I’ll have another exciting installment here later, but right now I have a guest post up at Tiger Beatdown–thank you so much to Sady for letting me drop by.
I Get Around
Categories: i get around
I Feel Pretty, I Feel…Coerced Into Being Co-Opted By the Patriarchalist Beauty Myth
Categories: beauty mythology, invasive kyriarchy, the patriarchy: you can't live with it....that is all
I wear makeup. Almost everyday. In fact, I’m writing this from a nail salon, where some nice ladies are tackling my feet with a belt sander.
Now, when I say makeup, I mean just any old cosmetic. Most days, it’s just some lipstick, and long-wear stuff at that, so I don’t have to touch it up during the day; when I have to do a client visit, or am going out on the town, I’ll add some blush and eye makeup. The whole deal takes about five minutes.
I wasn’t always so minimalist. When I first began to present as female outside of my apartment, I wore a lot of makeup. Some of it was by necessity: beard shadow is tough to hide, so heavy foundation was usually called for. Some of it, of course, was just wanting to wear makeup, because most of the time I didn’t allow myself to.
Since those days, I’ve done various things (like electrolysis) to make my life easier. Yet I still wear makeup, and as I am an introspective feminist, I wonder about what it says about me that I do.
Part of the reason is definitely to avoid any “OMGITSADOOODLOLZ”. The last time I went out of the house without wearing lipstick (about a year ago) I got “clocked” (picked out as trans) rather nastily. At six a.m. Before I’d had any coffee.
Such trouble, I don’t need.
Another reason is that I actually like to wear makeup, at least some of the time. I like the way it makes me look. I like the way that liking the way I look makes me feel, just as I like how I feel when I think I’m wearing a nice-looking outfit.
This is obviously a bit more problematic.
Because there’s no doubt that doing so feeds into negative stereotypes of how a woman is supposed to look, dress, and act. There’s little doubt in my mind that most of these are patriarchalist; that many are demeaning to women; that they constitute an ongoing backlash against women who dared be more than adjuncts to male sexuality.
I mean, hey, I’ve read Naomi Wolfe, I get all that.
But in my case it’s even more complicated. Because, you see, I never had a girlhood; I didn’t spend my childhood having lessons about what is proper or popular drummed into my head; and because of that, my relationship to fashion and cosmetics is a lot less complicated than most women my age.
I’m a bit like my friend Joanna. (Not that it matters, but she’s not trans.) She didn’t spend her high school or even early-adult years worrying that much about the latest clothes, the hippest trends. But around the time that I began to become interested in finding clothes I thought made me look good, instead of clothes that just made me look like a woman, she became interested in fashion. And she’s now one of the most fashionable people I know, though not trendy or consumed with a passion for the next unattainable fashion accessory.
For both of us, our clothes, our makeup, our appearance is a lot more about the pleasure we get from it than a pressure to fit in. I won’t deny that pressure exists–of course it does; but we both feel a lot more comfortable resisting it.
Or like I said before, we dress the way we do because of how it makes us feel, not because of how we feel we have to.
Ariel Levy said something in Female Chauvinist Pigs that I think gets at what I’m saying:
Monitoring her appearance and measuring the response to it have been her focal point. If her looks were a kind of hobby–if dressing and grooming and working out were things she did for pleasure–then the process would be its own reward. But she spoke of her pursuit as a kind of Sisyphean duty, one that many of her friends had charged themselves with as well.
I guess what I’m saying is that I definitely don’t feel the Sisyphean duty part of that equation.
But by the same token, I can’t help thinking about exactly how much I’m co-opted with the use of standards of beauty to repress women, that I can’t help but think that while I may feel good for wearing certain clothes, that’s only because the patriarchal culture around me tells me that I should, that these shoes/skirts/jeans make you feel good, and those (comfortable) shoes/(not-tight) skirts/(loose enough to breathe in) jeans won’t. It’s hard to sort out and the only thing that comforts me is that a lot of other women my age struggle to sort it out too.
But I’m still going to wear lipstick. Because more than one “LOLZURAGUYYYY” is too much. Hell, one was already too much.
Why I Blog, Part Wev
Categories: oh no not teh menz, why i blog, Your RDA of Outrage
Howdy, ducks! In today’s exciting installment of The Second Awakening, we learn that I learned how to set up Google news alerts! Fabulous–or is it? See below for the exciting answer.
Starting a blog is an odd thing to do: you have to believe that a) you have something to say, and b) other people will actually give a good god-damn about what you have to say. If you’re starting a feminist blog, you have to add c) that you understand feminism well enough to say something about it, and d) that what you’re saying hasn’t been pummeled to death like a very unlucky horse. But Ghu help you if you’re trans and starting a feminist blog: then you have to worry about e-z) who the hell do you think you are to talk about being a woman, let alone feminism.
So I’m quite happy to have several wonderful blogs out there that have helped me learn enough to launch this endeavor, and keep teaching me every day.
For example, Sady over at Tiger Beatdown has this provocative post about Andrea Dworkin and radical feminism that’s sparked an excellent discussion–to which, Maude save me, I’ve actually contributed. (I’ll note in passing–for it truly requires a longer post to discuss fully–that I tend to cringe at the words “radical feminism,” and probably unfairly; but given that some very, very vocal people who describe them that way have gone out of their way to let people like me know we’re not really women.)
Then there’s Liss, at Shakesville who offers up this post which might as well be another mission statement for what I want to do here:
Masculinity has defined itself exclusively in contradistinction to the feminine for so long that a serious challenge to the idea of inherent male superiority has left millions of American men floundering—and the best answer most of them have found for the question “What is my role if not a keeper of women?” is “I am a victim of oppression by women.” Femininity has become the center-pin around which masculinity pivots—on one side there is dominion; on the other side, subjugation.
What American men are lacking is a vision of equality.
Women had to change the rules, because we were told “You can’t,” because we had seemingly unnavigable barriers put in our way by people who didn’t want us to succeed, because, if we had played by The Rules (as dictated by The Patriarchy), we never would have gotten where are—because The Rules were designed so that we fail. For many of us, the odds have been against us our whole lives; everything we’ve ever done has been in defiance of the distinct likelihood—and expectation—that we would settle for less than we wanted.
The whole post is really good and a wonderful takedown of yet another Dooood’s carping “what about teh menz?’
Wait! Like I said, I finally set up some news readers–basic stuff, one for “feminism” and the other for “transgender.” (Understand that this is a work in progress.) And guess what popped up in the transgender feed? Have you guessed? Did you say–transphobia? Because Google sure did! (warning: links are triggery)
Now, do you see why people don’t want to see transsexuals and the transgendered covered in laws against discrimination?
Some discrimination needs to happen, if you’re business is going to survive. Discrimination at clubs goes on every single day, when pretty girls and celebrities go to the beginning of the line and right into the club, while others wait in line outside. Discrimination and the exclusion of freaks is the club way of life. And there’s nothing illegal about it. It’s business.
No-one wants a freak poisoning their establishment. No-one sinks their life savings into a business for the sake of social and contra-biological experimentation.
I know! What’s better is, I know about this case! helen boyd blogged about it a few months ago–she teaches up in Appleton, Wisconsin; the incident occurred right after she arrived in January.
And just when I thought I’d heard enough–and trust me, that was enough–of this Debbie Schlussel person….you know what’s funny? In a hate-filled, oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-it way? She wrote her own post on the article Liss blogged about:
Still, the facts and figures he cites are telling. As America continues its push toward a matriarchy, pushing men out of the way in favor of artificial insemination, single mother households, etc., it is one more step in the way of America’s demise and our continuing quest to emulate Europe. As we honor Governors who abandon their families to Mr. Moms, while they pursue political careers and while their own daughters father babies out of wedlock and shut the fathers of their babies out of their kids’ lives, we must ask ourselves what are the benefits of that. Why are we applauding those who behave this way?
As men are cast off to the wayside as obsolete, ask yourself if you want America to be the international equivalent of the WNBA or a NOW meeting?
Oh Zbornak! I should have stuck with the New York Post.
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:
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:
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.
Sarah Haskins on….Lady Friends!
Categories: i heart sarah haskins
I *heart* Sarah Haskins.
(h/t Feministe)
The Second Awakening: Special Retro-Mobile Edition!
Categories: all about me, posting at the speed of Amtrak, silly blather, teh tranz, This Was My Life
Sgniteerg Skcud! I mean, greetings, ducks! I’m on my way home again and blogging at 50 mph, after spending a weekend teaching myself to play the theme from Love Story, listening to my niece read to me, and finally catching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu. Which, along with my return homewards, has me in a retrospective mood.
I didn’t watch Buffy back when it was on TV–oddly enough, I had seen (and even liked) the movie, and maybe that kept me away at first; I remembered the film as harmless fluff. By the time I heard that Joss Whedon had taken it in a very different, darker, and (as usual) beautifully-characterized direction, it was too late to catch up on things and I didn’t want to try to come in late. So I missed it, until now.
I’m not one of those trans peeps who regrets not having a girlhood, per se; I know how lousy my adolescence was, and I really don’t think having been female would have helped much. (Or would it? I’ve become such a different–and better–person since I transitioned, maybe it would have worked out…) But that doesn’t keep me from occasionally getting blue about–about the tremendous waste involved with my early life, the years of being strangled with doubt and confusion, the horrific amount of mental baggage I carried around. And then too there is the consciousness of not having had a girlhood, of not having had to deal with being a teen ager, of all the ways my history separates me from other women.
Which isn’t to say there aren’t compensations; I was raised to believe that all things were possible for me, whereas sadly far too many women I know were raised to believe that they could be only those things that were proper. I might have been drowning in dysphoria, but I was never stifled by sexism, never silenced by society. I might have struggled with my assigned role, but it was a lot easier role to deal with than being an adolescent female.
On the other hand, though, try being the boy in sixth grade with a stuffed animal collection that covers his bed. That hill ain’t so fun to climb either.
I adore Buffy so far. I love how the show manages to have empowered female characters, to show the human side of everyone, all without denying the ordinary pressures of adolescent society: Buffy might be a superhuman being with an awesome responsibility, but she worries about being popular; Xander’s sly self-deprecation reminds me of someone I used to know (Ahem. It was one way to deal with always being picked on.) And I love Willow, even if she hasn’t become a witch yet.
Plus, Joss Whedon’s pitch statement–“high school as a horror movie”–pretty much sums up my recollection of those days.
Even so, watching it can’t but help stir the pot of my memories–if part of my tranisition has been learning about how unhappy I used to be (without even knowing it), then high school was me at my most miserable–tormented by my strangeness, my awkwardness, and the horrible feelings I had that I feared were at the root of everything. Watching Buffy can lead me to those “if only” moments–if only I knew that I could be a woman, if only I knew how happy it would make me–if only I could have just been born female and avoided all of this pain.
I can’t change that. I’m not even sure I would if I could; the person I am today was forged on the anvil of my transness, and I would be a very different person indeed without it. And I like that person, more and more every day.
So I shouldn’t regret the past. If only I could.
The Second Awakening: Special Mobile Edition!
Categories: all about me, silly blather, travels with CL, your rda of misogyny
Welcome again, ducks! Today’s post comes to you live from Amtrak! I am on my way to visit my parents, and as we are a Green outfit here at TSA, we’re riding mass transit. I am writing this on my trusty blue Acer Inspire One, which I bought for the trip to Thailand and has become my indispensable travelling companion–it fits in all my purses, and with the wireless broadband modem, I can blog anywhere!
Speaking of that trip, I passed through a large swath of Asia during it, and in honor of the first post I’ve written at 50 miles per hour, I thought I’d share some impressions of sex roles and segregation I gathered on the way.
Our first stop was Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. We only were there to transfer flights–if you’re flying to India or Thailand, I highly recommend Etihad Airlways; they spare no expense, the planes are comfortable even in coach, and the food was actually good. But even that brief layover gave me a sense of the character of the place. There were women working, but mostly as servers; the salesmen we saw at the various stores were, well, men. Abu Dhabi is a crossroads in the Persian Gulf, so we saw all varieties of dress, from full burqas to women in completely Western dress. (The flight attendants on Etihad, though, wore these odd combination pillbox hats and veils.) The bathrooms were a bit different; there was an attendant/chaperone, and they follow the British custom of having full-own rooms with doors instead of stalls.
One definite difference: the metal detectors were sex-segregated, to make sure that you were only touched by someone of the same gender. (This was to be a recurring theme, we shall see, and one that usually left me pretty worried.)
India: Saying anything authoritative about India is an excercise in futility; it’s too big, too varied, too everything. Our tour was exclusively in the northern part, so there were more Muslims there than other parts of India; again, there was a lot of variety in how Muslim women dressed, though when we visited the Jammu Mosque in Delhi, I saw quite a few people in burquas.
Indian standards of modesty are different than those found in America: bare bellies are fine (and an artifact of wearing a sari, as I know now–I bought two), but shoulders and knees should be covered. Both my boyfriend and I had to don ceremonial, wildly-patterned caftans when we visited the Jammu Masjid; once again, the metal detectors and clothing attendants were strictly sex-segragated.
Indian business and commerce are far more completely dominated by men than I was used to. We did meet several businesswomen, but almost exclusively in hotels; in stores, and the various “local craftsman” factories we were taken to by our guides (so we could be browbeat for 20 minutes in the hope of buying a rug/inlaid marble table/block printed cloth–the guide got a commission, of course), the people who did the talking were always male. As were all our guides; come to think of it, I think all the Indian guides I saw were male, as were a majority of the servers in restaurants.
Plate 1: The Author contemplates that the most beautiful building in the world was built for a dead woman.
Moreover, the quintessential picture of Indian poverty, I am sad to say, is a woman with her children. While I’m sure I saw some men begging–I certainly saw many, many poor people of both sexes; in India, if a space is flat, somebody’s living on it–the people who approached us were almost universally women. (On the other hand, the people who tried to sell us overpriced trinkets while we waited on various lines were exclusively male.) Every public bathroom I went to in India had an attendant; I’m not sure if that was always true for my boyfriend, but it was for me. These were very poor women (or heartbreakingly, little girls) who handed you a napkin to use to wipe yourself in exchange for a small tip; we usually gave them 50 ruppes, around a dollar. I can’t speak with any sure knowledge, but I would hardly be surprised to find that these women were Dalits.
On our way out of Indira Gandhi Airport (the first place I ever saw a traffic jam of luggage carts), we once again were run through sex-segregated metal detectors. These were more elaborate than the ones in Abu Dhabi; you were in a completely screened-off area, where you got wanded by the guard. Of the proper sex, of course.
Perhaps nothing captures the attitudes I encountered in India better than this: I was the one who booked the trip, who paid for it, who had negotiated with the tour company. When we arrived in Delhi, my name was on the card the tour representative held up at the airport exit. Yet when we got in the car–I was sitting right behind the rep–he turned to my boyfriend and said, “So, sir, is this your first time in India?”
Invisibility and being pushed around by men were the hallmarks of the trip for me.
Cambodia: Once we left India, we noticed a marked change in the presence of women in business–in that we actually saw several. Men still did most of the jobs that involved talking, including guide to foreign tourists. Like India, my boyfriend was spoken to first and more often.
I have no idea what the rules for the separation of the sexes are in Cambodia, but there seemed to be something subtle going on around us: our guide, Mr. K, constantly talked about the pictures of the apsara, or dancing girls that you see in bas-relief everywhere on the Angkor temples. He was often wistful about it, whispering: “Aspara. Dancing girls. Very beautiful girls.” We suspected dating was pretty complicated in Cambodia.
Plate 2: Mr. K wants you to know he feels nothing for these women. Nothing!
Thailand: We passed through Thailand twice, actually: once, very briefly, on the way to Siem Reap in Cambodia, and then of course of the Purpose of the Visit. Thailand, least in Bangkok and Suvarnabhumi Airport is huge, and more modern than LAX or Newark Liberty; if not for the presence of signs in Thai, you’d hardly know you weren’t in America.
Plate 3: It’s like Los Angeles, just with worse traffic.
In Thailand we finally saw something approaching gender equity. Women were firmly entrenched in the workplace, at about the same proportion that you find in America. Men talked to me–sometimes even first!–and women were definitely assertive, at least to me.
That isn’t to say that there wasn’t a lot of sexism; there was. Thai (or at least Bangkok) culture has something resembling a mix of 50s-style mores, plus a thousand years of Buddhism, plus modern capitalistic ruthless. My nurses told me, for example, that it was still considered somewhat risque for women to smoke–I mean, holy Mad Men!
But at least in Thailand (and Cambodia) I could pee by myself; there weren’t any bathroom attendants. And the metal detectors were unisex.
This is the face of progress, ducks: a man being wanded by a female security guard.
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:
- A topless coffee shop? That’s got to be some sexist exploitation going on.
- Didn’t deserve to burn down, though. That’s not right.
- Wait, they had a topless waiter too?
- The family nearly died?
- Still, I think a topless anything is probably exploitative.
- The townsfolk didn’t like the place.
- 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.”
- Well, sex isn’t dirty. I like sex. People, such as me, should have more sex and feel less guilty about it.
- Wait, one of the waitresses was using the money to put herself through college?
- But it’s still exploitative, right?
- 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.
- 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?
Satire or Wince–You Make the Call
Categories: bitterness, Humorless Tranny™, teh tranz
I’m in a bad mood right now, ducks, so I find myself not in a position to judge on the humor of this piece–I get what they’re doing, but I’m surprisingly humorless about this subject.
But judge for yourselves:
Conservatives Warn Quick Sex Change Only Barrier Between Gays, Marriage
(h/t helen boyd at (en)gender)
Me, I’m off to hide under the covers against the moment when somebody takes me to task for using a sports reference in the title of this post–it’s only been a few hours since someone tried to revoke my womanhood, and I need to recharge.
Except I Am
Categories: all about me, bitterness, teh tranz, vive le feminisme, why i blog
Reasons I Am Told I Cannot Be A Feminist
Culled from Books, Message Boards, Web Pages and Conversations by, for, and against feminists
- Because I shave my legs.
- Because I color my hair.
- Because I wear skirts.
- Because I wear dresses.
- Because I wear high heels.
- Because I had plastic surgery.
- Because I had breast implants.
- Because I had vaginoplasty.
- Because I am attracted to men.
- Because I still am attracted to women.
- Because I’ve read a few books on feminism.
- Because I’ve only read a few books on feminism.
- Because I have a vagina–now.
- Because I didn’t have a vagina–then.
- Because I don’t have a cervix.
- Because I had a penis.
- Because I had male privilege.
- Because I had white, male, middle-class privilege.
- Because I still have white, middle-class privilege.
- Because I wasn’t raised as a girl.
- Because I look like a dude.
- Because I look like a woman.
- Because of who I was.
- Because of who I am.
- Because I dare call myself a woman.