least we didn’t get into the “cis” discussion, the great hobgoblin of mainline feminist blogs’ comments threads. (“Cis” is used as the opposite of “trans”, i.e. a cisgendered person is someone who doesn’t feel the persistent discomfort with their gender a trans person feels–but it’s not exactly hard to find that out.) I don’t use the word cisgendered here a lot–sorry, I just don’t think the Latin is all that well used in this case–but it’s without a doubt very useful for trans people who are trying not to be perpetual others. Well, most trans people:

“Cis” is not an attempt to “decentralize the dominant group”. It is an
attempt, a blatant attempt, at redefining an entire conversation so that it can’t stray into areas that might be uncomfortable. It’s being able to cry about “cis privilege”; it is not about leveling the linguistic playing field.

Any civil rights cause needs articulate, reasoned argument. It needs impassioned speech, and it demands a proper feeling of being oppressed. It doesn’t need people saying that they are “oppressed” because women talk about some exclusively feminine issue, and they, as a trans woman, don’t, can’t, have that same experience. The debate about trans discrimination does not need the unwanted, unwarranted, imposition of a prefix onto those who are not transgender.

(Disclaimer: I used to know C-A personally, although I don’t remember him–he prefers male pronouns–as being such a transphobic wanker back then.)

Well, now. I suppose if I don’t mind being perpetually othered–if I don’t mind perpetually having to to put my history on display–if I don’t think that there might be some, oh, I don’t know, privilege attached to the idea that one gender history doesn’t need a prefix and one does, I might agree with Carolyn Ann. (And seriously: WTF is this about “exclusively feminine” things? In the comments, it turns out that this is–wait for it–periods! If you’ve ever felt “not so fresh,” then you qualify for a “Get out of cisgender FOR FREE” card!)

C-A provides a great example of how to talk past people, play fast and loose with your own definitions (using “Orwellian” to describe how people try to recast language to avoid their own oppression is pretty….Orwellian), and in general, not check your privilege. I’ve come to expect this sort of thing from the allmighty Google Reader–but then, comes something like this incredibly reasoned exchange, where sharply divergent points of view about the use of “Cis” manage to remain mostly respectful:

(Sungold–pro:)

I don’t describe myself as being “cisgendered” every day, but I realize that the term describes what I am and so I’m happy to claim it. I was born with female organs, I’m comfortable with being called a woman, I appear reasonably feminine despite my incompetence with nail polish, and so I don’t experience any dissonance between my anatomy, my gender presentation, and the way the world views me. That’s a big ole privilege.

(redmegaera–anti:)

My rejection of the adjective “cisgendered” stems from a belief that sex/gender is socially constructed. I don’t identify with the cis/trans binary because it reifies “gender” (masculinity/femininity) and transforms it into a biological property rather than a political construct. If you can explain to me why such a position is “transphobic”, I’d be very much obliged.

So of course I had to jump in (yes, ducks! A double post-within-a-post!):

I’m not exactly sure how rejecting “cis” isn’t in fact an excercise in privilege–that is, it allows the continual “othering” of trans people, i.e. “non-trans” is normal, “trans” is different. (Redmegaera quotes de Beauvoir, but the whole theme of “Le deuxième sexe” was how “man” is constructed as normal, default, and “woman” as permanent and irredeemably “Other.” So I’m not sure how you can use de Beauvoir to justify othering someone.)

Nor does it necessarily destroy other axes of oppression/privilege to acknowledge that another one exists.

As for the biological/social construction of gender: surely nowadays we can agree that this is not an either/or issue? The tragic case of David Reimer would seem to strongly argue that neither nature nor nurture completely explains internal gender identification. (A precis: Only a few days old, David’s penis was accidentally destroyed while undergoing circumcision. Following the advice of John Money, one of the leading advocates of “gender as social construct” theories, David was raised as a girl, Brenda. However, despite the positive reports Money published, “Brenda” never felt comfortable as a girl and continually rejected his imposed gender–even though his parents never told him about the accident, even though to teachers, friends, twin brother, etc., he was always and only a girl. After years of being suicidal and maladjusted, “Brenda” became David after his parents finally told him about the accident.)

This is why I and other trans people find construction of our transitions as cosmetic” (or a “harmful social practice”) so frustrating, and, well, insulting. It silences our voices, it implies that what we do to our bodies is somehow wrong
(isn’t control of your own body a feminist issue?) and it in general enforces heirarchical constructs based on dualisms that non-trans people would reject
having imposed upon themselves. If I am to fight against slut-shaming, abortion-shaming, body-image shaming (as I do) because I believe these are egregious impositions upon a person’s dignity by heirarchical society, why am I supposed to sit in the corner and be quiet when people do the same to me as a trans woman?

It’s the same when people use the language of trans/any oppressed group to describe a form of their own oppression; it creates the very false equivalency that Redmegaera opposes. For example, I’ve suffered both gender dysphoria and body-shaming for being female; and while they both feed similar anxieties, they are not same, do not stem from the same causes, and are experienced in quite different ways by myself. (I’ll hasten to add that I would also not claim that my own experience of having my body shamed is the same as a woman who was raised female and thus had those ideas inflicted upon her at a younger age.) Colonization of other people’s experiences is not liberation.

I’m all for discussions of privilege. I acknowledge freely the privilege I accumulated before I transitioned; I talk about it all the time on my blog, as do many of the trans feminists I know. Often we use it as a way to open up examinations of the invisible privileges that bind us all inside the insiduous system of kyriarchy. Hell, my own feminism would approach radicalism, if it weren’t for the fact that most radical feminists won’t have anything to do with me.

It does not dimish the reality of sexism and male oppression of women to note that other forms of oppression exist, or even to note that sometimes the other forms of oppression are more oppressive and urgent; but that’s what radical reduction of all issues into a sexist template does. As bell hooks says,

Sexist oppression of is primary importance not because it is the basis of all other oppression, but because it is the practice of domination most people experience, whether their role be that of discriminator or discriminated against, exploiter or exploited. It is the practice of domination most people are socialized to accept before they even know that other forms of group oppression exist. This does not mean that eradicating sexist oppression would eliminate other forms of oppression. Since all forms of oppression are linked in our society because they are supported by similar institutional and social structures, one system cannot be eradicated while the others remain intact.

Othering isn’t liberation. Silencing isn’t liberation. Imposing your own description on people isn’t liberation. Normalizing your own condition isn’t liberation.

Or more pragmatically, why is it, when so many trans feminists are working against the same issues cis feminists work against, that we get left out in the cold so often by those same cis people?

(I did mention I’m really loving bell hooks, right? In fact, I’m off to read more of her stuff. Keep it classy til I get back!)

1 2