Categotry Archives: failings

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The Rest Is Silence

Categories: adventures in transition, all about me, double bound, failings, how to tell if you've transitioned, the tiniest violin in the world

So, hi, ducks.

I’ve been away a bit. Not completely away, I’ve written a thing or two here and there. But I haven’t written much of late.

I have an excuse, for what it’s worth.

The excuse is that I was depressed to the point of…well, of taking rather irrevocable action to solve my depression.

Now, that would be kind of hasty, I think. But I was down so far that I couldn’t really see up anymore.

The thing is, I got laid off at the end of March. The job sucked, so I didn’t miss it, but I sure as heck missed the money. Because coupled with my previous client’s habit of not paying my invoices until I screamed and turned blue, and then being out of work for two months, my savings were pretty thin. And I’d been using my paychecks from the last gig to reduce some of my debt, so that I could live cheaper than I do, in case this kind of thing happened again. Which is a great plan, but it blew up in my face when I got laid off after only ten weeks.

I don’t have to tell you it’s hard out there. It’s hard, even if your day job is a fairly skilled position, and in one of the few segments of the economy that’s making a come back. Even so, it’s hard out there. I would send out resumes and work the phones but only a trickle would come back. I had one or two interviews but no second interviews.

At some point I realized that I was between six and ten weeks from being bankrupt, and losing everything I’ve spent the last fifteen years building.

I have to stop myself there. What I am complaining about is still incredibly privileged. I’d lose my home, but I wouldn’t be homeless–my family can easily put me up, and a friend of mine would do the same. That’s one thing.

Another is…that I’m complaining about the fact that I just wouldn’t be able to live in my expensive (now–it wasn’t when I moved in) neighborhood in Manhattan. I mean, boo fucking hoo, yeah? That would only be something I’d share with all but 1.8 million people in the world. This is not a tragedy.

But all the same, it felt like one. This apartment has been my home for over eight years; it’s where I lived with someone for the first time, where I got my first pets as an adult, the place where I’d come home to a person I loved, the place where I decided to transition and the place where I made that happen. And the neighborhood feels the same to me; I’ve lived within three blocks of this apartment for the last fifteen years.

And too this is the only place I’ve ever wanted to live, and I’ve sacrificed (some) to get here.

And also…it was shocking how quickly it could all get swept away. Three months could do it. That seemed shocking.

There was other stuff too. Between the fall and the last two months, this is the longest I’ve been out of work as an adult. I’ve had a job of some kind since I was seventeen. I’ve always found a way to get some work in the door.

So all that, plus our threadbare economy, had me down. But there was some other stuff. And I think I need to talk about this, because it is a feminist issue, because it is something I can comment on maybe more than other people.

That was the two strikes (at least) I had against me: that I was a woman trying to get a job in technology, and that I was a trans woman trying to get a job in technology.

All that stuff you may have heard about how much harder it is for women just to look professional is true. A stupid example: getting an interview would cost me at least ten bucks, because I’d go and get my nails done, because I can’t put a sheer color on myself and have it look good, and because where I was looking for work, women at my professional level don’t wear colored nail polish.

Okay, that’s a privilege thing, and maybe just my own prejudices. But when you have big hands (and you worry about what people might conclude about that), you do your best to not draw attention to them either from lack of care or for flamboyance.

Anyway. I had other stupid image issues. I haven’t been able to afford a decent hair cut in a while now–and a bad haircut would be held against me far more than it would a man–so I had to either try to blow it out and go long, or pin it up and hope I didn’t look too masculine. I’ll talk more about that in a bit, but: this is an issue for every professional woman, and it’s one of the cruelest of the catch-22s of patriarchy. To wit: professionalism is defined by men’s dress codes. So they tend to make women look more masculine. But you can’t look too masculine! But you don’t want to look too feminine either! It’s the same dynamic as the pointless manicures: don’t get your nails done, and you look too butch and like you can’t be bothered to be professional. But have red nails and you might be too feminine. And so it goes.

These are of course my prejudices. People can and do make either end of the spectrum work. But it’s a much tougher, much more individual struggle than it is for most men. That you’re getting straight from the horse.

Of course the other part of butch vs femme, masculine vs feminine for me was worrying about being read as trans. If my hair is up, I don’t have to worry about it looking too bad, but will it make my face look too masculine? My pumps are my most neutral dress shoes, but do they make me too tall? Will my voice hold up for an entire interview? Will they know? Will they care? It doesn’t really matter that I live in a place where there are workplace protections for trans people. I’d never be able to prove anything.

I’m not really making that up, not that you would think I am. There was this study by Make the Road New York which is pretty depressing in just how blatant the discrimination is. And yeah, I know, it was retail, right CL? I mean customers public face corporate image! Surely it’s different in other jobs.

Surely you jest. You think if people aren’t comfortable buying jeans from a trans lady that having one be your CTO is going to make people more comfortable?

Or to put it more simply: everywhere I went I hoped they didn’t make me fill out a formal job application. Because then I’d have to give my social security number and Ghu knows what they’d be able to find out; sure, I fixed that and my driver’s license, but even with letters to my credit bureaus, that stuff just lasts forever.

This story has a happy ending. I finally found a small place where I was able to meet with the guys doing the hiring right away and I hit it off with them. And two days later they offered me a job that will pay my bills and even get me out of debt. Which again makes me one privileged cat, one lucky ducky: and I’m very thankful.

But for a long time there I was really scared. And you want to know what one of my signs that I’ve transitioned is? I no longer am confident I’ll always pull things out anymore, not like I used to be. And that’s part of the reality of being a woman and being trans in the world today.

So hey: where have I been in the meantime? Well, Below the Belt is on hiatus, but I’m now a blogger at Change.org! You can read the two pieces I have up so far–about a trans woman and the crappy treatment the DC police gave her, and more about our favorite douchebags, Roman Polanski and Bernard Henri-Lévi!

And over on Tiger Beatdown, where I am somehow now the Senior (non)Contributor, I have this trifle about “The Tudors.” Enjoy!

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I’m An Idiot, But Wikipedia Is Still Sexist

Categories: failings, media tool kit, privilege stories, the patriarchy: you can't live with it....that is all

Well, okay, so ducks, I’m a bit of a silly goose.

As a very helpful commenter pointed out, I’m an idiot without any fact-checking ability because I ran with the front-page article on the English custom of wife selling as if it were a hoax. And it ain’t, more to my chagrin–although I should point out, that when I got off my ass and finally did do the fact-checking, there’s not a whole lot of very credible evidence for it on the free net–a lot of 19th century newspaper articles, and of course the Hardy novel; but one should really not put much credence in 19th century news articles. (It should also be noted that the edit history of the article shows it was written today My mistake, didn’t dig deep enough into the edit history.)

Be that as it may. I won’t even point out that if I got fooled, so did substantial chunks of the internet, most of whom ran with the story as if it were a hoax as well. (It seems that the Wiki tradition is to put slightly misleading headlines on the front page which link to totally legitimate articles. I was not aware; my main experience of April Fool’s day hoaxing are Google’s patently false ones.)

So anyway, I took the post down for a while. Not because I want to run away from being stupid, but because I had some freelance to do today for a tiny amount of money and really didn’t need to get a bunch of emails about how stupid I was. Thanks, got that the first time. And I wanted to fix what I wrote.

And it’s not as if I still don’t have a feminist bone or two to pick with Wikipedia.

Because here’s the deal: of all the articles they could have posted prominently, they posted this one. Now, maybe it says great things about us as a people that we think the concept of selling your wife so outrageous that it could only be a prank. That would be nice to think.

But how much more likely that the folks who organized today’s front page instead thought it would be totes harharhar to lead with an article about how women were property. With fun echoes of how other people were once considered property. And excuse me for being a paranoid lefty, but in today’s climate–when we’re seeing a tremendous backlash against women’s rights (just look at all the anti-abortion laws being passed, the Stupak amendment, the return of an anorexic beauty ideal, etc. etc. etc.) coupled with the steady drumbeat of racism on the rightwing fringe (examples too obvious and numerous to get into)–well, yeah, this whole fiasco troubles me. Quite a bit.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this:

Would I like to see “wife selling” legalized in America? Nope … it seems like slavery (one person owning another). But I would like to see the modern practice of taking hubby to the cleaners in divorce court ended.

That also seems to be a lot like slavery … or at least it’s like indentured servitude. There’s no moral reason why a hubby should be forced to buy his freedom, any more than there is any moral reason why a hubby should be permitted to sell his soon-to-be ex-wife’s freedom.

Or how it’s the first post in this Straight Dope thread titled “April Fool’s articles I wish were real.”

So yeah: lulz. We’ll drag up one of the most misogynistic things we can find in our database (and yeah, I know all about how it was a way around restrictive divorce laws, and how the women were supposed to not mind–which goes to show you just how low the English opinion of women was back then, and how desperate they could be under the law, not that this was some kind of good thing) and make it our lead post on a day it is guaranteed to be picked up everywhere! And for the true deep lulz, it will actually be true! Hahahaha! Stupid internet! Stupid ladybloggers! (Well, ladyblogger. I seem to be the only one dumb enough to write about it as if it were true.)

I mean, the rest of the articles are all mostly harmless (though somewhat guy oriented, or rather doood oriented: mentioning James Brown–no, not that one, fighter jets, video games, crime, and the hy-larious idea of the city of Halifax having sex with multiple partners. And a monkey.) But the main, featured, excerpted article is about selling women as property.

Okay, fine. I see sexism everywhere. I even flew off the handle about a non-hoax. But you want to know something? There are only two mentions of women on the front page: the wife-selling article…and this ad:

Fat ladies! Is that hilarious or what?

Sheesh.

(Yes, I’ve taken down the original. Yes, it’s in the time machine, I think; it’s probably also on the Facebook page. I’ve got enough going on in my life that I don’t need to have EVERY monument to my foolishness on the homepage of my blog.)

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WTF, Bilerico?

Categories: don't get your panties in a bunch, failings, Humorless Tranny™, teh tranz, the transsexual empire strikes back, transphobia: now in blog format

I really like the Bilerico project–it’s a great place for queer and trans folks and their allies to meet and discuss things. And it’s never shied away from controversy.

Bilerico recently added a new contributor, Ronald Gold, and reading his biography he’s just the kind of person you want to have there–a long time gay activist, one of the founders of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and a man who was instrumental in getting homosexuality removed from the DSM.

So it’s an enormous disappointment to read his first post, officially titled “‘No’ to the notion of transgender” but if you look at the url it must have been called “Transgender: a disease that doesn’t exist” at some point. And, well, let’s see if you, Gentle Reader, can understand why I was shocked to see it on Bilerico:

What is transgender? Well, there are two sorts who seem to be covered by the name, the drag kings and queens so good at portraying cartoon imitations of straight people, and transsexuals, the folks who report that from an early age they’ve felt themselves trapped in the wrong bodies. Despite the equipment they were born with that belies their assertions, they say they are really men or really women.

 Holy fuck. Did I just read that at a queer site? Seriously? Please tell me this is some kind of horrid fundamentalist satire…

I recall reading something by Jan Morris in which it seemed that he thought he needed a sex change because he wanted men to hold doors open for him and kiss him goodbye at train stations. For starters, I’d have told him that I’ve had these nice things happen to me and I’ve still got my pecker.

Oh ye ghods.

Oh, but he isn’t prejudiced against trans folk! See, this is how he ends the piece:

Perhaps it isn’t needless to say that a No to the notion of transgender does not excuse discrimination against cross-dressers or post-op “transsexuals” in employment, housing and public accommodation; and I strongly support legislation that would forbid it. I would, however, get after the doctors – the psychiatrists who use a phony medical model to invent a disease that doesn’t exist, and the surgeons who use such spurious diagnoses to mutilate the bodies of the deluded.

 See? I just think you’re deluded, C.L.–but that’s no reason for people to be cruel to you. That is, for levels of cruelty beyond calling you a man and a “transsexual.”

If I was to be charitable (I am reliably informed that for some reason December is a month we’re supposed to do so, here in Merka; the media says so), I guess I could scratch out some kind of “hmm, he’s really against gender essentialism, which I’m down with so…win?” Except, oddly enough, as I write this he’s sharing the front page with Autumn Sandeen, the transgender barista from Pam’s House Blend, and whom I’m sure enjoys having her identity crumpled up in front of her eyes and tossed away.

I just…can’t understand why this of all things should be the first post this guy makes at Bilerico. Didn’t somebody tell him there are actual trans people who visit? Or even, you know, write stuff there? Holy cow.

Grumble…gotta write that “how to take an ally to task” post that everybody is writing nowadays…sheesh.

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Kapo

Categories: failings, invasive kyriarchy, why i blog

I am a racist.

That declaration is the sort of thing that usually brings friends sputtering to your defense. “But Cat, you’ve dated people of color, some of your best friends, and you voted for Obama!” Which is true, but doesn’t do a whole lot to defeat my original point.

Which is that, I am a racist.

I’m also an imperialist. A colonialist. Certainly a classist and probably a capitalist.

I’m not generally cognizant of any of this. But occasionally an incident throws this into focus. For me, it was this comment I wrote. You can go follow the link to find it; I have just enough vanity to not put it on the front page.

But the fact is, I wrote something that was racist and imperialist and I need to own up to that, and to own the privilege that let me think something like that was in any way appropriate. And own up to the fact that the only reason I’ve become chagrined enough to write about this incident is that I pissed off somebody who’d had this blog recommended to her. Only to be completely and finally turned away by what I wrote.

In other words, I was so blind to my privilege that it took that kind of embarrassment to make me notice it.

It seems useless to deny the fact of my racism. Every day I walk through the streets of the Great American Metropolis and I see the color of the skin of the people in suits heading downtown and the color of the skin of the people who are making deliveries or running deli counters, and I can see the relative worth placed on each. And every day I accept that, buy my paper at the deli, and move on to more important things, like who won the baseball game.

Likewise it is useless to deny the fact of my imperialism, not when I wear clothes made halfway around the world by impoverished people, people who had their wealth and resources stripped away by the wealthier countries, people locked into a cycle of poverty and slavery in all but name by the continued exploitation of them by those nations. I see this every day but am content to pay $8 for my tee shirts and move on to the comics section.

Sure, I try to be a good progressive. I try to speak out against open expressions of racism. I have been fortunate enough to know many people of color in my life, which leaves me less sheltered than most people of my (suburban, white, middle-class) background. I believe in all the Right Causes and critique all sorts of forms of oppression.

None of that changes the fact that I am part of a vast web of privileges that systematically elevates me by virtue of a few accidents of birth while at the same time debasing billions who don’t share those features.

That I am trapped in the system as much as they are does not change one whit the fact that I have much the better position.

I write a lot here about feminism and sexism, and transness and transphobia. This is because these are the things that are important to me; sexism and transphobia are the prejudices that single me out. So it’s fitting that I should be loudest in my opposition to them.

But what I have learned as I’ve been writing this blog, as I have grappled with the issues raised both here and in my life, as I’ve struggled to learn and understand more about feminism and how I can live a life that is concordant with it, is that my personal oppressions are not enough. That it is the whole system of oppressions that needs to be fought against.

There is a reason I prefer to use the term kyriarchy over patriarchy, cisarchy, or any number of other dominations. That’s because I see them all as part of the same system: that kyriarchy describes the multivalent oppressive nature of human society. We are locked into it by the relative comfort of our privileges over others, which palliates our own lack of privilege compared to some. To confront real liberation would mean to seek to destroy the whole system of privilege itself, to voluntarily renounce and repudiate one’s own privilege–to rip down the whole structure of oppression that has dominated human society since the Agricultural Revolution.

Too much to ask? Maybe. But it would seem to me that at the very least this process can begin with digging into my own privileges, to expose them to the light so that they stop being the invisible shackles that keep me tied to the ediface of oppression; that by recognizing them, I can find a way to be less invested in the struggle to maintain my own place. Because make no mistake: ultimately this system leads only to tyranny, the constant struggle of all against all that maintains the majority of the human race in suffering.

And it’s a small thing, oh such a small and insignificant thing to do. If I weren’t such a coward, if I weren’t so deeply co-opted by kyriarchy, I could do more. I have to trust that it might help, though. I have to trust that in time greater things can become available to me.

But what I can’t do is not keep pressing forward. Because anything is better than remaining a racist.

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In the spirit of making some feeble amends, some links Google Reader served up to me on some uplifiting things happening in India recently:

Duniyalive.com » Gay community stages rally in Bhubaneswar

Riot of colours at Delhi’s second gay pride march

India’s transgender strive for rights | GlobalPost

Chennai turns up to support gay march