Trans Issues

Raiders of the Lost Etiology

Katherine Alejandra Cross10 Comments
Braaaaaaaaaaiiiins.

One of the rather fun things about being trans is that you live in a world where doctors poke and prod you hoping to find deep answers about why you exist- deep, award-winning, and powerful answers that will at last enable them to explain what the hell is up with us; because it’s not like we’re authorities on our own lives or anything.

To set the snark aside, I’m of course talking about the endless quest to find an etiology- or medical explanation of origin- for trans existence, a recent example of which can be found here. It is a particularly transfixing matter that seems to occupy the place of El Dorado or the Fountain of Youth in the eyes of our medical masters. A Lost Ark of the Covenant with which to at last claim final dominion over us. The ultimate Holy Grail being a “trans test” whereby folks in white coats will be able to objectively prove that someone is trans.

Yet like all the foregoing it is a myth, a legend. There is not likely to be any one coherent, purely biological/neurological explanation for our existence. The drive to research the matter is not inherently evil, mind, but the resources being dedicated to it come into question when studies of this sort appear to be to the exclusion of more directly beneficial research, like longitudinal studies on the long-term effects of hormone treatment on trans people.

Recent studies have been justified by asserting that they will benefit young trans people with early identification of trans-ness. But let us be as honest and realistic as possible for a moment, shall we? What would make things easier on young trans kids is not an MRI scan or some kind of trans test. It would be a world where having a trans child would not be a terrible thing, where bullying of children who defied gender norms would be frowned upon and actively discouraged, where parents raised their children to accept a multitude of gendered possibilities. A “trans test” would not even be a stopgap measure to help young trans people.

When I first came out to my father I naively waved studies in his face that spoke of this thing called “Gender Identity Disorder.” But his first reaction to me was not to say that my gender was valid. It was to say that since it was a ‘disorder’ there must be a ‘cure’- you know, one to make me into a boy again, like he wanted.

Transgender does not need a medical etiology in order to be accepted morally. The entire issue is a massive red herring that deflects a necessary moral and philosophical argument into whether or not we objectively exist by the standards of a game we are rigged to lose. We are already on the backfoot because we live in a world where our voices do not count, we merely concede more ground when we suggest that narrow, incomplete studies that reveal- at best- a small piece of the puzzle should speak for us.

The critical moral argument that we must never lose sight of is whether it is okay to discriminate against someone because there isn’t a biological explanation for their existence. For most any situation, the answer is a resounding “no” among decent people. We do not say that people of faith bring discrimination upon themselves because they ‘chose’ to be a part of a given religion, and when people do say this, they are rightly derided for being assholes. We do not get sidetracked into asinine arguments about how some people are born Jewish and have Jew brains and, y’know, they just can’t help it and that’s why we should be ‘tolerant.’

No, actually. You should avoid bigotry because it’s simply the right thing to do.

Continue reading →

It’s Time I Said Something

Katherine Alejandra Cross3 Comments

Trigger Warning: Explicit discussion of rape and rape apologism follows.

Often is the time that I wish I could update this space every day with thoughts on every topic under the sun, a constant celebration of what is good in the world, and tireless fusillades against what is not. For reasons of both self-care and lack of energy, I simply cannot, however. Yet my silence on one issue is glaring and it is time I said something, regardless of how exhausted I may be feeling right now and how ever much I may just be feeling a burning drive to forget the world exists for a while.

This is not a post about Julian Assange. It is a post that was inspired by Sady Doyle’s bone-shaking message of defiance on her blog yesterday pertaining to her ongoing quest to wrest apologies from two rich white cis men in the media who see fit to tweet personal information about potential rape victims, Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore. This relates to the Assange case, yes, but the reason this case has become such a line in the sand for many feminists is because of the broader social issues that this case touches on, and which, for all the media hullabaloo about Assange and his accusers, has not been discussed substantively by most mainstream outlets.

Doyle’s post is worth reading, to say the very least. The anodyne, lifeless words I just spoke will not do justice to what I am about to quote:

“I WILL NOT GO AWAY. WE WILL NOT GO AWAY. Because all of those women, all of those GODDAMNED WOMEN, all of those GODDAMNED RAPE VICTIMS and people who file rape allegations, they ALL got scared away in EXACTLY THIS MANNER. Using these SAME GODDAMNED TACTICS. They all had to go away, no matter what happened to them, they all just got scared until they went away, and for them, for their sake, because of everything they suffered, I am going to stand outside of Michael Moore’s tower with my megaphone until he comes. Somebody has to stand out here, somebody has to be the one that just won’t go away. Somebody fucking has to do it. Because those women matter.”

Thus I’m going to set those words aside tonight. Because what she has said is fucking true, and it needs to be shouted from the rooftops, the parapets, the mountains, foothills, hillocks, and goddess-damned anthills.

One of my closest and dearest friends, a woman to whom I owe my life, and indeed many aspects of the woman I became were cultivated by her, was raped by someone she trusted. The consent she gave was abused far beyond the limits she set out and she endured having things done to her that she did not ask for her, hearing poisonous words that haunt her to this day as the man who violated her flaunted what he was doing. She hasn’t reported this because of the institutional prejudices that would shoot down any attempt at prosecution, both because of what kind of woman she is, and the kind of sex she consented to have with this man.

So many forces in this world tell women like her, bright Polarises of humanity, that they stopped mattering the moment they were raped. Powerful people think nothing of using and dismissing her, dismissing what happened, hoping she’ll shut up and go away. This man told her she didn’t matter; the police would very likely tell her the same thing.

In the spirit of Sady Doyle’s words, Ms. T, you matter. You matter so goddamn much, you mean the world to me, you illuminated my life and you continue to do so to this very day. I cannot repay, ever, what you have given to me. This green Earth would be a lesser place without you.

These are words that I have told her in snippets, scattered puzzle pieces of the total whole of my love for her and who she is. She likely cannot read this post because of the PTSD that this bastard left her with, and I’d never ask her to revisit this tragedy- so she’ll hear my words in private and in person. But this proclamation of mattering, of love, deserves to be up in lights as well because we still lack the sheer number of outlets telling survivors of rape that they matter, enough to counteract the many forces tacitly and explicitly telling them that they do not.

Those four horrible letters, PTSD, cannot begin to encompass the enormity of life changes that rape visits upon someone. Read through the comments on Sady Doyle’s post as well, many survivors came forward, and their stories are moving. One woman who said she had to live an altered life while her rapist walked free as if nothing happened perfectly echoed a lament from my friend. A lament I have heard too many times from her, when the pain becomes too much to bear. The agony that she fights with every day because of the sense of worthlessness imposed upon her, both by the rape, and by broader social discourses that impose themselves on women is something I cannot put into mere words.

The pain I feel when she is triggered, when she’s crying out to the universe begging for the hurt to stop, for things to go back to the way they were… it’s a fraction of what she endures every day as a survivor. What this man did to her was to make her life such that it’s become an act of courage for her to go out and buy snacks for herself. She cannot forget what happened to her, she cannot enjoy crowds the way she used to, cannot enjoy touch. This happened because she was a woman in a society like ours, and a woman of trans experience; the sense of emptiness rape heaps on you is unbearable, the shame, the agony. I had to tell her, as my own body quaked with a fear that filled my voice, that her life was still worth living as she held a kitchen knife in her hand, teetering on the edge of snuffing that bright spark she embodies forever.

I say all of this because what has been lost in discussions about Assange’s accusers is any real discussion about rape and how women, cis and trans, experience it in our society. The shame and the silence it inculcates keeps the volume of such discussion somewhere slightly above mute and ensures that people think it’s perfectly fine to have a jolly good debate about whether or not doing something sexual to a woman without her consent is rape. While cadres of men wring their hands about withdrawing consent after its given, I have a friend who is still picking up the pieces of her life- and she’s succeeding, damnit, she’s making something of herself every passing day. But no thanks to them, no thanks to the Keith Olbermanns of the world, nor the other so-called progressive men who become Sir Robin and bravely turn tail when challenging social issues of gender arise.

This is not truly about Assange at the end of the day, and fools who think that the unique circumstances of his spearheading of Wikileaks are enough to ring-fence this and say nothing whatsoever at any time to do with sexism has entered the discussion about his accusers and the rape-accusations against him are people I have next to no patience for. I remained silent on this in part because many people were saying what I have tried to say here better than I could. But what Doyle reminded me of was precisely what I have just said, this is not about Julian Assange nor specifically about his accusers: it’s about a society where women who have been raped, or who even dare to use the criminal justice system to get justice after they have been raped, are automatically slandered and disbelieved. The first thought is about how they might be fucking some man over, rather than ever considering the possibility that they are telling the truth. How these women have been treated is how the vast majority of women, especially those who are fully divested of personhood by the state like trans women, sex workers, and immigrant women, are treated when they stand up and grant utterance to their experience with an eye towards justice.

For my friend, Ms. T, for everyone Sady mentioned on her blog, for everyone who responded their with their own tales, and for the armies of survivors around the world who cannot speak, I stand up and say enough is enough.

  • I am sick to death of men coming into every public discussion about rape and putting the words “Duke” and “Lacrosse” together in his post explaining why he’s entitled to shame and mistrust survivors.
  • I am tired of folks quoting a long refuted study about how supposedly 50% of all women lie about rape.
  • I am beyond tired of hearing “innocent until proven guilty” when I never said anything about presuming guilt, only about understanding and putting a premium on the victim’s pain and experience and the fact that she wants to kill herself, because it fucking matters.
  • I am sick to death of men talking about how women get a kick out of getting ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ in a courtroom, as if accusing someone of rape, especially someone who is well liked, is the easiest goddamn thing in the world to do for which there are no emotional and physical consequences.
  • I am tired of people getting on my ass about how I think all men are rapists when I never once in my life have said that.
  • I am sick to death of people making extremely pathetic and tired excuses for anything bad that happens to a transsexual or transgender woman.
  • I am tired beyond words of arguing against people who try to find some way to prove that a woman brought a rape on herself by doing or not doing x, y, and z.
  • I utterly despise and am sick of men who say that talking about rape culture is ‘misandrist’ or man-hating in any context.
  • For that matter I’ve just about had it with people who say there’s no such thing as rape culture despite the fact that we see its workings laid bare Oz-style in every high profile drama about rape, or despite the fact that people like Sady Doyle have to endure high velocity shit sprayed at her in the windtunnel of Twitter threatening her with rape and other harm for speaking out.
  • I’m sick and tired of people who think trigger warnings are hi-larious and represent “political correctness gone mad.”
  • I’m sick of people who believe there is such a thing as “political correctness” and that it protects people like rape victims andor PTSD-suffers when it seems the only ‘correct’ thing to do in these peoples’ minds is mock them.
  • I’m sick and tired of comic artists who make fun of rape survivors.
  • I’m sick and tired of men who heap nothing but scorn on survivors and people who try to help them, then compare paying alimony to being raped in a disgusting bid for sympathy for their right wing agenda.
  • Indeed, I’m sick of anyone who gets very squeamish talking about actual fucking rape but liberally compares anything they don’t like to rape to drive home how much they think being overcharged 50 cents at Pizza Hut or getting sniped in TF2 by a hacking player sucks.
  • I’m tired of people who think prison rape is little more than risque humour.
  • I’m tired of people who forget that both trans and cis women are raped in prison too.
  • I’m *really* tired of people who think prison rape is a ‘just punishment.
  • I’m bloody well tired of people who think sex workers can’t be raped.
  • I want to scream at people who think sex workers being raped is funny, cause to make a shitty pun, or is somehow ‘to be expected.’ As if rape just happens, you know?
  • I’m very peeved with people who think that feminists want to take all the ‘spontaneity’ out of sex by calling for people to be more certain about consent.
  • I’m tired of people who say “Yeah rape is a horrible thing, but…” and then proceed to say something that entirely minimises and/or erases why rape is so horrible.
  • I’m tired of people assuming that if a man is found not guilty of a rape that it must mean the accusing woman lied maliciously in some golddigging effort to extract revenge of some kind. Rather than, say, the fact that the police may have picked up the wrong man.

The fact that I can make this list go on and on is troubling to me on a very deep level. I was not my usual eloquent self tonight, but this post is a cry of outrage, of anger, and a firmly pronounced willingness to permanently commit to this space the fact that I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. All rape victims deserve better than the very abridged foregoing list of bullshit rape apologism I’ve laid out just now. They deserve to have more people speaking out and proclaiming loudly that the way we as a society deal with rape is deeply flawed and perpetuates oppression. People who say that rape culture doesn’t exist because we criminalise rape clearly have not bothered to listen much when a woman does try to make use of such laws to have her assailant face justice.

Ms. Doyle’s words could very well be my own:

“You all matter to me. I don’t care if they say you don’t matter. I don’t care if they act like you don’t matter. I don’t care what they do to us, to all of us, all of the shit they do to make it possible to discredit and bully us and make us too scared to report, all of the misinformation they spread — it’s not rape if it started out consensual, it’s not rape if it happened while you were unconscious, it’s not rape if you’ve had sex with him before, it’s not rape if you hang out with the guy later, it’s not rape if you love him, it’s not rape if you like him, it’s not rape if it happens to you because you’re worthless, these are all lies – because it doesn’t change the fact that you matter.”

Rock on, sister.

Lest We Forget

Katherine Alejandra Cross2 Comments

There are ample things to be said about such a day as this. For me the Day of Remembrance is about remembering the lives of those we have lost as they would want to be remembered, as the people they truly were, not as the lie that cis media repeats ad nauseam. I have wondered aloud if journalists go to a special school where they learn how best to utterly trash and defame dead trans women. The rather unpleasant spectacle created by the British press- both populist and ‘higher class’- surrounding the death of Sonia Burgess is just one all too contemporary example of the kind of slander that becomes so bad many have described it as a second death. Yet deaths like hers are often the ones that get the most attention; as the list on any number of TDOR websites will tell you, those we lose are often from groups less likely to be mentioned in the papers under any circumstances. The unremembered women on the front lines of sex work, impoverished women in Latin America just trying to get by, the poorest of the poor right here in my hometown. They too must be remembered, for their passing is often completely unmarked.

TDOR has been, for me, a time to remember who these people- the crushing majority of whom were women- really were. Their true names, their true lives, they way they lived, and what they lived for. So often, here at the nadir of cissexist hatred in our society, that same society avails itself of the opportunity to broadcast to all who will listen lies compounded by lies about the lives and identities of the now dead trans woman who is now utterly unable to speak for herself; the media takes this opportunity to tell us a tale of men in dresses and of female names in scare quotes, a sirensong of salacious goings on, whispers of sex work, a dramatic narrative of deception and “surprise”, and the curtain falling on the pinnacle of the final act, another nameless woman dead and waiting for the cameras. For the media, that is who we are- a lovely little piece of the puzzle that fits neatly into a story they have already written, about a life they care next to nothing about.

Thus it is that we insistently dare to remember, dare to call our lost and fallen siblings by their real names, and today is a day where we dare to thumb kyriarchy, dare to call the patriarchal press the profound virtuoso liar and cheat that it is, and dare to survive, dare to remember both our own courage, and our worth.

There are some who say that this day is too sombre, sad, and depressing. There is a lot that is worth celebrating about our existence, they say. Life as well as death. Joy as well as pain and loss. Some of these same people say that it’s even a whiff of internalised transphobia that makes this commemoration of death “our holiday” rather than something more festive. To this I say the following: due to the foregoing I have said about how we are so often not remembered, or explicitly and intentionally misremembered, this day is a necessary bearing of witness. It is a necessary reminder of the need to protect our identities and the truth of our lives, and to protect the memory of those who have been lost. The near total disgrace and erasure we experience on death, a death so often at the hands of another, is something that is almost completely unique to this community. A day devoted to a community and ally based remembrance of the truth then becomes necessary and powerful.

For me, there is a rich and potent joy to womanhood, to trans-ness, and to the journey that I will always be on. The people I have met, and the experiences I have had are treasures I would trade for nothing else on the Goddess’ green earth. Those joys I know are the product of me living a life where I am true to myself at last. Thus we had best remember that truth for those who are no longer with us.

Let every other day of the year be the grand, insistent, defiant, radical and oh-so-beautiful celebration of our lives. But today we must remember.

Because, as is unfortunately true about so much else in this community, if we do not- who will?

_________________________________

P.S. The slug off to the far left is playing Amazing Grace, in case you were wondering what a bagpipe was doing in that picture. ::winks::

An Open Letter to Kate Bornstein

Katherine Alejandra Cross52 Comments

Dear Auntie Kate, (can I call you that?)

I have had more than a few reservations about your gender theory for quite a while now but have held my tongue for a variety of reasons. Yet as I read through your latest op-ed in Out magazine, The Trouble With Tranny, I was profoundly troubled. I came to a point where I realised I just couldn’t stay silent any more because of the venues in which you’re promoting a certain kind of theory that is, perhaps despite your good intentions, very transphobic. If I haven’t already lost you, allow me to explain.

You begin the article with fond reminiscences about your time with Doris Fish, a prominent drag queen, whose views regarding trans women you characterise in the following way:

“I was afraid of her raw sexuality, but bowled over by her courage. Doris was amused by my quest to become a real woman.” (Emphasis mine)

 

“Like me in the late ’80s in San Francisco, the majority of MTF transsexuals just wanted to live their lives as closely as possible to whatever their notion was of “a real woman.” They considered drag queens beneath them. The drag queens were amused by the MTFs pursuing the dream of real woman.”

Let me be the first to say that the disparaging of crossdressers and drag queens on the part of transsexual people is, yes, quite morally wrong and represents internalised transphobia. It evokes that hierarchy of legitimacy that too many people of all backgrounds buy into in order to buttress their stability and position in a world that is built on domination. Yes, it’s wrong. I am not more legitimate than a crossdresser, no DQs do not make me “look bad” and I call out any person who claims such. The problem lies with a society that will not learn about us and lumps us all together as one blob of freakish bad, and not with any individual member of our diverse community.

All of this said, I get the distinct sense that you feel more ‘enlightened’ and ‘evolved’ now and agree with Doris Fish in her ‘amusement.’

Auntie Katie, let me reveal to you a bit of truth here. Willing to listen? Good:

I did not transition to be a “real woman”- that’s a useless concept, and a fairly sexist/transphobic one. I transitioned to be a woman, my kind of woman, the kind of woman I want to be, and that involves expressing myself as I am, as a whole person, in ways that break gender stereotypes as much as ‘caters’ to them. I’m not alone in this. A lot of trans women out there feel exactly the same way, and as we’ve unlearned our internalised transphobia and misogyny we are becoming all the more proud to be unique types of women, not archetypes of women. This leads rather nicely into my next point to you. You say the following:

“Years earlier, when I went through my gender change from male to female, I glided through life under the commonly accepted assumption: I was finally a real woman! That worked for me until I ran into a group of politically smart lesbians who told me that I wasn’t allowed to co-opt the word “woman.” Woman was not a family word that included me. My answer to this exclusion was to call myself a gender outlaw: I wasn’t a man, I wasn’t a woman.”

Here you’re making exactly the same, utterly fallacious mistake that too many “meanies” (as you might call them) make. Your experience was thus and so, therefore we all must be such.

Here is a bit more truth- I know, work with, and study the work of politically smart cis lesbians and queer women who would utterly balk at the idea that a trans woman “co-opts” the term “woman.” They are increasingly part of mainstream feminism, from the street to academe, they and their trans sisters would without a moment’s hesitation label such thinking outdated and transphobic. Why? Because how exactly are you going to break apart patriarchal gender norms if you cede “man” and “woman” to biologically essentialist definitions? If you say it’s not possible for someone assigned male at birth to truly be a woman, you’re not being a gender outlaw, you’re being  gender riot police. I don’t think you’d look very good in a black helmet and gas mask, Kate, so I invite you to reconsider your stance on these issues for the benefit of us all.

Because right now, you’re not helping by delegitimising people’s identities. By making womanhood more diverse, trans women are also in the vanguard of disrupting normative notions of womanhood and in case you were not aware, Kate, feminists do internalise gender norms as well; it’s what makes it so easy to take biological-essentialism for granted, as you yourself appear to do.

There is no question that you’re absolutely correct that it’s important to name yourself outside of known and common terminology if you so choose. It takes courage and a lot of perseverance to do this, and I am proud to call those people my siblings in struggle. We’re in this together. So why do you forget that, Kate? It is not my business to say your gender is illegitimate, and snarkily quote people who have no idea what it’s like to have your experience comment on it and pass it off as wisdom. How would you feel if I said with a whiff of smugness that I knew a trans woman activist who was amused by people “pretending” they could be something other than male or female? You’d feel hurt, marginalised perhaps, misunderstood and used. You might feel like they were stepping on you and your well-lived life in order to score cheap political points.

So, think on that. I do not have to attack or undermine people whose identities go beyond male/female. Why must you insist on attacking your trans brothers and sisters? We are not your enemies and we are not the ones who are holding you or The Cause™ back.

You say the following near the end of your article:

“Labels aren’t all that bad when they’re used consciously, but a major downside of using labels to describe an identity — even the labels we wear proudly as badges of courage — is that labels set up us-versus-them scenarios. The next generation of gender outlaws is seeking to dismantle us-versus-them. As a people, none of us deserves to hear the words “You’re not welcome here,” or “You’re not good enough,” or “You’re not real.” My Goddess, we just have to stop saying that to each other, all of us whose identity somehow hinges on gender or sexuality. We have to stop beating up on each other. The Sydney drag queens and transsexuals knew that when they came up with the word tranny to encourage mutual respect.”

You are telling me, Kate, that I am not real, good enough, or even welcome because of my gender, and you condescendingly tell me and many of my sisters that our feelings about the word “tranny”- which are very complex- are invalid. By the Goddess I believe in, yes we do indeed need to stop saying such things to each other, but I have never told you that you’re not real. More power to you in your gender. Fact is, though, I’m an outlaw too; just ask the people who don’t accept my gender for what it is (like yourself), or the politicians who seek to legislate against us as perverts, or the media personalities who liken us to Ewoks and the like.

What a “real woman” is, that’s something that’s determined by the lived experience of every woman on the planet- including trans women- and that’s a set that “diverse” can’t describe, whose vivid difference is a chromatic wonder that words have but the poorest power to illustrate. I never sought to be “real” except in the sense that I wanted to be the real me, who just happened to be a certain kind of woman. One who is now part of that limitless mosaic. I work with plenty of people who identify as men or women, or something else altogether  who have made it part of their life’s mission to work on making the world a better place for all of us, no matter what your gender is.

But with that project comes a need for respect that we all recognise. The word “tranny” is something that, yes, does belong to the community of trans women and male crossdressers/DQs that it is most often used to describe. Do we all agree on its use? Hell no. But many of us respect boundaries, many of us know it’s still a loaded term whose meaning is variable. Whatever its origins, where I’ve seen it used in the discourse is by cis people who are out to wound us. Some of us reclaim it for sure, but it is our word.

“Saying that FTMs can’t call themselves trannies eerily echoes the 1980s lesbians who said I couldn’t use the word woman to identify myself, and the 1990s lesbians who said I couldn’t use the word dyke.”

Then, if I may be so bold, why do you agree with those people exactly? Because that’s what one gets upon reading this article. There are trans men themselves who have explained quite clearly why it’s uncouth for trans men to use the term “tranny”– because it’s not really theirs to reclaim any more than it’s the place of suburban white kids to reclaim the N-word. Reclamation is a site of power that comes from inverting and taking back a word that’s been specifically used to harm you. That’s what gives certain people ownership of certain terms.

To quote Asher Bauer at some length on this subject:

So I hear the T word from supposed allies. And of course, one can always hear it from haters. But I also hear it from other trans people, particularly other trans men. And that pisses me off.

Look, as a self-identified fag, I am all about reclaimed language. Taking a brutal slur and wearing it like a badge of honor is an act of tremendous power. I absolutely encourage all those who have been burned by the T word in the past to go ahead and brand themselves with it if they desire. So no, it’s not reclaimed hate-words that I have a problem with. My problem is with some of the people who think they have a right to the word ‘tranny’ at all.

Let’s clear one thing up right now: while “tranny” is undoubtedly a transphobic slur, it has not been applied to all trans people equally. As I have said before in this column, it is a word that has been primarily used against trans women, drag queens, and other male-assigned people who present in female or feminine ways. It is just not used in an equivalent way against trans male types.

He understands the need for respecting specific circumstances, you should be able to as well. Tranny can, in a certain sense, be a family word of sorts. But please respect people who are part of that family and ask not to be called that in something as broad and general as a call for submissions that you want to be inclusive. There’s a welter of words to use: trans*, transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, genderfuck, and so on. The idea of “summarising it all” under the word “tranny” is both silly and ignorant of history. It’s as absurd as calling all gender non-conforming people “fags” as a super-heading, or “dykes”. It ignores a history that says ‘this word has been used to describe a particular group.’

Yet despite going on at length about how and why you and Mr. Bear have a right to the word “tranny” that my own lived experience and that of my sisters cannot inform or critique, you then say:

“It’s time to reclaim more than names. It’s time to reclaim the moral high ground.”

You do not reclaim the moral high ground by:

  • Defining away peoples’ identities.
  • Pooh poohing them when they tell you to please be a bit more respectful.
  • Quoting people who don’t belong to their experience-group as authorities on their lives (Doris Fish and your patriarchal lesbian friends).
  • Saying we need to name ourselves and then attacking people who do precisely that.

This is a running theme in a lot of your writing, and it is unfortunate; it erases and it hurts. Here’s your “tribal grandchild” saying to you very plainly, beseeching: stop hurting me, Aunty.

Please.

Sincerely,

Quinnae Moongazer/Nuclear Unicorn

A Social Symphony: The Four Movements of Transphobia in Theory

Katherine Alejandra Cross2 Comments

In analysing the place of transgender and transsexual people in the theorising of various disciplines one finds several common threads that link together the entire enterprise. Society can often be quite messy and yet paradoxically can also be found to have identifiable mechanisms of operation that grind certain social forces inexorably forward. So what am I getting at with this? What are the common threads? Well, with the invaluable assistance of an expert social theorist who happens to be a trans woman, I believe I have found four.

Trans people are not the only group of people hard done by social and political theory; there is a lot to be learned from analysing how theoretical paradigms have utterly excluded other marginalised peoples. In her 2007 book Southern Theory, sociologist Raewyn Connell articulates an excellent exegesis of Western social theory that lays bare its deeply Eurocentric assumptions as well as the colonial enterprise that underlay it. The colonised world, she says, was merely a data mine whose raw numbers would be exported back to ‘the metropole’ (Europe and America) for theoretical production that would then come together as a definitive vision of the colonised. In this way the relationship between coloniser and colonised is no different when regarding the academic realm as opposed to, say, the political or industrial ones.

The links to how academics conceptualise and (more importantly) use trans people are quite clear here. Metaphors of colonisation are quite useful for discussing vastly unequal social dynamics within Western countries as well; histories of appropriation and exploitation are certainly not limited to the majority world and ‘data mines’ can be found just down the street from where I’m sitting as surely as they can in Ghana or Pakistan or Aboriginal Australia. What’s more the trouble with such theory is not just that they appropriate, misuse, and distort the experiences of the colonised, but that in other instances (particularly in the weaving of generic theories of society) they are ignored altogether. Connell has identified four movements of colonialist academia that she says characterise most attempts to theorise about society: the claim of universality, reading from the centre, gestures of exclusion, and grand erasure. I will go through each in turn and discuss their relevance to gender theory and trans folk specifically.

In her pathbreaking paper The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto [1991], trans woman cyborg-feminist theorist Sandy Stone articulates in brief summary an idea that structures both this article and a lot of my thinking in general about trans people’s relationship to medico-juridical establishments and the academy:

I wish to point out the broad similarities which this peculiar juxtaposition suggests to aspects of colonial discourse with which we may be familiar: The initial fascination with the exotic, extending to professional investigators; denial of subjectivity and lack of access to the dominant discourse; followed by a species of rehabilitation. …

Bodies are screens on which we see projected the momentary settlements that emerge from ongoing struggles over beliefs and practises within the academic and medical communities. These struggles play themselves out in arenas far removed from the body. Each is an attempt to gain a high ground which is profoundly moral in character, to make an authoritative and final explanation for the way things are and consequently for the way they must continue to be. In other words, each of these accounts is culture speaking with the voice of an individual. The people who have no voice in this theorising are the transsexuals themselves. As with males theorising about women from the beginning of time, theorists of gender have seen transsexuals as possessing something less than agency.

This all makes itself manifest in the fascination some theorists have with us, fetishising the exotic trans people they see in their mind’s eye as either innately radical or conservative, denying that trans people’s individual self-understandings are meaningful (unless they comport with a dominant cis narrative), and a belief that the ideas expressed either in patriarchally-controlled medicine, psychiatry, or the academy can somehow save us. Thrumming beneath it all as a foundational gloss is the idea that we can neither speak nor act for ourselves, that we could never be adequate producers of knowledge about our own lives.

This is accomplished in the following ways:

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Outside: An Exodus From Patriarchy on the Backs of Women

Katherine Alejandra Cross5 Comments
Intersectionality is often lost on those who most need to make certain connections.

The operation of Kyriarchy in its peculiarly patriarchal forms never fails to impress me. As I look at a certain claque of radical feminists who claim to be fighting against a system of gender oppression in our world I find myself confronting women and men who have, in truth, merely internalised patriarchal power arrangements and are regurgitating them in a strange way. I’m speaking, of course, about radfem transphobia. Joelle Ruby Ryan, a trans woman academic, recently attended a conference in New Hampshire called Pornography as Sexual Violence. In trying to present on the often untold story of how trans pornography impacts both our community and gender in general, she found herself attacked by two transphobic feminists: Robert Jensen and Lierre Keith. Her story, passionate and quite understandably outraged in tone, can be found here.

In it she quotes at length a screed from Ms. Keith. You’ll forgive me if I decide to take a shotgun to yon barrel of fish. Some might say that it only dignifies the remarks of such people to debate them or to fisk them. I prefer, however, to think of it as providing a learning resource to someone who might find themselves oppressed or harassed by such ideas. The power of symbolic violence- the use of rank, position, privilege and entitlement to impose meaning on a subordinate person- should not be understated. I and many other trans people have learned the hard way why such arguments are wrong, but someone still struggling to find themselves and feeling vulnerable might be hurting. To me, the more responses there are to this kind of nonsense, the better. Now, on with the show.

A Journey Down a Familiar Path

Keith begins by saying the following:

Well, I’ve personally been fighting about this since 1982. I think  ‘transphobic’ is a ridiculous word. I have no strange fear of people who claim to be ‘trans.’ I deeply disagree with them, as do most radical feminists.

When I was a wee lass back in high school I used to argue with this rather tiresome Republican boy (incidentally his name was Robert as well) who one day angrily declaimed “there’s no such thing as homophobia! I’m not irrationally afraid of gay people! And ‘homo’ means same! I’m not afraid of things that are the same!” Now, I know what you’re thinking. “He has a career waiting for him in Fox News!” Quite. But secondly he sounds quite a lot like our friend here who’s supposedly from the opposite side of the political spectrum, which is not uncommon when dealing with this minority of radical feminists whose stock and trade is inverting reactionary arguments and using them against the oppressed in the guise of being anti-oppression.

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The Laboratory of Dreams: Theory from an RPG Sourcebook

Katherine Alejandra Cross5 Comments
(Image Credit: Grand Universe by Gary Tonge, antifan-real.deviantart.com)

When we’re children we’re often taught that great ideas are the product of great minds; blessed ideas that spring forth from the creator’s cranium like Athena from Zeus, fully formed and miraculous. But the truth is that ideas of the most compelling sort have no one source, and can come from the most intriguing of places assembled from seemingly dissociated bits and pieces. Recently in my writing about theory I’ve tried to convince you to look at it as something that grows from daily life and is itself a kind of practise as a result. What this way of looking at things enables you to do is see ‘theory’ as being more ubiquitous than it may first seem when you, say, look at a college textbook.

Enter Eclipse Phase, a pen and paper RPG set several hundred years in the future with a post-apocalyptic setting. The action, however, need not take place on the despoiled Earth. Our Solar System is home to countless colonies, some independent, some confederated, that express the gamut of human ideologies. One of the game’s overarching themes is transhumanism which the book itself defines as: “an international cultural and intellectual movement that endorses the use of science and technology to enhance the human condition, both mentally and physically.” Now, there is certainly no question that such an ideology has innumerable pratfalls. It could potentially become a 21st century expression of eugenicism, for example. People with disabilities in particular are right to be wary of such and the cultural genocide it can entail in the wrong hands.[1]

But the funny thing about ideas is that they are multifaceted and thus easily repurposed, and Eclipse Phase’s presentation of its interpretation of transhumanism is quite compelling. Loving a good ‘trans’ pun myself, I decided to explore the concept a little bit, and sure enough, I was rewarded:

To many transhumans, gender has become an outdated social construct with no basis in biology. After all, it’s hard to give credence to gender roles when an ego can easily modify their sex, switch skins, or experience the lives of others via XP. Though most transhumans still adhere to the gender associated with their original biological sex, many others switch gender identities as soon as they reach adulthood or avidly pursue repeated transgender switching. Still others examine and adopt untraditional sex-gender identities such as neuters (believing a lack of sex allows greater focus in their pursuits) or dual gender (the best of both worlds). In many bioconservative habitats and cultures, however, more traditional gender roles persevere. (Eclipse Phase Sourcebook, p. 35)

You see, in this distant future, humanity has discovered technological means of changing bodies at will, preserving consciousness in a handy, downloadable file format, and in the process taking “my body, my choice” to a whole new level. The game explores economic inequality in depth as well, and thus the limitations of one’s bodily autonomy imposed in a world where economic injustice has simply evolved in certain crucial ways. But nevertheless, this section on gender elucidates something rather fascinating that RPGs can do for us: allow us to imagine and actually play around in a future that we might do well to fight for (at least in part- I could do without the rampaging out of control military AI that destroyed Earth in Eclipse Phase’s canon, thank you very much).

What is fascinating, in part, is twofold. One, trans people of all sorts (myself included) are already living that paragraph in various ways, and two, that the future it posits is one in which being transgender is not only accepted, it’s an experience virtually the whole of transhumanity (transhumanity!) shares. Biological essentialism has been well and truly shattered, and right along with it, patriarchy.

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A Cliché Trapped in a Metaphor’s Body

Katherine Alejandra Cross18 Comments

When one reaches a certain point in transition and begins to delve into this riotously diverse, loose aggregate we call the “trans community” and its close cousins to whom we are the red-headed step sister (yes, quite the odd family, no?), one inevitably hits the wall of language.

What do you call yourself? To what group do you belong? How should you be addressed? How does this relate to how you address others? What language is hurtful and undermines you? On and on the questions and contemporaneous realisations go. Words, wonderful words, surround, bind, and penetrate you. At the end of the day again and again we are learning, re-learning, and un-learning language. Trans people are, along with certain other loose confederations of humanity, perhaps more deeply attuned to the vicissitudes of linguistic power and how language does power than your average bear.

And why is that? Because there is one realisation along with all the other usual ones (i.e. why it hurts when, as a trans man, someone calls you ‘she’ or a ‘woman’) that demonstrates language’s power.

The words we have often obviate any meaningful way of discussing our experiences.

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Theory is Yours: A Brief Archaeology of Trans Feminist Awesome

Katherine Alejandra Cross1 Comment

This post will appear as a crosspost on QT very shortly and was addressed chiefly to its audience, and thus the ‘this space’ term refers to Questioning Transphobia. Otherwise, enjoy!

In looking out at the vast, expansive canon of gender studies literature, and in light of even the most superficial analysis of its myriad failings it is easy to feel dispirited by what it has to offer trans people. It is all too easy to understand the instinct to abandon both queer and gender studies as a privileged exercise in neo-pathology, the postmodern turn of the same ideologies that guided the hegemonic psychiatrists of decades past. One could find yet more examples, of course.

Judith Lorber, someone readers of my blog may remember my past disagreements with, had this to say in 1994 about trans people: “[trans folk do not challenge the gender order because] their goal is to be feminine women and masculine men” (Lorber 1994, 20). Yet again we find the tireless obsession with attributing a politics to identity in the simplest possible terms, yet again we find the clutching of pearls with regard to the innate, literal body politic of trans people. It might perhaps be too obvious to tell Professor Lorber that for all of her elegant theorising about the socially constructed nature of gender she cannot bring herself to describe trans people by their proper pronouns (for example calling Renee Richards “he” and Billy Tipton “she”) nor to belabour the questionable hypocrisy of being unable to break out of the role of arbiter even as she derides the imposition of gender schema upon people.

However, to simply shine more light on the white cis women of gender academia and call them to the carpet for their tacit transphobia does a disservice to the armies of trans folk that have devoted their not inconsiderable intellectual, emotional, and spiritual energy to challenging these things since before I even drew breath.

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I Am Whoever You Say I Am

Katherine Alejandra Cross9 Comments

In the long march into academia one naturally becomes intimately acquainted with the geeky and esoteric minutiae of whatever discipline one has chosen for their career. Over the last two years I’ve found myself up to my eyeballs in gender studies text and find it utterly fascinating. I’m often seen scurrying to and fro with a book or two tucked under my arm and my desk is covered in all manner of books appertaining to my passions. But importantly, when you are trans-anything and delving into the wild and woolly world of gender studies you have to be ready for the fact that there will be lots and lots of highly credentialed, intellectual academics theorising about you who do not know what the hell they’re talking about.

This occupational hazard is, to put it bluntly, both annoying and the reason I’m doing the sociology of gender in the first place. The only way this is going to be truly fixed is when we start writing the theory and we start conducting the research, casting our eyes not just on this wild and strange tribe of “transgender” but also on cis people whose views are far more powerful in shaping how our fractioned community is gendered and understood. What I’m looking at today is a particular strain of thought that is increasingly common in Third Wave feminist theorising; it is ostensibly trans positive but ends up being highly fetishising, stereotypical, and ultimately transphobic. It stands in contrast to that Janice Raymond school of theorising that constructs us purely in terms of an outsider, an enemy who constitutes a patriarchal invasion-cum-Body Snatchers. This vision instead sees us (or some of us) as ‘useful’- we have utility in the quest of certain cis feminists to smash the gender binary. Yet what unites both of these seemingly oppositional philosophies is that they are theories formed by cis people about us, relative to their gender ideology, and that construct us as ‘other.’

There are a few major currents in this new feminist theory that merit deconstruction and they will likely be familiar to most readers in one way or another:

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