This is Sunday.
This is a lot of stuff, so I've tried to divide it up into parts for those of you interested in reading it. Hopefully its length doesn't turn you off... that's what she said! ZING!
No, but for serious, this post is long.
Let's start by going back to my post from a few days ago, because I am still thinking about it.
This: "If the medicalization of gender stereotypes continues, I worry the treatment for gay and lesbian kids will be to become the opposite sex and thus not be gay."
Originally, when I read/posted this, I was thinking about how it's factually wrong to say that accepting trans people = DEATH WARRANT FOR GAYS!! HOLY SHIT OMG~~!!~!~ I know plenty of queer trans people, and I also know that sex, sexuality & gender are unrelated to one another (they can and often do intersect, but they do not have to). So I was wtfing on that.
But it's also a seriously homophobic statement. I am getting that the OP means that this is something the majority will do to queer kids (see also: WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN??????), but what they are actually saying, however unconsciously, that to be gay is to be a deviant. The logic behind it goes beyond just that the majority thinks only men like women, and only women like men, and into the idea that this is also what queer people believe, despite existing in direct opposition to that idea.
If we understood- I mean, truly understood- sexuality as natural, the fear that the mere presence of trans people in the world signals the end of homosexuality as we know it because it gives the majority a way to 'right' us to their view would not exist. If it were possible to be homosexual/queer, and feel totally comfortable in your skin and in the world, this type of insane argument against trans people could not exist.
To bring it back around, sex, sexuality & gender do not have to intersect, but they can and often do.
Personally (and this thought will be a running thread through this post), I am fucking offended. I mean, I was seriously fucking offended before, but now I have gained bonus offense. The core idea is that I am less a woman because I am attracted to and sleep with other women, which is incorrect and inaccurate. I am not attracted to women because some part of me is a man, or even because some part of me is masculine. I am attracted to women because I am just attracted to women. That's just my fucking deal. And to make that argument is to buy into the bullshit the majority is pushing.
SIDEBAR: Do you guys remember when that thing came out, about how there is this spot in people's brains, and it's bigger in men, smaller in women? And they discovered that it was bigger in lesbians' brains, smaller in gay mens' brains? While I will never deny biology, I do have to point out that 01. Who gives a shit? Totally irrelevant, science!, 02. I really need people to stop trying to legitimize men are from mars, women are from venus shit, and 03. (see above, bc, RELATED).
Moving on, I read this post, and I thoroughly enjoyed it (I also enjoyed this, which is linked to in the post... I mean, jesus christ, first paragraph alone, right?).
If you didn't click on that link up there, the post is about the book The Transsexual Empire. This is one of the quotes from the book:
...Because transsexuals have lost their physical "members" does not mean that they have lost their ability to penetrate women -- women's mind, women's space, women's sexuality. Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women so that the seem noninvasive. However, as Mary Daly has remarked, in the case of the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminists their whole presence becomes a "member" invading women's presence and dividing us once more from each other.
This makes me think about this quote from The Office:
Seriously.
The thread again: I need people to stop attempting to define my experience as a woman. Things I've read recently- like the comments from the post a few days ago, and the comments from a post I read today, which I will get to in a minute- have reminded me how much of transphobia is related to genitalia. I had forgotten that my own personal privilege of education, experience, and interaction has blessed me with the knowledge that what is in one's pants (including my own) is irrelevant to one's self-positioning in the world. When I experience sexism, it never occurs to me that it's because I'm packing an innie instead of an outie. Because, when I experience sexism, those who are doing it can't see that. They aren't looking at my vagina and then treating me like shit. They are looking at my tits, my face, my clothing, the way I walk, any number of things I have chosen for myself and/or that have been put on me that make me a woman.
But it's not even just re: sexism. It's my day-to-day, the way my mind ebbs & flows, the way I brush my teeth, the way I order pizza, the way I open doors. All that is my experience as a woman, and all of it is unrelated to my vagina. And I am going to go ahead and assume that the other cis women reading this have a similar feeling; I doubt that you are thinking about your vagina as you go about your day, doing whatever it is that you do. And I am going to go ahead and assume that, for the other cis women reading this, you define your experience as a woman as, at the very least, MORE than just vagina-related things.
I, in fact, do not even have to assume that. I read your journals, I know you do.
Because being a woman is about, at the very least, more than just your genitalia. It is an infinite list of things that make you you, that make me me.
So any and all transphobic statements about trans women's genitalia are an attempt to define cis women by theirs, which is therefore an attempt to do exactly what the patriarchy has been doing to us for thousands of years.
If I refuse to have my experience as a woman be ignored and mangled so that it is about one thing- a thing I find irrelevant to my experience as a woman- then I also refuse to accept that one is not a woman because of that one thing.
If I believe that to be a woman is to experience the world in a certain way, seeing and feeling things in a certain way, that infinite list, then anyone who experiences the world as such is a woman.
Which brings us to what inspired me to post all this in the first place.
I recently started following an LJ of a person who regularly posts quotes she has gathered from around the internet. Reading them today (at 9a, btw, too early for rage, esp on a Sunday, ok), I came across some super transphobic statements. Exactly the same stuff from my post a few days ago.
So I hunt down their original source (the LJer says where they're from, but doesn't link things directly), and I am blown the fuck away by both the comments, AND the post itself.
132 comments that all deserve the response of WHAT.
I do have a lot of feelings about what's going down right now regarding Chaz Bono & the doc (and the NYT article, too), but I've decided that, at this moment in time at least, the situation is far too complicated for me to process adequately. If I find a lens with which I feel comfortable examining it, I will try to put something here.
SIDEBAR: Camille Paglia, you have never been relevant. You are the creepy old lady who lives on the first floor of a building, always peeking out the crack of the door when people come in after 7PM, and spends hours at the grocery store arguing with anyone about the quality of melons and the price of off-brand graham crackers just so you have some human contact.
Someday, I will see you on the street, and I will look you in the eyes, and I will say: DON'T. JUST. SAY THINGS.
It's not important to write about Bono now, because that's really irrelevant to what I want to highlight. The transphobia in the post & the comments isn't because of Chaz Bono, but rather, a post about Chaz Bono is there because that blog is fucking transphobic.
Just in case you don't believe me, here's my favourite part:
If a conservative said, even with humor, that he could barely tolerate women and all their chattiness; if he said men and women have different brains, and suggested that testosterone makes a person like gadgets, wouldn't a "lifelong liberal" like writer Cintra Wilson challenge him? So, why doesn't she question Bono on his retro view of gender? Perhaps she doesn't because she's too busy confronting "a whole swag-bag full of transphobias that I didn’t know I’d had."
Oh, I love this game! Mad Libs Flip! All you have to do is take a statement that offends you, and then change some of the words to things that will surely offend your opponent so that they HAVE TO agree with you!
I would play too, except I'm busy actually educating myself so I don't have to rely on two-bit playground tactics when in a discussion.
That aside, I can't quite wrap my head around that last part. So... someone examining their prejudices makes them a bad person? Oh, well, I guess it would if you yourself hold those prejudices near & dear. YOU ARE PART OF THE REBEL ALLIANCE AND A TRAITOR! TAKE HER AWAY!
Also: way to tear down your sister, crappy all-wave feminist blog. You are a shining beacon towards which all aspiring Gloria Steinems can sail.
But the post itself isn't where the true ragemeat is at. That, dear readerfriends, is in the comments.
Some gems4u!:
Perhaps I am the only one who is stymied by this, and perhaps no one want to hear it, but here goes anyway. I never really get the "I was born wrong", personally. I was born with a female body, and that's fine.
01. 'I'm not racist, but...', and 02. Hmmm.... do you think maybe those 2 things are connected? No? Privilege? No? Ok cool just checking byeeee!
This statement is profoundly anti-feminist. Feminism has always understood gender to be a social construct (and a damaging one at that), not an innate part of oneself.
DONTJUSTSAYTHINGS.MP3. You know jack-fucking-shit about shit. 'Feminism' has not always understood anything. It can't, because it is not alive. What you mean to say is that SOME FEMINISTS have said things about gender, and that those things they have said are damaging.
Oh... well... maybe that last part isn't what you meant to say, but since you're speaking for other people, I thought it would be ok if I spoke for you.
This commenter goes on to say (and this was one of the quotes that I read on LJ that lead me to all this):Women, due to our sex, are forced into a subordinate gender role by society. Many of us feel incongruency between our assigned gender role and our sex too. Only our solution is feminism, not transition. Transition offers a personal solution to the restrictive gender binary, and feminism fights for a political solution (ie. one that would benefit ALL people).
I won't take up space rehashing what I said above about people defining for me my experience as a woman, but I will say: I would like to invite you over for a nice dinner at my house. I will be serving a big giant bag of STFU. I think you will enjoy it.
I honestly... who... what. the. fuck. I wish I had a stopmakingthisallaboutyou.mp3.
What is mismatched is your SEX. That's why going from male to female, or female to male usually means having a "SEX change operation".
Memo to all trans people! You have been foolishly thinking that surgery is NOT the most precious and important part of your lives! But never fear, wonderful CIS PEOPLE are here to set you straight!
But not gay, because, as previously noted, NO TRANS PEOPLE CAN BE GAY. EVER.
See also: how crazy these comments make me that almost every single person there is trying to define sex, sexuality, and gender, yet none of their definitions agree, and none of them are positive or even helpful to their own arguments.
SEE ALSO: Please stop telling people what they're thinking and feeling. I get it, you have so much privilege, you don't have anywhere to put it, but maybe you can save it for, idk, a PTA meeting or a night out with your friends after one of them has a bad break up.And please stop using the word "cis" to refer to women, it's a nonsense word made up to marginalize and silence women who were born female, raised as girls, and live their lives as women. That kind of person is called a woman, plain and simple.
Sorry, at which location did you say you have left your vehicle?
I am also left to quote bouncingfizgig 's icon: Please stop being on my side. For the love of god... please.
This is from the LJ OP, and I am glad I found it, because I am unfriending her post-haste:I want the idea of "transgenderism" to go away because I want GENDER ITSELF to go away... [a]s a compromise position, I want at least three genders, preferably more like twelve.
You want gender to go away? Then maybe you should stop policing it. JUST SAYIN'!
She goes on to say this amazing thing:That probably makes me more of a radfem than most people here...
No. It doesn't.
[W]ould it be OK with you if a white man without any American Indian blood felt very strongly and sincerely that he was really Navajo, and he wanted the Navajo nation and everyone else to recognize him as such? He changed his clothing and perhaps even had surgery in hopes of making himself look more Navajo. Maybe he'd like to apply for a college scholarship as Navajo or stamp his silver jewelry with "Navajo." Anyone who confronted him would be labeled as a bigot. Do you see anything wrong with this?
I do see something wrong with this, but I am guessing it's not the same thing you're seeing.
HOLY SHIT NOT THE SAME! HOLYYYY SHITTTT!!!Violent sex-offender males
Nope....who claim to be trans women
No. ...(and that's all it takes, the claim)
Goddamnit! I said NO!
Now let's go allll the way back to the beginning of this post, to the intersection of things. Where my head is now, so many hours later, is on the fact that everything is connected. Did you see how a post about misogyny by a man who is trans led to comments that were not just transphobic, but also racist AND sexist. And to be fair, we're just talking about some snippets here. Going through the comments, I saw PLENTY of ableism, and TONS of classism, and that's just what I paid attention to in my pursuit of quotes I could adequately make fun of.
It's all connected. We are all connected. Transphobia harms all of us.