Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning Thread

Fwiw I mostly agree with dr. Morbs re "privelaged attention whore" status. I mean, she certainly is that but something more interesting and progressive may result.

Or may not.

In other words that was a non post. But attention whoring has many levels and degrees.

can we be grown ups and stop using 'attention whore' it is the pits

We can also be grown up and say "attention whore" if it is apt. I mean on ILX anyway.

at the very least, i support C over K

i mean i dont think it is ever apt to use sry, least of all for someone who has undergone the most high profile transition in the US

xp

That's ok. Personally I find an aspect of that in this situation and will not use that phrase.

But will not use that phrase, rather.

morbs largely otm

m bison

attention bore

*takes your nerf ball and throws it over the fence where the mean dog lives*

i got renee richards' autograph when i was a kid

who has undergone the most high profile transition in the US

yes, riches always determine importance

I agree with Dr Morbs also overall but there's something about "the former Bruce Jenner" rather than Caitlyn Jenner or even just Bruce Jenner on its own that's unsavoiry.

considering a whole hell of a lot of ppl do not (think they) know a trans person, i think it's important. caitlyn's not going to snap her fingers and all transphobia will vanish, but it's a big deal! i guess i don't understand why that's a small thing for you.

well i grew up with him as Bruce, the World's Greatest Athlete who then plunged downward to the Village People Movie, so sue me. xp

THEY DON'T KNOW THIS ONE EITHER.

"the former Bruce Jenner" is enough to tell Morbs to fuck right off, without any other explanation needed.

I don't agree.

who has undergone the most high profile transition in the US

yes, riches always determine importance

― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius), Thursday, June 4, 2015 3:39 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that's what's sad about it and why Morbs is right. Or, at least, why I agree with him to some extent.

Fuck it I don't know what to think.

i'll fuck right off then, em -- enjoy the Reality Show Politics of Everything

Fwiw I think your stance is legit and that you should not fuck off.

Unless you want to and that's also legit and I totally respect your rights to fuck off it may also be an important moment in fucking off on ILX and may have repercussions globally.

My overall feeling is who gives a fuck about Caitlyn jenner?

& that reality show bullshit is something we should all resist.

ilx, where we disown a moment of high-profile representation for a marginalized group because it's just a bit too gauche by 2004 standards

I hadn't heard of bruce jenner til maybe 2013 don't really have a good idea of the popular view I've seen photos online same with kardashians although I don't know that I've seen a video or heard any of them utter a word although not out of any deliberate avoidance or distaste or anything but I guess it's probably not really for me and I find it difficult imagine the reality of their various programmes and so on. I think ok you're caitlyn no prob. I also think it's fine for the most high profile transition in the US to be a person reviled by some for their perceived courting of publicity and superficiality of the persona they project or whatever. must be possible to celebrate the event so to speak without celebrating the person if you think you really don't like the person for some reason without refusing to call them by their chosen name or gender or suggesting an entirely cynical root to their having transitioned etc.

no i disagree morbs you should definitely fuck right off a cliff for reviving this thread to do nothing more than promote your cantankerous hobbyhorse opinions

Apologies myself for being cantankerous.

it's possible to lead into / ask for more thought on / raise a valid point a subject, like trans visibility, without using abusive language.

but where would one find the motivation to do so without the internalized codependence "whore" offers to so many previously or not-so-previously religious gay men.

http://vihart.com/vi-hart-weekly-june-5th/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/what-makes-a-woman.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Meat on the bones on Morbs' POV..

yes, some standard terf bs for morbs to nod along to

wow @ people whose hatred for celebrity culture is so strong that it overrides basic humanity, or perhaps just exposes their lack of it

caitlyn jenner's fame and career do not negate her story, and desiring to tell it is not attention-seeking, whatever you even mean by that

w/r/t that terrible nyt article, surely i will read nothing worse than the trans-as-blackface analogy this year

this has occasioned a lot of TERF-lite thought pieces from femenists who seemingly didn't start thinking about trans people until about a month ago

For the most part I've been willing to let cis people talk amongst themselves through the whole Caitlyn Jenner mediastorm, but that ridiculous NYT op-ed reminds me that it's kind of perversely fascinating to see how little transmisogynist talking points have evolved (socialization is destiny, except when anatomy is! trans people invade women's spaces and shut down feminist discourse! gendered and racialized modes of oppression function in just the same way!) since the 70s heyday of Janice Raymond, Mary Daly, and their ilk.

As for Caitlyn's transition, it isn't particularly relevant to my life and I consider a number of aspects of its media coverage to be regressive or sensationalistic, but I'm not interested in policing Jenner's body or the way she articulates her identity even if I don't agree with her politics. I'm suspicious of the assumption that increased media visibility (especially within the frame of celebrity culture) readily translates into more livable material conditions for most trans people (as Red Durkin recently said, "Cis conservatives are measuring success in anti-trans laws passed, cis liberals are measuring it in magazine covers"), but that's mostly a reason to look to grassroots organizations (like SRLP or the Audre Lorde Project) and activists as agents of change. Janet Mock's recent note on Caitlyn Jenner is useful, I think, in talking about some of the broader political issues involved (http://janetmock.com/2015/06/03/caitlyn-jenner-vanity-fair-transgender/), as is Scott Long's essay on the limits of modes of politics centered around visibility and recognition (http://paper-bird.net/2015/05/04/icons/).

On a more frivolous note, my favorite comment on that NYT essay so far is probably merritt kopas's: "ppl who haven't lived their entire lives as women & died as women & returned from the grave as she-wraiths shouldn't get to define womanhood."

wtf
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/rekha-basu/2015/07/16/arrested-transgender-sex-inmate-tests-jailers/30269945/

help here
http://sfwelcomeministry.blogspot.com/2015/07/arrested-for-being-transgender-meagan.html

Yeah, this is completely awful. There's some followup at the Advocate(http://www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/07/20/black-trans-woman-profiled-sex-worker-gains-online-following-may-remain-jaile) and some other relevant points made here (though without direct reference to Meagan Taylor): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chase-strangio/why-bail-reform-should-be-an-lgbt-movement-priority_b_7739166.html

McCarthy and Krum decided the best approach for Taylor’s comfort and for corrections officers was a female officer doing the top part and a male doing the bottom.

Thankfully, Taylor's now been released, though obviously the broader problems of anti-Black and transphobic profiling remain: http://transgenderlawcenter.org/archives/11786

Hey everybody, just bumping this thread. I feel bad that I have a pretty unfortunately aggressive DN in the OP... Maybe some wonderful mod can change that somehow?

Ugh, being transgendered in jail is a nightmare, or pretty much any interaction with law enforcement. Obvious she was arrested because of it, it seems like her probation violation is generally not an offense people get arrested for. I'm glad she was able to raise some money for her legal defense tho.

Damn, the only slightly positive thing wrt to trans & cops/prison is Chelsea Manning being allowed to transition, but she'll still be in prison for like 29 more years. :/

Something I wanted to say on the other thread: I can't relate to people who say they have no inner sense of gender or never thinking about their gender presentations.

I feel like this is because they've never had to because they don't feel any discomfort or anything else about it. Seems like the same thing as people who say "well, I don't FEEL heterosexual."

They don't understand how gender is performative because they've never had problems with their role.

Yeah, there's a good discussion of cis embodiment in terms of this in Serano's Whipping Girl.

Though, obviously, cis ppl can also have complex ways of thinking about their gender....

Though she's not writing directly about gender, I like the way Sara Ahmed discusses the relationship between normativity and comfort (http://feministkilljoys.com/2014/02/03/a-sinking-feeling/):

It is important to consider how heterosexuality functions powerfully not simply as a series of norms and ideals, but also through emotions that shape bodies as well as worlds: hetero/norms are investments, which are ‘taken on’ and ‘taken in’ by subjects. It is no accident that compulsory heterosexuality works powerfully in the most casual modes of conversation: one asks, “do you have a boyfriend?”(to a girl), or one asks, “do you have a girlfriend” (to a boy). [...] No matter how ‘out’ you may be, how (un)comfortably queer you may feel, those moments of interpellation get repeated over time, and can be experienced as a bodily injury; moments which position queer subjects as failed in their failure to live up to the “hey you too” of heterosexual self-narration. The everydayness of compulsory heterosexuality is also its affectiveness, wrapped up as it is with moments of ceremony (birth, marriage, death) that bind families together, and with the ongoing investment in the sentimentality of friendship and romance. Of course, such a sentimentality is deeply embedded with public as well as private culture; stories of heterosexual romance proliferate as a matter of human interest. As Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner argue, “National heterosexuality is the mechanism by which a core national culture can be imagined as a sanitised space of sentimental feeling".
We can consider the sanitised space as a comfort zone. Normativity is comfortable for those who can inhabit it. The word “comfort” suggests well-being and satisfaction, but it also suggests an ease and an easiness. To follow the rules of heterosexuality is to be at ease in a world that reflects back the couple form one inhabits as an ideal. Of course, one can be made to feel uneasy by one’s inhabitance of an ideal. One can be made uncomfortable by one’s own comforts. To see heterosexuality as an ideal that one might or might not follow – or to be uncomfortable by the privileges one is given by inhabiting a heterosexual world – is a less comforting form of comfort. But comfort it remains and comfort is very hard to notice when one experiences it.

a lot to think about and digest in this really excellent seán faye piece on trans identities and authenticity

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2293-to-be-real-on-trans-aesthetics-and-authenticity-by-sean-faye

http://www.transequality.org/issues/resources/voting-while-trans-preparing-voter-id-laws

^^^
Useful to have out there

what do you do when your agender friend assumes a name that is based on a questionable/kinda racist joke e.g. the japanese l-r thing