Sometimes Davey Wins

Warren Blumenfeld on The Media, Suicide, and Homophobia

2010-10-23T18:39:00.000-04:00

The Media, Suicide, and Homophobia

A Commentary by Warren J. Blumenfeld

What can clearly be referred to as a continuing epidemic, within only the past few weeks, a number of gay young men have taken their lives by all indications as a result of the unrelenting homophobic taunts, harassment, and attacks they had to endure by their peers: Seth Walsh, 13, hung himself from a tree outside his California home; Billy Lucas, 15, hung himself in Indiana; Asher Brown, 13, from Texas shot himself in the head; Tyler Clementi, 18, first-year student from Rutgers University took his life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. And though we are not yet certain of the precipitating factors, now we hear of the tragic suicide of gay student, Raymond Chase, 19, from Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island.

Throughout the past week, I have attempted to monitor the media to determine any themes in the way they have represented these tragic incidents. For many of the news outlets, it appears they are portraying these events as some sort of new trend they have deftly unearthed.

In reality, however, the media and our society generally suffers from a collective memory loss. This issue has arisen numerous times over the decades, but then appears in the media from time to time as if it were a unique and previously unrecorded development.

Back in 1989, for example, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its "Report on the Secretary's Task Force on Youth Suicide," which found that "A majority of suicide attempts by homosexuals occur during their youth, and gay youth are 2 to 3 times more likely to attempt suicide than other young people. They may comprise up to 30 percent of (the estimated 5,000) completed youth suicides annually.” [U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Gay Male and Lesbian Youth Suicide," by Paul Gibson, in Report of the Secretary's Task Force on Youth Suicide, ed. Marcia R. Feinleib, Washington, DC, January 1989.]

The report recommended that "mental health and youth service agencies can provide acceptance and support for young homosexuals, train their personnel on gay issues, and provide appropriate gay adult role models; schools can protect gay youth from abuse from their peers and provide accurate information about homosexuality in health curricula; families should accept their child and work toward educating themselves about the development and nature of homosexuality"

The causes for these suicides have also been known and documented for decades as well. For example, Kevin Berrill, Director of the Anti-Violence Project of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force at the time of the 1989 report’s release stated correctly pinpointed the societal impact: "The increased risk of suicide facing these youth is linked to growing up in a society that teaches them to hide and to hate themselves.”

Initially, however, the report was suppressed by the George Herbert Walker Bush administration under pressure from right-wing groups and by conservatives in Congress. After the findings, William Dannemeyer, who was at the time a conservative Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California, called for then-president Bush to "dismiss from public service all persons still employed who concocted this homosexual pledge of allegiance and sealed the lid on these misjudgments for good." HHS Secretary Louis Sullivan wrote in a letter to Dannemeyer that the study "undermined the institution of the family." [Quoted in Chris Bull, "Suicidal Tendencies," The Advocate, April 5, 1994, p. 37.]

The findings of the report, however, were leaked to the press and finally released.

Other studies confirmed these findings. Gary Remafedi, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, and author of Death by Denial: Studies of Attempted and Completed Suicide in Gay and Lesbian and Bisexual Youth, found in a 1991 study of 150 gay and lesbian youths in Minneapolis, more than 30% said they had attempted suicide at least once as a teenager.

“The youths who are at the greatest risk for suicide are the ones who are least likely to reveal their sexual orientation to anyone. Suicide may be a way of making sure that no one ever knows. It's homophobia that's killing these kids.” [Gary Remafedi, quoted in Bull, Chris, "Suicidal Tendencies," The Advocate, April 5, 1994, p. 38.]

Some media recently have labeled the high profile suicide of Tyler Clementi as a national “wake up call” to the problem of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender suicide.

Don’t blame me if I’m cynical, but didn’t we hear the same warning back in 1998 after the brutal homophobic murder of Matthew Shepard. Hundreds, maybe thousands of LGBT people have suffered vicious attacks, many ending in murder since 1998. Why then do the media not continually cover these incidents. If they did, our nation would not need a “wake up call.” We as a society might remain awake and vigilant.

I suspect in a week or so, even as the suicides and homophobic assaults continue, the media will move onto its next so-called “trend.” In a few years, maybe ten or so, they will issue yet another “wake up call” and (re)discover homophobia and its impact on the lives of our youth all over again.

Instead, we as a society must not depend on the media to alert us to the realities. As a society, we must take responsibility for the consequences for our inaction. More importantly, we must take responsibility for eliminating the stigma and the stereotyping of anyone and any group along the complete spectrum of human diversity.

Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld, Associate Professor of Multicultural and International Curriculum Studies at Iowa State University. He is co-editor of Readings for Diversity and Social Justice and Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in the United States.

Permission granted to forward or publish this commentary. Any editing must be cleared by the author: wblumen@iastate.edu

An Open Letter to My Friends Who Go to Michfest

2010-07-20T10:15:00.000-04:00

By Annie Danger
(Feel free to share widely, just credit where appropriate) (To Annie Danger! Not to this blog!)

Dear you,

I want to talk about the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Rather, I’m feeling like I have to bring up this conversation and push it forward and I’m pretty frustrated with that because, well, I don’t want to have to talk about the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. I understand and respect that it is important to you. I know you love it, and I am asking you to do more loving, not less.

I feel like I have to bring it up because I feel pretty shitty that so many of my friends attend and how they do or do not talk to me about it. Perhaps you are one of those friends?

To note: I do not want to start a fight. I am making a request for greater engagement with the curious politics of coalition building and alliance. I understand this is a complex-feeling issue with a lot of history. This may be a call out, but it is with a revolutionary ethic of love that I send it. In this ethic, I do my best to drive my activism and my life with a difficult and powerful combination of respect, recognition, honest and open communication, affection, commitment, and trust for all people in this world. Especially my allies.

This letter comes from trying to put my years of resent through this filter of loving: I feel hurt and I am writing because want to trust that you have my back as a transwoman. I am having a hard time separating your attendance of MWMF and your silence with me about this issue from your level of respect for me; for my body. I don’t want to feel this way and I am willing to do the work to let go of a decade of resent, but I need your help. Will you help me?

I have spent a lot of time trying to make this letter driven by more than anger and resent. When you go to Michigan, I push you away. I keep you at arm’s length as an ally of transwomen. As an ally of me. What I hear is that the festival is a powerful and welcoming other planet where women’s lives, pains, struggles, and hopes are more commonly understood. This is allegedly a place of healing based on welcoming. A harsh toke for me: This is a place where I, on a body level even more than a political one, am profoundly unwelcome.

There is no place I’ve ever been where my body and my experience of gender feel safe, wanted, welcome, supported, normalized, trusted, trustworthy. There is little or no safe space for transwomen. Not even at queer land, where we are often wanted in the abstract but not so much welcomed in practice. People don’t seem to know how to think about transwomen. And for us to make a squawk about our treatment often runs the risk of being called out as misuse of the male privilege we were raised with. To be woman enough to share womyn’s spaces, we must be good girls—we must be quiet.

So here we are, 35 years into the MWMF and nearly 11 years into my life as an out, hormone-enhanced transsexual. I have spent this decade- plus fairly actively turning my back on the arguments around Michigan because it was simply not my fight: I cannot imagine going there and feeling safe. Even the naming of womyn with a ‘y’: I respect and understand the place from which this nomenclature comes. But it must also be said that it drips gender essentialism in its disassociation from male language, tells me I am not important there, not a priority.

So I disengaged. There are a lot more pressing issues, in general or specifically about trans-inlcusion and the safety of transwomen, than trying to get a bunch of terrified separatists to let me pay them to camp in their woods and attend their party. And when more and more friends kept going, and when you proceeded for years to forget that it is an issue for me—to chat all about it like it was just someplace I didn’t happen to go; to tell me you wished you could get me there and never go much further than that; to discuss my absence while at the festival but not much of why—I proceeded to turn my back in small ways on you, too. Just the tiniest, most pernicious ways: silent distrusts, people held so close, but at arm’s length when it comes to recognizing and caring for my life, my struggle as a transwoman, or my body. And now I feel pushed, finally, to say something because my lover is going. My love. And because of this, I am struggling to believe she really sees and loves my trans body because of it.

I am also speaking up because, in only the most technical of senses, I could finally go: I can purchase a ticket as an out transsexual woman (though one cannot find that information on the MWMF website). I have considered going. I have had hours and hours of conversations recently—with decade-long Michfest workers, with transwoman friends and their lovers, with women’s-movement organizers who have never been to MWMF, and with those who know me best—about this possibility and I have come to a very solid conclusion: I have no moving reason to put myself through that emotional shredder. I cannot go there and not interact with this issue of trans-exclusion. It is on my body. To go and try to have fun, to do anything but loud and firey activism about this issue would be to leave my body. To disassociate further from a body I fight daily to be in.

And, yes, this issue of my friends at Michigan is a trigger point for a whole world full of transphobia. I feel your attendance with all the weight of a decade of distrust around trans issues. My experience of transwomanhood is one that runs a baseline of distrust: I do not tend to expect anyone except for other transwomen (not genderqueers, not my queers, not trans men) to really see or make room for trans women. But I do hope they would. I am asking for help: I want to build this trust. I am tired of crying alone and feeling like I have to take care of transwomen because no one but transwomen is willing to really take a stand for us. I want to build this coalition. I want this tired old issue to move in new, healing directions. I want to let go of all this resent. I want us to be a stronger, smarter community. But reaching a hand out on my end requires so much clear, concerted effort on your end. Show me you are as committed as I am to justice around this issue. I am tired of ignoring this issue.

There are a lot of different contexts to this issue, so many needs to meet, so many ways to talk strategy, so many enormous feelings to unpack and source, and I know I have work to do here, too. But under all the complicated ways to have this discussion, I keep feeling horrible about your support of this institution. I don’t want to. I respect that it is powerful and I do my best to remember that it is powerful in ways I simply cannot imagine. I know you do some sort of work on behalf of trans issues while inside the festival, but I do not know what it is and I see no results. What I do hear is all the fun times, amazing things to learn, deep connections, healing, and fucking that happens. You are much better at letting me know that part. I hear from you your defenses but not your explanations. I am writing this because I want more. I want you to actually show me that you have my back.

I understand that change is slow. That, technically, there are changes afoot. But I am writing to remind you that in the meantime, you have to actually show me that you respect the very real issue of transwomen’s lives.

I am not, necessarily, asking you to not attend. I am asking you to answer, with action, this: How is this more than just a party in the woods? What does it mean that you can go and I cannot? I cannot forget that my body is not valid there. You cannot remain silent with me about this and expect me to trust you.

I am asking you for proactive communication. I am saying that by the simple act of going to this place, you are engaging this issue of trans inclusion. So please stop feeling funny and being mostly quiet about it. Please restrain yourself from feeling defensive and instead engage me on this before I have to engage you. That may not involve calling me to discuss this. I am asking you to show me you are my ally. I am asking you to speak up. I am asking you to make transwomen visible in this place where we are made invisible. I am asking you to be loud and loving and creative. I am asking you to rock the boat.

I hear many people who attend are in support of trans women attending, but I do not feel welcome. The culture of separatism amongst the organizers and the legacy of this bigotry are much stronger than the words “I really think most people would want you there.” This is not your fault, but if you are going to go there and remain close to me, I am requesting that you make it your issue in a much more visible way. Please do things while you’re there that show me that you really respect my body. My life. My womanhood. Please let me know about them. Please be willing to push a little harder. Please show me I can trust you to have my back. Please, if you’re willing: stand up, step it up, and be a louder ally. I am asking you to love me as much as you love this festival.

Truly,
Annie Danger

Identity is Strategic

2010-05-19T00:52:00.005-04:00

‎ “… the use of any word for myself—lesbian, transperson, transgender, butch, boy, mister, FTM ‎fag, butch - has always been/will always be strategic…”‎
‎ -Dean Spade, in “Resisting Medicine, Re/modeling Gender,” Berkeley Women's Law Journal, ‎Volume 18, p.15 (2003)‎

On May 17, I went to Sacramento with Transgender Law Center ‎for the first ever California Transgender Lobby Day. I memorized a list of talking ‎points and prepared to have three nearly-identical 15-minute conversations with three different ‎representatives.

After a day of very thorough preparation for my first every lobbying adventure, I realized there ‎was one question not yet answered. How was I supposed to introduce myself? We wanted our ‎representatives to know that we were a group of both trans people and cisgender allies there to express our ‎concern about issues of importance to our communities (including healthcare access, ‎employment, mental health access for youth, and inclusive data collection). So of course we wanted to introduce ourselves by saying something about who we were and our ‎relationship to the community.‎

At first I thought I’d say, “My name is Davey and I’m a transgender constituent ….” The ‎problem with this straightforward approach is that people often get confused when I keep it that ‎simple. If I say I’m transgender to someone who doesn’t really know any transgender people, ‎they tend to assume I’m a trans woman. Oops.‎

The obvious alternative was to say, “My name is Davey and I’m a transgender man ….” The ‎only problem with this is that it’s not true. I don’t identify as a man. The word transman itches ‎me almost as bad as the word woman. Hmm.‎

Of course most legislators are unlikely to understand MtF / FtM, if only because acronyms are confusing.

What I’d like to say, if it has to start with, “I am a [one word identity],” is that I’m genderqueer. But that word ‎does not go very far with legislators, or most people outside of trans communities. And, I reminded myself, ‎ we don’t need legislators to “understand” us, we just need them to do the right thing.

I decided to tell the legislators a label they could recognize, even if it wasn’t a perfect (or even ‎good) reflection of how I understand myself. I bit the bullet and told them I was a transgender man. They seemed sympathetic to our requests. And after each ‎meeting I quoted Dean Spade to myself: … the use of any word for myself … has always ‎been/will always be strategic…. ‎

Getting Pronouns Right - Part 7

2010-05-02T22:31:00.004-04:00

Why it’s Hard to Get Pronouns Right: Because You Don’t Like Him/Her

This is the seventh and final installment of a longish and very drafty article on – you guessed it - getting pronouns right. Soon I'll embark on the process of editing down to a more digestible portion. Most of this work will happen offline. Holler (comment) if you want to be a reader!

There are lots of ways that our feelings about someone – whether conscious or unconscious - can come out in our behavior, including in our pronouns use. The simplest example if you just don’t like someone, and so don’t feel motivated to do the work to call them the right pronoun.

For example, years ago, a younger trans man in my community showed a clear pattern of calling me “he” during those times when he respected and looked up to me, and “she” during those times when he resented or disliked me (such as when someone he wanted to date started showing interest in dating me).

On the other side, one of the people in my life for whom I’ve had the most trouble getting pronouns right happens to be someone who really gets on my nerves. This is completely unrelated to her gender, and of course a totally unfair reason to keep slipping up. Once I was able to recognize what was going on for me in that situation, I was able to call her the pronouns she prefers even though I still disliked her. We continued to have conflict, but we could give each other the basic courtesy of respecting each other’s genders, and were free to identify more clearly what the conflict was actually about.

It’s my belief that I’m not obligated to like everybody, but I am obligated to treat everybody with basic respect and dignity, and that includes respecting their gender whether or not we enjoy each other’s company.

Why it’s Hard to Get Pronouns Right: Because You Don’t Want Him/Her in Your Club

Sometimes, the pronoun you default to for someone depends on whether or not you perceive them as part of your in-group in terms of gender and/or sexual orientation. One person I interviewed described very specifically how her ability to change pronouns for a friend who was in transition was directly related to how she saw that person’s gender in terms of her own gender. The interviewee is a queer and genderqueer woman, and so was her friend. When her friend’s gender experience shifted and he started requesting male pronouns, the interviewee struggled because she was used to seeing their genders as similar. She thought, “If he’s a guy … what does that mean about me?” Of course, she knew that it didn’t need to mean anything. But her feeling that her friend was “like her” or in her in-group made it difficult for her to separate this person’s gender from her own.

In a more everyday example, when I am introduced to heterosexual non-trans men, it seems that those who call me “he” are generally those who also treat me like “one of the guys” in other ways. They see me as part of their in-group. Non-trans men who persist in calling me she also tend to treat me “like a woman” in other ways. More specifically, they treat me like they treat women who are butch or otherwise queer, which is to say they usually ignore me completely, and occasionally get hostile or defensive of their guy space. This goes for most non-trans men who persist in calling me she, regardless of their sexual orientation.

Sometimes sexuality or flirting is an overt part of this pattern. When I am introduced to a group of heterosexual non-trans women (who are overrepresented in my professional field, so it happens pretty often), there are usually a few who have absolutely no problem getting my pronouns right from the start. These women often end of flirting with me sooner or later. Those who struggle and call me she rarely flirt with me, even after they’ve managed to call me he most of the time. I can only guess that women who are attracted to men, and also find me attractive, have an easier time thinking and talking about me as a man than do women who don’t happen to be attracted to me. Their own attraction to me convinces them of the plausibility of my gender.

Exercise: Exploring the Interpersonal Factors

Start by picking one specific person for whom you often have trouble getting pronouns right.

· How do you feel about this person? personally? professionally?

· If you were to describe them to a good friend on another continent (who would never meet them, so you wouldn’t feel bad about gossiping) what would you say?

· Do you find the person attractive? If so, how do you see this as aligning, or not, with your sexual orientation?

· Who else in your life does this person remind you of? And how to you feel about those people?

· How has your relationship with this person been positive? How has it been negative?

· If relevant, say aloud to yourself, “[The person’s name] is like me. [The person’s name] is one of us [or ‘one of the guys/girls/however you describe yourself and your gender peers].” How do you feel when you say it? Do you want this person in your “club”? How might this be related, or not, to the person’s gender?

It's true, there's no conclusion at the end of this essay. No point writing one, since I'm going to tear this up for several more drafts. Comments welcome anyway.

Getting Pronouns Right - Part 6

2010-04-05T00:05:00.001-04:00

This is the sixth (and 2nd to last?) installment of a longish and very drafty article on – you guessed it - getting pronouns right. I will post one installment per week until ‎you have the complete draft. Comments are welcome at any time, but I’m not going to rewrite it until I’ve gotten the whole thing written!

Why it’s Hard to Get Pronouns Right: Because Deep Down, You Believe In Binary Sex/Gender

Do you believe that trans people exist? Of course you do, that’s why you’re bothering to read this. You believe that a person can be a gender other than the one typically associated with their body type – for example, that someone whose body is like those we usually describe as male can be a woman.

Have you ever found yourself saying or thinking anything like the statements below? Have you ever caught yourself saying or thinking anything else along those lines?

□ If X’s voice weren’t so high, it’s be easier to call X “he.”

□ If X didn’t have that 5 o’clock shadow it’d be easier to call X “she.”

□ If X didn’t have such obvious breasts it’s be easier to call X “he.”

□ If X wasn’t so tall it’d be easier to call X “she.”

□ If X didn’t walk like a football player it’d be easier to call X “she.”

□ If X didn’t sashay around like a pansy, it’d be easier to call X “he.”

□ It’s hard for me to call X “he” because X is so nice.

□ It’s hard for me to call X “she” because X is so athletic.

□ It’s hard for me to call X “he” because X is so emotional.

□ It’s hard for me to call X “she” because X is so angry.

□ It’s hard for me to call X “she” because X is so butch.

□ It’s hard for me to call X “he” because X is so fem.

□ It’s hard for me to call X “he” when I see him fawning over that boyfriend of his.

□ It’s hard for me to call X “she” when I see her arm in arm with her girlfriend.

□ I know X likes to be called “he,” but X just feels like a woman to me.

□ I know X likes to be called “she,” but X just feels like a guy to me.

□ _______________________________________________

□ ______________________________________________

You’re not the only one! During my interviews, and in my everyday life, numerous people have admitting that a trans person’s ability to be “pass” convincingly as a non-trans person of their gender tends to make it easier for them to use the person’s preferred pronoun. For example, some of my grad school classmates said it would have been easier for them to call me ‘he’ if my voices wasn’t so high.

The thing is, many trans guys have high voices, if they haven’t taken hormones. It’s sort of part of the definition: A trans guy is a guy whose body is like those we usually describe as female. Of course there’s a wide range of vocal tone and expression for people of all genders. But on average, trans guys who have not been on hormones have voices that sound like “women’s voices.” If the reality of a trans guy having a “female” voice – or female breasts, hairline, skin tone, fat distribution, etc. – gets in the way of your calling them the right pronoun - what does that imply?

To me it implies that you’re acting on a working assumption that guys have low voices and women have high voices. Whatever you know about the individual in front of you, when your auto-pilot kicks in, you assume that anyone who sounds “like a woman” must be a woman. That may not be what you believe when you’re being thoughtful, but on a less conscious level you don’t really believe that someone with a voice/body/etc. like that can be a guy. In other words, deep down, you don’t really believe in trans people.

At least, that’s the way you’re acting. It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault, either (I do it too sometimes!). We have all been taught to believe in binary gender since birth, or maybe before. So we need to check ourselves. Do we believe in trans people? If we do, then we need to exercise that belief – act in accordance with it – so that it grows stronger, and eventually, overpowers our conditioning.

This same pattern also plays out in slightly more complex ways. For example, people often find it easier to call someone the right pronouns after they’ve started to medically transition, even though they know the person is trans. So, if it’s not that we don’t believe in trans people per se, it’s that we don’t believe someone is “really” trans until they have started to change their body. This is problematic for the obvious reasons: 1) trans people are trans whether or not they choose to change their bodies, 2) this assumption creates external pressure that may lead some trans people to change their bodies who wouldn’t necessarily want to otherwise, and 3) it still buys into the sex/gender binary – men have male bodies (or constructed male bodies) and women have female bodies (or constructed female bodies). That’s a tiny step farther than not believing in trans folks at all, but only a very tiny one.

What’s even more complicated is that some people find it easier to call someone the right pronoun after the person has announced plans to take physical transition steps, even before their bodies start to change! Several people suddenly found they were able to call me ‘he’ after I told them I was going to start taking testosterone. During the six months I spent jumping through medical system hoops and finding a doctor who would write me a prescription, my body didn’t change, but people’s belief in my gender did. For them, it wasn’t as simple as I had to have a masculine body to be a guy. I had to have the intention to have a masculine body. This behavior pattern implies an underlying assumption that trans people who change their body are “really” the gender they say they are, while trans people who don’t change their bodies are not as real or legitimate. Further, it implies that non-trans observers have the authority to judge the legitimacy of a trans person’s identity, rather than granting each person autonomy to define and describe their own gender.

Finally, there’s another set of underlying assumptions about gender that sometimes come out through people’s behavior around pronouns. Sometimes it’s not about bodies, but about womanly or manly behavior. People have told me that it’s hard to call a trans woman “she” if she walks “like a guy,” speaks directly to the point, or shows confidence in her viewpoints. Someone once told me she kept slipping up and calling me “she,” because she had trouble thinking of me as a guy, because I was so “nice.” Wow. So in this case, it seems to me that the underlying assumption is not only that body type dictates gender, but that gender dictates personality. Anyone whose mannerisms don’t match the cultural expectations of manly behavior, for example, doesn’t really count as a man. And that’s not only transgender oppression – it’s also simple sexism.

If you notice some underlying beliefs poking through in your behavior around pronouns, whether those assumptions are about bodies or gender norms or something else, here are some questions to consider:

If an assumption is coming up for you with regard to a particular trans person in your life, and getting in the way of your using the pronouns that person prefers, what else in your life might also be affected by the same assumption? (This is not a rhetorical question. Really take the time to think how else this assumption might come up for you.)
Do you really believe these assumptions? Do you want to believe them?
If not, what do you believe? How can you remind yourself of what you really believe? How can you exercise those beliefs?

Getting Pronouns Right - Part 5

2010-03-29T01:02:00.003-04:00

This is the fifth installment of a longish and very drafty article on – you guessed it - getting pronouns right. I will post one installment per week until ‎you have the complete draft. Comments are welcome at any time, but I’m not going to rewrite it until I’ve gotten the whole thing written!

Why it’s Hard to Get Pronouns Right: Because I Never Heard that Word Before!‎

In conducting my interviews, many people said that they have the most trouble getting pronouns right when someone wants to be called third-‎gender or “neutral” pronouns. It makes perfect sense that these are the hardest, because they are words that are not part of standard English. On ‎another hand, we all have experience successfully incorporating new words into our vocabulary. For example, there's text (as a verb), rip (as in ‎digital music), and download. And new coinages ‎are not limited to the technical: there’s also queer, genderqueer, Islamicist, and green-washing. We’ve even done it before with pronouns! Several ‎generations of us are now accustomed to seeing s/he in print (even if we still can’t agree how to pronounce it), and many of us use “they” singularly ‎to talk about a hypothetical third person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant.‎

The moral is, it just takes practice. See above for some ways to practice getting someone’s pronouns right. In addition, you can try this: ‎

Exercise: Third-Gender Journaling
This works especially well if you already keep a journal. Continue writing about whatever it is you usually write about, only use gender ‎neutral pronouns – for everybody. You’ll be surprised how quickly they flow “naturally” in your writing. Then it just takes a little getting used ‎to, to use them in speech.‎

Why it’s Hard to Get Pronouns Right: Because You’re Just Not Trying

Lots of people reported to me that they get pronouns right almost all of the time, except when they’re tired, busy, frazzled, or thinking about ‎something else. This is of course unsurprising. And yet when I think about my work week, and consider how much of the time I feel a little bit ‎frazzled, I realize it’s not okay with me to be messing up on something so important so much of the time!‎

If you tend to mess up someone’s pronouns when you’re stressed out or distracted, it communicates that treating that person with respect is not ‎your top priority in that moment. It also implies that calling them the right pronoun is not your default, but rather you’re having to consciously remind ‎yourself to use the right pronoun every time.‎

If this is your pattern, I suggest the following:‎

Take care of yourself! It’s not cool that you’re multitasking so hard that you don’t have the energy left to be conscious of your words. Take ‎a day off. Get a massage. Take a walk. At the very least, make sure to take all your lunch and coffee breaks. You deserve it.‎
‎See the motivation and commitment exercises above under “Why Pronouns Are Important.”‎
‎Continue to the next section … there may be more behind your slip-ups than general overwhelmed-ness.‎

Getting Pronouns Right - Part 4

2010-03-24T01:18:00.003-04:00

Why it’s Hard to Get Pronouns Right: Because It’s a Change

This is the fourth installment of a longish and very drafty article on – you guessed it - getting pronouns right. I will post one installment per week until ‎you have the complete draft. Comments are welcome at any time, but I’m not going to rewrite it until I’ve gotten the whole thing written!

When I started interviewing people in my community about what makes it difficult for them to use the right pronouns (or names) for particular trans people in their lives, some distinct themes emerged. One of the most common responses was, simply, it’s hard because it’s a change.

This makes a lot of sense as far as it goes. When someone we know goes through a major life transition – changing careers, getting married, having kids – it may take a while for us to adjust to the change. This is as true of gender transitions as of any other kind. We are used to calling someone one thing, and now they want to be called something else. It makes sense that we might not consistently get it right, right away.

And yet, there are limits to this explanation.

First, “it’s hard because it’s a change” only makes sense if you knew the person before transition. If you meet someone who goes by “he,” and lets you know that (or someone does) the first time you meet him, the “it’s a change” explanation tends to fall flat. If it feels like a change, even though you never knew the person to go by any other pronoun, this is probably a sign that there might be something else going on.

Also, even if you did know the person before transition, the “it’s a change” explanation implies that the pronoun slip-ups have nothing to do with gender – that a pronoun change is no more challenging than any other kind of change. People often cite the example of names. People change their name for many reasons, and it often takes their friends and family a while to get in the habit of using the new name. Pronoun changes, some people claim, are just like that.

If you can honestly say that it would be just as hard if your friend changed his name from Steve to Daniel, as it would be if she changed her name from Steve to Stephanie, then I’ll believe you that “it’s hard because it’s a change.” Otherwise, I’ll argue that the change is probably part of it, and also that there is more to be explained.

That said, when you’ve known someone a long time, “it’s a change” really is at least part of what makes it hard to get their name and pronoun right. In that case, it should be relatively easy to get it right. All you have to do is practice!

Exercises to Practice Pronouns:

Gossip (not really)

Talk about the person when the person is not around, using the pronouns the person prefers. You don’t have to be talking about the person’s gender, just make a point to include the person in your regular chit chat about how your day went. Or, if you know the person in a confidential setting, try talking about the person to yourself in private, such as while you’re in the shower. Get used to thinking, saying and hearing the person’s name paired with the pronoun the person prefers.

Toy Story

Give names to several common household objects in your home. For any object that has gendered associations for you, give it the other gendered name. (For example, your mixing bowl might be Jack and your chopping knife might be Dolores.) While you’re going about your daily routine, tell stories about the objects using the pronouns appropriate to their names. Tell the stories aloud. Actually saying and hearing the pronouns is an important part of this learning process.

Once you’ve got that down (after at least a few days, or however long it takes for the objects’ new genders to feel “natural”), switch pronouns but not names. (So now the mixing bowl is still Jack, but now “she.”) Once that feels natural, switch back. Switch back again. Add additional objects or try using third-gender pronouns* to make the game more challenging.

Accountability

This one works particularly well if you have a close personal relationship with the person. With the person’s consent, set up a deal where every time you mis-pronoun (or misname) your friend, your friend has permission to mis-pronoun (or misname) you right back. For example, if you accidentally call your friend “she,” even though he prefers “he,” he could then say, “Thanks, Frederick,” even though your name’s Amy. Pick a name ahead of time, and not just any name – pick the inappropriately gendered name you would least like to be called.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t make the situation “even”. After all, you’re consenting to be mis-gendered, whereas your trans friend may get mis-gendered fifty times a day. What it does is to provide you with immediate feedback about your behavior, so that you notice when you mess up. It also creates a mechanism for giving you this feedback that can be light-hearted, and doesn’t have to interrupt the conversation. By volunteering for this treatment, you are demonstrating your commitment to getting your friend’s pronouns right.

Community

Do it together! If one person in your community is transitioning, don’t be afraid to connect with other people in your community about what that means to all of you. Talk with other allies who are also trying to be respectful. Agree to remind each other when you mess up, so that it’s not always the trans person’s responsibility to do it. Consider getting together to discuss any issues that might get in your way, or to go over the reflective exercises on the other handout.

When you’re slipping up on someone’s pronouns because you’ve known them before transition, you have a unique opportunity to be a really valuable ally by doing your work and getting the pronouns right. Many trans people lose friends during transition, some who are outright transphobic and others who mean well but just can’t get over their shit enough to step up and support their friend who’s transitioning. By calling someone the right pronouns even though it’s hard, you are showing them that you are one friend they won’t have to lose. You are also showing them that the image of them that you have in your head is an image of who they are now – not an image of them in the past, or as you wish they would be. You’re saying, “I see you, I recognize you, I believe that you are who you say you are.”

Getting Pronouns Right - Part 3

2010-03-14T20:20:00.002-04:00

This is the third installment of a longish and very drafty article on – you guessed it - getting pronouns right. I will post one installment per week until ‎you have the complete draft. Comments are welcome at any time, but I’m not going to rewrite it until I’ve gotten the whole thing written!

Community Norms about Pronouns

In many trans-friendly spaces, there is a community norm that we don’t make assumptions about anyone’s gender or pronoun preference. We ‎assume that gender identity – one’s internal sense of self with regard to categories like man, woman, transgender, genderqueer, and so on – ‎cannot be measured by others, only reported by oneself. In these spaces it is usual to ask everyone to introduce themselves to the group by ‎sharing their name and preferred pronoun, because we assume that we can’t tell by looking. It’s also normal and acceptable to ask someone ‎individually, “what pronoun do you prefer to go by?” ‎

On the other hand, some trans people want their pronouns to be obvious. They assume that by expressing their gender in an obviously masculine ‎way, for example, they are sending a clear signal that people should call them male pronouns. And it’s true that more often than not, an ally can ‎make a good guess at someone’s pronoun preference based on their gender expression (that is, behaviors that are associated with gender, ‎including chosen appearance, mannerism, and chosen name).‎

However, assuming that everyone’s gender will be obvious is problematic, because it tends to rely on stereotypes and cultural norms that just aren’t ‎true for everybody. I’ve seen some overeager allies get totally flummoxed when they call someone “he” assuming the person is an FtM trans ‎person, only to discover that the person identifies as a butch woman and would rather be called “she.” Gender expression and gender identity vary ‎independently. A feminine person does not necessarily identify as a woman. A masculine person does not necessarily identify as a man. And ‎masculine and feminine are culturally-specific, time-bound, basically made up categories that mean different things to different people.‎

Most of us go around guessing about people’s pronouns most of the time, and never notice until we guess wrong. But even in the 99% of times that ‎we guessing right, I’d argue that there is a problem with guessing. When we assume it’s okay to guess about people’s pronouns, we assume that ‎people’s genders are necessarily so obvious that we don’t have to ask. This puts a great burden on people whose gender and/or culture varies from ‎the dominant expectation. Rather than making it everybody’s responsibility to pay attention to how each person wants to be talked about, it ‎becomes trans people’s responsibility to present our genders convincingly. To be convincingly female, for example, means conforming to ‎stereotyped and stylized versions of what it means to be a woman, which are unrealistic and restrictive to all women, trans and non-trans alike. The ‎practice of suspending assumptions and creating opportunities for people to describe their genders on their own terms – or to decline to describe ‎them – resists sexism and transgender oppression and opens up the possibilities for everybody.‎

Exercise: Community Norms

What are the norms about pronouns in your community? Have you ever heard anyone ask someone else their preferred pronoun? Have ‎you ever shared pronouns as part of group introductions in a meeting or class? How sure are you of the pronoun preferences of the ‎people you work or study with? ‎

If you have never asked an individual their pronoun preference, give it a try. Start by asking someone in a one-on-one setting what ‎pronoun they prefer to be called. Be prepared to explain where the question is coming from, as people unfamiliar with this practice may be ‎really confused! Tip: Don’t start by asking the one gender-nonconforming person in the group. It’s good to notice if you’re actually really ‎unsure of one person’s pronouns, but don’t let that trick you into assuming that you’re right in your assumptions about everyone else's ‎preferences!‎

Or, if you’ve never talked about pronouns in the group, give that a try. This works especially well if the group already has a routine of going ‎over group guidelines or of having an introductory go-round. Explain to the group or to a group leader that you’ve been reading and ‎thinking about gender, and that this is one way some communities makes sure to create a safe and welcoming environment for ‎transgender and genderqueer people. Again, be prepared to explain where you’re coming from! (Consider having copies of this article ‎handy.) ‎

Getting Pronouns Right - Part 2

2010-03-07T21:52:00.006-05:00

This is the second installment of a longish and very drafty article on – you guessed it - getting pronouns right. I will post one installment per week until ‎you have the complete draft. Comments are welcome at any time, but I’m not going to rewrite it until I’ve gotten the whole thing written!‎

Why Pronouns Are Important

From time to time a participant in one of my Trans Competency trainings will express their frustration at trans-people’s “over sensitivity” with regard ‎to pronouns. “What’s the big deal?,” they ask. “It’s just a word.”‎

For many reasons, pronouns are not “just words.” When you use a gendered pronoun about someone, you are in effect announcing that person’s ‎gender. Most people feel attached to their genders, and so when you get their pronouns wrong, it doesn’t feel good.‎

Imagine for a moment that people are calling you the wrong pronouns. If you usually get referred to with masculine pronouns (he, him, his, etc), ‎imagine that people keep calling you feminine pronouns (she, her, hers, etc), and vice versa. Perhaps your friend is introducing you to someone. ‎‎“This is Howard, she’s been a friend of our family for years. Yeah, our kids go to school with her kids. She makes a mean barbecue…” How would ‎it feel?‎

If you can imagine that, you might have the beginning of an idea of how it feels for many trans people – but only the beginning. When you call a ‎trans person the wrong pronouns, you’re probably not the first person to do so that day. You may not be the fiftieth. And while most non-trans ‎people can comfortably assume that their gender is obvious and legitimate, trans people’s genders are contested. Most trans people – especially ‎those whose transitions are recent, or who don’t “pass” as the gender with which they identify, or who don’t identify with one of the two socially ‎sanctioned gender categories at all – are accustomed our genders being questioned, ignored or denied in every interaction.‎

Of the trans and gender-nonconforming people I interviewed, most described feelings very similar to my own with regard to being mis-pronouned. ‎To simplify the storytelling, I’ll use myself as an example. ‎

I identify as FtM (female to/ward male) and as genderqueer. In some queer spaces I go by third-gender pronouns*, and in my everyday interactions ‎I go by masculine pronouns (he, his, him, etc.). At this point in my life I “pass” as male about 50% of the time. To the extent that strangers let me ‎know what they’re assuming about my gender, about half are assuming I’m male and the other half are assuming I’m female. This means that about ‎half the time when someone announces my gender by using a gendered pronoun about me, they get it wrong.‎

The effect on me when someone calls me the wrong pronoun ranges from a slight annoyance to a major disruption in my day. Sometimes, when ‎I’m having a really good day and feeling generally self-confident, I feel confused by it. Someone says something including the word “she,” and I look ‎around trying to figure out who they’re talking about, before I realize that they mean me. This experience gives me the uncomfortable sensation that ‎people are looking at me, and seeing someone else. In these situations I feel invisible and unrecognized. Yet in some ways the times when I feel ‎confused about people’s mis-gendering me are among the least painful for me. Even though I feel unrecognized, I still have a strong sense that I ‎know who I am.‎

On other days, being called the wrong pronoun can be far more painful. In trans communities there is a term, “clocking.” Clocking is what happens ‎when a trans person wants to pass – wants to be taken for a non-trans person of their self-identified gender – and someone notices or figures out ‎that they’re trans. For me, I don’t particularly want or need to “pass” as male, but I do want to be acknowledged as a guy. If people think I’m a trans ‎guy, that’s fine. If they’re not sure what my gender is, that’s fine, too. But when someone reads me as female and then uses a feminine pronoun for ‎me – effectively announcing me to be a woman – “clocked” is very appropriate to describe how that feels. ‎

In these situations, rather than feeling that other people are misreading me, I find myself worrying that I am not expressing my gender adequately. ‎Internally, I berate myself for not passing better, for not being convincing enough as a guy or as a trans person. I feel as if I’ve been caught in some ‎incompetency, like I’m not masculine enough, not trans-masculine enough, not trans enough, or not “really” trans. And yet of course I know that I ‎am, among other things, a trans guy. So when I fear, however fleetingly, that I’m not “really” trans or not “really” a guy, what that really means is that ‎I fear I am not “real” at all. Far more frightening than feeling invisible, I feel on the precipice of non-existence.‎

So far I’ve been describing how it feels for me (and many of the trans and gender non-conforming people I interviewed) when someone who doesn’t ‎know me calls me the wrong pronoun. An additional element is introduced if the person calling me “she” actually knows me, and knows that I prefer ‎to be called “he.” In that case, I feel profoundly disrespected and not safe. If someone can’t go to the trouble of using the right pronoun for me, how ‎can I feel confident that they will respect any of my other personal boundaries? If they don’t see me for who I am, and if I feel invisible or even ‎unreal in our interactions, how can we even carry on a conversation?‎

Some other reasons it’s important to use the right pronouns for trans people have to do with practical safety concerns. There is still pandemic ‎violence against trans people in most places in the world – including most places in the U.S. For many trans people, “passing” as a non-trans ‎person of their gender is one way to be less vulnerable to transphobic or homophobic violence. ‎

Just because you know your friend, relative, or acquaintance is trans, that doesn’t mean everyone knows. If you accidentally call your MtF friend ‎‎“he” in public, you are not only announcing her gender incorrectly, you are also announcing her status as a trans woman, and exposing both of you ‎to the possibility of a violent reaction from strangers who might overhear.‎

Exercise: Motivation
Think of one trans person for whom you have difficulty using the right pronouns. Who is this person? What is your relationship to this ‎person? In your own words, why is it important for you to get this person’s pronoun right? Take some time to write down your ‎thoughts about this. Put the paper in a place where you will see it at least once a day. For example, you might tack it to your bulletin ‎board at work. If possible, read over it from time to time. Even if you don’t read it every day, simply noticing that it’s there can serve ‎as a gentle reminder.‎

Exercise: Commitment
If it feels appropriate, talk to the person about why it’s important to you that you get their pronoun right. Saying it aloud to the person most ‎affected reinforces your own motivation, and also let’s the person know that you’re trying.‎

Only do this if y’all are close, and if you have asked for and received permission to talk to this person about your own process around the ‎person’s gender. You are putting a lot of effort into learning to be a better ally, and that might make you feel like you are close to this person. ‎Recall that most people have a lot to learn about transgender issues. The trans person you’re thinking of may have witnessed dozens or ‎hundreds of people go through the same process with regard to the person’s pronoun that you’re going through now, and may not want to be ‎close with you in this process.

*Third-gender pronouns are third-person singular pronouns that are not masculine or feminine. They are parallel to he/him/his and she/her/hers. Some people call them “non-gendered” or “gender neutral” pronouns. Third-gender pronouns have been used in three main ways: 1) referring to a hypothetical person, as a gender neutral and grammatically sensible alternative to “he or she” or “they,” 2) a generic pronoun referring to anyone, as a way to remove unnecessary gender references in conversations, and 3) a specifically gender-queer alternative to binary gendered pronouns, often used by trans folk who do not identify with either of the two socially sanctioned genders. There are many sets of third-gender pronouns that have gained traction in trans communities. One popular set is ze/hir, where ze is the third-person subject pronoun (parallel to he/she), and hir is the third-person direct and indirect object and possessive (parallel to him/her, and his/her/hers). For example, “Where did ze go?” “Oh, I saw hir a minute ago. Ze went to the hallway to get hir backpack.” For extensive background and grammatical details about third-gender pronouns, check out the Wikipedia entry.

More is on the way!

Getting Pronouns Right - Part 1

2010-02-28T21:12:00.002-05:00

This is the first installment of a longish and very drafty article on – you guessed it - getting pronouns right. I will post one installment per week until you have the complete draft. Comments are welcome at any time, but I’m not going to rewrite it until I’ve gotten the whole thing written!

“It’s hard for me to call you ‘he’ because you look so feminine.”

“It’s hard for me to call you ‘he’ because you’re not like most guys.”

“It’s hard to call you ‘he’ because your voice sounds like a woman’s voice.”

“It’s hard to call you ‘he’ because you’re just so nice.”

“It’s just so hard. We’re trying.”

“It takes time. You have to have more patience with us.”

These are just a few of the rationales people have confessed to me to explain why they get my pronouns wrong – why they mistakenly refer to me as “she” even though they know I prefer “he.”

Pronouns are a constant source of annoyance to many trans people. As trans people we go through all kinds of transitions – social, medical, personal, and often spiritual. In the context of these major life changes, it seems like pronouns should be a minor footnote. Yet for many trans people, working to get people to call us the right pronouns takes up an enormous amount of energy.

Those who would be our allies also put a lot of energy into pronouns. For the most part, people are being truthful when they say “We’re trying. It’s hard.” But what is so hard about it?

Pronouns are words that we use in place of nouns, to avoid repeating those nouns. When we’re talking about trans issues, we’re talking about the third-person singular pronouns: he, him, his, she, her, and hers. In standard English, third-person singular pronouns are always gendered. Problems arise when people use the wrong pronouns for someone who is transgender, or for someone who is not transgender but whose gender expression is sufficiently unusual that people get confused about it. For example, a trans man (FtM, or female-bodied and male-identified, roughly speaking) may want to be called “he,” the pronoun that aligns with his gender identity, and other people may resist or have difficulty complying with this request, and instead call him “she,” the pronoun that aligns with his assigned gender.

At times I have been tempted to say, there has to come a time when trying leads to doing. If you’ve been trying for six months, a year, or three years, and you’re still calling me the wrong pronouns, I am tempted to say that you must not be trying very hard.

On the other hand, if you’ve been trying for three years and it hasn’t worked yet, then maybe trying harder isn’t the answer.

When I started this project, I decided to start with the assumption that most people who use the wrong pronouns when referring to a trans person are genuinely well-intentioned, and that their failure to get pronouns right is not for lack of trying. Rather, I think there are specific barriers that get in the way of people’s using the correct pronouns for a trans person. If we can uncover and explore these specific barriers, then we can create tools to make it easier for would-be allies to get it right, right away.

I had some ideas what the barriers might be. I got my ideas from two sources: First, from the excuses people made when they got my pronouns wrong (such as, “It’s hard for me to call you ‘he’ because you’re not like most guys.”), and second, from my own reflections about times when I had trouble getting someone else’s pronouns right. After all, trans people are not immune to the gender-stupidity that makes such an easy thing, so hard to do. I know as well as anyone how important it is to get pronouns right, and it usually comes very easily for me. Yet every once in a while, there’s someone whose preferred pronoun just doesn’t seem to stick for me, and I have to struggle to use the right one.

But I didn’t want to write about what makes my pronouns hard for people to get right, or what makes it hard for me to get some other people’s pronouns right. I wanted to write something more general, that could help other people figure out what was getting in the way in their specific situations. So I decided to seek more information. I conducted informal, semi-structured interviews with about 25 friends and acquaintances about their experiences with pronouns. I asked them about their experiences speaking about people in their lives who are trans or gender non-conforming, and also, when relevant, about their experiences as trans or gender non-conforming people being spoken about. The ideas and suggestions in this article are derived from my own experiences as well as the results of these interviews.

Stay tuned for next week's section!

Modern Gynecology

2009-12-26T22:40:00.011-05:00

(The text formatting is weird, and I don't want to put in the time to figure it out. To see it in reasonable-sized font, with appropriate line breaks, click the title of the post (not the blog).)

I really dislike pelvic exams. I assume most of us do, who have to have them. I know it's healthy to keep on top of my preventative healthcare. But when I think about walking into that waiting room ... sometimes, I just need a little extra motivation.

Luckily, my favorite coping mechanism - snarky, inappropriate humor - has proven remarkably applicable to gynecological conversation. Who knew! In fact, I'm almost looking forward to my next appointment, because I know I'll have another hilarious story to tell.

At least, in retrospect it will be hilarious. In the moment, it's sometimes hard to see the humor.

Electronic medical records, in particular, have turned a visit to the gynecology office into a stand-up comedy routine. The medical assistant has to ask the same questions, in the same order, to every patient no matter what. The computer won’t let her go off script. Of course, I’m not your standard gynecology patient. They ask me all these questions that I just don’t have the right answers to.

“Do you know the date of your last period?”

“January, 2007.” Now that one should have been fairly simple except that it was unexpected. So then we had a little selective hearing loss situation.

“July 27^th?”

“No. January, 2007.”

“Oh!”

Once that was cleared up it got even weirder.

“Are your periods regular?”

“Umm…?”

Now how was I supposed to make sense of that? So she just picked one, flipped a mental coin, I guess. She couldn't get to the next screen without answering. My official medical record, if you were to read all my gyn exams one after another, would say that my lack of period vacillates randomly between regular and irregular. Whatever.

“Are you on birth control?”
“… no?”

I’m on testosterone, but three gynecologists in a row have been notably non-committal as to how unlikely an unintended pregnancy is for someone on this dose. The medical assistant didn't appear to notice my intonation. Oh, well.

“Have you ever had an abnormal pap smear?”

“No.”

At this point the medical assistant turned to me in open disbelief. “And your last period was in 2007??”

How I would like it to have gone next is like this:

“Do you have my chart? My paper one? Because on the first page it says that I’m transgender and I’ve been taking testosterone for 3 years.”

“Oh.”

“Which also explains the facial hair.”

“Right.”

“And the fact that I didn’t respond when you called for “Ms. …” in the waiting room.”

“Okay dear the doctor will be right with you.”

But I’m not really that bold, or that mean. It wasn't her fault, anyway. Instead I just explained, all straightforward and apologetic-like.

The next time I went in, for a follow-up visit annoyingly shortly after that one, I had exactly the same conversation with a different medical assistant. Word for word. It was creepy.

I considered making a handout. It wouldn’t have to list the questions, or even full sentences, just my answers. Something like,

2007.
Umm…?
Not exactly.
No.
Yes.
Yes, really.

I could just hand it to the medical assistant and let her sort it out.

The third time, I had the same medical assistant from the first appointment. She still asked all the same questions, but this time she believed me about each answer the first time I said it, so it wasn’t quite as funny. Then she started asking the behavioral questions, which for some reason had been skipped during the previous appointments. The conversation got exponentially more bizarre.

“Are you sexually active?”

I refer you to the quantum physics non-explanation of my dating life. I think I said “yes,” just for simplicity’s sake.

“Is your partner a man or a woman?”

“Umm … no.”

I felt sorry even as I said it. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say that would feel honest. Note how I restrained myself from launching into an explanation of quantum superpositional dating, wherein, in this case, the term “partner” is a bit of an overstatement during an unquantifiable, but large, proportion of the time. Interesting perhaps, but not pertinent. The medical assistant was confused enough.

“No?”

“She’s … ze’s … we … our genders are similar.”

That one took her a little while. I guess they don’t have a button for that in the electronic record system.

“Is there any possibility you might be pregnant?”

Given my recent (if largely uniformed) musings on quantum physics, the phrase “any possibility” may mean something different to me than it does to the medical assistant. Or maybe it's just that it goes against centuries of cultural habit to promise a positive outcome (i.e. lack of pregnancy) with so much certainty. I dampened the impulse to explain my completely irrelevant hesitations, and settled on “no” because I thought it would end the conversation sooner, which it did. Then it was time for the actual exam part of the exam, which I won't relate here, except to say it was far less amusing than the talking part of the exam.

It’s probably not nice of to mess with the medical staff so much. I could play along, I guess. Give away the punch line sooner, so at least they can attribute the confusion to my queerness, rather than feeling badly for not knowing which buttons to push. Sometimes I do consider dialing it back a few.

But then I think, whose comfort am I more concerned about here? The medical assistant is just having a normal day at the office. I’m having a f*%$^#! gyn exam. If coming away with hilarious stories about the MA’s confusion about my gender makes the situation just a little bit less miserable, or makes it a little bit easier to contemplate showing up for the next time, then I think I’ll continue enjoying their confusion.

What Gentiles Should Know about the Holiday Season

2009-12-03T00:21:00.005-05:00

by a cranky Jew
(revised from previous years and re-posted by popular demand. feedback welcome as always.)

I do not celebrate Christmas.

Please don’t tell me to have a Merry Christmas. This is comparable to telling a Canadian happy 4^th of July.

Christmas is not a “secular” or “American” holiday. It is a Christian holiday.
If you celebrate it in a secular way, it is still a secular Christian holiday. (If I celebrate Pesach/Passover in a humanist style, without reference to G-d, is it then an “American” holiday? No. It’s a secular Jewish holiday, and it’s no more universal without the G-d language than with it.)

Some Jews do celebrate Christmas. That doesn't make it a Jewish holiday.
Jews may celebrate Christmas for many reasons. Many Jews have Christians in their family. Most Jews in the US grow up in predominantly Christian communities. Many Jews have tried to assimilate over the generations, and that has meant adopting Christian practices like having a Christmas tree. It's still a Christian holiday.

Chanukah is not a Jewish version of Christmas.
Christmas is an important holiday for most contemporary Christians, based on one of the central stories of the Christian faith. Chanukah is not even a particularly religious holiday. It is primarily a cultural/historical holiday commemorating a military victory of one group of Jews, who advocated maintaining a traditional Jewish culture separate from that of the ruling empire, over another group of Jews, who advocated cooperating with imperial rulers and assimilating into the imperial (Hellenic/Syrian) culture.

It’s kinda like the aforementioned 4^th of July. Only older, and with miracles.

The only reason Chanukah is such a big deal in the U.S. is because of its proximity to Christmas.

Chanukah does not occur on December 25^th.
It is an eight-day festival beginning on 25 Kislev by the Jewish calendar, which is a lunar /solar calendar. The corresponding date on the Gregorian calendar, the one commonly used in public life, ranges from mid-November through late December. Therefore, do not tell me to have a happy Chanukah unless you know when Chanukah falls this year, and that it’s not over. Cheat sheet for 2009/5770: Chanukah begins at sundown on Friday, December 11.

Chanukah may be spelled several ways:
Hanukkah, Hanukah, Chanukkah, Chanukah, etc. That’s because it’s a Hebrew word, and it’s actually spelled like this: חֲנוּכָּה. Chanukah is probably the closest transliteration for the Hebrew - more like Channikke for the Yiddish. It sounds like it looks, only the initial H or Ch sounds like the guttural sound at the end of the composer Bach.

I don’t care how you spell it. Just don’t tell me how weird it is that it has multiple spellings. I’m over it. If you can’t say the Ch sound without spitting on me, then just say H and keep your germs to yourself.

There’s no such thing as a Chanukah bush.
Did you really need to be told that? Christian hegemony appropriated the tradition from Celtic pagans, and now is trying to impose it on Jews. We already have pretty stuff for the holiday. We don’t need Jew-ish-ified trees, wreathes, elves or mistletoe.

Some Jews Have Chanukah Bushes.
See above, under "Some Jews Celebrate Christmas"

Chanukah is not a good excuse to tell me about your best friend, neighbor, or distant relative who is a Jew.
If you didn’t care enough to tell me the rest of the year, then I don’t care to hear about it now.

Don’t try to impress me with how much you know about Chanukah or about Judaism.
It’s a safe bet I know a whole lot more than that about Christmas and Christianity. Not cause I’m so smart or so studied. Just cause y’all are everywhere.

“Happy Holidays” is not an acceptable secular substitute for “Merry Christmas.”
No matter what words you use, we both know you’re only saying it because of Christmas. Otherwise, you would say it in September/October and March/April, when I’m observing major religious holidays, as well as in December, when you are.

This is not about your Free Speech.
In recent years, a few people who should know better have said things to me about Christmas that sound suspiciously like the ultra-conservative "war on Christmas" rhetoric. Stuff like, "Department stores cannot dictate how their employees greet customers during the holidays. If they want to say Merry Christmas, that's their free speech." Or "People can't stop people from putting up Christmas decorations in the town square. That's their free speech."

Good try, but, this is not about your free speech. Employees do not have the right to say whatever they want while they're working. They sell their free speech along with their labor during the hours they're getting paid. And I'm only prepared to grant "free speech" that's free, as in not paid for - especially not with public money. Go ahead, speak about Christmas all you want. But don't use public funds to speak about Christmas.

Anyway, no one is trying to stop you from saying Merry Christmas to your friends and loved ones, or on your Christmas cards. That's exactly where the greeting belongs. I just don't want you saying it to me, especially not all day every day for all of December. And I really don't want to pay for your Christmas decorations through public funds, and be subjected to them in public spaces.

Quantum Superpositional Dating

2009-10-14T22:14:00.008-04:00

This was the hardest question on the 45-minute survey of attitudes toward Palestine/Israel conducted by the Big Gay Synagogue:

I am:

single
partnered
married
widowed
divorced
separated
in a steady relationship (e.g. boyfriend/girlfriend)
in a polyamorous relationship
it’s complicated
other, please explain: _____________________________

Seriously. They covered their bases!

I waffled for a while among single, poly, complicated, and "other," all the while wondering why it was so difficult to make a selection. After all, unlike most such surveys, this list includes options that actually apply to me!

The hard part was picking just one. And it got even harder if I wanted to pick one that not only was true today, but also was likely to still be true by the time someone got around to counting my responses. I had a creepy feeling that clicking one of the options would somehow jinx the situation - that by presuming to measure or define my relationship situation, I would somehow introduce new complications, and make my response instantly obsolete. It's like the dating version of Schrödinger’s Cat.

The Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment describes a phenomenon known as quantum superposition. In extremely simplified terms, this means that multiple physical states occur simultaneously. Inside a sealed box, where you cannot measure or witness what's happening, the hypothetical cat is both alive and dead. Once the box is open, possibilities collapse. You can't check on the cat without affecting the outcome.

Actually, given the attitude of [a person whose relationship with me is a quantum superposition of its own] toward my cat, let’s drop the metaphor.

Measuring reality necessarily alters it. Making the decision to click on a radio button alters my thoughts about a relationship, so it alters the relationship. I appreciate the plentitude of options. But I don’t really want to pick one. I guess I find quantum superpositional relationships sexy.

It's sort of like the opposite of Intro Stats Meets Dykes to Watch Out For.

Then a friend reminded me of another sexy implication of Schrödinger’s Cat – quantum fetish mechanics. You’ll never think about kink the same way again.

Report after Monday's Vigil

2009-08-07T04:06:00.008-04:00

On Monday night, about one hundred people assembled at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav and then proceeded to the SF LGBT Center in a memorial vigil honoring the young people who were killed and injured in the Tel Aviv LGBT Center last week.

To be honest, I was dreading this event. I needed to mourn – for the youth who were killed, and also for the sense of safety that I lost, years ago, when I first realized that my own LGBTQ youth center was not the safe space I needed it to be. I worried, though, that I wouldn’t be able to mourn, but would instead be distracted by anger and alienation at the Zionist rhetoric that almost always accompanies any public Jewish event.

I was pleasantly surprised in so many ways.

Monday’s vigil focused entirely on the tragedy of the youths’ lost lives. Speakers from the Jewish community and the broader community emphasized the need to stand up for queer youth in our own communities and worldwide. One speaker talked about creating safety for “all residents” of Tel Aviv – not “all citizens,” as pro-Israel speakers usually say.

Nobody used this event as an excuse to repeat the nonsensical rhetoric of many official Israeli sources, that this level of violence is “unheard of” in Israel. In fact, people hardly mentioned Israel. And that is as it should be – these youth were targeted because they were queer, not because they were Jewish, not because they were Israeli. The organizers of this vigil did an amazing job of keeping Zionist politics out of it, to an extent I have never seen at any Jewish event.

Even the default Jewish event default Israeli flags, which some people seem not even to realize are political symbols, were not as big a presence as I'd expected. There were only two, and one of them was the rainbow version created for this June’s Jews March For Pride contingent– which, despite my dislike for all national flags and especially this one, I can see the relevance of for this particular vigil.

The vigil brought together groups that rarely share space, much less mourn together. There were many Jews but also many non-Jews – rare at a Jewish-organized event! There were many congregants from Sha’ar Zahav (a predominantly LGBTQ shul), and also some “unaffiliated” Jews and many Jews from other congregations, including two Chabad rabbis.

Perhaps even more surprising, it brought together people from across the spectrum of political stances on Palestine/Israel. I personally spoke with one representative from SF Voice for Israel and one from IJAN – the right and left poles of SF Jews organizing around Palestine/Israel – and both said the vigil was “really nice.” Voice for Israel and IJAN agreeing on something!? My vision went blurry, I was so surprised at that one. Now, anyone who likes one of those groups probably thinks the other is vile. But still, there are queer folks (or LGB anyway) in both groups, and they all needed a space to mourn these losses. It’s a good thing that our community was able to create a broad enough space, in that moment, to be meaningful for all of us.

This vigil teaches us some important lessons about inter-community organizing, and also raises some important questions for us to grapple with. With less than one day of lead time, a small team pulled together a well-attended, successful, diverse event. We have skills, resources, and a smoothly functioning network to draw on. What can we pull together next?

I have some ideas:

Some of us have wondered, why didn’t the LGBTQ community take the lead on this vigil? Why, worldwide, is it primarily Jewish communities who are mourning this homophobic hate crime? Since many of us are part of secular/gentile LGBTQ communities as well as Jewish communities, we can use our experience with this vigil to make sure that our LGBTQ communities also hone their capacities for rapid, organized, inclusive response.
We can build on the relationships freshly forged to create dialogues, within our Jewish communities, about our varied and complex relationships to Palestine and Israel. There is a moment of opportunity, as the eyes of the global Jewish community are on Jewish queers, for us to leverage an influence we have never had before. On average, LGBTQ Jews and younger Jews are farther left on Palestine/Israel than our straight and/or older counterparts. This week, established community leaders, including rabbis, turned to some young queer Jews for instructions on how to create inclusive community programming. They asked for and followed our advice on how to avoid excluding people like us from Jewish community. They want to hear our concerns and to understand where we’re coming from. When else have Jewish leaders ever invited us to speak and be heard about Palestine/Israel? Let’s take this opportunity!
As much as I appreciated the opportunity to acknowledge this tragedy communally without being distracted by Israel, it is not a coincidence that it happened in Israel. There are connections that need to me made. In a state where practically every man owns a firearm… Where entire ethnic groups are routinely and officially dehumanized and murdered … Where the state uses queers as a tourist attraction without regard for the likely backlash… Where the ultra-Orthodox have disproportionate power in the political system … In a state like Israel, this, or something like this, is always inevitable and ongoing.

Now that we had a successful community-wide vigil, I would like to create other spaces in which my grief need not be depoliticized. I want to say to fellow mourners that we stand against all violence - including the violent evictions of two Palestinian families from their East Jerusalem homes that took place that same weekend, the violence of drafting children to participate in the murder of other children, the violence against immigrant workers that is widespread and tolerated in Israel and here, and of course, the ongoing horrific violence perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. When I acknowledge and speak out against all those forms of violence, then I am able to mourn more honestly.
And finally, we can use our organizing capacity to build community that is not about Israel or Palestine, but is about our community here and now. Zionism is all about there and someday, about a fantasy of a homogeneous Jewish homeland where we'll somehow magically be safe from everything. To which I say, nisht geshtoygen, nisht gefloygen - this idea does not have wings, never got off the ground. Safety is not built with guns and walls. Instead we need to build safety, home, and family here – wherever we are at – and now – because if not now, when? The more that we can create vibrant, supportive and sustainable communities here, the less people will lean on the idea of there to soothe their fears and insecurities.

I plan to start by buying coffee for a young, queer Jew I’ve never hung out with before, and finding out what that person is thinking and feeling about all this.

How about you?

(This article is cross-posted on indybay.)

Painful Irony in Tel Aviv LGBT Teen Center Shooting

2009-08-02T02:43:00.011-04:00

In their own words, Stand With Us and other Zionist organizations "play gay card"; "Tel Aviv's burgeoning gay scene may be the single most effective Israel-advocacy instrument in the Zionist toolbox."

On Saturday evening, August 1, a shooter (presumably a Jewish Israeli, based on police reports' language, but no confirmation yet) injures 15 and kills 2 (with 3 more in critical condition) in LGBT teen center in Tel Aviv (as reported in Ha'aretz).

The mayor of Tel Aviv says "we will fight for every person's right to live their lives as they see fit."

I wonder what he means by "every person."

The irony makes me furious and scared. Furious at Stand With Us and organizations like it, furious at the shooter, and furious at the Jewish community here in the U.S. for pressuring me to "love Israel," when every bone in my queer body is screaming to run for safety.

(But, oh yeah - youth centers like the one where the shooting took place are exactly where I ran for safety when I needed it. And violence happened there, too. Machine guns are harder to come by in the U.S., but fucked up power dynamics are easy to find. And we did get hurt, in those moldy church-basement youth centers.

I've learned that safe spaces aren't always safe - for Jews, for queers, for anybody. That's because safety isn't a matter of place and walls. Safety has to be made some other way.)

Stand With Us wants you to love Israel. If you love Israel, love it for what's true about it. Not for an ad campaign.

Hey, queer Jews: Do not let them fool you! Israel is no more gay-friendly than any small, non-coastal U.S. city, and is less friendly than most. Don't let Tel Aviv's bar scene trick you into thinking it's some kind of San Francisco. (Not that San Francisco's perfect, either.)

Hey, straight Jews: Talk to your queer Jewish friends. Talk to queers from Israel. Just because Israel can wave a rainbow flag, doesn't make it a friend to the queers. (Remember HRC?)

Hey, queer Jews: Here in the U.S., we are doubly (at least) marginalized. In Israel, Jews are privileged. When Stand With Us says they dig the gays, which gays do you think they mean? When the mayor of Tel Aviv says he'll fight for "every person's right to live their lives as they see fit," do you think "every person" includes Palestinians? Do you really want to ally yourself with people for whom a Palestinian doesn't count as a person?

Hey, queer gentiles: Talk to your queer Jewish friends. Most of us are farther left on Palestine/Israel than you might imagine. Most of us are not fooled by the rainbow flag waving. You can support us best by hearing our concerns about these issues, and making your own thoughtful and informed decisions. To be an ally to the Jewish community, support the Jews you are in community with. This may or may not align with supporting Israel, in general or on any particular issue.

Hey, queer Jews: Check where you're standing! We don't need Tel Aviv to be our queer / Jewish homeland. We have been building homeland and building family wherever we go for generations. Who's your queer / Jewish community, here and now? How will you protect and nurture it? How will it protect and nurture you? How will you make your community what you need it to be?

Hey, everybody: It's not so complicated. Well, okay, it is. But you're smart! Don't let "it's complicated" become an excuse for not having an opinion. Gather information. Share news sources. Exchange perspectives. Listen. Speak. Don't be afraid to say something you might later think is wrong. Don't believe everything you're told. Question. Argue. It's the Jewish thing to do! It's the queer thing to do! And if you're not Jewish or queer ... you know, this is something we've got right. Give it a try. Don't let someone do your thinking for you. Don't let someone else define "home" for you. You gotta do it yourself. We gotta do it together.

(This article is cross-posted on indybay.)

Addendum re RACHEL

2009-07-26T00:37:00.008-04:00

On a more personal note ...

I am realizing, some 8 hours after the screening ended, that I really resent having to sustain my awareness of the local and global politics of showing the film, not to mention the local politics and possible consequences of my showing up at the film, rather than being present with the political situation the film describes and its personal ramifications for me and people I love.

I mean, this film is traumatic. We see multiple still shots of Rachel Corrie as she lay dying and dead. We see soldiers, most of them younger than I am, admitting that they believe their actions in Gaza were wrong, and we see one saying that he can't say he won't do the same thing again, the next time he's called for Reserve duty. I was on the verge of tears for some six hours after the film ended (which is not a good state to be in when driving across the Bay Bridge) (but it's okay, I made it safely).

I wish I could have sat with those feelings, discussed those issues, learned from those aspects of the film I agree with and those aspects I disagree with. I wish I could have cried with my friends about it, and wrestled together with the implications for our own behavior as anti-occupation Jews with all our various privileges, citizenships, and complicated positionalities. I wish I could have done what you're supposed to do with documentaries!

Instead I was constantly aware that the audience's reaction might affect JFF's decision about going through with next week's screening, that this controversy might once again tear my synagogue community apart (or tear me apart from it), and that my presence at this screening might get back to people I work with, and have who knows what consequences in my workplace.

I feel angry that those who sought to silence this film succeeded, not in getting the screening canceled, but, at least partly, in ruining it for me.

This makes me think about sustainability and self-care. About how to build healthy communities in the midst of a profoundly unhealthy society. About building in some debriefing, mutual support, and dancing whenever we lay plans to attend and/or protest a politically fraught event.

At the very least, we should have brought some chocolate.

Support SF JFF Screening of RACHEL

2009-07-25T23:21:00.005-04:00

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival's showing of Rachel has been met with protest from (what I perceive to be) a small but wealthy segment of the Jewish community that is so Zionist that it considers it inappropriate for a Jewish film festival to screen any film that is not explicitly and completely pro-Israeli-government.

Muzzle Watch (a project of Jewish Voice for Peace) has an excellent piece on it here.

Rachel is a documentary exploring the case of Rachel Corrie, a young activist from the U.S. who traveled to Gaza with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to act as a "witness" and human shield. ISM members hoped by their presence to deter IDF (Israeli military) soldiers from harming the Palestinians with whom the ISM members lived. In one of their direct actions, attempting to block soldiers from demolishing a Palestinian home, Corrie was killed when an IDF soldier ran her over with a D-9 Caterpillar bulldozer.

As the SF JFF's statement about the film notes, Rachel offers a fastidiously balanced point of view. IDF spokespeople are given equal airtime with ISM leaders. Even the soldiers involved in the incident (including the one who actually drove the bulldozer) have their say, and the filmmaker treats their testimony with complete neutrality and respect. The film focuses solely on the circumstances surrounding Rachel Corrie's death, and does not even mention the broader context of ongoing occupation that drew Corrie there as a solidarity worker in the first place. (Neither does it play the other side of the "context" card, by citing suicide bombings or other intifada tactics as an excuse for killing civilians, as is so common in pro-Israeli-government messaging.)

Right now SF JFF needs to hear from people who support the festival's decision to show this film. It may be especially useful from San Francisco Jews, but also from anyone who feels drawn to write.

Writing in support of SF JFF is not uncomplicated. As the Festival director proudly announced today during the SF screening (there's another next week in Berkeley), the JFF is showing 37 other films from or connected to Israel. Many of them are explicitly pro-government. It goes without saying that I do not support everything the JFF does. In fact, in line with the current call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, including selective cultural boycott, I would not feel right attending any Israeli film that is funded in part of in whole by the Israeli government, or that doesn't seek to criticize the occupation and/or benefit Palestinians.

Nevertheless, I think that communicating my support for JFF's decision to show this film is strategic in two ways: 1) to interrupt the assumption and assertion that all Jewish institutions are or should be Zionist, and 2) to assuage the fear within Jewish institutions that any Jewish institution that violates this taboo will lose community support and funding.

This is a moment when some Jewish institutions in the U.S. are beginning to acknowledge that a significant slice of the Jewish community does not support Israeli government policies or actions. These acknowledgments are baby steps, but crucial ones, toward opening up a real dialogue within the Jewish community that could lead (maybe is already leading) to reduced U.S. Jewish donations to Israel, increased international pressure on Israel to respect Palestinian rights, and increased international commitment to create the conditions necessary for Palestinian self-determination. Our support for SF JFF's decision can help SF JFF not be scared by donor's threats, and perhaps begin to recognize even more of the spectrum of perspectives on Israel and Palestine that exist in increasingly public ways in U.S. Jewish communities.

If you would like to show your support for SF JFF's decision to screen Rachel, please visit the SF JFF website for information on next week's Berkeley showing, and also visit the site of Jewish Voice for Peace (one of the co-sponsors of this film at SF JFF, along with American Friends Service Committee) to learn more about the situation and how you can direct your letters of support. You can also check out this Facebook group, whose purpose is not very defined as yet, but has something to do with making space for queer anti-occupation voices in the LGBTQI Jewish community in the SF Bay Area.

"Queer Jews Will Not Be Silenced"

2009-07-11T22:22:00.002-04:00

From the group on Facebook titled "Queer Jews Will Not Be Silenced":

We, Queer members of the Bay Area Jewish Community and our allies, are deeply saddened by events surrounding the “Jews March for Pride” contingent in this year’s San Francisco Pride Parade.

We wanted to march with Jews March for Pride because we are proud to be Queer Jews and allies. We felt excited and privileged to have a place in the San Francisco Pride Parade to celebrate our whole selves as Jews and Queers.

However, our sense of pride in the contingent was shattered when we learned that not only would the Israeli Consulate be marching with Israeli flags, but also that “inclusion monitors” would censor anything that deviated from the narrow message of “Jews support LGBT equality.” We see this as a contradiction. Support for the Israeli government is a political position that is not synonymous with support for LGBT equality, and is not synonymous with Judaism. Because these strong Israeli symbols would be dominating the contingent, we felt we could not in good conscious march without publically repudiating those messages. And although the planners reached out to include us, we felt excluded when any disagreement we voiced was declared “off message” and inappropriate.

This illusion of unity, at the price of silencing some members, is a deliberate trend that is plaguing the Jewish Community. Many Jewish organizations portray a unified front of support for Israel, and allow this single message to come at the expense of the diverse needs of our Jewish Community. In fact, we have a range of views on Israel/Palestine and our commitment to Jewish and Queer communities lies far beyond this single issue. We reject the dichotomy that 'Pro-Palestine' is synonymous with 'Anti-Israel,' and encourage space for deeper conversations about the complexities of these issues. Additionally, we refuse to let discussions about Israel detract from the many other struggles for justice our communities are engaged in.

Prior to the Parade day, we were not sure that we would be allowed to march at all. We arrived holding signs such as “No Pride in Occupation,” and “Feygele for Free Palestine,” and to our surprise, we did not get kicked out. We were met with a positive reception from many participants and observers of the parade, and a few hostile reactions. But the real consequences of our action have occurred in the days and weeks following the parade. Many of us have faced social sanctions in our personal and professional lives. Some of us who work in Jewish organizations have been harshly shamed in our workplaces and our political views have become a topic of discussion amongst our peers and supervisors. We feel vulnerable in the very community that had supposedly organized to support us as Queer Jews.

Rather than retreating to safer, less public expressions of our convictions, we are asking you to join us in resisting the silencing in our communities. Let's seize this opportunity for discussions, programming and policy change, and push to create spaces where our voices are allowed and welcomed.

Join our group on Facebook to show support, stay updated and get involved.

Po-pos on our side??

2009-05-28T00:49:00.007-04:00

As promised, some writing about being uncertain:

Yesterday the California Supreme Court announced its decision to uphold Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage in the state. It also affirmed the validity of all the marriages performed during the months leading up to the proposition's passage. So, those who are married already, are married. Those who aren't, can't. At least not here. At least not if they call it marriage.

As a friend said last night, very bravely, in front of a whole congregation of grieving gay people, "I am over marriage. I am so over marriage." Word. Me, too. So I'm not going to get into the political analysis. Instead I want to think about a perversely heartening and disturbing story I heard about the police.

In SF, there was lots of planned civil disobedience in front of City Hall. A few hundred folks got arrested, about 40 of them clergy, including the Rabbi and Rabbinical Intern of our local Big Gay Synagogue.

The way the arrests went down was ... really peculiar. From what I understand, a bunch of gay cops volunteered to be on crowd control duty at the action. They were the friendliest, helpfulest crowd control cops ever. They circulated in the crowd and let people know what was going on. They weren't pushy. By all accounts they were even cute.

When it came time to start arresting the clergy folks, these gay cops actually refused to do it, prompting more (presumably straight?) cops to get called in, who went ahead and arrested folks, while gay cops stood by making sure nobody got hurt. And actually, as far as I've heard, no one got hurt. Gay cops videoed the pat downs, which protesters interpreted as holding other (straight?) cops accountable for their treatment of those arrested.

Overall, the safest "arrested at a protest" story I've ever heard.

And yet I am left reeling.

I live in a place where cops are on the side of protestors.

Yeah, but, I'm still afraid of cops.

A trans person decided to get arrested for a cause he believes in, and knew that he would likely be safe doing so.

As safe as anyone is, when their body is searched and imprisoned.

A trans person had the freedom to decide to get arrested for a cause he believes in, and he was totally safe!

I know trans people who've been arrested here, and have not been safe.

Cops violated orders in order to show their support for queers putting their bodies on the line against state controlled-definitions of our relationships.

The cops were still there to control queer bodies.

I live in a place where cops are on the same side as protestors.

I don't want to be on the same side as cops.

My friends were in a protest yesterday, and the cops were on their side.

My friends were in a protest last month, and the cops beat up some of their comrades.

Having a few cops on our side can't be a bad thing.

I never want to be on the same side as cops.

Maybe they're changing the system from the inside?

The system is rotten, through and through.

Some cops helped to protect my friends' bodies from state violence.

Cops are state violence.

As usual, even more than usual, I want your thoughts/feedback/ideas.

Panelspiel on Environmental Illness

2009-05-17T04:16:00.004-04:00

An old panelspiel, from Dec. 2007, focusing on chemical sensitivities and ableism (the oppression of people with disabilities). I would not write it the same way now, but in the interest of continuing to post often, and because it's still true and still something I struggle to navigate, I will swallow my pride and share it anyway.

My name is Davey & I’ve been asked to speak about chemical sensitivities. I feel a little bit awkward about that, because I’ve been on panels about a lot of different issues, but never this one. So this is new to me. I also feel awkward about it because I have relatively mild chemical sensitivities, compared to some other people I know, and to the cases that get publicity (when any do). On the other hand, if my chemical sensitivity were very much more severe than it is, I wouldn’t be able to be in this room with you safely.

First I’m going to explain a little bit about what chemical sensitivity means, and what my experience has been. Then I’ll talk a little bit about how I understand chemical sensitivity in terms of ablism, and about some intersections with other forms of oppression.

I think a lot of people become confused about chemical sensitivity because of the word “sensitive”. People hear sensitive and think, “oh, that person’s just picky,” or whiny, or something like that. This misperception is exacerbated by the fact that most people with chemical sensitivities are women, so sexist stereotypes play into the situation, and by the fact that the medical establishment is not in agreement as to whether or not it constitutes a legitimate physical problem.

Chemical sensitivity has also been called MCS, Sick Building Syndrome, environmental illness, and a lot of other names. Basically it means that chemicals in the environment cause a physiological reaction similar to an allergy, but not a histamine reaction like most allergies, even when those chemicals are found at low levels that are considered safe or that don’t bother most people. People report a very wide range of symptoms.

For me, the chemicals that provoke an obvious reaction are usually perfumes and other scented body products. I get a variety of symptoms in response to those chemicals – sometimes I get short of breath, or I get a wheezing cough kind of like asthma, or I get what feels like a sinus headache or sometimes a migraine. If I leave the room immediately and get fresh air, the symptoms usually go away. If I hang around for longer I often get dizzy and sometimes nauseated. Sometimes symptoms come on suddenly and other times it’s more subtle.

In terms of walking around in everyday life, this means I have a really hard time being in public places. Most body products are scented, so really anywhere that I’m around other people I’m liable to have a reaction. There’s not really a way to avoid all of the substances that make me ill, so I have to prioritize which outings are worth it.

I haven’t stopped going out, but I often have to leave gatherings early. A few times I’ve gotten so ill that I felt it wasn’t safe for me to drive home, and luckily I was out with a friend who could drive my car.

If you have more questions about my personal experience I’m glad to answer them, but for now I’m going to move on to talk about an ablism analysis and some intersections.

I think that MCS is a really clear example of disabilities as socially constructed, for several reasons. First of all, this condition is not natural - it does not come from a biological cause. It’s caused by chemicals that are produced and proliferated by humans. I have never ever had a reaction while taking a walk in the woods, or camping, and I almost never have one when hanging out in my home by myself [when I lived by myself], because I don’t bring chemicals into my home that will trigger a reaction.

Second, the public discourse about MCS individualizes it. When it’s acknowledged at all, it’s treated as an individual medical problem and not as a social problem. People affected by MCS are expected to deal with it by taking medication for specific symptoms, and by avoiding chemicals that trigger them. There’s relatively little action in the other direction, such as putting fewer toxins into the environment, or making less toxic body products.

You can see this tendency in the language that’s used to describe MCS. For example, The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (a division of the NIH) defines MCS as a "chronic, recurring disease caused by a person's inability to tolerate an environmental chemical or class of foreign chemicals" (wiki). Note the “caused by a person’s inability to tolerate …” rather than, say, “caused by chemicals that are toxic to some people more severely than others.” For the most part there’s no controversy that these chemicals are toxic, it’s just that they’re supposedly safe at low levels. It seems really logical to me that a chemical that’s toxic at high levels probably isn’t good for you at low levels, so I don’t understand the resistance to blaming the chemicals, rather than the individuals affected by them.

Actually, I think I do understand a little bit. Corporations make a lot of money by taking shortcuts with toxic chemicals. It is more profitable in the short term for corporations to continue making poisonous products, so that’s what they do. And they use ableism to blame people like me when those products prove toxic to us.

On an individual level, when I tell people that I have chemical sensitivities, they almost always ask me if I take medication. The answer is, I do sometimes take medication to treat specific symptoms, but those are chemicals too, so that doesn’t seem like such a clever idea in the long term. And really, why should I have to be popping Excedrins all day or ab/using albuterol, when you could solve the whole issue by switching to a less toxic skin cream?

Finally, before I go on to talk about intersections, I should mention that legally, MCS is not uniformly recognized as a disabling condition. Some people have sensitivities so severe that they can’t be in public spaces at all, and yet they’re routinely denied Medicare and other benefits because MCS is not seen as a legitimate illness. I feel really angry and frustrated about this. One of the main arguments has been that MCS is psychosomatic, that it originates with psychological rather than physiological causes. I have four answers to that:

First, as I’ve said, there’s no argument that these chemicals are toxic. Why is it so hard to believe they might be more toxic to some people than to others?
Second, if you’ve studied even a tiny bit of neuroscience or neuropsychology, you know that the line between psychological and physical is really fuzzy. Lots of psychological conditions are known to have physiological correlates and/or causes, including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and the list goes on.
Third, lots of psychological illnesses are considered to be “real” disabilities. People can get Medicaid coverage for a wide range of mental illnesses. Even if MCS is caused in part or in whole by psychological factors, that shouldn’t make it any less legitimate.
Fourth, about 80% of people with MCS are female. There’s a long history of illnesses specific to females going undiagnosed, or being pooh-poohed as “all in your head.” As informed people we should be skeptical when these same arguments resurface.

With that as a transition, I’ll give a few more examples of how I see ablism intersecting with other forms of oppression around chemical sensitivities, and then pass it on to the next panelist.

On an institutional level, the intersections that come to mind are environmental racism and environmental classism. Antiracist activists have noticed that toxic industries tend to be located in communities where People of Color and poor people live, and that’s the most basic example of environmental racism or environmental classism. One hypothesis about the etiology of MCS is that a severe or chronic chemical exposure wears down a body’s resistance, making it more sensitive to chemicals that previously did not cause any symptoms. So if poor people and People of Color are more likely to be exposed to toxins in childhood, by having toxic industries sited in their neighborhoods, then they’re more likely to develop chemical sensitivities.

In addition, poor people of all races and People of Color are more likely to work in jobs where they’re exposed to chemicals.

For myself, all that has made me wonder what childhood exposure might have contributed to my current experiences. One thing I think of is that I grew up in a rural area with relatively high levels of agricultural chemicals. Once when I was young a bunch of kids got pretty seriously sick after swimming in a public swimming hole that was contaminated with pesticide runoff. In addition, we were near the Hudson River. You’ve probably heard of the long history of PCB contamination, originating in chemicals dumped from a GE plant for several decades. There’s still an ongoing argument about how to clean it up and who will pay for it. As environmentalists have studied the ecology of the Hudson River, they issue recommendations about which species of fish are safe to eat and which aren’t. During my childhood, the reccomendations seemed to change every couple of years. This year you are allowed to eat the shad, this year you aren’t, and who knows what we were all exposed to?

And, although I grew up in upstate NY, I was born [and now live again] in Oakland, CA. According to the 2000 census, Oakland the most ethnically diverse city in the US (tied with Long Beach) (wiki). It also has amongst the highest rates of asthma and other environmental illnesses, largely due to pollution from the Port of Oakland, which is one of the busiest shipping ports on the West Coast.

Finally, on an individual level, ablism intersects for me with Transgender Oppression. I am transgender. In social settings, transphobia and ignorance about trans issues can cause a huge disruption. I put a lot of energy into just trying to make small talk, without having my gender become an issue for people. In settings where I come out as trans, I feel like I’m already asking a lot of people. So often, I’m making a decision about whether I’m going to ask for “accommodation” in terms of people learning enough about trans issues to be generally respectful, or for the “accommodation” of avoiding chemical scents. I’m afraid if I do both that people will lose patience with me, that all the confusion will be too disruptive, and I just won’t be able to participate in that space. In this example the 2 forms of oppression don’t have a whole lot to do with one another, but on an individual level the way that they can play out is very similar, and when they both play out at once it can be overwhelming.

That’s all I have time for. Thank you so much for listening. I’ll pass it off to one of the other panelists now. I look forward to hearing your questions.

Cultural Appropriation, Transgender Names, and Looking in the Mirror

2009-04-22T01:25:00.019-04:00

DRAFT 2 UPDATED 5-5-2009

I’m a little snarky sometimes. No, really! In real life, too. This is not an affectation created especially for my net presence.

One of my favorite things to be snarky about is how trans people choose our names. In particular, it really bugs me when trans guys (I’ve never noticed trans women doing this) adopt Hebrew names even though they’re not Jewish.

Names like Aaron, Asher, Isaiah, Isaac, Jacob, Jesse, Jonah and Jordan seem popular among non-Jewish FtMs. Some of these are frequent choices because they sound gender-neutral: Aaron (where it sounds like Erin), Jesse (Jessie), and Jordan are examples.

I can understand why some FtMs would gravitate toward neutral-sounding names, sometimes to reflect our own genderqueerness and other times simply to reduce the chance of a stranger saying, “But that’s a boy’s name!” On the other hand, in Hebrew, Jordan is the only name of these three that actually is used for both boys and girls. Aaron and Jesse are quite clearly gendered; it’s only the translation and mis/pronunciation that make them gender-ambiguous.

Gender aside, most of these names would not be cause for comment if one or two guys chose them. But the sheer number of Isaacs (for example), is a little odd. In addition, there are a few Hebrew names that are weird to encounter even once. Micah. Ezra. Ezekiel. I mean, really. You just don’t get a lot of white gentiles named Micah, unless they’re FtM.

And I don't totally buy the argument that "these are Christian names, too." They are of course - some of them, anyway. But still, they're out of proportion. There are lots of Christian names that FtMs do not typically name themselves. There is no remarkable surplus of Mathew, Mark, and John like there is of Aaron, Isaac and Jonah.*

So, what gives?

I’m not just saying this to be snarky. I mean, I am snarky. I admitted it right off, didn’t I? But there’s something more serious going on here, too. When I meet a non-Jewish guy who’s named himself a clearly Jewish name, I feel a little bit jealous. A little possessive.

In my family, no one in my generation, or my parents’, or my grandparents’, have recognizably Jewish names. Even my great-grandparents, most of whom spoke Yiddish primarily and English only haltingly if at all, had anglicized names (see also).

They changed their names, and gave their children English names, in order to assimilate, partly for class mobility, partly just for survival. It worked for some of them, in some ways. It did not prevent them from experiencing antisemitism. Probably it mitigated the severity. Probably it continues to do that for me.

In my generation, I know lots of young adult Jews who have obviously Jewish names. For some, these are the names on their birth certificates. Others are choosing to go by the Hebrew names their parents gave them for use during religious rituals. I even know a few people who go by Yiddish or Arabic names. Almost all of these folks who reclaim Jewish names catch flack from their non-Jewish peers. At the very least they are considered weird.

In short, some Jews in the U.S. go through a lot to have Jewish names. I resent the non-Jewish FtMs who choose, as adults, to take on names that, if they were Jews, would mark them as outsiders, but since they are not, only mark them as trendy/interesting/exotic. It’s cultural appropriation. It’s oppressive. It kinda sucks.

I know all about the trendy/interesting/exotic thing, because I have gone by non-English names most of my life. The name I grew up with was Gita, a Hindi name meaning song.** When I introduce myself that way to white folks, after the inevitable back-and-forth about pronunciation, the almost universal response is, “What an interesting name!” I get that response not because the name is interesting per se, but because it’s an interesting name for a white girl. As I wrote here not long ago, when people don’t know that I’m white (because I’m not present / they can’t see me), having a Hindi name causes them to see me as suspicious, rather than interesting.

I stopped going by Gita because of gender, not because of airport security. But I started going by Davey for way more complicated reasons.

My mother tells a story – which I won’t vouch for the accuracy of, because sometimes her stories change on me – that after I was born, she wanted to name me Devi (which sounds a lot like Davey if you don’t speak any Hindi). The story goes that other people – my father? her friends? – wouldn’t let her name me that because it sounded too much like a boy’s name. This is ironic because Devi actually means “goddess.” Like with Aaron and Jesse, it is the mispronunciation that makes it sound ambiguously- or unexpectedly-gendered.

In college, for some reason I honestly can’t remember (but probably had to do with feminist neopaganism), I started using Devi as part of an internet handle. The hot tranny boy across the hall, once I corrected his pronunciation (as best I could, given that I don't speak Hindi either), thought it was totally interesting, not to mention convenient, that I already had a name that could sound like a boy’s name. For a little while, I went by Devi rather than Gita.

At the same time, I was exploring my gender and presenting in more and more masculine ways. Sometimes when I really looked or acted “like a guy,” my friends would jokingly ask if I was sure I didn’t mean Davey rather than Devi. So, for a while, I used both Devi and Davey. They weren't interchangable. I switched according to how my gender was feeling at the moment. I don't know how other people decided which to call me, but either way I was never bothered by it. I enjoyed the contradiction of honoring the Goddess while using what everyone around me heard as a guy’s name. To highlight what ought to be obvious, I will point out that this could only have happened in a predominantly white environment where very few people had more than passing familiarity with Indian cultures.

In grad school, after an intermission in which I was too busy scraping rent from change in couch cushions to think much about these things, a bunch of factors came together to shift me away from using Devi at all. One of these factors was a kind of gender policing in both trans- and non-trans spaces. People got really anxious about me having two names, or as they usually put it, two spellings of a name. They pressured me, more or less overtly, to “pick one already.”

Another factor was my learning about racism. For the first time, I was working and studying with people who recognized my name as Indian, and not because they were hippies but because they or their families were actually from India. I got the sense some of them were uncomfortable with my name, and the more I learned about the dynamics of cultural appropriation, the more I was uncomfortable with it, too. Plus, of course, they knew it was very definitely not a guy’s name. And not that this makes it okay, but that may have contributed to them never calling me the right pronouns (I was going primarily by male pronouns by this time).

I had tried to be consistent about always putting Devi on assignments I handed in, since that was the name I had applied to grad school under, and I had already learned that having multiple names confused people. But I was using both names in my personal life, and using Davey more and more of the time. One time I accidentally put Davey on a term paper and handed it in. My professor approached me afterward and said, “You know, Davey, when you spell your name this way, it’s a lot easier to call you ‘he’.”

I thought, ouch. There are so many things wrong about that statement. And at the same time, thanks. After all, most people weren’t being so helpful as to tell me what was getting in the way of their respecting my gender. I figured, if that’s what I have to do to be respected as a guy, then, what the heck. I started using Davey in school, as well as in my community. I got comfortable with it. And then I started publishing. And it sort of stuck.

But, I’m thinking about how much it annoys me when non-Jews adopt Jewish names, and mispronounce them, and make them mean something different. Even though Davey is not the same word as Devi, my name still came from that same process of appropriation. I don’t want to continue perpetuating that.

As I shifted to using Davey more or less all of the time, it became more and more a convenience, – a way to represent myself to the world that gave most people the impression I wanted to give them – and less and less connected with my mother’s intention to name me for the goddess, my own desire for connection with the feminine divine, or anything even slightly related to Hinduism or Indian cultures. I'm glad I don't go by Devi anymore, because I recognize the cultural appropriation that gave me access to that name. At the same time, I want my name to be more than a convenience. I want it to mean something more than a strong hint to use male pronouns. After all, if all I wanted was male pronouns, I could name myself Bob. And no offense to the Bobs out there, but ... No.

I never changed the name on my legal documents. At first, I had sensible reasons. Lately, I just haven’t gotten around to it. It's only been in the past few weeks has I noticed part of my reason for not changing it is that I don't know what to change it to.

So, for now, call me Davey. For later, I’m open to suggestions.

* Although there do seem to be a whole lot of Lukes. I have no hypothesis.

** Yeah, I know it's also a Yiddish name (more often as its diminutive Gitl), but let's be real here - Hindi is spoken by between 500 and 680 million people (wiki), and Yiddish by about 3 million (wiki). Even before WWII it was only around 11-13 million (wiki also). And anyway, my name was never Gitl. Just saying.

Ten Plagues

2009-04-09T16:56:00.008-04:00

The ten plagues are scary. Last night, a young person reminded me of this. He brought it up to his parents before the seder, asking "How dare you tell this story to kids?! It's horrible!"

Now that I think of it, of course the story is horrible. When I was first learning the Passover story as a little kid, way younger than the person who brought this up last night, I had a big problem with metaphor. I took pretty much everything literally. (For example, I remember worrying that if I watched too much TV, my brains would actually rot inside my head. This was especially true of commercials. When I watched cartoons, I hid my head under the pillow during commercials so I wouldn't see too much and become stupid.) Even now, I have to remind myself that people usually don't mean exactly what they say. It makes me not very good at making small talk.

So of course, as a very literal kid, I was pretty freaked out by the Passover story. I had nightmares about being overrun by frogs, and strategized about what to do if all the water turned to blood. When you put it that way, it hardly feels like a story of liberation. So, yeah, how dare we tell this story to little children?

Last night, the brilliant and gorgeous and gifted leader of our seder had a great solution. Instead of going through the whole blow-by-blow magid, he asked folks to share our favorite parts of the story, that we draw meaning from, in no particular order and without the obligatory blood, boils, and hailstones.

Like Moses, I do not tend to speak clearly, especially without preparation, when I've had some wine, and I'm in a room full of people I respect and admire. So I listened, and learned from other people's favorite parts. Later, in the long BART ride home, I decided the ten plagues are one of my favorite parts, at least they are now that I don't take them literally.

The feeling I get about the ten plagues reminds me of something that happened in 2004, the morning after the second time it was announced that Bush would be president. I was in grad school. In class that morning, my classmates and I were in shock. Some folks sat listlessly, with faces puffy as if they'd been crying all night. Others were agitated, demanding to know what right we all had to be studying and living relatively well off of our student loans, rather than spending the next four years of our lives organizing protests in the streets.

Our professor, a generation or two our elder and a strong, grounded presence in the classroom, said, "This is awful, and we will survive it. We have survived worse, and we will survive this too." She didn't have to explain what she meant by "worse." She's a Black woman social justice activist in her 60s. We all knew she's seen some shit go down. It was a comfort that she thought we'd survive Bush. That's the same feeling I get from the ten plagues story. If we could survive the blood, locusts, wild beasts ... then I guess we'll be okay.

It's like one of those weeks where you think, if someone made an after school special about my life, it would suck, because it would be totally unbelievable that this many crises happened to one person in one week. I mean, first blood came out of the faucet, then wild beasts trampled the garden, locusts ate our food and shitted all over the pantry, now the kids have boils, and to top it all off I found a frog in my bed. A frog! And when it's all over - not the next week, but months or years later, when you've had time to recover and get some perspective on it - you think, well, I survived that, I guess I'll survive this, too.

That's what I'm taking from the ten plagues story this year. We survived the ten plagues - the epic epitome of absurd crises upon crises. And for that matter, we survived Bush. We've survived lots of things. Whatever happens next, I guess we can survive that, too.

Excuses

2009-04-06T01:13:00.002-04:00

I have been such a slacker. Truly. If I had any regular readers, I'd feel really bad about this. As it is, well, I'm really sorry to both of you.

The thing is, I am used to writing rants and tirades and personal narratives. I am used to writing what I know. Lately, what's occupying my mind is the stuff I don't know. It's much harder to write about that.

I lived for 10 years in a semi-rural area in Western Massachusetts. I learned and grew a lot in those years, but by the last year or two, I was in a rut. Then I moved to Oakland, and my world got much much bigger.

Some fun with Census data: The population of Oakland is approximately 12x greater than that of the town I formerly lived in. The geographic area is .6x bigger. Oakland has over 7,000 people per square mile, and the town I used to live in has fewer than 1,000.

Census data counts bodies. Twelve times as many bodies, 7000 bodies per square mile, is not easy for me to get used to.

The great part is, I have access to 12x as many ideas as I did in WMass. When I lived there, I'd get together to kvetch and theorize about Christian hegemony with one or sometimes two friends who also had that interest. I'd get together to kvetch and theorize and organize about classism with two or sometimes four friends who were into that. Here, I think, "I wonder who's organizing about XYZ?," and it seems before I even voice the thought, there's someone (usually someone really cute), inviting me to a discussion group or event about it.

I am getting to think new thoughts here, which is delightful and, when it comes to this blog project, slightly embarassing. It's embarassing because I am used to knowing stuff, and then trying to convince other people of what I know. I know how to write that. I'm not used to writing about what I don't know, about uncertainty.

A friend suggested to me recently that needing to know "the answer" is a part of Christian hegemony. Hegemonic (culturally, socially and politically dominant) Christian thought assumes that there is one truth, and that those who know it (or have faith) are good, and those who don't know (or doubt) are evil - or at least, less good. In that model, of course people don't tend to admit to uncertainty.

I'm not Christian, but I was raised and educated in a society dominated by hegemonic Christianity. In particular, I learned to write in educational institutions founded and structured on Christianity. I learned how to write a 5-paragraph essay with a thesis statement and 2-3 supporting points. Didn't you?

I never learned how to write from a place of uncertainty. I'm not sure how to craft an interesting and compelling essay about not knowing.

I am not sure, but I think probably it is good for me to keep writing even when I don't know. I am sure that at least one of you is going to nag me if I keep slacking. So that was my excuse, and this is my commitment: I will write about things I'm not sure about. I will write about Palestine, about queer and trans politics, and about buying my first suit. When all else fails, I may write about urban chicken farming.

If the writing is not as incisive as the older posts, my humblest apologies.I think at any rate it will be more engaging than leaving three-month gaps in between posts. Plus, maybe if I write my uncertainty, y'all will believe me when I say I am eager for feedback about the writing and the content. (Really, I am. That part I am sure about.)

How to Talk about Gaza, 2

2009-03-02T23:48:00.004-05:00

I still don't have any answers. But people are coming to me with questions. I have to remind myself that I have a repertoire of skills for these moments. I have facilitated dialogues about topics almost as fraught. It is probably possible to dialogue about this, too. I'm going to take it in baby steps. Here is a snippet that might come in handy.

How to Talk About Gaza: When somebody says something that you just can't hear.

If you have any opinion about Israel and Palestine, you probably know what I mean. Sometime people state opinions about Israel that seem so heinous that it's hard for me not to scream at them. I don't really want to repeat those opinions. Sometimes they are as blatant as, "I think it's great that IDF kills babies," or "I think suicide bombing is the right thing to do." (This is not to say that these are parallel or equivalent, but only that they evoke similarly emotional reactions for different people.)

What happens for you when somebody says one of those things you just can't hear?

What do you feel?

What do you say??

Here's are a few possibilities.

"That's really hard for me to hear."
"Did you just say that ... [paraphrase what they just said]?"
"You may not realize that I grew up learning to talk and think about Palestine and Israel in an entirely different way than you did."
"I would really like to have this conversation with you. For me to do that in a way that feels sustainable, I would need . . . "

-to set aside some time to just talk about this, separately from our everyday work/life.
-to recognize that our different perspectives may be based on different knowledge and information, different analysis and interpretation, and/or different personal relationships to Palestine/Israel.
-to agree that agreeing on this issue is not a prerequisite for our friendship, or for working/living together peacefully.
-to set a timer, so that we can take turns explaining our perspectives, while enjoying the other's complete and respectful attention.
-to set an overall time limit for the conversation, for example, that we don't spend more than an hour discussing this at any one sitting.
-to agree to informed dialogue, that is, that we both want accurate facts and data to inform our opinions and analyses.
-to discuss and come to agreement about how it is or is not okay to share each other's perspectives with third parties outside of this conversation.
-to make plans for a follow-up activity, regardless of the outcome of our conversation, so that we can take care of ourselves and each other after discussing this very difficult topic.

How to Talk about Gaza

2009-01-18T22:33:00.003-05:00

I have been avoiding writing about Gaza. For the most part, I have avoided talking about it, except with people whose minds on the topic I already know.

One of the reasons for my avoidance is that I keep feeling I ought to have something significant to say. The longer I put it off, the more significant I feel obligated to be. Otherwise, I’m just prattling.

But the situation is overwhelming. I am not going to think of some brilliant insight. I will never have something to say that is equal to the enormity of the topic.

So for now, I’ll write about what I can write about. Even if it’s just about how hard it is to do so, and why. Maybe eventually that will evolve into something significant. Maybe it will be significant enough in itself.

And, to paraphrase a saying we used in grad school, it’s better that the writing be done than that it be significant.

So, here is s story about why it is hard for me to write about Gaza:

Last week I went to a Shabbat dinner hosted by a chavurah of a progressive synagogue of which I am now almost officially a member (which is bizarre in itself, but that’s another story). A wonderful and thoughtful woman led a discussion about Gaza based on the Torah portion for that week (Joseph forgiving his brothers for selling him into slavery).

For the first time since the ceasefire was broken, I was invited to talk about Gaza. I choked up realizing that I had been agonizing about the situation all week, and hardly talked about it. This is, I guess, a common thing for many Jews, but it is new for me.

Unlike most Jews I know, I was not raised to be a Zionist. Neither was I raised to be anti-Zionist, exactly. I was taught to identify with the national liberation struggles of indigenous and oppressed peoples, and also to be skeptical about all governments, particularly ours in the U.S. Jewishly, I have mostly assumed that being in Diaspora builds character. I have never felt connected to Israel as a homeland. For the most part, I have spent my adult life surrounded by people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who sympathize with Palestinians.

I have a few friends who grew up in more mainstream Jewish communities, and their attitude toward Israel and Palestine has confused and angered me. In some cases it seems they are staying deliberately ignorant. In other cases, we see things quite similarly, but where I have spoken openly about being non-Zionist or even anti-Zionist, they seem unable to even say the words without quaking. One friend was struck dumb for several minutes the first time I said to her, “Actually, I’m not a Zionist.”

It took me quite a while to start sympathizing with their predicament. Some of these folks come from families and communities where they would be disowned for being anti-Zionist. They felt held and supported in their Jewish communities, and to risk losing them was almost too much to imagine.

I, on the other hand, felt I had nothing to lose. As an adult, I have rarely felt held by a Jewish community, and never by one that was overwhelmingly Zionist like most mainstream congregations. I have always been on the outside of these communities.

It was not only our difference in convictions about Israel and Palestine that put me on the outside. I didn’t grow up in those communities. There is some cultural capital common in those communities that I don’t share, and I have never encountered a congregation that grasped that and went out of their way to include me. On top of that I am queer, and transgender, and have been “out” as both for practically my entire adult life. That doesn't always go over well, even in nominally gay-friendly congregations. And I don’t plan to have children, whereas most synagogue communities are structured around raising Jewish children and other heteronormative life cycle tasks.

In sum, those communities that would have kicked me out for being other than Zionist were already closed to me for unrelated reasons. For that reason it has not usually been hard for me to speak out against thoughtless or destructive manifestations of Zionism.

Now, some things have changed for me. I live in a place where the affiliated Jewish community (those connected with synagogues) is small and well-connected, and includes many out queer people. There are entire congregations structured around the needs of GLB (sometimes including T) Jews. I am employed by a Jewish agency, and sit on committees at a Jewish foundation.

These organizations and communities are not exactly what I want them to be, but they are not irrelevant either, nor are they actively excluding me. For the first time in my adult life, the organized religious community of which I am nominally a part actually has something to offer me. The synagogue offers adult education programming about transgender issues (and not because I offered to teach it!). Elders in my Jewish community take a positive interest in my life. Several folks who fancy themselves shadkhonim (matchmakers) have tried to set me up on dates – with the kind of people I actually like to date. At least one Jewish agency and at least one Jewish foundation want to know what they can do to include people like me. All of a sudden, I feel I have something to lose by expressing a belief system that puts me at odds with a significant proportion of this community.

And so it’s hard to write, or even talk, about Gaza. My feelings and my analysis about the situation have not changed. But the mental/emotional gymnastics I have to perform to figure out how to voice that analysis has changed a lot. I find myself mentally rehearsing statements like, “It doesn’t matter whether I’m Zionist or non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, a one-stater or a two-stater; no matter what one’s goal for the ultimate disposition of the lands and population of the area, the current actions of the Israel government are counter-productive.”

It’s very diplomatic. It has some elements of truth. I am not sure if it’s true enough, or diplomatic enough, for me to want to share it.

But silence is not working for me. I have had conversations with colleagues about how stressed out we are about Gaza, in which we both studiously avoid saying which “side” we’re on. It disgusts me that I was able to get comfort from those conversations. I don’t want to use diplomacy to avoid honesty. And so, even if the degree of honesty and diplomacy are uncertain, I have to try.

This is my first try.

Mixed feelings after No on 8

2008-11-29T11:53:00.003-05:00

For those who’ve been sleeping since election day, or who still haven’t sobered up from the parties celebrating Obama’s victory, California’s Prop 8 passed. This means that same-sex marriages are no longer sanctioned by the California state government.

Prop 8 may or may not stand up for long. The court has already granted a review of the proposition (citation). Even the notorious Governator is saying he hopes the Court will overturn Prop 8 (citation). But for now, most gay people are feeling really let down. One woman I know says that all she wants to do since the election is watch TV and eat mac and cheese. The community is depressed and distressed about it.

On the Wednesday following the election, several gay and straight coworkers approached me during the day to process their sadness and disappointment about Prop 8. I was having feelings about it, too, but they were mixed feelings. In fact, I had mixed feelings about the No on Proposition 8 campaign all along, in the days leading up to the election as well as afterward.

Of course I felt disappointed, like many others did. I was disappointed in the election results, but I was also disappointed in myself for getting caught up in the campaign. You see, marriage is not my issue. I have strong mixed feelings as well as strong opinions about marriage in general and about marriage as a political priority for the gay rights movement. In the midst of the gay community’s mourning period following the election, I felt nervous about voicing my feelings and understandings about the issue. Now, I’m stepping up. I’m know I’m taking a social risk by even posting this, but I feel it’s important to voice a different perspective on the issue.

Here’s where I stand on marriage: I think it’s a bad idea. Not same sex marriage in particular, but marriage in general, as a governmentally recognized category of relationship. I think a person’s marital status is a ridiculous way to decide whether people are considered family, whether they get to share health insurance, retain custody of their kids, or seek citizenship, and how they are taxed.

Please understand that this has nothing to do with how people define their own relationships. If individuals want to be married, or religious communities want to recognize couples as married, they should go for it. I wish them well. I just don’t think that the state should have anything to do with it.

Further, I think it is ridiculous that the (relatively) mainstream gay rights movement – what some folks have taken to calling the homonormative community – prioritizes same sex marriage as a political agenda. I’m with them this far: so long as marriage is a prerequisite for certain rights and privileges such as those listed above, everyone should have equal access to it. But aren’t there more urgent issues? GLBT and queer youth make up between 20% and 40% of homeless, runaway and throwaway youth (citation). Transgender people in San Francisco, of all places, experience unemployment at a rate of 60% (citation) and live in poverty at a rate of 90% (extrapolating from citation combined with cost of living data for the area). Transgender women of color are routinely arrested for sex work, whether or not they are working, and confined in men’s prisons (citation, citation). And we’re putting our energy into marriage?

For that matter, there were initiatives on the California state ballot this year that I found even more nefarious than Prop 8. For example, Prop 4 to require parental notification for minor abortions, Prop 6 to increase penalties for gang-related drug offenses, and Prop 9 to decrease the frequency of parole hearings (citations). And we’re putting our energy into marriage?

Advocates of legalizing same-sex marriage will say that it’s not about marriage, but rather about the civil rights that go along with marriage. This argument makes a certain amount of sense. One primary difference between marriage and civil union is symbolic. Another is that insisting on marriage is a strategic step toward making sure that same-sex marriages can eventually receive all the privileges associated with marriage, which civil unions do not.

That word – privilege – is exactly why I think that it is about marriage, and not only about civil rights. When homonormative people advocate for same-sex marriage as a way to obtain to civil rights like access to healthcare, paths to citizenship, legal recognition of second-parent adoption and so on, they are speaking from a place of privilege. It is only from a place of privilege that marriage can be seen to guarantee any of those rights.

In our current foster care and child welfare system, poor parents of Color risk having their children taken away, even if they’re married (see Spade, “Compliance is Gendered: Transgender Survival and Social Welfare,” in Transgender Rights , eds. Paisley Currah, Shannon Minter, Richard Juang (2006) or this study for example). In our current economic system, poor people are denied healthcare, even if they’re married. In our current immigration system, transgender people may be denied paths to citizenship, even if they are married to a U.S. citizen (citation, citation). Need I go on?

In “Is Gay Marriage Racist?,” (Bailey, Kandaswamy, & Richardson, in Mattilda Bernstein’s That’s Revolting, Soft Skull Press 2004 & 2008) three panelists discuss some of the reasons many queer People of Color have not gotten on the same-sex marriage bandwagon. The gist of it for these panelists/authors is that they understand that marriage will not automatically create access to those rights and privileges that marriage activists claim to be after. They understand that healthcare, citizenship, and family integrity are privileges not only of heterosexuality, but also of race and class.

For all of these reasons, I have felt less attached to same-sex marriage campaigns than many of my peers and colleagues. From the time I first moved to CA in July, I felt bored and sometimes annoyed at the ubiquitous focus on marriage.

Of course, we didn’t exactly choose the battle. The theocratic right put an enormous amount of funding and strategizing into Proposition 8, and the No on 8 campaign was from the start a defensive one. I couldn’t blame people for getting caught up. Eventually I started to get caught up, too.

The Yes on 8 campaign was not friendly. They used the most blatant homophobic stereotypes to generate support for the proposition. The feeling of threat and sense of urgency associated with defending our community against these attacks was almost infectious. Even I started to catch it. I knew (and announced) that I would never get married even younger than I knew I was queer. And yet, as election day approached, I began to think something important was afoot, and that I needed to seize the moment. I donated a total of $200 to the No on 8 campaign – not much in the scheme of things, but a lot relative to my budget, and more cash than I have ever donated to any political or non-profit cause. I stood on street corner in Oakland in the pouring rain holding a No on 8 sign. I then left that sign in my car, for a whole week, not knowing how my neighbors might feel about the campaign, but knowing that many of them are still uncertain about my gender.

Even while I was feeling strongly enough to take some not-entirely-sensible risks for the campaign, I had mixed feelings about my participation. Of course I didn’t want Prop 8 to pass, but I felt kind of dirty working for marriage as if it were uncomplicated. I felt like I should not voice my critiques of marriage as an institution or the same-sex marriage movement – or of Obama, for that matter – because my concerns were secondary to the election. And that’s what I did. I kept my mouth shut, for the most part, and did my duty by the gay community. (I still have all my car windows.)

As soon as the election was over, the urgency of the campaign subsided for many gay people into anger and disappointment. I shared those feelings, but not their target. Rather than being angry at the Yes voters, and disappointed with the results of the election, I was angry and disappointed with myself, for getting caught up in a marriage campaign.

I have organized my life so that most of my energy beyond self-care is going to help causes I believe in, and believe to be both urgent and important. Marriage is not one of those issues. I am feeling angry with myself that I let myself get distracted.

And I’m also feeling scared – as I was before the election, too – that my homonormative brothers and sisters will not come back for me. I’m hopeful that Prop 8 will not stand up in court, and that soon enough we’ll get a ruling from the State Supreme Court saying this whole process wasn’t legal to begin with, marriage rights are restored, and it’s all okay again. And yet that hope is also my fear.

After marriage, then what? After the relatively privileged homonormative folks get over throwing lavish wedding receptions, will they notice that young people are still homeless, trans people are still getting imprisoned, poor people still lack healthcare, and the child welfare system is still racist?

The week after the election, after hearing me explain these arguments, two people suggested to me the following course of action: First, keep fighting for No on 8. Then later, after Prop 8 is repealed, give the gay people some time off to enjoy their long-awaited honeymoons. Then, go confront those people and convince them, by guilt or guile, to come back and fight for those left behind.

I get it, or at least I think I do. There was a moment we had a chance to seize. We didn’t get to choose the issue, because the theocratic right chose it for us. And if we all throw our energy in together, we can win, and then we can move on to the next fight.

But I’m scared. I’m scared those homonormative folks won’t be with me for the next fight. I’m scared they already decided that this is the last fight. I know that my fears are not all reality-based. I also know that I have seen this happen before.

I lived in Massachusetts for about ten years, both before and after same-sex marriage became legal there. At the time I was working (volunteering, really) in a queer youth center. The center was able to stay open largely because adult volunteers donated their hours to staff the center. As soon as it became possible to get a marriage license, many of our most reliable and beloved volunteers quit, in order to take time to plan their weddings. They literally prioritized picking out china patterns over putting energy into the community. Did they deserve a little something to honor their commitment to each other? Yes, I’m sure they did. Can I blame them for walking away from young people who trusted them to be a second family? Yes, I certainly can.

And then there’s ENDA. Many people including I have written about the ENDA/HRC debacles (citation), so I won’t go into it here. The point is, this fear is not from nowhere. History suggests that the privileged do not “come back” for the most marginalized members of their coalitions, at least not without a whole lot of prompting.

And besides, this isn’t a one-way exchange. I need the support of homonormative gay rights power structure, and they need me too. The homonormative folks can’t do it without the queers, trannies, and especially poor people and People of Color. Before the election, some of the homonormative folks who have tried to convince me of the primacy or marriage used arguments to the effect of "We don't have time/energy for a complex intersectional analysis, because that will distract from or prevent us from winning marriage right now." After the election, much rhetoric has been spewed and analysis offered to the effect that No on 8 lost because it failed to reach out to communities of Color. That demands the question, as one very clever person put it to me recently, “Would it have killed them to have an intersectional analysis?”

I’d rather not wait until after the honeymoons. I’d rather get people on my side now. I’d rather build understanding amongst our heterogeneous communities that we are all in this together. I’d rather know now that I am throwing down for marriage because we’re seizing a moment, and that not decades from now but immediately, the folks in my community who feel urgently about marriage and will benefit from it will also be throwing down for causes I believe in.

To build this understanding is not the work of an evening or a campaign season. This is the work of movement building, of coalition building, which in the ideal is also community building. I am hopeful and scared about this work. Right now, this is what I’m willing to throw down for. Are you in it with me?

How I got off the terrorist watch-list

2008-10-27T00:50:00.002-04:00

draft 2

This is a draft and I am interested in editorial comments. Please do not share it (except by linking to this page) until it's finished.

I am particularly in feedback about the use of metaphor, which is definitely not my strong suit, and about how my analysis speaks or fails to speak to your experience. You can write feedback as a comment or email me.

After 9/11, I got stopped every single time I went through airport security. In the very beginning I got stopped twice in each airport – once at the regular screening point, and once again at the gate for an additional search of my carryon bags.

At that time most travelers – at least, most white, U.S. citizen travelers - were just getting used to being really scrutinized in airports. Everyone was annoyed at the long lines, and at having to remove their shoes and jackets. It seemed like overkill. It was overkill. But even in that context, my experiences with airport security stood out as notably ludicrous.

For one thing, the numbers did not add up. They told us that the second screening of carryon bags at the gate occurred for one in ten randomly selected passengers. I got selected ten times out of ten. For another thing, metal detectors didn’t seem to like me. No matter how hard I tried to remove any clothes with metal pieces, and any stray scraps of foil in my pockets, I always set it off.

After a little while, I got know the signs and procedures. When I picked up my boarding pass, I checked for the row of Ss across the bottom that meant I had to go through the special line. (It was always there.) Most of the people I shared the line with were white men in suits – business travelers. I figured they really had been selected randomly. There were also a few Arab, African and South Asian men, who looked accustomed and resigned to the extra scrutiny. I figured they had been profiled, selected because of irrational suspicions based on their presumed race, ethnicity, or religion.

In line, I removed my shoes, hoodie, cap, and belt and placed them neatly in plastic bins to be x-rayed. I shuffled through the metal detector, trying to look like my pants weren’t about to fall off. Because I was in the special line, officers would search my bags even if I didn’t set off the metal detector, but I hoped at least to avoid a personal screening (i.e. a pat-down).

The pat-down or wand-check (with a handheld metal detector) is not exactly a joy for anyone, and it can be particularly traumatic for transgender people. A few times, officers got into arguments about who should pat me down. The screening is supposed to be performed by an officer of the same gender as the person being examined, to avoid the appearance of inappropriate touching. The officers weren’t certain of my gender, and it seemed to stress them out. “Should you pat her down?” “No, I think you should pat him down.” “I’m pretty sure you should pat her down.” “Just pat him down please!”

Needless to say, I worked hard to avoid this situation. I took to flying in pyjama pants, so the rivets on my jeans wouldn’t set off the metal detector. I replaced my steel earrings with wooden ones. I even tried removing my Star of David necklace, which I almost never do. It’s a tiny pennant on a silver chain that’s hardly big enough even to count as metal, much less to set off a metal detector, but I was willing to try anything.

It didn’t matter. Inevitably, the metal detector went off anyway. At least once I think I really had succeeded in removing every discernable trace of metal, because the detector didn’t sound immediately. I took a few steps past it and felt a sense of elation – at last, I did it! No argument about my gender! No confused TSA agent fastidiously touching every inch of me with the backs of his or her hands! And then of course the detector went off. They must have a button back there, I thought. Just in case a freaky, suspicious-looking person like me fails to set it off on their own. They must have pushed the freak button.

I thought I had it all figured out. It was obvious to me why I was getting searched more often, and more intrusively, than most people I knew. I attributed the unequal treatment to those aspects of my identity that were most salient to me. I thought, “It’s because I’m young, because I’m poor, because I’m queer, because I’m transgender.” Actually, it was something else.

I found this out in 2005, traveling to Florida to be with my extended family. My boarding pass had the row of Ss like usual. In the special line, the TSA agent rattled off, “Remove your shoes and jacket and put any metal from your pockets in this dish …” and then she turned to me, realized I had already done all that, and commented, “You’re pretty good at this.” I noticed her for the first time them, because this was the most personable thing a TSA agent had ever said to me. She was a petit woman of South Asian descent, and the id badge pinned to her uniform had a Hindi name on it. It occurred to me that this must be an awkward job for an Indian woman to have, what with the rampant racial profiling of South Asians.

“I’ve had some practice,” I said. She nodded sympathetically. I handed her my id and boarding pass. She glanced at them and almost immediately looked up and said, “Gita??” Gita is my legal first name. In India, it is a very common name for girls. I had a moment of panic, thinking this was yet another gender confusion. Sometimes when people read me as a guy, they don’t believe my id is really mine.

“Yeah,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You don’t look Indian,” the TSA agent said. That caught me off guard. All of a sudden we were having a totally different conversation from the one I had thought we were having.

“Yeah, that’s true,” I said. I am white, after all. I’m sure there are some people in India who look like me, but the truth is my connection to that country is tenuous at best. My parents traveled there for a few months before I was born, and I know just enough Hindi to pronounce my own name. There’s no reason that I would “look” Indian at all.

“Huh.” The TSA agent shrugged. The moment was over, and she was all efficiency again. With her right hand, she typed something into her computer, while with her left hand she returned my id and boarding pass to me. “Have a nice flight,” she said.

On the other side of the check point, tying my shoes and trying to regroup, I puzzled over the exchange. I second guessed everything I had said, wondering what I could have done differently to be more friendly, or less suspicious, or … something. I knew I was missing something.

I continued puzzling over it for the entire trip, until I arrived at the airport for the return flight. I looked at my boarding pass and noticed: No Ss! I went through the ordinary, non-special check point, and lo and behold, the metal detector did not go off!

Up until that trip, I had been stopped every single time I flew for about four years. In the three years since then, I have never once been stopped by airport security.

I think I was probably right about the freak button. But I think they have another button back there, too. When the friendly Indian TSA agent realized I was not South Asian at all, but rather a white kid with a Hindi name, I think she hit the white button.

Peggy McIntosh writes of a knapsack of white privilege. The idea is that white people carry around a whole package of unearned advantages, which we may not even be aware of, that privilege us in a system of racism. McIntosh’s article has been described as groundbreaking for folks who do work around racism and other systems of oppression. I’ve found it useful as a teaching tool, but it always frustrated me on a personal level. When I first read McIntosh’s article, I wanted to understand that I had white privilege. And yet many of the specific examples on McIntosh’s list did not apply to me because I am disadvantaged by other systems of oppression – for example, because I am young (and young-looking), working-class, Jewish, queer, and transgender.

These other identities tend to mask my white privilege in many situations. One of McIntosh’s examples is “I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.” As a young-looking, poor-looking, gender-ambiguous queer kid, I was followed and harassed pretty consistently in stores. Now I don’t look quite as young or as poor as I did then, but I still get harassed from time to time because of gender. Another example from McIntosh’s list is “I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.” As a Jew whose family has been impacted by McCarthyism, that one didn’t make much sense to me either. Many other of McIntosh’s examples apply to me only because they include phrases like “because of my race,” or “based on my skin color.” They describe privileges that are denied to me for reasons other than race. I could understand that I was white, and that these examples described privileges of whiteness, but it was hard to reconcile that with the fact that I did not have access to those privileges.

A handful of McIntosh’s examples of white privilege are true for me, and that’s how I started learning about white privilege. But even once I knew what to look for, I rarely saw it operating in my life. The concrete, everyday examples that make The Invisible Knapsack so compelling just didn’t apply to me. I knew that I had white privilege in an abstract sense, and I tried to increase my awareness of race playing out in everyday interactions. Still, my primary experience was that of being targeted as untrustworthy, un-valued, or an outsider, because of identities other than race.

These were the kinds of experiences that were most salient to me, and these were the kind of explanations I turned to when I realized I was being targeted in airport security. The effects of other systems of oppression don’t negate my white privilege, but they do make it even more difficult to put my finger on ways in which I personally benefit because of my race. In this case, my attention to these other factors distracted me from noticing that I was being mistakenly targeted because someone perceived me as non-white.

I still think that classism, adultism, transgender oppression and probably antisemitism play out for me in airports. But they are not as central in that context as race is. I was put on a list of some kind, set aside to be particularly hassled in the airport, because I had a South Asian name. I was taken off the list when a South Asian woman noticed I was white.

McIntosh calls her knapsack “invisible” because white people usually don’t notice the privileges we have as being related to whiteness. We may assume that everybody has them, or that they are results of our own personal effort or merits. Even though white people often don’t notice our own white privilege playing out (sometimes even when we try to), the fact of our whiteness – the fact of our membership in the category of “white” – is not invisible. In order to be afforded those privileges, we have to be recognized, by other people and by systems (banks, police, schools, etc.), as white. Rather than a knapsack, it’s more like a tiny transmitter that sends out constant signals wherever we go, saying, “white person. white person. white person.” People around us may be conscious or unconscious of the signal, but either way they know to treat us like white people.

I was a white person before and after 9-11, but sometimes the signal was jammed. Because of my other identities, and in this case because I have a South Asian name, my privilege was obscured not only to me but to the system. The TSA failed to recognize me as white and therefore did not afford me the white privilege of being considered above suspicion. On the contrary, I was racially profiled as a presumed South Asian and, I can only guess, put on some sort of list to receive extra scrutiny.

Ironically, it took an Indian TSA agent to see through my unusually opaque knapsack. Despite my whiteness signal being jammed by an Indian name and a “special” boarding pass, she noticed that I was white. She pushed the white button, and the system ceased to suspect or even to notice me. And that is the essence of privilege. I didn’t do anything wrong to get on the watch list, and I didn’t do anything right to get off it. All I had to do was show up and be recognized as white.

Funny/"Ha Ha" vs. Funny/Oppressive

2008-09-14T00:10:00.003-04:00

My buddy C likes to distinguish between funny/"ha ha" and funny/"oppressive." People so often confuse the two. If I say, "There were two dozen clowns in a VW bug. It was so funny!" that's funny/"ha ha." If I say, "Isn't it funny how the TSA stopped bothering me after they realized that I'm white?" that's funny/oppressive. I might still laugh at it, but it's not laughing with joy. It's laughing so as not to be overwhelmed by the wrongness of it.

I thought of this today when I found myself drafting an email to a friend with the subject line "Want to hear a funny story about gender?" It was sort of funny/"ha ha," but the more I let myself vent about it, the more I realized it was also about an oppressive underlying situation.

The story is this: I recently wrote a book review for an academic journal. Today I got an email from the publisher asking me to do final proofs on it. That means, to go over it for any typos or other very minor edits that are needed before publication. The copy editor provided a list of "queries" for me to look at. Queries mark places where the editor saw a problem and wanted me to provide or approve a correction. This time I got very few queries - four to be exact.

The funny part is that two of the four queries concerned my pronoun! As usual, I used third-gender pronouns in my author bio. There are two pronouns in this three-sentence version of the bio, and the editor had marked both of them. The first query read "Change ze to he." The second read, "Change? ze to he?"

Oops! I explained briefly and referred the editor to my article in the same journal from a few years ago, which includes a lengthy footnote about third gender pronouns, for a similar reason.

So what kind of funny is it? Is it funny/"ha ha"? I have to admit, it is a little. I did laugh with a little bit of joy when I imagined the editor's confusion upon finding the second "ze" and having to doubt whether it was really a typo.

It's also funny/"really, people?" because it does not cease to be bizarre to me that I have to have outside citations to prove that third gender pronouns are legitimate. I actually use these words in conversation on a daily basis, and I am understood in my community when I do that. This has been true in my life for about 8 years. Still, they're not real to a mainstream publisher unless I can provide citations. I generally shy away from reading ethnographies of people like me - talk about funny/oppressive! - and literary references don't count for much unless you're writing about literature. So to my publisher, these words do not exist.

If that's bizarre, then I'm not even sure what the adjective would be for the fact that in this case I can legitimize my use of third gender pronouns for myself by citing ... me! The reference I provided the editor was an article on queer theory, which I wrote and this same journal published only two years ago.

And if any of you were wondering, this is a perfect example of why I'm not in a doctoral program right now. Academia, and perhaps academic writing in particular, seems to encourage those who are deeply engaged in it to give up the skill of noticing reality when it punches them in the nose without a citation - a skill which I prefer to retain.

Dilemmas of Invisibility and In-Between-ness

2008-09-01T12:54:00.004-04:00

A paper I wrote several years ago, for a grad school class on historical foundations of social justice education. It's always creepy for me to re-read old writing, since how I wrote it then is never how I would write it now. Nevertheless this paper seems particularly relevant for me right now, as I'm in a new city, getting to know the trans community here - and over and over again, I am astounded and dismayed at how strongly people cling to normative identity logic even as they advocate for the rights of trans and queer people whose very existence challenges and disrupts that logic. This paper reminds me of some of the very good reasons people cling to normative identity, and also of why I dislike it so much.

(With recent additions in orange.)

“One of the first things we notice about people (along with their sex) is their race. We utilize race to provide clues about who a person is. This fact is made painfully obvious when we encounter someone whom we cannot conveniently racially categorize – someone who is, for example, racially ‘mixed’ or of an ethnic/racial group with which we are not familiar. Such an encounter becomes a source of discomfort and momentarily a crisis of racial meaning. Without a racial identity, one is in danger of having no identity.” (Omi & Winant, 1986, italics in original, my underlining)

Without a racial identity, one is in danger of having no identity. Of all our class readings so far this semester, this provocative assertion from Omi and Winant’s “Racial Formation” is sticking with me. At first I struggled with it. What can it mean to say that a person could have no identity? From an individual perspective, a person without an identity seems almost a contradiction in terms. But Omi and Winant are writing from a social perspective and, as I contemplated this passage, I began to see that it speaks volumes not only about the experiences of individuals caught outside of categories, but also about the formation and maintenance of these categories.

Race and gender are so fundamental to the structure and function of U.S. society that, without a racial identity and a gender identity, one becomes invisible, silenced, unrecognized, and unacknowledged. Omi and Winant speak of the momentary crisis of meaning that may occur when we encounter someone who we cannot easily classify. The encounter shakes the borders of our racial and gendered landscape and we often work hard to resolve the mystery in a way that maintains those borders. We may perform mental gymnastics trying to justify force-fitting the person into a category that’s not quite right, or we may write hir [1] off as an exception or a freak.

On the other hand, for the person who doesn’t fit into racial or gendered categories, the crisis is not momentary but constant. Every momentary crisis that someone else has about hir is a reminder of hir in-between-ness. It is not so easy to write oneself off as an exception. When someone doesn’t have a racial or a gender identity, others have trouble seeing/recognizing hir, and ze may even have trouble seeing/recognizing hirself. In order not to be caught with no identity, ze must belong to a racial and a gender category that makes sense to hirself and others. Many people who are caught in this dilemma try to resolve it by force-fitting themselves into a new or established category that others can recognize, even if the category is not quite true to experience, or is so broad as to be practically meaningless (e.g. Asian, Latina/o, Bi/Multiracial, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgender). This is not to say that these categories are meaningless to everyone who uses them, only that some people may claim an identity that is not quite what they mean, but that at least means something.[2]

For example, Ekins & King observe the importance for transsexuals and transvestites of “adopting an identity which makes sense of things” (p. 101). They detail four characteristics that transsexuals and transvestites reference to explain, and perhaps to defend, their identity: reality/centrality, pervasiveness, permanence, and inherence. They also mention, almost in passing, that transsexual and transvestite identities can only be defined in reference to normative binary gender. What Ekins and King fail to point out is that a transsexual or transvestite identity must “make sense of things” not only to the person who claims that identity, but also to others – in this case, to the gender-normative or non-trans gaze. The characteristics that they list as common to these trans identities are also true of normative, binary gender identities. Being a man or a woman, like being transsexual or transvestite, is considered central and pervasive to one’s identity, permanent, and inherent.

This similarity is not a coincidence. For one thing, transsexual and transvestite are both terms that come out of the medical community, not out of a trans community. They were developed by gender-normative male doctors as part of a mechanism of social control to make trans folk more comprehensible and manageable within a binary gender system. Transsexual and transvestite provide new possibilities of location within a binary gender system, but they do not challenge the structure or the terms of that system.

For another thing, the identities of trans people are scrutinized and contested by non-trans observers. If the non-trans observers find a trans person's identity inadequate, they may punish the individual both directly an indirectly, most notably in the form of anti-trans violence which is all too common. Often the perpetrators of such hate crimes get off with light sentences using the "transpanic" defense - by arguing that, when they realized the person wasn't "really a woman" (or man), they became so distressed that they had to respond with violence. What's worse is that these defenses often work. In a real sense, both in law and in practice, people who are seen to transgress gender without adequately convincing others of their normalcy as members of one of the two socially sanctioned genders are no longer afforded the basic rights of citizenship (see e.g. Cabral & Viturro, 2006) or indeed what are usually considered to be "human rights" (Thomas, 2006). To be without a recognizable gender identity is to be without a human identity.

When people who find themselves positioned outside of social categories have the opportunity to construct our own new categories without such direct manipulation from institutions of social control, do the categories still reproduce the rules of the system in question? In other words, is it possible to create new categories of gender or racial identity that do not reflect the fundamental characteristics of the extant categories? To go back to Omi and Winant, a person in danger of having no identity needs an identity that is comprehensible not only to hirself, but also to others. A gender identity that does not follow the basic rules of normative gender identities – such as the four characteristics outlined by Ekins and King – is not a gender identity at all, it’s something different. To take another example, a racial identity category in the U.S. that does not reference physiognomy and heredity in some way is not a racial identity at all. To construct such an identity would require, at the outset, intense intrapersonal work and integrity. Then it would require convincing many others of the legitimacy of the construction.

The larger question this is coming to is how can we change oppressive structures of social categorization? Social categories, including but not limited to racial and gender identities, are defined, contested and redefined according to the cultural and political requirements of the moment. Often they are defined hierarchically. Sometimes the categories themselves are oppressive, even regardless of hierarchy. Yet we need racial categories in order to function socially, or else we are in danger of having no identity, of disappearing.

For clarity’s sake, let me make an admittedly simplistic example. Imagine a world in which there is no racial hierarchy. In this world, people of every racial group have equal resources, access, and opportunity, and everybody really is “color blind”. But there are still racial categories, and they still mean something (although something without value judgment). Because there are categories, there are still some people whose categorization is uncertain. In this imaginary world, race as a system of categorization is still oppressive, even though the hierarchy has been removed.

The only way to eliminate racism is to eliminate both the hierarchical organization of racial categories and ultimately the categories themselves. The only way to eliminate sexism is to eliminate not only the hierarchy of men over women, but also the entire system of gender categorization – that is, the concept of gender itself. The only way to eliminate heterosexism is to eliminate the normalization of heterosexuality and the othering of other sexualities, but also to break with the concept of sexual orientation entirely. But as I learned the hard way, identifying as “I don’t believe sexual orientation is a valid concept” is not a productive way to start a conversation. We need to break with these categories, but in the meanwhile, we need to hold onto them, lest we disappear.

Perhaps the struggle of genderqueer identity, for example, is to gauge when it is safe to give up gender identity without disappearing. In the meanwhile, we hold onto just enough of it to get by on, while slowly discarding some characteristics, like permanence and inherence. Indeed, the genderqueer community seems to be moving in this direction. However, I have seen many genderqueer individuals “relapse” into more binary gender logic as they leave sheltered communities such as some colleges and have to deal with more and more “momentary crises”. We are still far from the point where we can or should abandon gender.

"Transgender" and "genderqueer" as identity labels do little to challenge the structure of the traditional gender system. It's not that they aren't radically outside of & in opposition to it - in many ways I believe they are. But they are not generally recognized as gender categories, and in fact their failure to conform to the basic structure of gender (permanence, inherence, biology, etc.) makes it unlikely that they ever will be. However the transgender rights movement has in many cases recognized the futility of inscribing one more gender category as a strategy for social change. Legislation to protect the rights of transgender individuals rarely names transgender people as a protected class, but rather refers to "gender identity" and "gender expression" as protected categories (Currah, 2006; Thomas, 2006). This much broader approach is promising legally in that it inscribes protection for all people to explain and display their gender in a variety of ways. However legislative advances do not automatically lead to cultural change. It seems to me that passing trans-inclusive nondiscrimination statutes has only a limited effect on the interpersonal level, where many trans individuals are still unrecognizable and seen as inhuman. We know that anti-trans violence is no less deadly for being illegal in a few jurisdictions, and so most of us enact identities on a daily basis that are less radical even than the nondiscrimination statutes - and for some of us, less radical than how we actually understand ourselves to be.

The example of sexual orientation may be more promising at this point. Since it is not a necessarily visible identity, I think many people have succeeded in giving up sexual orientation in favor a political identity of queer. Queer does not follow any of the same rules as sexual orientation identities: it’s not inherent or permanent, is sometimes central, and has nothing to do with the gender of the person or hir partner(s).

I have no illusions that I have answered any questions in this paper. Instead, I hope that I have raised some in a way that others can understand: Why do people sometimes claim identities that are not true to experience? Why do new categories seem to reproduce many characteristics of established categories? When are systems of categorization oppressive, even without the element of hierarchy? (For that matter, is there such a thing as a system of social categorization without hierarchy?) What would it entail to move beyond the need for race, gender, or sexual orientation as a classification? Finally, how do these questions apply to some contemporary situations?

Ideas for this paper were drawn from:

Cabral, M. & Viturro, P. (2006). (Trans)sexual citizenship in contemporary Argentina. In Currah, P., Juang, R. M., and Minter, S.P., Transgender Rights (pp. 262-273). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Currah, P. (2006). Gender pluralisms under the transgender umbrella. In Currah, P., Juang, R. M., and Minter, S.P., Transgender Rights (pp. 3-31). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ekins & King (1998), “Blending genders: Contributions to the emerging field of transgender studies”

Link, A. (2002). “Vision.” In Nestle, Howell, & Wilchins (Eds.), Genderqueer: Voices from beyond the gender binary (pp. 86-89). LA: Alyson Books.

Omi (1999), “Racial identity and the state: Contesting the federal standards for classification”

Omi & Winant (1986), “Racial formation”

Thomas, K. (2006). Afterword: Are transgender rights Inhuman rights? In Currah, P., Juang, R. M., and Minter, S.P., Transgender Rights (pp. 310-326). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

[1] In this paper I use gender neutral or “third gender” pronouns to refer to hypothetical third persons. This avoids gendering my example, or distorting grammar with the plural “they”. Gender neutral pronouns are ze for the subject pronoun and hir for the object and possessive pronouns, as in “I heard from hir yesterday, and ze’s really happy in hir new home.”

[2] As I re-read this paragraph, I realize that I am falling into the same trap many of our readings do. When I spoke of the theorist or the observer, I used “we”. When I speak of an individual in between identities, I use the third person. This is not quite honest to my experiences, since I am often in the position of causing crises of meaning for others. Yet I imagine a reader who is not used to thinking of hirself as in between or as a cause of dissonance, and so I try to relate to this imagined reader by relegating myself to the position of academic observer, rather than that of an “other”.

Taking My Knapsack of Privilege through Airport Security

2008-06-07T08:38:00.005-04:00

or, "How I got off the terrorist watch-list"
or, "She pushed the white button"

This is a DRAFT and I am interested in editorial comments. Please DO NOT SHARE it (except by linking to this page) until I'm done with it.

At that time we were just getting used to being really scrutinized in airports. Everyone was annoyed at the long lines, and at having to remove their shoes and jackets. It seemed like overkill. It was overkill. But even in that context, my experiences with airport security stood out as notably ludicrous.

For one thing, the numbers did not add up. They told us that the second screening of carryon bags at the gate occurred for one in ten randomly selected passengers. I got selected ten times out of ten. For another thing, metal detectors didn’t seem to like me. No matter how hard I tried to remove any clothes with metal pieces, and any stray scraps of foil in my pockets, I always set it off.

In line, I removed my shoes, hoodie, cap, and belt and placed them neatly in plastic bins to be x-rayed. I shuffled through the metal detector, trying to look like my pants weren’t falling off my tush. Because I was in the special line, officers would search my bags even if I didn’t set off the metal detector, but I hoped at least to avoid a personal screening (i.e. a pat-down).

The pat-down or wand-check (with a handheld metal detector) is not exactly a joy for anyone, and it can be particularly traumatic for trans people. A few times, officers got into arguments about who should pat me down. The screening is supposed to be performed by an officer of the same gender as the person being examined, to avoid the appearance of inappropriate touching. The officers weren’t certain of my gender, and it stressed them out. “Should you pat her down?” “No, I think you should pat him down.” “I’m pretty sure you should pat her down.” “Just pat him down please!”

I found this out in 2005, traveling to FL to be with my extended family. My boarding pass had the row of Ss like usual. In the special line, the TSA agent rattled off, “Remove your shoes and jacket and put any metal from your pockets in this dish …” and then she turned to me, realized I had already done all that, and commented, “You’re pretty good at this.” I noticed her for the first time them, because this was the most personable thing a TSA agent had ever said to me. She was a petit woman of South Asian descent. She looked tired. The id badge pinned to her uniform had a Hindi name on it. It occurred to me that this must be an awkward job for an Indian woman to have, what with the rampant racial profiling of South Asians.

“Yeah,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You don’t look Indian,” the TSA agent said. That caught me off guard. All of a sudden we were having a totally different conversation from the one I had thought we were having.

“Yeah, that’s true,” I said. I am white, after all. I’m sure there are some people in India who look like me, but the truth is my connection to that country is tenuous at best. My parents lived there for a little while before I was born, and I know just enough Hindi to pronounce my own name. There’s absolutely no reason that I would “look” Indian at all.

“Huh.” The TSA agent shrugged. With her right hand, she typed something into her computer, while with her left hand she returned my id and boarding pass to me. “Have a nice flight,” she said.

Up until that trip, I had been stopped every single time I flew for about four years. In the three years since then, I have never once been stopped by airport security.

These are the kinds of experiences that are most salient to me, and these were the kind of explanations I turned to when I realized I was being targeted in airport security. The effects of other systems of oppression don’t negate my white privilege, but they do make it even more difficult to put my finger on ways in which I personally benefit because of my race. In this case, something far stranger occurred. My attention to these other factors distracted me from noticing that I was being mistakenly targeted because someone perceived me as non-white.

I still think that classism, adultism, transgender oppression and maybe antisemitism play out for me in airports. But they are not as central in that context as race is. I was put on a list of some kind, set aside to be particularly hassled in the airport, because I had a South Asian name. I was taken off the list when a South Asian woman noticed I was white.

I was carrying my knapsack of privilege the whole time, but it wasn’t obvious. They usually aren’t, to the people carrying them – most white people find it difficult to see the privileges that we have. But usually the knapsacks are at least clear enough that the system knows to treat us like white folks. In my case, the contents of my privilege knapsack were obscured by my other identities and by having a South Asian name.

But that TSA agent saw right through it. She x-rayed my knapsack of privilege, and saw that I was white, and she pushed the white button. And that is the essence of privilege. I didn’t do anything wrong to get on the watch list, and I didn’t do anything right to get off it. All I had to do was show up and be white.

This is a DRAFT and I am interested in editorial comments. Please DO NOT SHARE it (except by linking to this page) until I'm done with it.

First Things First

2008-05-17T11:34:00.004-04:00

This past Tuesday I had the privilege to participate in and present at a small conference/training day for adults who work with GLBTQ youth. The workshop I facilitated focused on supporting transgender and "gender variant" youth (their language, not mine). It was the only session focused specifically on trans issues; all the other workshops lumped the T in with GLB and Q.

Toward the end of the day I was chatting with the keynote speaker, a successful academic who does community-based research on GLBTQ youth and their families. I asked her a couple of questions about trans issues in her research. All of her responses could be summed up as "We don't know, because we didn't analyze the data on trans youth, and that's not our focus." I don't blame her, I guess, but on a personal level I felt disappointed.

Then she politely returned my interest in her work, and asked me what it was like to be a consultant on trans issues here in Western MA. I reminded her that it is still legal to discriminate against trans people in MA, and explained how that makes it difficult to tell organizations that they must/should be welcoming of transgender people. I said I enjoy my work as a consultant, but that part of the reason I'm self-employed at all is that most workplaces are hostile or at best clueless about trans issues, and therefore I have found I'm nearly unemployable except in trans-specific jobs.

She responded, "Oh, well you're such a great activist, you can fix that!"

Ouch.

It struck me that the speaker was not particularly comfortable with my being there as a trans activist. She does a lot of good work on behalf of GLBTQ youth, trying to improve their situations so that they can make free and healthy choices. And yet when a young(ish) trans person says, "I'm here in this room, doing this work with you, in part because I have gotten totally screwed over as a young trans person and this was one of very few paths open to me," she tries to change the subject.

"Be an activist," she says, "and it will be all better." And through her words I also hear, "Don't talk to me about how bad it is. It's not my department."

I mean, thanks for the vote of confidence. Truly, I'm glad you think I can change the world. But the compliment was almost totally overshadowed by the way it functioned to avoid acknowledging the emotional context of the problem. It's like saying, "It's no big deal that your community is totally downtrodden and disenfranchised. Just work real hard on your activism, and one day (maybe) you can be part of the regular job market."

On top of being tactless, the comment was also nonsensical. It doesn't usually work that way. People who are downtrodden and disenfranchised, who are living in poverty and being treated badly, don't have time or energy to show up on picket lines, to write letters to their congress people, or to be there for each other in a healthy, functioning community. They may not even be able to be there for themselves.

Instead of "Be an activist, so you can be employed," I'd like to be telling trans people, "We'll help you get employed, and then when you have some stability in your life, you can make your own decisions about being an activist."

In my personal philosophy, I tend toward the assumption that anyone who's not being an activist is not pulling their weight. I think it's my responsibility to be an activist because I'm a human who's conscious of my surroundings. However, it is not my responsibility as a trans person to do activism on trans issues because trans people are oppressed. Trans people have no particular moral responsibility to be activists, any more than people in general do. And like people in general, trans people should be able to come to activism of their own free will, because they see a need for change, and not because their immediate survival depends on it.

queering yr anti-zionism

2008-05-15T13:21:00.004-04:00

The issue of Zionism, non-Zionism, anti-Zionism, etc. is one of the few areas of my own politics about which I rarely have fun, make art, get lewd, or feel able to take a joke. My thanks to this guy, whoever he is, for helping make resistance to Zionist expansionism sexy. Wish I'd seen the ad when it was still current!

More on Protest at Smith

2008-05-06T20:51:00.003-04:00

A Smith student who attended the protest wrote this excellent piece, commenting on the distinction between interfering with free speech and interfering with academic decorum ... or as I put it to some Smithies I chatted with after the protest, between breaking the law and being impolite. Enjoy.

(Hope the links works. It's to a facebook note, and facebook's weird.)

Right, so the facebook link doesn't work cause you need to have a facebook acct and be my friend BUT here's a link that does!! ~anonymous

Damn Lesbians!

2008-05-02T16:28:00.006-04:00

For all those queer women, etc. who don't happen to like the word Lesbian, you have allies in Greece. From MSNBC:

Greek islanders seek to reclaim term ‘Lesbian

Protesting Homophobic Speaker: What I saw & Lessons learned

2008-05-01T09:55:00.008-04:00

Last Tuesday I was privileged to witness and participate in actions organized by Smith College students in protest of lecturer Bryan Sorba coming to campus. Sorba was invited by the college's Republican Club (or, he invited himself and asked the Republican Club to reserve him a room - opinions vary). His thesis is that people are not born gay, but that rather it's a lifestyle choice, and that it's a choice against (his) God, and that therefore gay people don't deserve civil rights.

There's been a lot of conflict amongst Smith students (and alums) about whether and how students should have protested the event. A small part of this conflict centers around whether Sorba's really all that bad, and most of it centers around what forms of protest/disagreement would have been appropriate.

As to the question of whether he's really that bad: he is. If you need to discover it for yourself, you can see some of his writings here - though I'm loathe to give his site more traffic. Among his published opinions are that Islam is inherently violent and anti-intellectual; that everything good in Western (sic) society, including science, is a result of Christian values; and that wealth inequality is a good sign (!), because it means that some people aren't living in squalor like presumably everyone was before Protestant capitalism. And that's not to mention the homophobic stuff.

Several alums, writing to the LGBTQ Smith Alumae listserve, argued that as long as Sorba's work is academically sound, then it should be allowed as a part of a vibrant academic environment. The thing is, his work is not academically sound. It is full of bad writing, internal contradictions, and sometimes statements that are demonstrably untrue. More on that below.

Since pretty much anyone who reads my blog probably agrees about Sorba and his views, I'll stop wasting pixels with that and move on to the interesting part: What should we have done? I said above that Smith students organized a protest, but actually, "organize" might be too strong a word. The events surrounding the lecture came together at the last minute with no central organizing body and no formal leadership. This has its pros and cons.

Here's what I saw happen:

Students decided to protest the event in a variety of ways. Some staged alternative events at the same time, such as a "love in" where students went to cuddle, smooch, study for finals, and be affirming of their various sexual orientations. Others decided to be visible at the event itself. Plans for protests at the lecture included simply being visibly queer (by wearing rainbows, fairy wings, etc.), turning chairs around and causing Sorba to lecture to the audiences backs, and holding signs. A few people brought pots and pans to bang on, but this was not part of any organized plan that I know of.

The part of the organizing that most deserved that name involved what students planned to say to Sorba. Many, perhaps most, of the students who gathered to protest had the intention of witnessing Sorba's entire talk and then asking pointed questions intended to highlight the inconsistencies and ridiculousness of Sorba's argument. In other words, they were going to engage with Sorba in the way that's customary at academic lectures. Students researched Sorba ahead of time so they'd know what issues were likely to come up. (Perhaps more preparation than they do for their classes, or at least more preparation that I ever did for an undergraduate lecture!) One student with a background in bible studies volunteered to be the designated repudiator of faulty biblical references. It was, I thought, and admirable example of students pooling their intellectual acumen to prepare for the kind of fight they're good at - the rational, abstract, academic kind.

For the first 15 minutes or so of Sorba's lecture, many of the students in the room did just that. At one point, rumor has it, Sorba quoted Magnus Hirschfeld in support of Sorba's claim that people are not born gay. A student blurted out - interrupting, but who can blame her? - "But, Hirschfeld was gay!" Sorba said, "No, he wasn't." The student replied, "Yeah, in fact his Institut was burned down by the Nazis." Sorba said, "That's not true," which of course, it is. That exchange seems to me like exactly the kind of victory Smith students would want. If it sounds dry, chalk it up to my inadequate description. The pleasure that students at an elite school get from showing-up someone in their chosen field of study is at least as pleasurable, albeit in a different way, as a good picket or chant.

It's my opinion that the rest of the lecture would have gone in pretty much the same vein, if all the protesters had been allowed into the room. After all, that was the only solid plan that had been made. I suspect that at some point, Sorba would have said something even more reprehensible, for example something that seemed to advocate violence, and at that point the banging on pots would have commenced, and Sorba would have been drummed out in a way that even the stuffy foremothers of Smith College past would have been proud of.

However. What happened instead was that the lecture was held in Neilson Browsing Room, a medium-sized parlor (I can think of no other word) in the front corner of Neilson library. Public Safety officers determined the room to be "at capacity" about 20 minutes before the lecture was to begin, and stopped letting people in. Some self-designated leaders of the protest approached the folks in charge of the lecture, including college staff who were present, to ask if the event might be moved to a larger venue. They were told that it couldn't.

The room was packed with protesters of the sit-backwards and ask-pointed-questions crews. The hallway was likewise full, making it difficult for students to get in and out of the Browsing Room or the Library itself, which distressed the librarians. The steps of the building were writhing with milling protesters, and the embrasures of the windows were packed with students literally climbing on each other (and happily consenting to be climbed on) in attempts to see and hear what was going on inside. There was also a quiet stake-out in the reference section adjacent to the room's rarely-used back door.

In other words, the room was surrounded on four sides by people who came expecting a protest. All the plans had assumed that everybody would be in the room where the lecture was happening. As it happened, barely half of us fit inside. The folks on the outside (I was one of them) were at loose ends, itching for a protest, but with no plan, and no leader to look to for a new plan. At first we piled into windows trying to hear what Sorba was saying. Some people shouted, "Turn up the mic!" but it was all the way up already.

What can I say? We were bored. It was chilly. Someone started up a chant. That was a good idea, because it kept us warm, but it didn't have much to do with the original plan. Some people ran an errand to one of the Co-op houses to get more pots to bang on. Eventually, someone got the windows open. Students started climbing through the windows. Public Safety officers tried to prevent this, but there were more windows than public safety officers. I heard (but could not see because as a sometime contractor for the college, I opted not to climb through the windows) that some folks ended up marching in tight circles around the podium itself, chanting and holding signs.

After about 20 minutes, Sorba said he was going to take a break, and would come back "after the anarchists leave." Public Safety officers escorted Sorba out the back door into the library. Students hiding in the stacks overheard the officers telling Sorba that he should leave, because the event was a disruption to the library. Sorba never got back to the podium.

When it became clear that Sorba was not coming back, a student from the Republican Club, which had hosted the event, stood up and declared tearfully, "I have an announcement. You won, but what did you really win?" The other students burst into cheers and pot-banging. Gradually they dispersed to cuddle, study, smoke cigarettes (sad but true) and eat ice cream. Some people called it a victory. Other people called it an embarrassment.

So, lessons learned:

Have a plan. Have a backup plan. Have designated leaders to make on-the-spot calls.
Know the rules. In the middle of the protest, someone turned to me and said, "What leeway does public safety have here? Can we get arrested for forcing our way into the room?" and nobody knew the answer.
Have a goal to refer back to when making last-minute decisions and/or declaring victory. Was the goal to embarrass him? To make him leave? To be a visible presence? To affirm our sense of our own goodness as queers? Or what?
Have a position statement that clearly lays out all the issues, sets the terms of the debate, and does not rely on the opponent's own publicity to dig its own grave. I can't believe how much breath was wasted saying, "Well, is saying that people aren't 'born gay' necessarily homophobic?" That was the rhetoric that got around most quickly, because that was the title line of Sorba's own materials. It's not nearly the most offensive thing he says. Protests need to have a clear target, and Sorba makes a good one, but only if we highlight what we believe to be offensive about his message, not just repeat the language he's using.
Be organized. By which I mean, have an organization! Of the three GLBT-based student organizations that have been active at Smith, one is small and floundering, one is trying to restart, and one is totally defunct. This event highlighted the need for ongoing organizing on GLBT issues, so that the community wouldn't be caught off-guard when something like this comes up, and so that a leadership structure would be already in place.
Form, maintain, and draw on strong coalitions. There are student groups at Smith that have expertise in organizing protests. They weren't involved in this event at all. Later, students pointed out that a) this isn't the primary issue those groups work on, b) there aren't many students with that expertise, and they're tired, and c) the huge number of queers who showed up to protest Sorba rarely show up to anti-war protests, or indeed to anything that's not queer-specific. Coalitions go both ways. We need to show up as queers at events that are not only for us. And more people should have those skills so that we're not relying on a few over-extended perennial organizers.

Finally, even though I learned good lessons about how not to run a protest, I'm not disappointed about how it went down. It wasn't the best way we could have won, but it sure wasn't bad, especially for something that came together on barely a week's notice while most people were busy studying for their finals.

As one alum pointed out to me: We literally drummed him off the stage! How often do activists get to celebrate a victory as dramatic as that? Let's learn from our mistakes, yes; but let's also not forget to enjoy our successes.

Pronoun Project

2008-04-23T22:26:00.002-04:00

Dear friends,

I am working on a writing project about what makes it difficult for some people to use the correct pronouns for trans people. I would like to invite you to contribute your ideas & experiences to this project, by letting me interview you for about 20 minutes. You do not have to be trans (although you could be) or a particularly skilled ally (although you could be). If you have ever been in community with a transgender or gender-transgressive person, or where transgender issues were discussed, and if you know what I mean by "pronoun," then I value your perspective and would love to talk with you.

This is not research in the academic, human subjects review board kind of way. I am thinking of it more as journalism. I hope it will result in a short article that I will publish in a general audience context, and/or self-publish on the web. The article will conclude with a series of exercises that people can do to help them become more proficient at using gendered language respectfully. Drafts of these handouts will be your thank you gift for consenting to be interviewed.

This project came about because, in the course of my work as a consultant and educator on transgender issues, I hear the same questions over and over again. One of the common ones goes something like this: "We're all very trans friendly here. The main challenge we have is that, even when we know which pronoun a trans person prefers, we keep using the wrong one anyway. We try, but... it's hard."

People who say this are well intentioned! They really want to call someone the right pronouns, and yet, they keep slipping up. In this project I am taking people at their word that "it's hard." I have some ideas about what exactly might be hard about it, and thus what people might be able to do to work through it. The purpose of the interviews is get a range of perspectives on people's learning processes around using the right pronouns for transgender or gender-transgressive people. For folks who are transgender or gender-transgressive, I am also interested in hearing about your experiences of how people use language about you.

If you're interested in participating or have questions, please email me.

Peace,
Davey

Panelspiel on Violence Against GLBTQI People

2008-03-23T20:47:00.007-04:00

This is draft 2 - March 26.

This is for a 20 minute panelspiel to be given this coming Thursday. Comments are welcome anytime, and they are especially useful if received by Wednesday night. (Bloggish niceties, like links & better html formatting, will be inserted later when I have time to do it.) Thanks ~D

Good afternoon. My name is Davey. I am an alum of the Social Justice Education Program at UMass, Amherst, and now I work as a consultant providing trainings and workshops about social justice issues, primarily focusing on trans/gender issues and issues related to class/classism. I am also a writer, and in my spare time I have a day job making water color paintings on silk clothing.

Today I’ve been asked to talk about violence against people who are GLB and transgender. I think this is an aspect of “gender violence,” as this forum is titled, that’s often missing from conversations about violence in communities and on campuses. In particular, it’s often missing from conversations about sexual assault and intimate partner abuse, which is the area in which most of my antiviolence work has focused.

We tend to speak of these as “women’s issues.” In fact that’s part of the story of how I came to be invited to be part of this forum. Someone wrote a message to a listserve that I’m part of, raising the issue of “violence against women.” What the person said was smart and important and totally valid, but the term “violence against women” just grates on my nerves. So I wrote back to the list saying, “Actually, it’s not only women that are targeted by sexist violence and sexualized violence.” After I wrote that, about a half a dozen people approached me to discuss the issue, and next thing I knew, the CRC asked me to be on this panel.

So, when we talk about sexual assault and intimate partner abuse, we often say “violence against women” as a shortcut. Most of the people who speak publicly about these issues are working out of women’s centers and came up through the women’s movement. Even when that’s not the case, many if not most people who do work around sexual assault and intimate partner abuse are working from a binary and heterosexist framework, where the problem is heterosexual men’s violence against heterosexual women, often their partners, and where the underlying explanation for this violence is sexism.

This is an important framework and a useful one. I am not suggesting that we throw it out. However it is vital that it not be our only lens, because that leads us to ignore other manifestations of violence and other underlying factors.

Heterosexual men’s violence against heterosexual women is a major issue, and sexism is a major underlying cause. In fact, I would argue that sexism also is an underlying cause of much of the interpersonal violence committed by men against men, by women against women, and by anyone against GLB, trans, queer and intersex people. This makes it all the more crucial that we not ignore these other manifestations of violence, which also stem from sexism, but which don’t match the assumption of hetero men’s violence against hetero women. If we’re committed to ending the violence that stems from sexism, we have to acknowledge all the forms that violence can take.

So, I don’t want us to take the shortcut of saying “violence against women,” when what we mean is something much more specific – such as “heterosexual men’s violence against their heterosexual women partners” – or something much more broader – such as “violence whose function is to perpetuate sexist power relationships amongst people of all genders.” With phrases like that I can see why we might want to take short cuts. But let’s make sure what we know what we mean by those shortcuts.

You might be wondering why I care so much about the language we use. They’re just words, right? Here are some of the reasons it matters to me:

-It matters because women also commit violence. If the model we’re using to understand violence doesn’t account for that, then the model is flawed.

-It matters because sexism is not the only underlying cause of violence. I’d highlight racism, classism and imperialism as some others that we had better not ignore.

-And it matters because men, trans folks and people who are intersex also experience violence directed against them.

A movement against violence must honor all of these experiences, must provide services that are accessible to all survivors of interpersonal violence, and must incorporate all of these perspectives into our overall understanding of what violence means.

One thing that gets in the way of this conversation is basic ignorance about the experiences of GLB, queer, trans and intersex people. In a moment I’m going to rattle off some statistics for you. First I’d better define some of the terms that I’ve been throwing around already. I don’t mean to provide authoritative definitions. These are how I am using these words for our purposes today.

-When I say GLB, I mean gay, lesbian and bisexual.

-When I say transgender, I mean person whose gender identity or gender expression differs significantly from what is expected of them in their culture, and for whom this difference is central to their identity and/or a significant part of their everyday experience.

-When I say intersex, I mean anyone whose physical body is not easily classified as simply male or female.

-When I say queer, … Well, there just never seems to be a good time to talk about what I mean by queer. Now certainly isn’t the time. I’ll just say, queer is a term that is highly loaded and politicized, whether it’s used as hatespeech, or as a positive term of empowerment. It is endlessly useful and endlessly fraught. Queer is the word that speaks truest to my identity and experience, and so I tend to use it a lot. If it happens to slip out during this talk, what I mean is all of us folks who are targeted by homophobia, heterosexism and transphobia regardless of how we identify.

So, now let’s talk statistics (read whichever ones seem most relevant based on feel of the group and what panelists have said already):

Hate Crimes: Hate crimes statistics are ridiculously unreliable. Nevertheless, it might interest you to know that the FBI recorded 1,195 crimes motivated by homophobia in 2002. 72 of these occurred in Massachusetts. (Crimes motivated by homophobia are not actually part of the federal hate crimes statutes. The FBI is required to keep track of them, but nothing happens as a result of a federal crime being classified as a homophobic hate crime.)

The FBI does not track hate crimes based on gender identity or gender expression. However some trans people are trying to keep track of them: The Remembering Our Dead website currently lists 358 people who were murdered since 1970 because they were trans. This is almost definitely a drastic underestimate, since police departments have no obligation to report these as hate crimes, and since trans people who aren’t “out” as trans are unlikely to be counted.

Schools: Looking at all “sexual minority youth” as one group, the Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey (2005) found that 13% had skipped school because they felt unsafe, 44% had been bullied (compared to 23% of heterosexual non-trans students), and 14% had been threatened or injured with a weapon at school; in addition 35% had experienced dating violence and 34% had experienced or sexual contact against their will.

Another study, which looked at transgender youth separately, found that among those who were enrolled in school, almost 90% reported feeling unsafe in school, more than half report being physically harassed, and 35% report being physically assaulted in school because of their gender expression (Kosciw, 2002).

Sexual Assault: (First ask people to guess) With regard to sexual assault, gay men and lesbians are more likely to be raped than heterosexuals; in addition they are more likely to be raped by a stranger, often as part of a physical assault motivated by homophobia[1]. From the few studies of sexualized violence against transgender people, they appear to be at even higher risk.

Percentage of population who report having been forced to have sex at least once:

All men, regardless of sexual orientation:	7%[2]
Gay men in particular:	12%¹
All women, regardless of sexual orientation:	22%²
Lesbian women in particular:	31%₁
FtM transgender people:	55%[3]
MtF transgender people:	68%³
“Sexual Minority” Youth in Mass. Schools	34%[4]

(Ask people to guess what the reasons might be. Fill in if they don’t come up with: Homophobic stranger assaults; young people getting in unhealthy hetero relationships to prove their straightness; young people disconnected from family therefore living in unsafe shared housing or on street; young people feel isolated in general therefore more vulnerable to pressure from partners, etc.)

Across all of these groups, perpetrators are believed to be 90%-95% non-trans hetero me. I feel I can’t say that without also re-emphasizing that men are also victimized by sexual assault. The statistics are unreliable due to underreporting, but my best guess is that any given man is at least as likely to have been victimized by sexual assault as he is to ever commit a sexual assault.

Intimate partner abuse: Intimate partner abuse is a pattern of violence over time such that one partner in an intimate relationship maintains power and control over another. About 1/3 of hetero women are abused by an intimate partner at some point in their lives. This same proportion is true for lesbian women and gay men. It’s estimated that the number for hetero men is way lower, but since hetero men are probably unlikely to report this kind of experience, we just don’t know.

Economics: GLBTQI people are more likely to be living in poverty than heterosexuals. For example, one recent study of trans-identified folks found that 15% were employed full time, 35% were employed part time, and the remaining 60% were unemployed or were employed illegally (i.e. doing sex work or selling drugs).

I would define this level of impoverishment as a form of violence in itself. But that’s not the only reason I bring it up: I hope it’s obvious that people who are doing sex work are at extraordinary risk of sexual assault, and are also unlikely to report assaults or receive support services because of the legal risk. In addition, engaging in criminalized work puts these individuals at high risk of imprisonment, and people who are imprisoned are at tremendous risk of sexual assault with very limited access to support services.

Barriers to Reporting: Finally, when GLB and queer and trans and intersex folks do experience a sexual assault or any kind of interpersonal violence, they face unique barriers to reporting or disclosing about their experience and seeking support. First of all, as we know, most services for survivors are designed by and for non-trans heterosexual women. Some programs are actually closed to GLB, queer, trans and intersex folks. Others have names that may be heard to imply that. And even when a program wants to be welcoming, staff members don’t always know how to assist survivors who don’t fall into the usual priority population of non-trans hetero women.

In addition, similar to other marginalized communities, GLB, queer, trans and intersex survivors may distrust service providers in general. How many of you are familiar with the story of Tyra Hunter? She was a 24 year old transsexual woman living in DC. She was injured in a motor vehicle accident. EMTs arrived at the scene of the accident and started to help. Tyra had lost consciousness during the crash, and was just waking up when they arrived. While examining her to assess the extent of her injuries, one EMT discovered that Tyra had male genitals. At that point the EMTs stopped providing treatment. Instead they stood around for a while making intensely derogatory comments. Then they took her to the hospital where she continued to receive inadequate care. She later died as a result of her injuries.

I don’t think this represents a typical experience with emergency medical staff. I hope it doesn’t happen every day. But I know it happened that once, and most trans people also know about it. This story is still circulating in trans communities, partly because it’s so horrific, and partly because almost all of us have our own smaller-scale horror stories to tell about interacting with doctors, social workers or police who did not have our best interests in mind.

That story is particular to trans folk, but certainly intersex folk have similar well-founded reasons to distrust service providers, and some GLB folk do as well, depending on where and when they came out. So even prior to interacting with service providers, a GLB, trans or intersex survivor may assume or fear that providers won’t be helpful.

And in many cases they’re right. GLB, trans, queer and intersex survivors who report a sexual assault or intimate partner abuse risk being re-victimized by the system in a variety of ways. For example:

-they may be asked to explain the physical details of the assault in greater detail than one would ask of a non-trans female who was assaulted by a male;

-they may face blatant homophobia or transphobia from service providers;

-they may be arrested (especially if the survivor is a trans woman, because police may assume she’s a sex worker);

-trans and intersex survivors may receive inappropriate medical care if providers are confused about their sex or gender. For example they may not offer EC (emergency contraception to a trans man who they perceive as male, even though he may need it.

I’m sure you all are full of depressing statistics for now. I know that I am. I said before that ignorance of the facts is one thing that gets in the way of this conversation. So now you have some facts, and if you want further information along those lines, there are handouts available in the back, including one about barriers to reporting (in general, for marginalized populations, and for trans folk in particular).

In closing, I’ve been asked to talk a little bit about what we can do to improve the situation. Mostly, I want to hear from y’all about what you’d like to see happen. It’s your campus. I will sign off with two quick suggestions, though. One of them is abstract, and the other is more concrete.

First, the abstract thing: We can all get really clear about what we mean when we’re talking about these issues. What do we mean when we use shortcuts like “violence against women” or “gendered violence”? When we say “sexual assault,” what are we imagining? Are we imagining a stranger assault by a non-trans hetero man against a non-trans hetero woman? And if so, let’s disrupt those assumptions. When we say “safety,” what exactly are we imagining safety feels like? How exactly are we imagining safety happens?

The concrete thing is: We can improve resources, services and general understanding about violence against GLB, trans and intersex folk on this campus. We can do this by funding great trainings for staff and students, so that survivors who do choose to disclose an experience of violence find caring and competent support. We can train not only EWC staff, but also the folks at counseling services, at UHS, and in Residence Life. In my dreams, we can fund these trainings so well that staff will actually get paid to attend them rather than having them tacked on to their already full workloads.

I look forward to hearing your other ideas, as well as any questions or comments you might have for me.

(If someone asks about women’s spaces:)

The issue of “women’s space” is hugely complicated, so here are just a few things I want to make sure to leave you with. First, when I say that rape crisis services and intimate partner abuse services should be accessible to men and to GLB, trans, queer and intersex folk, I don’t mean that “women’s only” spaces must be eliminated. I think there is a role for gathering a group of people who share a very specific identity and set of experiences, such as being non-trans heterosexual women who’ve experienced abuse at the hands of non-trans heterosexual men, for the purpose of healing together. I’m not trying to take that space away from you. I want you to have that space. My question is, can’t there be space for me too?

Second, when people advocate for “women only” spaces, the explanation that they usually give is that these spaces are safer. How do we know that? Are we sure? In my experience, non-trans heterosexual women are entirely capable of doing violence against each other and of enacting sexism against each other. So when we talk about safe space, I want us to be explicit – safe for whom? Safe from whom? What about these spaces makes them safe? And how can we make all spaces safer? Certainly having some “women only” spaces is one way to promote healing and safety, and it is one good option to have. But it is not the only option, and it is not a panacea for sexist violence.

[1] http://www.morris.umn.edu/services/ViolencePrevention/Lgbt%20sexual%20assault%20pamphlet.pdf

[2] http://www.janedoe.org/know/website.ma.sa.pdf

[3] Clements, et al., 1998

[4] Mass. Youth Risk Behavior Survey 2005

NYT on FtMs at Women's Colleges

2008-03-19T18:39:00.002-04:00

Thanks to the six people who forwarded me this article during the 3 days I was out of town. You can stop now. And since y'all thought it was good enough to send me six copies, I thought I should at least read it and have something to say about it.

It's not bad, as far as mainstream media articles on trans stuff goes. Overall, the article is sympathetic. The author, Alissa Quart, puts her foot in her mouth way less than most journalists who write about trans issues. She refers to the students she interviews by the pronouns they prefer, which is a small but unfortunately rare victory.
She does seem to struggle a bit with some of the emerging language around trans identities, mostly in that she defines each term as if it has a unitary, broadly accepted definition. (They don't.)
Also, I believe Quart oversimplifies the issue of bathroom access on college campuses by equating bathrooms that are "open to all sexes" with ones that are "trans-friendly." In my experience, campus bathroom access campaigns address many factors, including location, cultural climate, and ADA accessibility as well as whether bathrooms are sex-segregated. Most of these campaigns do not ask for all bathrooms to be made sex-neutral, because the prospect of eliminating sex-segregated restrooms triggers both reasonable concerns and unreasonably heated backlash. I feel nervous that Quart's unclarity on this point may serve as an excuse for some non-trans students, alumnae or faculty to rise up in hostile opposition to a request that trans students are not, in fact, making.

Many trans people (and well-meaning allies) tell me that I should complain less about imperfect but kind media stories such as this one. In a climate of pervasive ignorance, the argument goes, any media coverage about trans issues is a good thing. I disagree. Last year's debacle around the NYC guidelines for changing one's legal gender are an example. The change (to eliminate the surgery requirement) was about to go through without a hitch, until the story broke, in a NYT article ridiculously titled "New York Plans to Make Gender a Personal Choice." Policy makers got embarrassed and backed out of their support for the change. The rule stayed the same.
Unfortunately we are in a climate where public sentiment is not on our side. Many people in the U.S. do not believe that trans people deserve basic human rights. (See this handout for some specific stats.) This is changing, but slowly - too slowly for a community whose lives are at risk because of little details like the requirements for changing the sex on our ID cards.
So, is Quart's article good for trans people? It remains to be seen, but I would guess not. As a NYT writer, Quart reaches a huge audience. Many of those readers will be moved to see trans people in a more sympathetic light because of this article. Most of them will probably go about their lives the same as they did yesterday, neither harassing trans people nor doing much to be allies. Many other readers - particularly, I imagine, non-trans women with connections to women's colleges - will be outraged. Those are the readers that are likely to take action. Quart may never know the backlash that her well-intentioned article triggers, because it won't be directed at her. Instead, women's colleges with significant trans populations will be bombarded with calls from alumnae and parents. Trans student leaders, and sympathetic but ill-equipped administrators, will scramble to clean up the mess.
I look forward to finding out that I'm wrong about that.
If you have any stories about how this article has been received at your campus, I'd love to know.

panelspiel on medical transition

2008-02-18T12:57:00.005-05:00

This panelspiel is for a 5-minute time slot (don't laugh!) this coming Wednesday. I welcome feedback/impressions/responses any time, but they are especially useful if they come by Tuesday evening.

Good afternoon. My name is Davey [yes, blog readers, it really is]. I am an alum of the Social Justice Education Program at UMass, Amherst, and now I work as a consultant providing trainings and workshops about social justice issues, primarily focusing on trans/gender issues and issues related to class/classism. I am also a writer, and in my spare time I have a day job making water color paintings on silk clothing. I’ve been a member of this Speakers’ Bureau since about 2001, and I’ve done panels through other programs since 1997.

I identify as transgender (FtM) and as genderqueer. Today I’m going to do something that’s a little bit out of character for me, and focus on the part of my story that’s about medical transition.

People’s decisions about medical transition are one major way in which we categorize different kinds of trans people. I don’t think it’s necessarily a good or useful way to categorize trans people. Nevertheless it is true that medical transition is a pretty big deal in terms of how we’re likely to experience the world, and how other people, including other trans people, are likely to respond to us. I think there’s a lot of confusion about medical transition, and so I want to tell my story about it so that you can have at least one more perspective.

First of all, I should clarify the term “medical transition.” You probably learned from the other events in this series that “medical transition” can mean a lot of different things. Some people who are transgender choose to change their bodies, and some choose not to. Some of us stay on the fence about that more or less forever. Medical intervention is not a prerequisite for being trans. For those who do choose to do a medical transition process, it might involve hormone treatments, at various doses, for short periods of time or for the rest of one’s life; surgeries, including chest surgery, genital surgery, hysterectomy for FtMs, and for MtFs sometimes facial surgery; and sometimes other medical interventions. So when I talk about someone’s decisions around medical transition, it’s not only a decision of whether to transition but also a series of decisions about exactly how to transition, exactly which interventions are right for that person.

For me, being genderqueer is a big part of how I understand my trans identity. I do not see myself as “born in the wrong body,” or “a man trapped in a woman’s body,” or any of those sort of classic stereotypical phrases you might have heard. For the most part, I have been happy to be a genderqueer guy or a trannyboy in a female body. That works for me.

For a long time, I struggled with whether and how I wanted to do medical transition. I loved my body, and usually felt pretty connected to it. I also felt a desire to change my body to make it more masculine. This desire was sometimes so strong that I could hardly think about anything else, and at other times it was just sort of an idea that hovered in the back of my mind.

I had (and still have) several strong reservations about medical transition, related both to my own identity as a genderqueer and to my political convictions related to gender.

One of my reservations was that my transition would be in part for others. I did sometimes feel disconnections internally, in terms of how I was able to relate to my own body. But even more salient than that was the disconnection I felt because other people saw my body as female. I knew that if I were to transition, it would be at least in part for the convenience of others, to make it easier for them to see me as a guy, and therefore to make my interactions with them easier for them and for me. And I worried that that was not a good enough reason.

The medical model says that transexualism is an internal condition, and that transitioning is supposed to heal an internal rift. I thought the only acceptable reason to have otherwise unnecessary medical interventions was if my internal pain was so unbearable that I had no other option, and I knew that that wasn’t true for me.

Since I knew that I wasn’t that kind of transsexual, I worried that transition might be a cop-out for me. I worried that my desire to change my body was a way of avoiding doing my own internal work around being a genderqueer in my body. I felt that for me, changing my body would be confirmation that I was not strong enough to live as a non-transitioning genderqueer.

A second reservation I had, which is still very strong for me, stems from my mistrust of the institution of medicine as a capitalist institution and as a system of social control. Basically, I know that by putting myself in the role of “patient,” I am giving up some of my control over my situation. I am literally placing my body into someone else’s hands, and into the hands of a system that I believe to be driven by profit and not by human caring. That seemed like a bad idea.

And finally, I had reservations about putting so much time, energy and money into my own physical transition. I had experiences in trans communities friends and colleagues who had been really involved, sociable, leaders in my communities decided to physically transition, and all of a sudden that’s all they had time for. Every time we talked it was all they could talk about. They stepped down from leadership positions to put time into their medical transition process. They took extra jobs to pay for surgery, and therefore had no time anymore to be part of the community. I didn’t want to put so much energy into my physical transition that I had nothing left for other aspects of my life that are also important to me, including not only stuff that I do, but also other aspects of my internal life, other stuff I like to contemplate and reflect on.

And related to that, I worried because I had seen some people transition and then leave the community entirely. Some trans guys I knew, who had been really radical, involved people, would start taking testosterone, and start passing as male, and all of a sudden their radical politics seemed to evaporate, and they didn’t want to be out anymore, and sometimes didn’t even want to be seen with people who were obviously, visibly queer like me. And I didn’t want to be that guy.

I agonized about these questions on and off for about five years before I took any steps toward medical transition, and I am still agonizing about some of them. Here are the conclusions I’ve come to so far:

With regard to my concern that I would be transitioning in part for others, I decided that that is true and I’m okay with that. Identity is social. The social pain and disconnect that I was experiencing and still experience are just as real and just as legitimate as the internal struggles depicted in the medical-model transsexual literature. I am glad that I have the opportunity to reflect on the various reasons for my desire to change my body, and even though the reasons are not entirely internal, I think they are good enough.

If I were to define my strength as a person based on my willingness to put up with unnecessary pain, both internal and external, I would be buying into the myth of masculinity and embracing the victim role that this system of oppression has assigned to me. That’s not healthy! I can treat myself more kindly than that.

I am strong enough to be genderqueer, and I am strong enough to acknowledge that being genderqueer means something different to me now than it did five years ago. After all, the freedom to constantly reevaluate and redefine my identity is part of what attracted me to the genderqueer label in the first place. With or without medical transition, I trust myself to have the integrity to continue doing my internal work, and to continue being the person I want to be in the world.

Regarding my reservations about entering the medical system – That is true, and it sucks. But that’s what’s available to me right now. And I have to be part of that system anyway, just to get regular necessary primary health care.

And finally, regarding my concern about how I allocate my energy: I realized that I was putting a whole hell of a lot of energy into not transitioning. At times, it was all I could think about. It was already distracting me from other things that were important to me. So I thought, if I put some energy into medical transition, maybe I could come out the other side of that process more able to pay attention, commit myself to community-building, and make good decisions about where to focus my energy.

And I don’t have to worry about being “that guy” who transitions and then deserts his community, because, I’m not that guy. I have a choice about that.

And perhaps most importantly, I realized that even in entering a medical transition process, I still have choices in every moment. It’s not like I crossed over to the “dark side” and now I’m a transsexual instead of a genderqueer, which is how some of my genderqueer comrades might see it. It’s not a slippery slope, where once I took that first injection of testosterone I was hooked, which is how some transitioning FtMs have described it to me.

I give myself an injection of testosterone once a week or so. Each time, I make a conscious decision about whether or not to take that dose. Every day, ever moment, I get to decide how to do my gender, and what it means to me, and that is as true now as it ever was.

I want to be clear that these are ways I’ve found to resolve my dilemmas that work for me, for this moment in my life. I don’t intend to say these are the answers for all trans people, or even for me forever.

By now I am undoubtedly out of time. To wrap up let me say that I welcome all questions, whether personal, political, or factual. I have been doing panelspiels like this since I was sixteen. I promise I have heard it all. If you ask an honest question that offends or shocks me, I will give you a prize.

Ways to be a Trans-Ally

2008-02-05T18:08:00.001-05:00

generated by the participants of a short non-credit course I facilitated on gender & transgender issues this January

Things we do already, or have seen another ally do:

· “swallow” you discomfort to behave respectfully, even if you don’t understand or “agree with” someone’s gender

· educate others: do a “trans 101” for your friends/visitors before they meet your trans friend/housemate/etc

· offer yourself as a resource for people who have questions about trans issues

· correct others’ pronoun use (friends & strangers)

· ask trans friends how you’d like them to handle it when you hear someone call them an incorrect pronoun

· volunteer with Mass Trans Political Coalition (www.masstpc.org)

· be a good friend. lots of trans people lose friends when they come out. be a friend they won’t have to lose.

· interrupt when someone’s getting “interrogated” about their gender or about trans issues in general

· e-mail professors with feedback about how their behavior in class might affect trans students

Things we’d like to do, or things we’d like to do more:

· learn "gender neutral" (or "third gender") pronouns. practice at home.

· if you use a wrong pronoun by mistake – apologize, correct yourself, and move on.

· become more comfortable educating others and answering questions

· become more comfortable answering the tough and/or offensive questions. (practice at home?)

· spend time with other trans-allies. don’t isolate yourself! get support.

· be intentional with programming & publicity in orgs and houses – notice gendered language on posters, e.g.

· find ways to offer support to trans and/or questioning friends, without patronizing

Add your own:

(also, you can find more trans-related handouts and resources on my other website, here)