Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
So it looks like ENDA may come to a vote early next week – according to Harry Reid.
The bill is unlikely to gain much traction in the Republican controlled House, but could provide Democrats with another opportunity to paint the GOP as out of step with most Americans by obstructing a bill aimed at ending workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Every once in a while when I’m doing Trans 101 I have this split second where I’m saying something standard that all of a sudden rings in my ears as blatantly false. Tonight it was this whole “preferred pronoun” business, which strikes me as kind of goofy.
It’s an accurate pronoun. Not preferred. Preference is like whether you like chocolate or vanilla ice cream. We don’t use it often to talk about queer sexual orientations anymore, so why use it for pronouns?
Call me old school, but I still prefer Trans Am. BUT, check it out! Straight dude comes out as straight! No, as a trans inclusive straight guy.
I’ve had enough of this shaming. It’s created a disgusting culture of trans-attracted men using trans women for sex but never forming a committed relationship with them. Most trans-attracted men are only trans-attracted at night. Then, during the day, they run back to their heteronormative relationships with cis-women of whom they are not ashamed. Even men who are in committed relationships with trans women will often tell those women that they could never introduce them to their friends or family. Imagine a woman who has been to hell and back trying to transition into who she really is only to be told by her lover that he is ashamed to be with her.
I’ve had enough of this shaming, too, so may there be legions right behind him.
So here’s a bunch of interesting reading on that old horse of whether gay and trans politics are bedfellows, allied, or not – a series of pieces in the NYT (the NYT!) from people like Susan Stryker and Laverne Cox and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (who is, by the by, currently on tour).
From Susan Stryker:
Remember that in 1969, rebellion and resistance by the queens and hair fairies of Christopher Street transformed a police raid at the Stonewall Inn into a defiant act of “gay liberation.” Twenty years later, “queer” politics included transgender as another version of what it called “antiheteronormativity.” The ’90s version of “queer” morphed into the L.G.B.T. community of recent years — an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — and for transfolk, it was politically invaluable to be part of that coalition. It still is.
From John Corvino:
But sometimes the answer is no: It does not always make sense to try to align sexual orientation and gender identity in one coalition. Each group has distinctive needs and challenges. By jumbling them all together into one alphabet soup — L.G.B.T.Q.I.T.S.L.F.A.A.*, anyone? — we run the risk of covering or erasing people’s experiences, especially those who are already most marginalized.
*In case you were wondering, it stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, two-spirit, leather-fetish, asexual and allies.” Even I had to ask about some of the letters.
& From Mattilda:
The gay movement would like us to think that gay marriage will give everyone housing and health care; that openly gay soldiers pressing buttons in Nevada to obliterate Somali villages means homophobia is on the wane; that strengthening the criminal legal system through hate crime legislation will bring murdered queers back to life. This is what we lose when we think of identity as an endpoint – just add “gay” (or even less acceptable terms like “queer” or “trans”) to any oppressive institution, and suddenly you have the new civil rights struggle. Gay marriage, gays in the military, gay members of Congress, gay priests, gay cops — what’s next?
So while a lot of my readers may be very familiar with all of these arguments, it’s a good introduction to the idea – and to the ideas of category & alliance – for newbies.
This makes me so, so happy. 
So this is cool news: a trans person and her partner were evicted from their housing, and…
More than a year later, the Justice Department followed through on filing the case, which seeks any injunction restoring the couple’s housing, barring discrimination against them, and awarding them unspecified money damages.
Transgender Equality’s director of policy Harper Jean Tobin said in an email that she was not aware of any other case in which the HUD has gone to court over anti-transgender discrimination.
“The U.S. Departments of Justice and Education recently settled an administrative complaint brought under Title IX by a transgender student in California – the case was investigated by the two departments but the settlement kept it from ever going to court,” Tobin wrote.
Although every time I read a similar story I’m still always stuck thinking about how exactly stupid it is that, as a country, it’s still okay to deny people housing (or anything else) based on their genders.
I
t’s such a rare thing, to find a news story about someone who identifies as genderqueer. Usually, the news tories are full of what I like to call “traditional trassexual people” – meaning, those who follow a traditional path, going from one gender to “the other”.
“So for me, genderqueer is just a … different label for how I express my gender in a way that to me is not man or woman.”
Evnen dropped the pronouns “she” and “her” for personal identification, preferring the use of “they” or “them.” Emily became Ev.
Identifying as genderqueer didn’t change Evnen, but it was liberating.
“I just finally had a word that I could use to describe myself,” they — Evnen — said. “It gave me a little bit more space to kind of explore and play, and wear ties more frequently.”
They are surrounded by a community of family and friends, both in Cambridge, Mass., where they now live, and in their hometown of Lincoln, to which they return frequently, most recently to have wisdom teeth removed.
Evnen’s father, Richard, gets it.
“I also believe that a person’s gender and their identity that springs forth from that gender contains elements of both genders. It’s sort of a slider,” he said. “Some people are maybe more to one end of that spectrum than the other. Some people are more in the middle.”
Thanks for the Lincoln Journal Star & the journalist JoAnne Young for getting it right. Even those Young used “she” pronouns, she did so only because that pronoun was relevant to the story, and switched to Ev’s preferred gender neutral pronouns as soon as that was out of the way.
The problem isn’t just trans exclusion. It’s gender exclusion. Feminism is for everyone:
#19 ONE OF THE GIRLS
People sometimes ask me when I knew I was transgender. Usually I say around the time puberty set in and the differences between me and the girls I knew began to become more apparent. I can recall wanting to play with the girls as far back as elementary school. However, the girls at recess didn’t have much interest in an awkward geeky boy hanging around.
I have always considered myself a feminist. By feminist I mean someone who believes women are just as equal to men and deserve the same rights and respect. As I began to experience my own womanhood, feminism became even more important to me. I am very fortunate to have some seriously stellar lady friends in my life that have been instrumental in my development as a female. These inspiring women go all the way back to high school and have helped see me through college and my transition.
With all this awesome girl power and female bonding going on around me, I was seriously taken aback when I learned that there are a number of women and radical feminists who refuse to recognize transwomen as women. What is confounding about many of these women is that while they don’t believe that “biology equals destiny”, yet they judge transwomen on what we have/had between our legs. They claim that we were raised with male privilege and no amount of hormones, electrolysis, or surgery will make us “real women”.
A big matter of contention among this crowd tends to be the issue of transwomen in “women only” spaces. By their reasoning transwomen are invading (and some…ahem, Janice Raymond…have gone as far as saying “raping”) women’s bodies, safety, and comfort when transwomen dare to be part of female groups and activities. Yet a lot of these women will welcome trans-masculine people openly into their organizations and events. This is trans-misogyny plain and simple.
Transwomen have a lot to offer feminism and indeed it is crucial that transwomen be part of the feminist conversation. Those who denounce transwomen as fake and refuse to recognize our femininity are like those girls elementary school who wouldn’t let “boys” be part of their game.
I love her take on this, too:
#20 TRANSGENDER PEOPLE DON’T REINFORCE THE GENDER BINARY
I have read that some individuals take issue with trans folks because we supposedly “reinforce the idea of a gender binary”. Their view is that through our transitions trans individuals are somehow trying to fashion themselves into an idealized image of what a “real” man or woman should be, and therefore supporting the notion that men and women should look and act a certain way. This is notion is flat out ridiculous.
While it is true that for many trans folks attempting to gain access to hormone therapies and surgeries, portraying themselves as overly feminine or masculine is a means of dealing with gatekeepers. This does not mean that we are reinforcing the gender binary. Instead, this is an unfair burden placed upon trans folks to work within the restrictions imposed by the Standards of Care.
What really debunks this concept is that it holds trans people to a higher standard than cisgender individuals. If a transwoman is reinforcing the gender binary by wearing make-up and a dress then by the same thinking ANY woman wearing make-up and feminine attire would be reinforcing the gender binary. Any man who chooses to sport a tie would be reinforcing the gender binary as well. In other words, if trans people are reinforcing the binary, then we all are.
Because well, yes, we all are, we all do. We make concessions to binary gender because it’s fucking easier, and there’s no good reason trans people have some special mission to deconstruct the binary so that cis people can be liberated from it.
Not basing your gender presentation on TV, movies and magazines seems like sound advice for everyone – not just trans people.
#9 OVERDOING GENDER
From my own experience and from other’s transitions I’ve witnessed; a lot of trans folks tend to overdo it when it comes to the gender presentation choices they make they begin to transition. I look back and cringe a little when I see some of the outfits and make-up decisions I wore early on. I think the reasoning for this is two-fold.
- I was trying my best to signal to the world “I AM A FEMALE NOW!” So I picked the most stereotypical feminine over-the-top outfits available. I’ve also seen a lot of younger trans men who express their newfound masculinity in a parade of suits and muscle tees along the same lines.
- I believe a lot of this is because as trans people we base our gender presentations on what media and society has deemed a male or female person to look like. If you are basing your wardrobe/hair/make-up choices off TV, movies and magazines…you’re going to look a little off.
It takes a bit before we become comfortable enough in our own newly established genders to start expressing them in more realistic/traditional ways.
I’ll add that I think there’s a huge difference between emphasizing your gender because you’re expressing an internal sense of it as opposed to emphasizing your gender because you’re worried about what people think of you. To me, it’s self expression in the first case, but self consciousness (at best) in the second.
I hope, by now, everyone knows I hate hate hate the term “passing”. I do. I come to hate it more every year.
#10 THE PROBLEM WITH PASSING
“Passing” is a term rife with complications and innuendo. Originally “passing” was a term used to describe gay or lesbian persons who didn’t seem to “act homosexual” (whatever that means). For trans folks “passing” means to be seen as socially/physically as cisgender (i.e. non-transgender).
I’m fortunate that I tend to “pass” fairly well. People read me as female when they meet me and as a result I tend to have an easier time (i.e. less harassment, humiliation, discrimination) than many of my fellow transgender brothers and sisters. However, not everyone is able to pass due to physiology or lack of access to HRT and other costly aesthetic procedures.
The problem with passing is that it implies that there is a “correct way” to present as either male or female, and that this ideal is cisgender. It also suggests that transgender individuals are somehow attempting to fool or trick people into thinking they are cisgender. This sets up an “us and them” situation with trans folks on one hand and cisgender folks on the other, and those who pass are like spies in the house of gender normativity.
There is no right way to be male or female. At most, some of us tend to look/act in ways that we as a society deem as “feminine” or “masculine” most of the time. Trans people who don’t live up to that standard shouldn’t be penalized or victimized for not living up to our culture’s false standards.
The other implication, of course, is that trans people are not actually the gender they’re being read as when they “pass”. But I am *still* looking for a way to express this idea without using this godawful word. I’m open to suggestions and coinages that express the idea that someone, anyone, is having their gender interpreted correctly by those around them, and this is true for trans and cis people alike.
As many of you know, I particularly love this kind of story: about a person who just decides to be who they are in whatever small town they’re living in. In this case, Sissy is particularly amazing: to take the name Sissy, for starters, but Wyoming?! Damn.
Sissy Goodwin is out shopping. He’s on the hunt for an industrial-sized wrench for a home handyman project along with two special somethings: colored hair bows and a pretty new dress — preferably red, size 12.
He walks through a mall, a linebacker-sized figure in a pink skirt, lacy yellow blouse and five-o’clock shadow; a gold lamé purse slung over his shoulder and a white bow affixed to his receding gray hair. The 67-year-old college science instructor looks straight ahead, ignoring the stares and the catcalls.
That said, I have a particular soft spot and respect for sissies – they’re like the bottom of every possible hierarchy within & without the trans community, but I hope there are plenty of others like me who know that Sissy is no way “less than” any other kind of (trans) person.
Worth reading. And good for you, Sissy.