![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clovehitchedIronically, some of the most horrible vitriol and hatred directed at trans women comes from the women's community. People like Janice Raymond, author of the shameful "The Transsexual Empire", Germiane Greer before she became less vocal in favour of her own career as a media person, and that one who writes in the Guardian sometimes, you know, the trans people should be forbidden from having surgery because it's inconvenient for my politics one, started out with the best of intentions. They saw the way society treated women like second class citizens, and they wanted to do something about it.
And they saw they had an enemy - the patriarchy, and they divided the world into "us and them", and then it started to go a bit wrong. They assumed that "us" were always the victims, and "them" were always the perpetrator, and anything done in the name of "us" was automatically right, because it was "fighting oppression", and if someone else got hurt, well then they're automatically one of "them", and they probably had it coming.
And so when trans women are systematically excluded from women's resources and spaces, whether that be something as symbolic as being denied access to a music festival where you commune with the Moon Goddess for a week by eating tofu, Having a pharmacy refuse to serve you, or something as serious as being denied rape counselling or being put in a male prison, transphobic radical feminist turn a blind eye, or even cheer on the abuse of other women in the name of "ending women's oppression". We're not even casualties of war to them, we are the oppressor.
Julia Serano, a trans women, has written a book which has become very influential in transfeminist circles, Whipping Girl, which is broadly a collection of essays highlighting some of the problems trans women face, often perpetuated by the women's movement, or the queer community. She popularised and gave us lots of useful terminology - cissexual, someone who is not transsexual; cissexism, the belief that the identified genders of trans people are somehow fake or less authentic than the genders of cissexual people; trans misogyny - hatred or transphobia directed specifically at trans women.
It's the last one I want to talk about. One of the issues Julia Serano highlights is the way many queer spaces and people value or fetishise gender transgression by female-assigned-at-birth people while simultaneously directing hatred or disgust towards gender transgression by male-assigned-at-birth people. The fetishisation of trans masculinity within the lesbian community, while that same community frequently campaigns to shut trans women lesbians out, is but one example. If one hangs around queer spaces enough, this fetishisation of trans men can often seem ubiquitous, and there are those who encourage it, whether trans men themselves, or masculine-leaning lesbians wanting to demonstrate how subversive and edgy they are by adopting a transgender identity, as if it were a new haircut.
This is appropriative and really messed up, and it creates a lot of anger amongst trans women, who often struggle to have our voices heard in this atmosphere, or who are dismissed as "men in dresses". While it is subversive and radical for female-assigned-at-birth people to adopt the trappings of masculinity, it is seen as shameful and appropriative and oppressive for male-assined-at-birth people to go in the other direction.
Of course, these people don't really respect trans men, or take their gender identities seriously. Having a trans man as a boyfriend while proudly proclaiming your lesbian identity is a la mode presently, even if you do then refer to them as "she" and "her" behind his back, and will dump him the moment he starts to get body hair, or talks about getting any kind o gender affirming surgery. There are limits! One can't be too edgy and subversive, otherwise it looks like heterosexuality, and gosh darn it, that's not edgy or subversive at all!
Serano has done a great job in giving form to this issue, so that we can talk about it in terms of the way it ungenders both trans men and trans women, perpetuates trans misogyny and the exclusion of trans women from queer and women's spaces, and so on.
But I can't help thinking that, like the Raymonds, the Greers and the Bindels, some of us have lost the plot.
A few weeks ago,in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
transgender, a community which I moderate, during a debate over who was allowed to reclaim the word, "tranny" witout being oppressive, a really nasty undercurrent seemed to surface. That there was a debate at all was cast as trans misogyny. Trans men who tried to argue their case, or trans women who supported them were frequently shouted down and told to stop being oppressive. The thread grew to 800 comments, and showed no sign of slowing. Meanwhile parts of it degenerated into outright personal attacks between small groups of people. Before we, the moderators, shut it down, some of the arguments had descended into racial abuse. It got extremely ugly.
One poster in particular started referring to trans men as "runts with c*nts*, and talked about how sick they were of listening to "dickless men", which ultimately earned them a ban. At the time I figured it was such a clearcut case of inexcusable transphobia that even those who had been sympathetic to the "Even discussing whether trans men are allowed to say 'tranny' is trans misogynistic" angle would not make excuses for it. It seems I was wrong.
I was recently dismayed to see some women defending the abuse of trans men with phrases such as "runts with c*unts" and "dickless men" on the grounds that it is, and I quote, "funny and witty", and that it's, "an emotionally evocative phrase meant to illustrate the damage of living in a body that is a constant, inescapable cultural punch line".
It gets worse; the reasoning seems to go that picking a trans women up for saying this is evidence of trans misogyny - apparently it would be just fine for someone to talk about "chicks with dicks" intransgender, and it would receive no comment from the moderation team, on account of how invested in trans misogyny and sticking up for "them" (trans men, in their newly cast role as part of "them") we all are.
To anyone who genuinely thinks that, and from the LJ drama surrounding this, I can see there are those who do, I can only suggest you try putting it to the test - the community would likely be better off without you. I'd also like to say this - I think you've taken trans misogyny and turned it into a dogma, and in doing so you're attacking your own community. When trans men I know come to me, as a community moderator, in tears because they feel at the mercy of their GP, or gender clinc, and no-longer even feel they can turn to their community because it's cast them as the oppressor, then it seems clear that some in our community are doing to them what the transphobic radfems did to us. People doing this, becoming the trans community's own Julie Bindels are part of the problem. When you start talking about whether it's OK to use transphobia against trans men as a satirical way of highlighting transphobia against trans women then I think you've lost the plot.
A friend of mine (white, straight, cismale), once referred to much of the identity politics on LJ as "bullshyt". At the time I thought, "what a terribly privileged thing to say". Now I see my own "side" using a position that should be used to highlight and combat oppression to victimise other people with impunity, because they are so used to being the victims, and I see he had a point. Yes, trans women are oppressed. Yes, some queer spaces privilege trans men over us, but this is wrong, and I want no part of it.
I'm screening comments here, for obvious reasons.
Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/205192.html - you can comment here or there.
And they saw they had an enemy - the patriarchy, and they divided the world into "us and them", and then it started to go a bit wrong. They assumed that "us" were always the victims, and "them" were always the perpetrator, and anything done in the name of "us" was automatically right, because it was "fighting oppression", and if someone else got hurt, well then they're automatically one of "them", and they probably had it coming.
And so when trans women are systematically excluded from women's resources and spaces, whether that be something as symbolic as being denied access to a music festival where you commune with the Moon Goddess for a week by eating tofu, Having a pharmacy refuse to serve you, or something as serious as being denied rape counselling or being put in a male prison, transphobic radical feminist turn a blind eye, or even cheer on the abuse of other women in the name of "ending women's oppression". We're not even casualties of war to them, we are the oppressor.
Julia Serano, a trans women, has written a book which has become very influential in transfeminist circles, Whipping Girl, which is broadly a collection of essays highlighting some of the problems trans women face, often perpetuated by the women's movement, or the queer community. She popularised and gave us lots of useful terminology - cissexual, someone who is not transsexual; cissexism, the belief that the identified genders of trans people are somehow fake or less authentic than the genders of cissexual people; trans misogyny - hatred or transphobia directed specifically at trans women.
It's the last one I want to talk about. One of the issues Julia Serano highlights is the way many queer spaces and people value or fetishise gender transgression by female-assigned-at-birth people while simultaneously directing hatred or disgust towards gender transgression by male-assigned-at-birth people. The fetishisation of trans masculinity within the lesbian community, while that same community frequently campaigns to shut trans women lesbians out, is but one example. If one hangs around queer spaces enough, this fetishisation of trans men can often seem ubiquitous, and there are those who encourage it, whether trans men themselves, or masculine-leaning lesbians wanting to demonstrate how subversive and edgy they are by adopting a transgender identity, as if it were a new haircut.
This is appropriative and really messed up, and it creates a lot of anger amongst trans women, who often struggle to have our voices heard in this atmosphere, or who are dismissed as "men in dresses". While it is subversive and radical for female-assigned-at-birth people to adopt the trappings of masculinity, it is seen as shameful and appropriative and oppressive for male-assined-at-birth people to go in the other direction.
Of course, these people don't really respect trans men, or take their gender identities seriously. Having a trans man as a boyfriend while proudly proclaiming your lesbian identity is a la mode presently, even if you do then refer to them as "she" and "her" behind his back, and will dump him the moment he starts to get body hair, or talks about getting any kind o gender affirming surgery. There are limits! One can't be too edgy and subversive, otherwise it looks like heterosexuality, and gosh darn it, that's not edgy or subversive at all!
Serano has done a great job in giving form to this issue, so that we can talk about it in terms of the way it ungenders both trans men and trans women, perpetuates trans misogyny and the exclusion of trans women from queer and women's spaces, and so on.
But I can't help thinking that, like the Raymonds, the Greers and the Bindels, some of us have lost the plot.
A few weeks ago,in
transgender, a community which I moderate, during a debate over who was allowed to reclaim the word, "tranny" witout being oppressive, a really nasty undercurrent seemed to surface. That there was a debate at all was cast as trans misogyny. Trans men who tried to argue their case, or trans women who supported them were frequently shouted down and told to stop being oppressive. The thread grew to 800 comments, and showed no sign of slowing. Meanwhile parts of it degenerated into outright personal attacks between small groups of people. Before we, the moderators, shut it down, some of the arguments had descended into racial abuse. It got extremely ugly.One poster in particular started referring to trans men as "runts with c*nts*, and talked about how sick they were of listening to "dickless men", which ultimately earned them a ban. At the time I figured it was such a clearcut case of inexcusable transphobia that even those who had been sympathetic to the "Even discussing whether trans men are allowed to say 'tranny' is trans misogynistic" angle would not make excuses for it. It seems I was wrong.
I was recently dismayed to see some women defending the abuse of trans men with phrases such as "runts with c*unts" and "dickless men" on the grounds that it is, and I quote, "funny and witty", and that it's, "an emotionally evocative phrase meant to illustrate the damage of living in a body that is a constant, inescapable cultural punch line".
It gets worse; the reasoning seems to go that picking a trans women up for saying this is evidence of trans misogyny - apparently it would be just fine for someone to talk about "chicks with dicks" in
transgender, and it would receive no comment from the moderation team, on account of how invested in trans misogyny and sticking up for "them" (trans men, in their newly cast role as part of "them") we all are.To anyone who genuinely thinks that, and from the LJ drama surrounding this, I can see there are those who do, I can only suggest you try putting it to the test - the community would likely be better off without you. I'd also like to say this - I think you've taken trans misogyny and turned it into a dogma, and in doing so you're attacking your own community. When trans men I know come to me, as a community moderator, in tears because they feel at the mercy of their GP, or gender clinc, and no-longer even feel they can turn to their community because it's cast them as the oppressor, then it seems clear that some in our community are doing to them what the transphobic radfems did to us. People doing this, becoming the trans community's own Julie Bindels are part of the problem. When you start talking about whether it's OK to use transphobia against trans men as a satirical way of highlighting transphobia against trans women then I think you've lost the plot.
A friend of mine (white, straight, cismale), once referred to much of the identity politics on LJ as "bullshyt". At the time I thought, "what a terribly privileged thing to say". Now I see my own "side" using a position that should be used to highlight and combat oppression to victimise other people with impunity, because they are so used to being the victims, and I see he had a point. Yes, trans women are oppressed. Yes, some queer spaces privilege trans men over us, but this is wrong, and I want no part of it.
I'm screening comments here, for obvious reasons.
Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/205192.html - you can comment here or there.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 02:22 pm (UTC)Transpeople are many times too diverse to share a sense of community. Apart from the Big Thing, there's little we all hold in common. We are young, old, gay, straight, bi, asexual, liberal, conservative, monogamous, polyamarous, atheist, religious, sex workers, Government workers, cops, lawyers, Doctors, factory workers. You name it, there's a transperson who does it. That brings us a great strength but at the same times it's a great weakness. We can't always get into our peers' heads and empathise with them. Too many of us have a sense of entitlement that informs us that our way is the only true way to be trans and unless we constantly stay aware of that privileged thinking, we tend to judge others by our own circumstances. That way lies division and the seeds of the "Hot Tranny Mess".
Identity politics is far too often a minefield. One must navigate it with care lest one find it blowing up in one's face.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 02:55 pm (UTC)I've always hoped that the whole issue of 'identity' could be subsumed into a simple acceptance of just being human - while accepting that everyone has their own sub-identity within that - without making the individual identity categories such a stumbling block to aceptance.
We all have our own identities - we should be proud of them - but don't use them as a means to belittle and stratify others in realtion to yourself.
I hope that makes sense - and maybe I'm being too idealistic - but I've always tried to live by the principle of IDIC - and it still surprises me that other people can't grow up and realise that the simplicity of IDIC would change the world beyond recognition. It'll not happen until there's been another world war and we're knocked back almost to a pre-technological civilisation.
All hail St. Gene (Rodenberry, that is! The unsung genius the world never recognised!)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 03:19 pm (UTC)Stands for 'Infinte Diversity in Infinite Combination' - I see it as a shorthand for how we could all live together in an accepting society... which, if it spread, would cause a lot of problems for the people with vested interests in maintaining divisions such as political, national and religious.....
And yes, I do ramble a lot - and it's probably a hangover from my childhood that I still think such an idea could be useful.... but I'm happy with my delusion that we're capable of being better than we are....
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 03:22 pm (UTC)Never ever apologise for being one of the ones that looks at the stars.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 03:46 pm (UTC)Biggest question about the stars is, when we get out there, how do we keep the childish dogma and all that **** penned up back here were it can just go rot?
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 04:06 pm (UTC)Being uncouth often sort of trancends whatever axe they have to grind.
Date: 2009-07-21 04:07 pm (UTC)As were it me and they locked into a lift etc- I'd be tempted to put them out of my misery using teeth&nails...
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 04:07 pm (UTC)Hot Tranny Mess definitely sounds like a porn film.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 04:15 pm (UTC)As for the thread you're talking about. Meh. After thinking about it I did actually think Imi had a very good point, and it made me seriously question the value of using 'tranny' as a edgy or cool or humourous method of self-deprecation. I also think that maybe such things are worth discussing (because some people aren't offended by it, or they do 'reclaim' it, or whatever, and some people *are* hurt by it, and melting up perspectives can be useful. hell, it was a learning experience for me). However, totally..... just because one trans-man behaves like a dick, or just because one aspect of culture somewhere or other is squicky, doesn't mean that the whole thing is off. IYSWIM. But, the origional post wasn't suggesting that (even though i wasn't surprised it trainwrecked), just (from my reading) a handful of people with nothing better to do (at that particular time) than stir shit up on the internet.
Otherwise, it just proves that you can be an asshole no matter what your demographic.
*i have to ask myself whether this disclaimer is totally neccessary as well..... does it matter that the person in question is white, straight, cis and a he? i can see why do mention it, to provide context, but it really is a very narrow way of packaging up a person and it certainly doesn't preclude the possibility that he has some insight into the situation.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 04:20 pm (UTC)This is just nasty, but if it's any consolation, t'aint new, but the same old emperor of prejudice and hatred in new clothes and it's still just as naked!
As you know, I've been around for a long time and long ago came to the conclusion that the right size for a group of trans peeps is one (although this isn't to say that I haven't met many wonderful trans peeps, yourself included, over the years or that I've found it impossible to campaign from a quiet corner :o) As Jessie says, we really don't hold very much in common (although one does occasionally meet peeps with similar interests or background more or less by chance as a result of travelling this road less taken) apart from having had to deal with the GD monster.........
The very fact that you've chosen to screen comments for, I think, the first time since I've known you, speaks volumes. Very sad. :o(
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 04:23 pm (UTC)I think one of the biggest objections I had to that thread was the way some of the "tryns wymyn" seem to have equated discussing something controversial within the trans community to their use of outright hateful transphobia against trans men, and deciding the two are equivalent, and therefore the moderators are trans misogynist for picking up the use of actual transphobic hate speech against members of the community while not instantly banning anyone who, you know, dares to take part in the actual discussion on the "wrong" side.
There's no equivalence at all, and frankly I think most of the people claiming that there is are just looking for an excuse to avoid thinking about the way they've behaved like utter shits.
does it matter that the person in question is white, straight, cis and a he? i can see why do mention it, to provide context, but it really is a very narrow way of packaging up a person and it certainly doesn't preclude the possibility that he has some insight into the situation.
I think that's a bloody good point, and the whole, "you must be respectful to me while I abuse you because I am a member of more minorities than you are" dynamic that seemed to be going on there seemed to a) completely ignore than, and b) use it as a very cynical cover to behave abusively and not get called out for it.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 04:25 pm (UTC)More context--the women (and, conveniently omitted from mention, one man) who, in my journal, were talking about voz using that phrase to illustrate that "suddenly, when it happens to trans men, it's relevant. But I mean, you know that and I know that and Voz said it just as well as I just did."
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 04:25 pm (UTC)Cis or not, I think your analysis is right on the money, FWIW.