Categotry Archives: your RDA of intersectionality

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Now Let Us Praise Complicated Women, And Condemn Them While We’re At It

Categories: Humorless Tranny™, tiger beatdown rocks, transphobia: now in blog format, your RDA of intersectionality

So Mary Daly died.

(You might have heard about it.)

I don’t have much to say about Mary Daly, really. I haven’t read anything by her (because I am a bad feminist, or at least a lazy one, or at least somebody made very theory-adverse thanks to my graduate studies in English.) I’m not really sure if I’d heard her name before she died (because I am a bad…oh, you know.)

But I was utterly unsurprised to find out that she was a Second Wave radical feminist who, you know, hated me.

(Well, one thing surprised me: she was Janice Raymond’s thesis adviser. Janice Raymond! And no, I’m not going to link to anything about her–if you’re here, you should know about her; if you don’t, use the bloody Google.)

As I said over at the ol’ Tiger Beatdown today, it’s clear that Mary Daly gave a lot of women a new way of looking at the world; that in a very real sense, she liberated them. And the glowing testimonials of people who knew her–about how generous she was with her time, how she helped other women writers and feminists, how she created, in the truest sense of the word, sisterhood with her fellow women.

But I just can’t be all that happy about it, because she also wanted to deny me all those things; because to Mary Daly, I would never have been woman or even feminist enough.

And this doesn’t even touch on the criticisms Audre Lorde leveled at her of ignoring the voices of women of color except as anecdotes, a bit of “color” for a chapter mostly about white women–something Daly never publicly cleared up, at least not while Lorde was alive–or her belief that the male of the species should be reverse decimated (leave one in ten alive) and those secluded in zoos.

And yet a lot of women I admire got their start in feminism with her.

And yet she thought I was a monster.

And yet she was dismissive towards women of color.

And….and what? There was a lot of good Mary Daly did. There was a lot of bad as well. How do we sort this out? How can you honor the legacy of people who were noble in some ways, and wicked in others?

How do you make sense of human lives?

Me, I dunno; like I said, I never read her. But her fame should not expunge her failings.

(And if you want a balanced, no-nonsense appraisal of her good and bad, Sady has it.)

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Ron Gold, Choice, And The End Of The Affair

Categories: cis-o-rama, Humorless Tranny™, i heart oppression, kyriarchy, the transsexual empire strikes back, your RDA of intersectionality

So on further reveiw, the infamous Ron Gold post was taken down and he had his contributor status revoked. This was the proper step to take: one doesn’t run a blog that supposedly caters to every letter in the LGBT spectrum and then publish something like that.

In the past I’ve found Bilerico to be pretty approachable for trans people and trans bloggers, which makes this failure hurt so much more than if it had been on a blog that didn’t have that reputation. It revealed an enormous blind spot in the editor’s outlook. One thing is certain: nothing that attacked the gay and lesbian identity in such a way would have been posted there.

However, one must wonder about the screening process over there. Were they aware that Ron Gold had previously claimed that being gay was largely a matter of “imprinting”?

First, about the science of the thing.  My reading of the literature gives me no cause (despite highly publicized research by Simon LeVay and others) to believe that there is any physical, chemical or genetic difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals.  Indeed, I think the current data leads to the inescapable conclusion that all human beings are born with the capacity for both homosexual and heterosexual responses.  Preferences for one or the other seem, in most cases, to be fairly fixed by the age of six, but within the species homosexuality and heterosexuality do not appear to be discrete entities, with preferences running the continuum from exclusivity at both ends to genuine bisexuality in the middle.  Even within individuals there is ample evidence that people can and do change, whether situationally (as in same-sex settings like prisons) or culturally (as in virulently homophobic societies).
So what causes sexual orientation?  My guess is that preferences for one gender or another is much like preferences for people who are dark or fair, young or old, tall or short; imprinted patterns that are usually formed quite early in life.  How these imprints occur has yet to be discovered, principally, I think because the bulk of the research has been looking for “the cause of homosexuality” rather than the cause of sexual preferences in general.  Do we choose our imprints?  No, but we do choose not only whether to act on them but whether our feelings are appropriate for our self-image.  It really isn’t too hard to repress feelings that embarrass us or make us feel guilty.  It’s a bit harder to try, as I’ve tried, to expand my imprints beyond young, short, dark men to others I might like just as well if I gave it a chance.

You should go and read the whole thing, because it’s remarkable how this presaged the line of argument he used in his anti-transgender piece–with the exception that he was respectful of gay identities, but didn’t deliver the same courtesy to trans folk.

I should note that one of the few good things about this mess is how many LGB and straight cis folk defended transgendered people and decried the bigotry of the Gold article. Peterson Toscano has a nice post about this, with many wonderful replies. (h/t to helen boyd, with a side order of snark.)

It should be noted too that not every trans person in the world acquitted themselves spotlessly. Our old friends the HBSers leaped in to score their usual desiccated points about “the transgender.” There were some posts of fail in the various comment threads–even having bigotry shoved in your face shouldn’t be an excuse to shove bigotry right back. These were few and far between, and somewhat ameliorated by the shocking level of insult Gold heaped out.

And by the fact that, well, we’ve heard it all before. Bil Browning said he wanted to “challenge” the readers of The Project, but how the fuck was the latest reiteration of the same old argument I’ve heard for all my life from all kinds of cis people, queer or not, challenging? Would Peter LaBarbera be allowed to be a contributor to The Bilerico Project? He’d certainly “challenge” the views of many in the gay community.

I think Lisa Harney of Questioning Transphobia said it best in the comments thread to the non-apology apology:

Don’t you think trans people are constantly challenged already? Why do we need to be shocked out of a comfort zone that we largely do not have access to? […] Would you honestly allow a post that called all LGB people deluded and unnatural, and said that same-sex attraction doesn’t really exist? And when your commenters respond predictably (that is, with anger), would you deliver this same apology?

And with that, let’s put L’Affaire Ron Gold to bed. I’m sure by tomorrow morning the world will have found a new champion to tell me that I don’t exist.

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Erasure

Categories: teh tranz, we don't put the "T" in LGB, your RDA of intersectionality

(warning: any links from the New York Post should automatically be considered triggery.)

I was married once.

It was a rather ordinary marriage, except that we both got unnecessary blood tests; our information about New Jersey law was out of date.

In case you’re wondering, I was the groom. As if you needed to.

That was the easy one. If I ever get married again–to a man or a woman–things will be likely more difficult, depending on whether the state I’m in recognizes a) legal sex change and b) gay marriage (just in case, either way.) It’s one of those nebulous things about being trans–for example, as Jenny Boylan notes, had I stayed married and gotten all my paperwork done, my (ex-)wife and I would have had a legal, lesbian marriage. Except that it didn’t start that way.

Now, most progressive places don’t have any trouble sorting this out, while a few (Ohio! I’m looking at you! Let people change their birth certificate gender, for pete’s sake) have more–difficulty. But even in the heart of the most progressive regions, you can get something like this, from the New York Post:

Wedding Crashers

I dupe, I dupe!

While political arguments rage, New York City has certified its first gay marriage — of two men who fooled the City Clerk’s Office into letting them tie the knot.

Hakim Nelson and Jason Stenson married on May 26 with nary a raised eyebrow among the oblivious city bureaucrats who not only OK’d the marriage license, but conducted the ceremony, despite gay marriage being illegal in the state.

The plucky couple filled out their marriage application online at the Apple Store on 14th Street in May. A few days later, they went to the City Clerk’s Office on Worth Street to complete the form and get their marriage license.

Nelson — who goes by the name “Kimah” and hopes to one day have surgery to become a “full female” — wore an orange dress and white leggings, his straight, brown hair falling to his shoulders.

The gullible clerk didn’t seem to notice that both Nelson, 18, and Stenson, 21, have male first names.

They both had to present identification to obtain the license. Stenson used his state ID card, and Nelson gave a state Benefit Card, which he uses to collect food stamps.

By a fluke, Nelson’s ID card has an “F” for female on it, because the official who issued it in April assumed from his appearance that he was a woman.

Good morning, transphobia, how are you going to fuck up peoples’ lives today?

It’s almost pointless where to start here–that it wasn’t a same-sex marriage because trans women aren’t men, that “duping” is an insanely insensitive thing to say to trans people (it’s what the people who commit violence against us use as their defense), that it’s not a “fluke” that Kimah’s ID had an F on it–you only need a letter from a therapist to change your gender on your driver’s license in New York State–and for fuck’s sake, enough with the Pronoun Fail.

I won’t quote further from the Post–I feel all icky inside already–but here are the headlines of their follow-up stories; that should give you a feel for things:

Unwed Dudes A Happy Couple

Marriage License Of 2 Nyc Men Revoked

N.Y. Unwittingly Marries “Same-Sex” Couple

Oh wait! That last one isn’t from the Post, it’s from The Advocate.

I can’t say I’m surprised.

The erasure of the “T” from LGBT is not exactly a new phenomenon. Whether it’s ignoring Sylvia Rivera (who was one of the instigators of the Stonewall riots but was later given the cold shoulder by the gay movement) or deciding trans people don’t deserve equal rights yet, there has been a long history within the gay rights movement of ignoring or denigrating trans issues.

And while I understand that often there are very different issues involved–for example, the marriage issue is more or less resolved for heterosexual trans people in most of the country–that still doesn’t mean there isn’t a convergance of issues. Removing the gender-identity provisions in ENDA didn’t just throw trans people under the bus–it said to the femmy gay guys and butch lesbians that they didn’t deserve rights either; that the protections that ENDA promised–most of all, the right to live your life the way you want to live it without worrying about losing your job or not finding a home–only applied to “normal”-looking queers.

That eraser gets a pretty good workout.

But hey, if the Advocate wants to be on the same page as the Post, who am I to complain?

After all, I’m naturally deceptive, don’t you know.

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Crossroads

Categories: privilege stories, teh tranz, tiger beatdown rocks, your RDA of intersectionality

Intersectionality, ducks! It’s all the rage! Everyone talks about it because–everyone lives it!

Take, for example, this story over at Pam’s House Blend. It seems that there was a topless coffee shop up in Maine, one that a (deranged, angry, spiteful) local resident decided it was OK to burn to the ground. Nobody was hurt, but they could have been–the owner and his wife and children were sleeping inside. In addition to the destruction of his uninsured building, the owner lost the lobster pots and carpenter’s equipment he used to make a living.

Why am I bringing this up? Because of the dizzying intersections of forces, privileges and theories in this one case. When I first read the story, my thinking went something like this:

  1. A topless coffee shop? That’s got to be some sexist exploitation going on.
  2. Didn’t deserve to burn down, though. That’s not right.
  3. Wait, they had a topless waiter too?
  4. The family nearly died?
  5. Still, I think a topless anything is probably exploitative.
  6. The townsfolk didn’t like the place.
  7. But they didn’t like it, it seems, because they thought it was sexist: they didn’t like it because they thought it was “dirty.”
  8. Well, sex isn’t dirty. I like sex. People, such as me, should have more sex and feel less guilty about it.
  9. Wait, one of the waitresses was using the money to put herself through college?
  10. But it’s still exploitative, right?
  11. Sure, because it’s sexist that being a topless waitress was the best way for her to make money. Whew. I almost had to think for a second.
  12. My head hurts. I can’t figure out if I should write a post condemning the place, or write them a check. Or both.

And that’s a relatively benign example. Things can get far more complicated than that.

For example, there’s me.

Being trans opens you up to a wonderful world of intersecting under- and overprivileging. On the one hand, I’m a woman–I identify as one, I look like one, I am in general treated like one, with all that entails. Moreover, I’m a trans woman, which means that if/when people find out/are told/Google me that their attitudes about me will very likely change. Some will stop thinking of me as a woman. Some will think of me as a woman with an asterisk. Sometimes I’ll be expected to be the mystical tranny, here to tell everyone about what it’s like to be trans. (And, of course, almost everyone will want to know what my genitals look like, something not an ordinary area of discourse, at least not at lunch.) Not to mention that there are people who will react violently towards me, who will single me out, who will make me a special target–that over and beyond the targeted/othered status I bear as a woman, as a trans woman I’m at risk for even greater degrees of violence.

But wait. There’s also no denying that I have and have had privileges simply not available to most women. As a very, very simple example: it is highly unlikely that a woman who had my editorial assistant job 14 years ago would have been given the license to teach herself how to program computers that I received. (Especially not at that company–the boss was a right old chauvinist.) In fact, just about everything about my career in IT, which is my bread and butter, was aided by being male at the time. I had instant credibility; it was considered proper for me to be in the field; and I never had to vouchsafe my identity as a programmer the way many women in IT have to. (Though many women don’t have to vouchsafe their gender the way I often have to; like I said, it gets dizzying.)

And of course I’m white, not overweight, college-educated, not disabled. A ton of privileges. Do my underprivileged characteristics–not cisgendered, not straight, not chromosomally female–outweigh my privileges?

It depends.

One of the reasons I began writing this blog was the gradual awakening I had about the iniquities of privilege. It’s the passion that drives me, even as I struggle to understand and expose my own privileges. It’s why I am an opponent of kyriarchy, why I so staunchly oppose all the various petty divisions within the different communities of underprivilege.

But as it turns out, checking your privilege is very hard to do.

Which leads me to Shakesville. I’ve only been a recent reader there, but the community there had a profound influence on me; indeed, Shakesville and Tiger Beatdown are the two sites that inspired me to start blogging again after a four-year hiatus.

I’m mentioning Shakesville because–as you may have noticed in my little blogroll widget–the site is in stasis right now. You can read about it at Shakesville, but what it breaks down to is: Melissa McEwan, the founder and webmistress of the site, had to take a break from posting. On her own blog. Because people wouldn’t listen to her when she said that a lot of the comments were bothering her, and that people needed to be more civil.

I’ll repeat that. She stopped posting. To her own blog.

Even though I’ve only been a recent Shaker, the safe space that Liss has created and worked so hard to maintain is something I cherish. And even as I get mad that things came to this head, I feel bad for my own failings, sins of commission and omission, there.

The idea that Shakesville has reached a crossroads, that there could really not be a Shakesville anymore, is chilling.

Sady at Tiger Beatdown as usual is all over this, far better than I can add with my poor powers. But I will say: this is an issue of privilege, of flaunting it and most of all of not examining your own privilege. But just so we all understand:

When somebody tells you something you said hurt them, and you don’t take it
seriously, that’s privilege.

When somebody tells you your conduct is against the simple rules she created
for her own space, that’s privilege.

When you repeatedly ignore complaints except to occasionally apologize and
then go right back to doing what you were doing, that’s privilege.

If you think that somebody is supposed to do something for you, something
that you value and treasure, and you don’t listen to what they say, you in fact
act like you were owed something–you better believe that’s
privilege with a capital-fuckin’ P.

And when somebody writes an incensed blog post about privilege, you can bet she has some privilege too. We all do. So what are you going to do about that?