Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning Thread

Amazing!

holy shit!!!!

we exchanged a couple of letters but you danced with her i'm so jealous

and watched her rap along to "Beez in the Trap" iirc

rev :D

http://lowerdens.tumblr.com/post/90448691182/on-pride

Can I please ask, in future, anyone who would like to participate in this thread, not to link dump?

Firstly because this is an emotive topic for those of us that are affected by these issues. Secondly because, as you can see several times upthread, some people have been using this thread not-in-good-faith.

If you have something to share, please can you explain what you are sharing - what it's about - and why you are sharing it? I really think that would be helpful in terms of generating respect and good faith, and it would lead to more productive discussions. Can I just ask you folks to do that? Thanks!

xp - Jana Hunter is really great, thanks for posting that.

http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/

Mordy posted this Jack Halberstam blog entry in the creepy liberalism thread but I'm curious to what people in this thread think of it. I feel a bit of unease about the tendency towards individualism I sometimes see in queer circles and so a lot of what Halberstam says here resonates, but then his Gaga feminism thing doesn't really seem to account for the kinds of suffering that lead to that individualism seeming like a necessity. Maybe I think both sides are too positive about how self-construction can work? But I dunno.

I think Halberstam is right to call for more granular, intersectional analysis of marginalization and violence, which is why it's disappointing that his narrative about the spoiled queer kids of today seems to crudely efface experiential and material differences among LGBT youth for the sake of a tidy story about generations. On the whole, I agree with Natalia Cecire's reservations (see http://nataliacecire.blogspot.com/2014/07/on-neoliberal-rhetoric-of-harm.html). I'm also amused to see that Halberstam's essay has already spawned a Twitter parody, the work of the game designer and critic Merritt Kopas: https://twitter.com/halberslam.

I also rolled my eyes at Halberstam's use of Justin Vivian Bond's open letter: no one is stopping v from identifying as v pleases; what is offensive is when v casts other trans women as censorious and conformist if they don't want to accept being called what has mostly become a transmisogynistic slur.

(Credit where it's due: I see now that mattresslessness linked to Cecire's response first on the creepy liberalism thread.)

(i guess i picked the wrong week to order my first halberstam book, huh)

I've reached a point where, right now, I no longer have the emotional energy to read, digest, unpack, and respond to the ~latest outrageous thinkpiece~. It's work, and it's (often unpaid work, unlike the people who get commissioned to write the big ~thinkpieces~) work that marginalised people are expected to pick up and carry on top of the stream of bullshit that is living a marginalised life. (I mean, how's that for ~neoliberal~?)

I am glad, however, that other people have the time and the energy to sit down and unpick them. These are two other pieces which have been circulating in response. I have still not read the original piece, and may never find the energy to do so, but I on reading these pieces, they feel packed with good points.

On the failure of "Academia" to accommodate practices developed in Activism:

http://navigatethestream.tumblr.com/post/90947046597/another-anti-trigger-warning-article-has-come-and-im

On the failure of Halbermeschdude to actually understand the difference between Content Warnings and Trigger Warnings and the uses and meaning of either:

http://alicebreckless.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/trigger-warning-a-response-to-jack-halberstam/

thanks, I'll read all these later. And I'll also note for now that I kinda scanned the Halberstam piece before posting it here, noting the interesting bits about relating to race and class struggles and seemingly not noting the willfully outrageous pull-yr-socks-up tone, which I'm not at all down with.

I think Natalia Cecire already basically nailed the problems with Halberstam's essay, but Julia Serano has now weighed in, and has some interesting recollections about tensions within 90s queer and trans activism:

http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/07/regarding-generation-wars-some.html

lol halberstam

Hardly an event would go by back then without someone feeling violated, hurt, traumatized by someone’s poorly phrased question, another person’s bad word choice or even just the hint of perfume in the room. People with various kinds of fatigue, easily activated allergies, poorly managed trauma were constantly holding up proceedings to shout in loud voices about how bad they felt because someone had said, smoked, or sprayed something near them that had fouled up their breathing room. Others made adjustments, curbed their use of deodorant, tried to avoid patriarchal language, thought before they spoke, held each other, cried, moped, and ultimately disintegrated into a messy, unappealing morass of weepy, hypo-allergic, psychosomatic, anti-sex, anti-fun, anti-porn, pro-drama, pro-processing post-political subjects.

i interviewed for a job phonebanking at an environmentalist n.g.o. and i was told repeatedly, in advance, on the phone, in person, in documents, 'this is a scent-free environment'

apparently that one really stuck in halberstam's craw too

yeah, I'm old enough to remember lotsa folk who were environmentally ill in the Bay Area (before the Todd Haynes "Safe" film) and I gotta say, I am with Halberstam here a bit, and perhaps that's my generational prejudice talking. But I clearly remember the slaying-the-gay-father dramas that went down as the hip radical queers of the 90s got rid of the bad-old-gays who were trapped in their essentialist paradigms, etc. and on one level, yes, useful theoretical work was being done, but on another level, there was a drama of self-serving "victory over the old folks" going on, in which Foucault was in, the Mattachine Society was out, and anyone who didn't use exactly the words that we used was guilty of various sins that we would police in order to pump up our own cultural capital and feel younger / cooler / more enlightened. And watching (and chuckling along at some of the jokes, admittedly) as young trans activists revile someone like halberstam on Twitter w fake/parody accounts kinda just takes me back and makes me rethink the Queer Nation / ACT UP era that I came out in, and wonder about what was going on then, and whether queer culture might do generational difference with more or less venom than other cultures? Elizabeth Freeman to thread here on "temporal drag", stat.

I've read the Cecire and Serano pieces, and yeah, they have some useful points, about the pre-emptive gensture of "overing"-via-Ahmed, etc. so I get those critiques- but I also see something going on in people's vicious Twitter reactions to Halberstam that seems to me to reveal an aggression and, yes, age-ist hostility that sits rather oddly beside the demand for a world in which everything be served up pre-labeled with trigger warnings, like a mom cutting the crust off sandwiches- these ostensibly sensitive people can be awfully cruel, apparently.

to be fair to crustless sandwiches, they are delightful.

The weird thing about this "generational war" idea is that I can distinctly remember having endless discussions about content/trigger warnings, deciding whether to use them, whether they were protection or censorship, deciding ultimately they were no more harmful and slightly more useful than film ratings systems... back in the 90s.

Side point: When you read someone acting "with aggression" on twitter, or elsewhere, kindly take a moment to think about how much defensive behaviour and aggressive behaviour can look alike when viewed from outside. When someone returns hostility for hostility, is that really "aggression"?

But really, I don't think this is the thread for all that.

ostensibly sensitive people can be awfully cruel qft

"People who have been treated cruelly their entire lives can sometimes return cruelty with the same cruelty they have learned at the hands of others" qft

nobody's perfect

yeah, MCS is definitely the silliest thing my activist queer friends get up in arms about. I want to just start yelling "PSEUDOSCIENCE!" at people sometimes

xps

just today read the Serano response, really good

(also I'm happy today cause I found out my friend is gonna be able to get the top surgery he wants!)

commentary by porpentine

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
the only real feminism is meme feminism

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
if your ideas can't make it viral, you should consider whether you're a real feminist or not, and if those ideas in fact suck?

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
i completely agree that feminism is for everyone. it is for everyone who can generate enough social media buzz, not no-follower randos

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
there are two kinds of women. women who can go viral, and women who are randos

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
but there is a problem when transgendered individuals have male socialized virality and not female socialized virality

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
there are just feminine and masculine ways of liking or faving a post and some people have the socialization for that

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
would i accept a transgendered female identified person as part of a woman and transgendered female identified person movement? absolutely

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
But they need to get the female socialized favs. We need to get on Buzzfeed. On the Atlantic. On Bustle. On the Times. This is core

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
Until people see that transgendereds are exactly like them, they will think they are not like them. Like a dog or opossum.

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
Do you know when the killing of transgendered female people stops? It stops when we have enough articles in the Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Bustle.

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
Do you care about transgendered females not having health care, hormones, housing, food? Make a VIDEOGAME with a TRANSGENDERED CHARACTER

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
Do you know why people were killing & discriminating against transfemales hundreds of years ago? Because there were no inclusive videogames

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
If someone comes up to you and tells you they were "abused" or "assaulted", just stop drop and roll. Roll right out of the building

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
Because you know what's really abusive? Trying to guilt someone with what happened to YOU. Ever hear of TMI?

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
There is a time and a place to be abused and it is by someone who is not well known or important or socially connected!

@aliendovecote · Jul 24
And if you have less followers than them, I'm sorry, but maybe you were asking for it? They are obviously going to out-viral you

is there a point to posting a hostile, sarcastic missive with an indiscernible point (or even POV) itt?

The only point was that I liked it, and I think her point is pretty discernible. As someone very connected to twitter and Internet culture and the blogoverse, she's upset and irritated by well-connected feminist bloggers co-opting and policing trans women's thoughts and identities for clicks. She laments that the discussion and writing she sees most focuses on trivial issues instead of the issues that affect trans women most: violence, housing insecurity, unemployment. I admit that her being involved in game development and writing probably influences what she reads and what discussions are peripheral to her, but her tweets show that she casts a wider net than that, too.

A variety of this click/like/follow visibility thing came up here on ilx after the TN-C reparations article was published. Some guy's tweet was linked to on the thread where the article was being discussed, and the guy was basically dismissed for sort of sub tweeting and also for not having enough followers, but what ilx didn't notice or look into was that behind that guy's tweet was a conversation happening among black women, that the guy, who was twitter-follower-challenged, didn't really originate the conversation, and that the conversation regarding that article that the group of black women were having didn't even register as existing.

What criticisms of theirs that I remember are:

- black women have been writing and talking about those issues for years in the academy and they weren't getting credit
- these same women write painstakingly for peer review while potentially legitimate criticism of TN-C's article is drowned in click bait noise and the usual white supremacist garbage
- TN-C seems to think America is worth saving (some of the black women writing have a different attitude). TN-C is spinning his wheels idealistically instead of focusing on pragmatic means of tactical interest convergence.

That's all I can remember!

Porpentine talking about clicks and follows and the salience of her and other trans women's opinions and identities seems appropriate for this thread. The immense power and noise of the new yellow press and the make-a-buck savior mentality of do-gooder liberalism seems pertinent, too.I don't think this is some tortuous extrapolation.

and that the conversation regarding that article that the group of black women were having didn't even register as existing.

amazing that a bunch of tweets along the lines "How dare TNC speak about women's hair" didn't lead us back to the discussion of which you speak

There's some validity to Porpentine's tweets, but their lack of specificity means they lose some force. Her comments on abuse and invisibility are also complicated, for me, by knowing that at least one friend of a friend, along with several other people, has called out Porpentine as having been emotionally abusive towards her, and I don't feel I have grounds to doubt her or others' claims. (Of course, having acted abusively obviously doesn't exclude having experienced abuse, so it's complicated.)

Anyway, Julia Serano has some useful critical comments on the recent New Yorker article on TERFs here: http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/07/two-articles-related-to-femininity-and.html

I was going to post this to the Butch/Dapper Style thread until I realised that is actually on the Style board and presumably primarily for style tips and links to stuff you can buy or at least style blogs, so, uh - recent PBS segment on dapper/genderqueer style which also touches on a few recent fashion advertising campaigns with trans models:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/right-handsome-clothing-gender-non-conformists-rise/
(video, though there is a transcript, which reads OK on its own but is a little confusing in places without the video)

These people all look awesome but they are all also v skinny and I am still struggling not with lacking the right to be handsome but with the right not to be handsome or pretty or anything in between, but hey, more power to those people

xps: ok, I understand now but when I first read them I couldn't even determine whether it was a trans woman speaking! So I was very confused.

She seemed to be shooting in every direction and I couldn't determine which tweets were genuine and which were sarcasm.

Spacecadet, that link would have been fine on the Butch/Dapper thread ("style", to me, is so much more than just photos of clothes and where to buy them, it is about the semiotics of clothing itself, what it means, etc. which that link certainly goes into.) But I guess it also certainly belongs here... Though, to me, the most interesting but disconcerting bit to me, which I suppose is just because it is an American programme, is talking about pushing a growing acceptance of Trans/genderqueer people and issues because of the growing *financial* clout of the LGBT demographic. Which on one level is Market Capitalism showing how "Neo-Liberalism" *can* in point of fact have a liberalising effect on a society, because it's impossible to ignore how lucrative that certain market is. But also showing exactly how *gross* the "liberalising" effect of Neo-Liberalism is, because it seems to imply that only demographics which are perceived as lucrative will be tolerated, and the whole thing gets turned into a ~lifestyle~ for the positioning of consumer products, rather than an exploration of gender and identity and meaning, and just... wow, no, gross.

And yeah, the message that comes through the filter of Class, is that the current class signifier is to be very thin, and you can be accepted and marketed to if you look rich, thin, attractive, can afford a $1500 suit. Which is something that other people are fighting on multiple fronts to keep the fuck out of this. (The link, I can't remember if I put it above or on the dapper thread about the perception of genderqueers as "fancy" and highly Classed.)

I mean, it's a conversation worth having, but I don't know about having it here or having it on the other thread. When Viceroy and I came up with the idea of this thread, I didn't see it turning out the way it did. Like, I wanted a space for genderqueer and trans* persons to share our own experiences and discuss the issues affecting our lives. Kinda like the Girl thread or the Gay thread but for genderqueers. Except it hasn't really turned out that way, and I guess ILX maybe needed a general "Trans Discussion Thread" where people could dump links and discuss news items or, y'know, Cis people can perform "caring about Trans* issues" or "shout at trans people" or whatever.

But that does crowd out individuals wanting to discuss the minutia of their lives, and that issues of "how do I get away from performing pretty OR performing handsome and just have the right to BE" seem trivial by comparison with "Here is the latest Outrage and 50 blogs discussing it". But I do actually think that those trivial "how the fuck do I work my life in this space" questions are also important, and deserve a space for discussion. But maybe not in a place where people are link-dumping outrages, because it can be uncomfortable to have try to address our small and very personal issues in a room full of Big Important Political Issues. (The Personal *is* Political, yes, but... rooms full of strangers demanding explanations and Debate! versus rooms full of friends who have been through the same thing and are facing the same issues and just talking about them.)

This quote from that piece kinda gets at that tension, though:

RACHEL TUTERA: Yes it has been emotional for sure. Shopping or wearing clothes seems like a really mundane thing. But actually it’s, like, incredibly meaningful and incredibly powerful and it can really, like, make or break an identity.

S.H.O.P.P.I.N.G. I mean, it's so trivial, because it's what girls do, it's what gays do, and should not be afforded attention because it's mundane. (That attitude can go fuck itself in orifices.) S.H.O.P.P.I.N.G. and turning our most personal and intimate details into the driving forces of market capitalism, that's a different question, and one I'm still not sure how to resolve.

so yeah, I posted this on fb last night. I didn't really plan to, it just all came out, and I'm feeling very emotional today.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10203677555634170&id=1075536484

its amazing

I'm out as a trans woman, not as genderqueer, but I can relate to a lot of what you've written, especially about the gradual process of self-recognition. Congratulations on being able to share this, Rev! (And I'm so glad your friends are supportive!)

Thank you! How is everything going with you? (If you care to share.)

Rev I was crying and smiling all over your post this morning, thank you for sharing it.

<3 u Rev

(yr post inspired so many feelings, and a lot of recognitions, but ILX is not the place for them, for me)

Rev I never ever talk about my gender with anyone, largely because it's been my whole life so mercurial. When you described how variable these factors had been for you, both in terms of sexuality and gender, it rang so true

Rev, if I liked posts on FB I would like yours so hard.

awesome

10/10 rev

Sorry I didn't see your post sooner to reply, Rev--my internet access is intermittent these days. I'm actually doing really well--I've been on hormones since May, out to pretty much everyone in my social circle since June, and going exclusively by my chosen name and female pronouns since coming out. It's been almost shocking how little friction there's been socially (at least insofar as I'd been mentally amplifying the stigma involved for most of my life)--my father's uncomfortable about it, but everyone else has been really supportive. At times it does feel like my gender only exists for myself and my friends, because I still get read as male pretty constantly, but I haven't been on hormones long, and haven't done much to change my presentation yet, so I just have to try to be patient (not that I'll ever pass as cis, and not that "passing" is at all useful to think about). That's a really minor frustration compared to what I'd expected when I started being honest with myself, though. I'm probably moving to Seattle late next year, after finishing some academic work in my current town, since I have a few friends in the queer community there and it's supposed to be one of the more trans-friendly cities in the US (among its other qualities). Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread. Congratulations (again), Rev, and thanks for your openness!

p.s. OWS, this is not derailing the thread, this is what the thread *is* (or at least its intention was).

I mean, there's a part of me that wants to say (without a hint of irony or sarcasm or anything that is not genuine) "welcome to womanhood" because when you start to apologise for taking up space, or apologise for expressing yourself or even for being on topic on a thread, that is an aspect of Becoming A Woman that most of us born with innie genitals and turned into women are unfortunately all too familiar with. Like "passing" is not just about appearance, it's about demeanour. And that demeanour of apologising for talking or being loud or taking up space or even existing is part of the expectation of womanhood, for cis and trans women. (And it's a fucking trap.)

But this shit isn't helpful, so I'll shut it. But basically, congratulations and I hope that moving to Seattle is wonderful and life-expanding for you!

Really good post, Rev, and glad to hear things are going well for you, ows.

rev, that was so thoughtful. Thank you for sharing it.

<3 rev