Archive for the ‘Transphobia’ Category
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007
She's very fierce, I think, in this Newsweek [1] interview
There's no sound-bite compact enough to cover this subject. I wish it could be boxed up and passed out in pretty packages, but it can't be. It's not just that it's a multilayered subject, but it's also different for every person like me. It's hard because I'm using my fame, and exploiting it, but in a positive way to do something beneficial as opposed to catastrophic—which is what we're constantly doing to ourselves as a group. I'll say it a million times—my documentary is a vain pursuit, and I can see why a lot of people could say gays are narcissistic, but it is just as important. Until all of us can feel we can walk down the street without ridicule, none of us really will ever be safe from Hitler's Gestapo.
My favorite comment:
There are a lot of people who are attracted to people like myself because they like boobs and a penis, and let's just be honest about that. They like she-males.
[1] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18615747/site/newsweek/
Posted in Transphobia | 4 Comments »
Monday, October 16th, 2006
When I read about this kind of medical treatment [1] I really want to scream:At the hospital it became less about my actual symptoms and more about “Wow. Let me see that fancy surgically created vagina!” I had to stay overnight for 4 rounds of intravenous antibiotics and during the night I was woken up twice by surgeons from the plastic surgery department. They wanted the full tour as well. At least they were all very impressed by the visual, so that was an ego boost. [emphasis mine.](via Gender Immigrant [2])I see this as another instance when transsexuals have no "right" to privacy. I think it is reasonable to expect that when you're in the ER with a fever and infection that doctors won't come looking for your bits. But, alas, no. When you're transsexual, all that matters is your plumbing.
[1] http://www.genderimmigrant.com/?p=218
[2] http://www.genderimmigrant.com/
Posted in Transphobia | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 4th, 2006
So I've started work on a memoir, without regard to chronology, gender, and origin.The structure right now is one of chapters with a cartoon and a short or long collection of words, sentences and paragraphs. Sex and clothes seem to be the two topics I'm working on/through. These are two things I'm very passionate about. The right to a passionate, open, compassionate sex life is a right I believe in and one that seems difficult to place at the front of the left political movement."We need to focus on what's important!"Right. I am. So I'm writing about breasts these days, as I've really liked them for quite some time. I'm also not writing about origins. Actually I'm making a series of decisions to avoid the discussion while hinting at it.Transsexual memoirs, by definition it seems to me, require some explanation from the writer about origins. I'm not unique in this observation or in detesting answering the question.The why bores me now. Today I endeavor to answer the how of my life ~ the process, the details, what raises my passion. The force of my detest is strong. Yet I feel as though this post, or even the entire book, can't describe how such emphasis makes my life seem like either a question mark or one long exclamation point. Never a period nor rest.Sokari [1], recently asked [2] "What does your body mean to you and how does it influence your identity."In refusing to discuss origins my body and my life becomes relaxed and open. Every origin story underscores my unusualness.What I'm not clear about is whether skirting around the topic in the memoir will only serve to bring more attention to the topic.And I'm sure I'm rambling now.
[1] http://jaysennett.com/cgi-bin/mt/www.blacklooks.org
[2] http://www.blacklooks.org/recent_books/
Posted in Queer, Transphobia | 4 Comments »
Thursday, September 7th, 2006
Head immediately over to Brownfemipower and this post [1]. Then go read piny's post [2]. Very fucking important stuff they are writing about.
[1] http://brownfemipower.com/?p=388
[2] http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/09/07/3709/
Posted in Anti Assclownery, Transphobia, Truth | 4 Comments »
Thursday, May 11th, 2006
I wrote in the comments [1] section at Feministe [2]:And on a slightly different point, I’m not sure I agree that transition isn’t subversive. Unless we’re defining subversive as successfully achieving political revolution, the endless process of redefining people’s assumptions about my gender so that I can obtain: a new driver’s license; health care; a job; the correct name of all manner of forms (birth certificates; passports; transcripts; library cards; financial documents; health documents; etc.); is something I think.Each undoing of a hook that has trapped my gendered body is a kind of subversion in my book. But then I’m passionate about transsexuals and transsexuality. So I’m opened to accusations of bias.I think in the end what pisses me off about the whole transition-isn’t-subversive thing is the entirely dismissive tone. Like transitioning requires as much thought and effort as taking a shit after eating a big bowl of bran. It’s all over if you just push hard.Transitioning is a verb for a reason. What with all the actions and choices and revisiting of choices and recommittment of choices required to effect all that is necessary to achieve the desired results. Frankly I’ve come to believe that we trannies do ourselves a tremendous disservice by not talking about the details of transition. In retrospect, all of it, and all who accomplish it - especially those with fewer financial resources and less privileges - I find astonishing and amazing.But, as I said before, I’m biased. Is transition subversive?
[1] http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/05/05/trans-responses-to-feminist-myths/#comments
[2] http://www.feministe.us/blog
Posted in Anti Assclownery, Transphobia | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, May 10th, 2006
Embedded within notions of privacy lies a power imbalance. Some of us - maler, richer, whiter, thinner, temporarily able bodied - get more privacy than others. These people don't get asked ridiculous questions, the ones that for me lurk behind every well meaning face."Did you have the surgery?""Were you born this way?"And so on. Dear reader, you probably have a series of questions you dread, too.Or maybe you don't. But I do. I dread them because I've been at this gender thing for almost fifteen years. In the ensuing years I've changed much. The questions have not.In the beginning of my career as a transsexual, I loved the questions, answered them, offered more than anyone asked. But after I started dating Ms. H. - a woman for whom privacy ranks as a hallmark of respect - I decided no more.The repetitiveness of the questions creeped me out. But even more than the creepiness was the realization that these questions and the blithe manner in which they always seemed to be asked, were part of the very public nature of transsexuality. They weren't about wanting to know or curiousity about about an unspoken power imbalance designed to keep me in my place. After fifteen years I now understand that these questions are, for the interrogator, the price I pay for being a transsexual. After all, transsexuality is so strange that all socially negotiated expectations of privacy disappear. As a transsexual I can have no reasonable expectation of privacy.Yes, the interrogator may be well meaning, or even nice, but imagine the baneful or downright confused glances I would receive were I to flip the questions."Well, how do you feel about your genitalia?""At what point in your life did you decide you had a normative gender?""So like, when do you disclose that you have a one inch Johnson or a super loose vagina?""Here dear. Just be a nice little pet and answer the man's questions." How 'bout not. The ones I will answer come from folks with clouds in their eyes, pursed lips. They usually disclose their agenda. "I'm asking because of my child, spouse or me." These folks want to know for their hearts and sometimes because their lives may depend on it.For them, I offer what I can. For everybody else, the answer is no.
Posted in Anti Assclownery, Transphobia | 3 Comments »
Sunday, April 30th, 2006
Those pesky, luddite feminists [update 05/04/06: luddite used here to distinguish these feminists from socialist feminists, liberal feminists, marxist feminists, black feminists, working-class feminists, anti-racist feminists, anti-abortion feminists......oh, and lesbian feminists......] hurl the words "trans politics" like certain so-called christians scream about the "gay agenda."Rather than cower, I say, Yes, I have an agenda.Below please find a list of what I believe constitutes my transsexual agenda, my "trans politics."Understanding medical personnel who don't treat us like freaks. Those that do should be excommunicated from their profession. Criminal charges should be vigorously pursued at all times where appropriate.Cheap, barrier free access to healthcare insurance. Retiring the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care.The removal of transsexuality and all trans-related diagnosis from the DSM.A federal requirement that all states must recognize requests for gender changes on birth certificates - no amendments.A permanent ban on the "trans panic defense." Permanent, federally supported anti-discrimination legislation for employment, credit, public accomodations and anything else the feds can do to protect us from all the asshats and assclowns in the u.s.The creation of legal gender categories other than m or f. Make it legal to carry multiple forms of identification that have "contradictory" gender information.A federal requirement that trans prisoners be sequestered for safety.A criminal category for prisons and mental health institutions that stop hormones of inmates.Others?
Posted in Transphobia | 13 Comments »
Wednesday, April 26th, 2006
Some people tell me that by having surgeries and taking hormones I've lost my ambiguity. Usually they make these statements as expressions of their own ambivalence around transsexuality.Wonder what they'd think if they saw me in my birthday suit? Publically, of course, I look very certainly a man. But why stop at the surface? Revolutions aren't commercials.Revolutionary revolutions must go below the surface of the skin, to embrace whole people. Beneath every person's public face and public skin, lie private surfaces and little revealed faces, touched and untouched, seen and unseen, ambiguous, ambivalent, obscure. Transsexuals are perhaps simply more public about our ambiguities and subversions.
Posted in Transphobia | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006
Az Aizura [1] needs your help! Please consider answering his questionnaire [2]. I've done it. It's easy. It's painless. It's important.The questionnaire is for anyone, living anywhere in the world, aged over 18 who considers themselves transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, gender variant or gender transgressive.The project studies how patterns of geographical travel relate to gender variant identities and practices. It forms part of a doctoral research project in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. [Read more here [3].]
[1] http://goingsomewhere.blogsome.com/
[2] http://www.gendertravel.info/survey.htm
[3] http://www.gendertravel.info/index.htm
Posted in Transphobia | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
[1]
Context matters in art. Really. Ilene Chaiken, executive producer of the L-Word, apparently missed that memo.
Writes [2] nubian at blac(k) academic [3]:
fuck you ilene chaiken. fuck you for having the audacity to have a black woman used for sexual pleasure for whites. fuck you for perpetuating the idea that the black female body is always ready and available for white sexual domination and consumption.
And if that weren't enough, az, at goingsomewhere [4] adds [5]:
I don’t like the politics of representation at work here. A primetime television show — even one about queers — is not a viable political space for the ‘authentic’ representation of transpeople.
Guess L stands for loser. Luckless. Liable.
[1] http://jaysennett.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/artist.JPG
[2] http://blackademic.blogspot.com/2006/03/fuck-l-word.html
[3] http://blackademic.blogspot.com/
[4] http://goingsomewhere.blogsome.com/
[5] http://goingsomewhere.blogsome.com/2006/03/20/the-burdens-of-representation/#more-72
Posted in Racism, Transphobia | 3 Comments »
