Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning Thread

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It's not Savage who said that! Someone else in response to him.

― pugger pugger (benson) (The Reverend), Sunday, June 1, 2014 10:37 AM (4 hours ago)

Yeah, I know. But reading (albeit sound) comments threads about Savage generally requires paying attention to Savage, which is something i try to avoid.

Terms like that are actually offensive to me..and I'd personally you rather didn't use them tbh

― Sausage Party (Bob Six), Sunday, June 1, 2014 6:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol dude shut the fuck up

*Awed by the adult conversation*

Will watch and learn

it's always a good look to disrupt a thread with petty and infantile 'misandry' whines and then sit back with a patronizing Alfred E. Neuman grin on your face when you get called on it.

it is, quite possibly, a 'dick move' in fact

:D

Burning ears. Anyway, I've long accepted that petulantly attacking BB with the r-word in response to a not-unreasonable check-yr-ableism was a profound dick move, and regret it enough to ensure I never do such a classless thing again. Bob, you have no business picking fights on this of all threads, and neither do I, even if I look dashedly good in drag if I may say so myself (cis drag 'tourism' versus trans identity tho etc)

sistren and brethren, please

Imago, that was a thoroughly decent thing to say, and thank you.

The derail is tedious, because the things that Rev has been bringing up are really interesting, and particularly salient for me.

I'm just of the generation inbetween. ACT-UP was just slightly before my time, but still something I remember as a teenager. However, "Queer" is something I still think of as a thing yelled out of car windows at me, whether for dressing in a masc-presenting way, or walking with my girlfriend. And because of that, it's hard to identify with that word, even in a positive sense. Even though that word, that space of "Queer" as meaning "the huge grey area on the map which is neither 100% heterosexual nor 100% gay" is something that would have saved me so much grief over the course of my life.

So much regret, so much wasted self-loathing, so much time being forced into a biphobic closet because of people (usually in the gay club-subculture) saying things like "dick always wins" and that crap. So I carry a lot of resentment about that particular space/subculture, and both wish feminist queer space had existed sooner, but also wish it had a different name, because that one is so loaded.

But you can't win on either front - if you make up a brilliant new word for a necessary and needed new concept (e.g. Intersectionality) you'll get people going OMG SUCH A WEIRD ABSTRACT ACADEMIC WORD I CAN'T UNDERSTAND IT OH THE MULTI-SYLLABIC HORROR. But if you take a word that already exists and use it for a new meaning (e.g. privilege) then you get all this resistance to the new meaning, and people unable to shift from one usage to another, and getting defensive about the old meaning rather than understand or adapt to the new meaning. And I kinda feel like "Queer" is one of those words that is in the latter category.

I haven't said anything about 'misandry', and I don't think BB is misandrist.

I just think it's hypocritical to be gender and sexism aware and continue to use sexist language.

DO YOU GET HOW SEXISM WORKS?

DO YOU ALSO SAY THINGS LIKE "WHY ISNT THERE A WHITE HISTORY MONTH?"

as a man i feel i'm reclaiming slurs like cockfarmer, dickwit and complete fucking tool

Hey! Don't you dare say I'm "nuts". That's OUR word!

Subpost: Y'know, every time I pick up yet another yappy-headed little dude intent on chasing me creepily from thread to thread, hollering his little hate-crush at me, I realise that I am more and more fiiiiiine with it, if my language happens to represent me to them as a ~Misandrist~.

― Branwell with an N, Sunday, 1 June 2014 09:56 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This (not your post, the offending one) just made me do a double-take. Bizarre. Killfiled.

bob, calling women out for "sexist" language in response to completely harmless phrases like "dick move" is never not going to be a bad look. and this thread is about the worst possible place to try it on. a word of advice from the twice shy.

It's a hobby of his.

"two bald men arguing over a comb"

No sexist comments please

― mohel hell (Bob Six), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 15:35 (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

One of the worst examples of casual gender based derogatory stereotyping I've seen for a while on ilx

― mohel hell (Bob Six), Wednesday, 23 April 2014 15:37 (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(again, immediately after a BB post)

Gold medalist in the False Equivalencylmpics he is

it's fine if the bald men in the comb scenario are bald by choice but that should be made clear

getting strange ass all around the globe, you may doubt the earnestness with which I think this is sexist language is expressed but it's hardly the equivalent of DO YOU ALSO SAY THINGS LIKE "WHY ISNT THERE A WHITE HISTORY MONTH?" so you get a podium place too

Dafuq

It's actually rooted in the exact same kind of disingenuous "won't someone think of the privileged" bullshit thinking so i'd say it's at least a first cousin, captain pedant.

The idea that trans* or genderqueer people could have a thread to discuss issues we face as relevant to our lives, that's just too big an ask, isn't it.

(sorry, derail partly my fault)

Yes apologies here as well...proceed

Not your fault, but trolls gonna troll, derailers gonna derail, grandstanders gonna grandstand, but the end result is still that the actual discussion gets shut down, which was the OP's desire in the first place. I am just really tired of this. It's tedious and exhausting and fucking boring.

However, "Queer" is something I still think of as a thing yelled out of car windows at me, whether for dressing in a masc-presenting way, or walking with my girlfriend. And because of that, it's hard to identify with that word, even in a positive sense.

Yeah, I guess it's easier for me to accept because I've barely heard it used as an insult in my life, and even before I learned of its current connotations, it always seemed kind of a quaint, outdated feel to it, like I dunno "poofter" or "fruit" or something. Those times I did hear it, it was used in kind of a jocular, teasing manner that didn't pack the sting of epithets like "faggot" or "homo", but I respect that other peoples' experiences with regard to that word may be different.

Yeah, I guess it's just proof of how words change, usages change, connotations change, both from neutral to bad, but bad to neutral, too. But it's important to be sensitive to or at least aware of all of both past and present meanings.

WOW FUCK THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

http://www.glaad.org/blog/chicago-sun-times-remove-grossly-inaccurate-op-ed-and-apologizes

it IS the position of major pubs to present opposing views, even when they are liars.

Heinous though the column is, it's no worse than any Bush administration/David Brooks/Bill Kristol horror that the WaPo publishes every day. Columns elide info or outright lie all the time.

National Review writers really are the scum of the earth

I liked this.

http://upw-prod-images.global.ssl.fastly.net/nugget/536b94b14e2f5ad4ba000070/attachments/bflowchart-5e68227d7254fc2ffec3bdde34900bac.jpg

Um. "Gender-determining brain structures" is some pretty leaky science, TBH, but it's not an argument I want to get into ever again.

oh I just liked the overall message etc.

it's no worse than any Bush administration/David Brooks/Bill Kristol horror that the WaPo publishes every day. Columns elide info or outright lie all the time.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 4, 2014 6:24 AM Bookmark

ok sure, but this is a lot more personal to me.

There's been some truly hateful stuff going round social media today about "non-binary" people.

So someone else reposted rather amazing piece, which is old, but I feel expressed something rather profound:

http://cnlester.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/why-were-all-non-binary/

It's not about whether an individual is "binary" or "non-binary" - it is about acknowledging that we live in a non-binary world, when it comes to human gender.

the stuff some prominent media feminists have been coming out with on trans issues is absolutely shocking. not even coded.

a more +ve story - r kelly's 13-yr-old son came out as trans. i didn't know where to put it initially, as he seems to have so little contact with his dad that the link seems tenuous, and he explicitly says that he doesn't like the way the media have caught on - but anyway, his ask.fm is just a really touching and encouraging place, and all kudos to his mother

http://ask.fm//MI_YLNO_NAMUH

I haven't had a chance to read all of this yet but looks interesting and relevant: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-tobia/genderqueer-professional-_b_5476239.html

Deconstructing "Professional Appearance"* is a very very interesting debate on so many levels and so many different axis, and it's such an insidious thing, and so hard to fight, because the costs are so high. It's one of the places where all the really pernicious -isms meet the worst aspects of ... (god I feel like such a college student for wanting to type ~capitalism~, maaaan here) but it really does show the whole concept of "Corporate" as a blunt instrument of erasure.

But, on the other hand, even while trying to read that article, I kept getting distracted by the sidebars and adverts and trappings all around the Huffington Post site, and realising that they have now codified "Queer" as a marketing demographic, which makes me feel revolted and icky and pressed into some corporate mould in a different, but still bothersome way.

*One of my favourite stories to tell of ~how I get things so wrong~, was when I first got to NYC, honestly, I was about 23 and had no idea how to dress myself. I'd gone to a school with a uniform, and grown up wearing charity shop clothes. So a couple of weeks into my first Proper Office Job, I was taken aside by my boss and told that there had been complaints about my dress, and though she appreciated my hard work, could I maybe dress more professionally? And I confessed that I had no idea how to "dress professionally", what should I do? So she told me to walk about the office and look at how all the other ~successful people~ in the office dressed, maybe surreptitiously peer under desks and check out people's shoes, because apparently my footgear was a problem. So I did exactly that, and walked around peering at board members as they came out of their offices.

Then went home and my housemate took me clothes-shopping in this big warehouse in Brooklyn, and I kitted myself out in what I had seen, and came into work on Monday wearing a grey suit that some old man had probably died in, and shirt and tie and clompy black brogues. And my boss came in and saw what I'd done and was just like *headdesk* "Branwell, noooo...." I was sacked from that job soon after. ~Can't imagine why~

I mean, I tell this story like it's really funny, and make out like I was so much more naive (well, I was, but also, I knew what I was doing, though I didn't understand the reaction I'd get) but then again, this was the same workplace that I tell the green card story about. It's kinda LOL, but it's also... y'know.

Sorry, I generally hate the "drop a link on a thread without explaining or reacting or otherwise commenting on its contents" school of ILX posting, but there's this, too:

http://the-toast.net/2014/06/05/fanciest-genderqueer-youll-ever-meet/

On perceptions of "genderqueer", class intersection and "fancy".

been thinking about the media feminists reacting so strongly against the label "cis" the other day, and...even if they think it's because gender is a construct and weapon of the patriarchy (which, yes, but more about how narrowly socially acceptable performances of gender are defined), it's at root a denial of the trans experience. it's what we all talked about on branwell's gender thread really.

I haven't seen the twitterbarney but there's one aspect I can sympathise with: many prominent cis feminists, well before they were accomplished and recognised as such, had to run a gauntlet of abuse re. their gender or presentation of same by individual men (in addition to The Patriarchy bullshit we all suffer with and rail against to varying degrees). If they're being mean to transpeople on that basis, though, ARGH, the following words are important:

Intersection
Continuum
Spectrum.

We're all on one somewhere and the sooner we collectively understand that, the better.

No, sorry, I just don't buy that shit, because there are loads of feminists who went through all that same shit and yet still managed to come out of it managing to get through their lives without bullying trans women.

There's a part of me that thinks it's that same tight ringfencing, of people who have had to fight for a tiny modicum of power, hang onto that power for all its worth, yank the ladders up behind them. (Same as the persistent, recurring stink of racism within ~White Feminism~; I think it's telling that it's often the *same people* involved.) Someone who has had power used against them their entire lives, and finally gets a tiny bit of power, they have that sense of "I get to make the rules now, I set the boundaries" but instead of using those experiences of having been the subject of oppression to empathise with others, and attempt to find common ground with people being marginalised in other ways, they use it to exclude people worse off than them. Which is so counter-productive, and in which case, Patriarchy Wins Again (mwah hah hah hah!)

It's just infuriating, because there have been so many times I've tried to read TERFy logic, and it's so frustrating, because there are so many points where their logical argument goes A (yes, I agree) therefore B (yup, agree there too) therefore C (WHOAAAA NELLY NO, WAIT WTF). And part of that, I think is a logical error, of conflating "Gender is socially constructed" with "Gender is entirely a social construct" and then claiming that social constructs do not exist, or are purely imaginary or something.

I dunno; it's just that blunt-faced denial that other people's experiences are what they say they are and that a huge part of the ~feminist project~ is supposed to be believing that and practising that, even in the face of people who have not even had access to those kinds of experiences insisting that they cannot possibly be.

I mean, I can understand to a certain extend, the idea of the right to reject labels that are applied to you without your consent (rejecting negative labels like "bitch" or "slut" or "bossy" or whatever) but it's that weird mindset where it seems like people are rejecting "cis" not because it's applied to them without their consent, but because they object to the very concept, and are tainting the word with some negative connotation that it does not inherently have! It's one thing to say "I am not Cis, I feel very much non-binary, thank you"; that is a perfectly reasonable response. But that whole "there is NO SUCH THING as cis!!!" is just unaccountable.

Blah blah blah I feel like a broken record at this point and I have a garden to weed.

But mostly, just wanted to say "but I was hated on by the Patriarchy/individual sexists on my way up the ladder!!!" is just a pretty piss poor reason to throw shit at people on the ladders below you. Not buying it.

TERFs get no sympathy from me, just so we're clear. And I'm not buying it either, because I just plain don't buy allowing once-bullied people to perpetuate cycles of bullying/ganging up once one's 'gang' forms as if they're passing a particularly troublesome parcel. I wasn't terribly hetero-normative growing up (how many seven-year-olds toga themselves up in a zigzag afghan and scream "I'm a DRAG QUEEN!" while running around the neighbours' lawn, I ask you) and I got a lot of shit for it until I was about 16. If someone tried to apply cis to me in a very personal, hurtful way (as opposed to a theoretical, spectrumy way) I think my response would be the 'no thanks' one rather than the no-such-thing example.

Yeah, there's the rub. "I don't know that that fully applies to me?" is a valid response. "That doesn't exist" is not.

Ugh, I broke down and checked out what went down on twitter and all I can say is fuck TERFs forever, especially when just in the past couple days the body of a trans immigration reform activist in Anaheim was found behind a Dairy Queen, and a trans teenager here in Seattle who a bunch of my friends knew committed suicide. Straight to hell with that lot.

re: "Professional dress" - This is another good article I read not too long ago. Though the author identifies as a cis woman, she's working through a lot of the same things while trying to figure out how to present as butch in a corporate world that demands she wear dresses and heels:

http://mediadiversified.org/2014/03/17/first-boi-in-dressing-queer-in-the-corporate-world/

brazilian mecha ‏@fujoshidad

@CCriadoPerez 'we are all nonbinary' is the new 'i dont see race'