Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning Thread

hah!

Hmmm, so my therapist who is supposed to be helping me work through my gender issues was completely unfamiliar with the term "cisgender" until I said it today. Awesome.

Has anyone else watched the Candy Darling documentary and if so was anyone else as disgusted by Fran Lebowitz as I was?

Yeah, LOL @ having to explain basic terminology to one's therapist (me, too) but also total YAY! for therapists who actually get it, and grok the concept, even if they're not familiar with the words.

(Which was the case with mine - doesn't sound very hopeful, depending on whether that "awesome" was sarcastic, which I think it was?)

But, as above, just because someone doesn't know the terminology doesn't mean that they can't still be helpful in working out the issues. Because when you're working it out, it's mostly you do the working, not them. (Unless you have actually gone to a doctor with the idea of transitioning, and you're looking for advice and strategies. n.b. I am totally uninterested in transitioning, what would be the point.)

Yeah, that's kind of where I am.

I finally came out as trans (maybe genderqueer? still feeling it out) to some friends a couple of weeks ago; I'm seriously considering transitioning once it's practically feasible and I have a better sense of where I stand emotionally, but maybe the fact that it isn't currently an option is making it easier to think about. I'll see about therapists' lexicons soon enough.

good luck ows

thanks

Yes, pulling for you!

Thanks! It's nothing I want to be melodramatic about, but knowing how long I've been trying to rationalize it away, it's healthier to confront the dysphoria now.

Speaking as someone who tried to rationalise the dysphoria away for about 25 years, I would highly recommend that yeah, you explore your identity now. (I wouldn't use a term like "confront", tho, it's another kind of othering a part of yourself. And also the recognition that identities can be fluid, that the thing you have to "confront" this year may be the core of you the next.) Really wish you luck, and hope that you find a good therapist who can help you explore this stuff, regardless of what outcomes are feasible/possible or not.

Thanks, BB--you make good points w/r/t self-othering language and the need to recognize fluidity, the latter of which I think is part of why it's difficult but also probably necessary to start naming this. Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread.

Not derailing at all! You are us! Use this space in any way that helps you.

I appreciate that; it'd probably be more apt to say that I don't want to drown anyone else out. In any case, it'll probably be better to work through this with people offline for a while, but I am glad that this thread is around.

Hope this is ok to ask this here, I'd like to ask something (and I'll apologise in advance if I'm using any of the terminology incorrectly) about something that I can see is problematic but I'd like to understand better WHY it's problematic. I'm hoping BB can explain it a bit because it was something I was made aware of reading their posts, but I'm interested to hear from anybody that has thought about it. In the 77 tracks thread there was a male artist recording under the name Sophie; Lex was annoyed by the name and which BB pointed out

"Every time some jerk does this, it just makes it even harder for actual female producers, because it just reinforces that whole myth that behind any female artist, there is *always* a male string-puller making it happen. Why do you do this, dudes. Why."

I hadn't thought about it this way before, I'd viewed it (and I'm thinking mainly about Caribou / Daphni here) as a queering of identity, as someone using music to express another side of their personality, and also to blur the stereotypes of what is male and female music.

Then I was reminded of this identity again when a male poster made a sock puppet with a female display name to create a music poll thread and was criticised for it. Now in that particular case I am assuming that this poster was not trying to queer anything, just disguise their identity. But I'd still like to understand better why representing himself as female in that discussion was problematic.

Reading what I've typed I'm not trying to be meta or provoke arguments here, I'm genuinely trying to understand this better.

ramona is such a fucking awesome name

I don't care if you're black, white, genderqueer...

would say that it's presumptuous to judge the motives of anyone for the name they attach to themselves (or whatever they happen to do). we don't easily know inside one another, and the right to name, to identify, seems among the most basic we possess.

but, you know, bb = worlds beyond my ken

http://thump.vice.com/en_uk/words/please-dont-let-2014-be-the-year-that-female-djs-are-a-novelty

This micro-trend is telling because whilst artist names are mostly harmless word-play, and are rarely given a second thought by fans, there's something that pinches at me about men who choose names that are either explicitly female (Lucy, Millie and Andrea) or imply femininity (Miss Modular, She Works The Night, Body Issues), and do so in an attempt at anonymity, or playful indulgence. Millie and Andrea is apparently framed as an opportunity to “explore sounds not usually associated with their solo productions”, and SOPHIE even warped his voice on a radio show to sound like a young girl. Both weird, both unnecessary, both hiding behind the feminine in a stylistic attempt to create better work through a false persona.

Men who adopt explicitly female monikers and don't engage with the issues implicit in doing so, in an industry where women are often treated as novelty, run the risk of labouring under a false apprehension. Using the feminine to create an air of mystique not only panders to the misogynistic stereotype of the woman as the voiceless and unseen figure, but in only engaging with the female or feminine on a surface level, it could go as far as to actively undermine women who rightly seek to just put in the work, and not have gender treated as a selling point.

OK, I will try to answer your question, since you have asked in a respectful way, and I'm hoping that you might actually be willing to listen and learn, as opposed to blank dismissal. I find these conversations exhausting, and I really do try to limit them, for mine own mental health, if either I am not in the mood for them, or if I don't think I'm going to achieve anything except making myself frustrated and angry.

But I may also need to go off and find some links and possibly think about it.

The short answer is that it's a question of intent, and as you pointed out, the difference between exploring femininity, versus hiding one's identity, often with an agenda. I am trying to find a link to the example a few months ago, where a white person created a whole fake facebook account of a black feminist in order to defend certain actions as "not racist" because this black feminist sock "didn't have a problem with them." That is the spirit in which I saw Kerr assuming a female sock in order to talk about problems - including sexism - within a genre. That is co-opting a lived experience they have no experience of, and no right to speak of on any terms, let alone use it to defend its opposite. His defence of those shitty, sexist metal cartoons when pretty much everyone else on the board saw the problems straight off shows how much he just does not get it and most likely just never will, but he thinks that just putting on a female display name gives him the right to discuss it with authority? It doesn't work like that.

Artists taking on alternate personas in order to explore other identities - this has a long tradition from Bowie to Beyonce and well before. Sometimes it's a way of wearing a mask to convey the truth, but when those adopted identities start to impinge on the locuses (loci?) of other people's oppression, this becomes a problem. (e.g. of Montreal writing songs from the viewpoint of "I'm just a black she-male" and Amanda Palmer taking the piss out of people with disabilities during the course of pretending to be a conjoined twin.) I raise those two cases because Kevin Barnes actually seems to have known some queer people and, indeed, queer people of colour, in his life, and has himself written and performed often of his own feelings of sexual fluidity and frustration with gender. Amanda Palmer, on the other side, basically told the disabled people who criticised her, to shut up and get a sense of humour. I hope you can see the difference why both are problematic, but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to one, but not the other.

With Daphni, I never did not know for one moment that it was "Dan Snaith exploring his feminine side." He never concealed his intent, I never saw him make any kind of statement, overt or implied, about whether this gave him the right to speak on behalf of women in the music business - and I never saw anyone express surprise that "Daphni is a dude!"

Something like the Aphex Twin's Tuss project is one of those questionable areas. Because I believe his intent was not malicious (again, this is a guy who had explored gender and girl/boy dichotomies repeatedly in his music and iconography) - and also, it was different because the project was a collaboration between himself, and a woman - his wife - though she gets written out of the story repeatedly, first in AFX fanboy minds, then by Richard, after an acrimonious divorce. And in the community of fandom, it just reinforced the endless suppositions that every time a female producer appears on the scene, she must be the sock puppet of some male producer. (e.g. all of Mira Calix's songs are secretly written by Autechre, Ursula Bognor never existed, and another female IDM producer whose name I have forgotten, she did a gig, and WATMM fanboys were all "Oh, *male producer she sounds a bit like* why do you send your girlfriend to stand onstage and play your CDs?) ((And this does *not* just happen in the electronic music community, by any means. It's just really highlighted there.))

Because of the massive imbalance, and the attention (negative though it often is) paid to female artists, dudes often come to believe that it is somehow "easier" to operate in the musical world, as a woman. There's this weird fetishisation of the women involved in the deep history of electronic music (though it does not stop them from mixing up the tags and just labelling any woman with a modular synth as automatically "Delia Derbyshire".) There is the case of an IDM label with an all female roster, founded by a guy whose deliberate aim it was to try to combat sexism in that scene. And, of course, there popped up at least one guy (and another very strongly suspected) who put on a female name, got some photos of a model off the internet, and got signed, then unmasked himself, saying "look how easy girls have it in this industry." As if one label taking women seriously eradicates all the other shit we have to deal with on a regular basis.

It smacks of those extreme makeover experiments where a thin person puts on a fat suit, or a WASP puts on a burqua, and walks around for a day like that, and comes back and says "OMG, you guys! Guess what I discovered? Muslims or fat people or women or old folks have it really fucking hard" as if they've learned something from the experience, learned anything except the fact that it is nothing but a brute display of privilege that they never noticed before and OMG THEY COULD HAVE ACTUALLY JUST PAID ATTENTION TO MUSLIMS OR OLD FOLKS OR FAT PEOPLE OR TRANS PEOPLE AND BELIEVED THEM WHEN THEY SAID THEY EXPERIENCED BAD SHIT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

This stuff is loaded, this stuff has a history. There is a place in this world for "men in dresses" and there is a place in this world for "trans women" but when one starts taking up the space, and because of their privilege, starts dominating the narrative, yes, that is co-option. Dudes who take on female names just to make points on messageboards or sell records are making it harder for trans women as well as cis women.

I have no idea where Sophie, as a producer, fits into this. I know nothing about him, but with the weight of all that stuff above, it is really, really hard for me to give someone the benefit of the doubt.

It's true; anyone can explore aspects of "masculinity" or "femininity" and I actively encourage people of all genders to do this, in music or however makes sense to them. But there is a very big step between exploring gender, and thinking that doing a little bit of exploring of an identity that one can take off and go back to privilege at the end of the day gives them any kind of real insight, let alone authority to speak from, the position of marginalised person, whether that's a cis woman or a trans woman. It happens all the time, men speaking for women, men taking up space intended for women. When a man queers his gender and explores his femininity, it's up to him to recognise that he is still speaking as a queered man, and the world will still, automatically give more weight to his words when speaking about women, because he *is* a man.

Wow, this is longer than I had hoped for. I don't really want to go through this again. I don't think the ~dudes of ILX~ understand, what it costs me, emotionally, to talk about this stuff, and what it costs me to go through it again, and again, and again, because someone didn't hear me the first time. The "not being believed" part is often worse than the injury, with gendered aggressions and microaggressions. I realise that I haven't explained myself very well, but I also do not have the energy for a big fight over this.

otoh, it's evidence of femininity being recognized as intrinsically valid, perhaps even especially valuable. lame dudes cashing in on that = lame, sure. i'm just saying i wouldn't throw stones if i weren't awful damn sure of where those putative dudes were coming from, gender- & orientation-wise (which i wanna abbreviate as "fuckwise", but won't). which perhaps just means i'm sitting outside this convo, speculating ignorantly...

that to lex.

Contenderizer, I'm going to ask you in the nicest possible way, but could you, for once, just try *not* to take the devil's advocate position on this thread?

I know it is impossible to create an actual safe space, anywhere on the internet, but you are the cissest of cis-het dudes, and it would be good if you could actually recognise that this might not be a space where you are automatically the expert.

I am trying to find a link to the example a few months ago, where a white person created a whole fake facebook account of a black feminist in order to defend certain actions as "not racist" because this black feminist sock "didn't have a problem with them."

http://www.forharriet.com/2013/12/dear-ani-difranco-supporters-you-cannot.html?m=1

which perhaps just means i'm sitting outside this convo, speculating ignorantly...

there's a turn up for the books

contenderizer i have zero desire to argue rn but will you STOP doing that thing of "reasonably pointing out the other side of the argument" whenever people talk about oppression? and stop using the language of witch hunts etc. no one is throwing stones. no one is criticising sophie, lucy or whoever personally. people are talking about the context and the fact that this is a micro-trend that rubs them the wrong way. did you even read lauren's piece? in which she interviews one of the male producers who uses a female name, and he acknowledges that it's problematic in ways he hadn't thought of?

LOL xp

I claim no expertise, bb. just, as usual, your spec-ulatin cuz. one of the big differences between u and me is that i have absolutely no problem giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, ever (a function of privilege, i'm sure). that said, i mean not to offend, will step off. ramona is still a fucking awesome name.

hey, lex. just scrubbed my xp for "the language of witch hunts" and came up empty. praps ur referring to my talk of rights and stone-throwing? fwiw, i see no witch-hunting hereabouts. am at least tentatively okay with people identity-flirting with whatever gender seems to suit.

Cis-het white dudes who flaunt their benefits of privilege as if it is some kind of ~NOBLE QUALITY~, part eight billion. What else is new?

Thanks for the link, Lex, that was exactly the case I was thinking of.

xposts

BB, Thanks very much for your reply, that was an awesome post and really made things a lot clearer for me. I admit I was a bit apprehensive in asking in the first place because I was conscious that it was 1) something you might justifiably not want to post about 2) bordering on meta, which I know you dislike and 3) potentially clusterfucky. I was also aware that this was probably covered somewhere else and I was requesting it was regurgitated for my benefit, so I’m really sorry if it stressed you - however, like I said, your post was really insightful and has helped my thinking.

I was just about to reply to Lex thanking him for the link - I hadn’t realised the female pseudonym in dance music was so widespread when I saw you had also posted, and tbh I’ll probably need to re-read it a couple of times cos there is a lot to digest.

Personally, (gay white cis-male here) I’ve always been interested in ambiguity and saw it as positive rather than problematic but I’d been beginning to feel there were aspects of privilege involved without being able to put my finger on exactly how - So thanks to both of you for taking the time and effort to help me out on that.

"because someone didn't hear me the first time." maybe not evertyone reads all of your posts.

Cis-het white dudes who flaunt their benefits of privilege as if it is some kind of ~NOBLE QUALITY~, part eight billion. What else is new?

righteous indignation shit? no, wait...

Personally, (gay white cis-male here) I’ve always been interested in ambiguity and saw it as positive rather than problematic but I’d been beginning to feel there were aspects of privilege involved without being able to put my finger on exactly how

this is probably how i felt when i first came across the phenomenon but it irked me in a minor way that i couldn't put my finger on. then a friend of mine (who used the dj name token girl at the time) said she really hated it, and almost felt cheated when she discovered certain djs were actually dudes, which made me think my being irked wasn't so irrational. then i noticed it becoming this weird micro-trend even as female djs were dismissed, marginalised etc etc, and then lauren's article pretty much articulated why it's not necessarily such a positive ambiguity thing.

Thanks, I Am Using Your Worlds, I am out now, for what I hope are blatantly obvious and understandable reasons.

Yeah that makes sense, the poll thread was the first time I saw it mentioned in a negative way and it hadn't really occurred to me that there was anything wrong with it until then. Lauren's article was well done.

It is appreciated BB, see you around

more from lauren's piece:

This micro-trend has been bugging me for a while now, so I called up Miss Modular to ask him why he's called Miss Modular. He was surprisingly forthright about it all. “I chose Miss Modular a long, long time ago before I even started producing”, he insists. “I used it for a blog I used to do. When I first chose it, it didn’t really occur to me that it was implying a gender, but then as I started producing and getting more attention, people used to message me being like: 'Hey, we’re doing a piece on female producers, do you want to get involved?' I’d tell them I was a man and they’d be like, 'Oh, okay, well, we’re not really interested in writing about you anymore'.”

How did that strike you? “I found it frustrating”, he confesses. “Not because I wasn’t getting the attention because I was male, but because I thought the concept of a magazine wanting to run a piece on female producers was weird. As though being female was some kind of handicap for them, and that if they were good at what they do then it should be, extra celebrated?”

How do you feel about being Miss Modular now, considering that? “In all honesty, I found myself a bit caught up in the whole phenomenon of this. I wonder if men working under female names is them purposefully trying to be anonymous; because of some inherent guilt of being a white male producer, and wanting to present yourself as something else. I’ve definitely noticed that since using a female name people have treated me as a novelty, and come to me about my work purely because they think I’m female. Whenever I’ve done a vanity search on Twitter, people are always talking about it.”

Do you really think it's a trend worth talking about, or are we just being hypercritical? “Oh no”, he says. “I think it's a trend that's really starting to snowball now. I’ve met guys who are trying to start out as a DJ, and been like 'Oh yeah, I might call myself this because it’s female', and I’ve been like, 'You’re saying you’ve actively chosen this name because it will present you as female?!' I really should have probed deeper into that at the time." I asked if it opened his eyes to sexism in dance music culture, and he admitted that:

“It’s both fascinating and frustrating. It shows what these gender politics are like. It's been quite an insight. I feel a bit weird being part of it, to be honest. I’d really like to stress that as a guy working under female names, I had no intention of hiding myself behind some kind of veil of femininity. I thought about changing it altogether, or at least doing variations on it, but then I thought that it might be more effective to use this weird situation I've found myself in in order to speak out about the issues that it's brought up, and try and frame it in a more positive way.”

fwiw (not much, i presume), I agree that the assumption by the privileged of the nominal identities of the not is fundamentally squicky, repellent. all i'm saying here is that i'm in no rush to judge "sophie" given that i have no special insight into where the artist in question is coming from. also, as a straight cisdude, i basically refrain from passing judgement on how (even potentially) not-so-straight, not-so-cis people might happen to construct their identities. i don't see that as any of my business. not saying it isn't yours...

also, i'm 100% outside dance music culture, so the special implications of this discussion as it relates in the present moment are likely lost on me. do not mean to comment in any general way on the micro-trend lex & lauren are talking abt.

reminded here of similar squickiness related to men publishing books under feminine pseudonyms

like what, the privileges "normally" accorded your gender aren't enough?

[= igi, will shaddap now]

Relevant to our interests:

http://queerofgender.com/

^^^Looks like this is going to be a super-interesting project

Haaaayyyy, Brooklyn Boihood mention!

https://www.facebook.com/bklynboihood

OK, they look seriously awesome. Reading the blog etc now.

I don't know them personally but a community group I work with would like to partner/collaborate w them on some anti-street harassment initiatives, so that will happen eventually. Pretty excited!

Oh, that sounds like that would be great.

http://elixher.com/watch-undoing-masculinity-by-bklyn-boihoods-ryann-holmes/

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gonna have to wait until I have better bandwidth to watch that but yes, v v v relevant to my interests!

Hey, contendo, would you get the fuck out?

Please don't set him off again, Rev?

I would love for this thread to be a safe space, but safe spaces are impossible to maintain without rigorous moderation we do not have available to us here.

hi, rev. i'm a bit baffled by the trajectory, tbh, but in no mood to make a bad situation worse.