I wish I remember who recommended Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men to me. It may have been through this blog, but…oh well! The book is written by Lori Girshick, a “sociologist and social justice activist,” and is an exploration of 150 interviews she conducted with individuals who responded to a survey looking for “gender transgressors.” Much of the book directly quotes these interviews, with Girshick interjecting her summarized opinions and conclusions throughout.
The book is divided into 6 chapters, with multiple sub-headings in each chapter. The chapters are:
The Social Construction of Biological Fact
Self-Definition: Birth through Adolescence
Constructing the Self: Options and Challenges
Coming Out to Community, Family, and Work
Gender Policing
Inner Turmoil and Moving Toward Acceptance
There is also an epilogue, “Gender Liberation,” and an appendix with the survey-advertising flier and the survey itself.
As you may be able to guess from the book’s subtitle, “Beyond Women and Men,” and even more so from the chapter titles, I generally agree with the politics of Transgender Voices. Girshick does a solid job of representing a very wide spectrum of people, and (for the most part) she interjects her own thoughts only to provide context or summarize how aggregate groups felt, rather than impose a specific definition of identity or gender.
However, in the introduction, “Identity Boxes,” Girshick lays the groundwork for a view I’m not 100% comfortable with:
My own bias in this book is to advocate for liberation from the binary gender system, which for many people artificially restricts the fullest expression of self. At the same time, though, I deeply respect those who wish to identify with “male” or “female,” “man” or “woman,” and are willing to undergo expensive and painful medical treatments to achieve physical correspondence with who they feel themselves to be given the current gender system.” (Pg 11, Emphasis in original)
My father marched at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. He went to Washington to see Dr. King speak. His work as a defense attorney has helped demonstrate the unjustness of the death penalty and his was one of the cases referenced by Gov. Ryan when he issued a moratorium against capital punishment. In my mind, I still sometimes imagine my dad like I did when I was ten: the Good Lawyer protecting the innocent from Evil Cops, fighting for Civil Rights and Other Important Issues Warranting Capitalization.
Life rarely that simple. Family certainly isn’t.
There was a slowly dawning sense of discomfort during my teenage years, as I started to notice the times my dad would talk about clients he knew were guilty but would receive reduced sentences based on police misconduct. Now, to be perfectly clear, I think police misconduct is almost always a greater societal problem than the guilty person getting a break. Better ten guilty men go free, and all that. I still believe my dad is one of the Good Guys, and that even the guiltiest among us deserves fair and competent counsel. But my dad is also a more nuanced and complicated individual than I as able to acknowledge as a child.
Still, I sometimes expect him to see all civil rights and justice issues the way I do. Which made speaking with him tonight something like banging my head against a wall. The discussion began, as so many do, with talk of breasts.
I came running into the apartment, dropping my purse and jacket on the dining room table and yelling a brief “Hello” to my roommate in the kitchen. She yelled back, “We’re out of toilet paper!”
“So?” I replied, “I’m peeing.” I almost instantly realized what had happened, and laughed. When I came out, I said to her, “Yeah, I’m still a shaker, not a wiper. Standing up to pee is awesome. But I think it’s really sweet you forgot that!”
Her reply, “Well, I don’t know your routine!” just made me laugh harder.
(I make no apologies for my utter fail at French. It’s one of the many languages I was unable to learn in school.)
It’sbeenawhile, I know, but I figured it was time to finish off some of these questions. Lets go!
Do you want to have “bottom” surgery?
“Bottom” surgery usually means sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and I think “want’ is a tricky word to use here. If the Vagina Fairy came through my window (no, not that one) to wave her wand and give me a pussy, I’d say “Yes!” in a heartbeat. I’d also say that I do want to have had SRS, in the same way I want to have learned a foreign language: I want the results, but don’t want to go through the pain and suffering to get there. But do I want to have surgery at some point in the future?
Do you Agree or Disagree with the following statements:
1. Every woman has the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy regardless of when during the pregnancy. I’m conflicted, but I think my answer is ‘yes.’ If the baby could survive unassisted outside the womb, I feel uncomfortable about aborting the pregnancy. But, ultimately, that’s such a tricky thing to define I’d rather err on the side of the woman’s rights, not the baby’s.
2. Abortion should be allowed even beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy. Yes.
3. Parental consent should be required for any teen under the age of 18 requesting an abortion. No.
4. Women who have more than 5 abortions are irresponsible. Not inherently – everyone’s situation is different.
5. Women who have more than 10 abortions are irresponsible. Same as above.
6. Women should not use abortion as a form of birth control. I agree, but I don’t think there should be legislative actions or rules in place to push women in that direction.
7. I think reproductive health advocacy organizations should promote the use of emergency contraception in order to decrease the number of abortions in the US each year. Yes, but not because of reducing abortions is, in and of itself, a “good” goal. Rather, there are (to my limited understanding) a safer, less expensive way of preventing and aborting the pregnancy.
8. I feel uncomfortable if a woman has an abortion because of the gender of the pregnancy. I do. But (like number 6) I can’t imagine a legit way to legislate this out of existence that doesn’t cause more problems than it prevents.
9. Male partners should have the right to be a part of the decision to terminate a pregnancy. Erg. I think women (usually) have a moral imperative to bring the male partner into the discussion, but I don’t think that should be put into law.
10. I think a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion is an absolute and inalienable right no matter what.
I mean, I can think of ridiculous situations where I’d say “no, it’s not a right.” If aliens came and impregnated a woman with their baby and said they’d destroy the world unless she carried the child to term, sure. Lets prevent her from aborting to save the human race. But I can’t think of any real-world scenarios where I don’t think abortion should be an absolute right.
What is the difference between a label and a keyword?
Recently, I spoke with some other trans women about the pros and cons of labels. I was saying that labels can be a very powerful force for personal identification: by labeling myself, and choosing what labels to apply and how, I can forge my own identity out of its many disparate parts. I choose the labels ‘woman,’ ‘trans,’ ‘Chicagoan,’ ‘Jewish,’ ‘geek,’ and so on, and I get to decide what those labels mean for me.
Another woman in the group countered, “But what about when someone else places a label on you?” She said part of her problem identifying as ‘trans’ is all of the negative baggage associated with the word. Her feelings of discomfort were exacerbated by a generational gap: I was probably half her age, and the labels ‘trans’ and ‘queer’ meant very different things to her than they do for me.
Our different ideas of the emotional weight of those labels got me thinking about the semantics of the word label, and what other words might better describe how we create our identities.
Changes may be a’brewin. I’m thinking about renaming The Thang Blog and rolling it into my artist site, www.RebeccaKling.com. I’m currently working on making my artist site something a little more professional, and a little less iWeb, and those thoughts collided with my growing realization that “The Thang Blog” is a really friggin’ vague title. Looking at other blogs I enjoy reading – Dear Diaspora, Feministe, Get Rich Slowly, Questioning Transphobia, and so on – the vast majority have names that are, if not descriptive, at least evocative.
I’m pretty sure I’d keep my primary email addresses at fridaythang.com, out of momentum if nothing else, but it seems like it might be time to phase out fridaythang.com as a place to send anyone looking for my existence online.
I’m looking for some 1950s sex ed videos as part of something I’m thinking about for my next show, and thought I’d share. The restrictions on square dancing are near the end, around 4:30. (You can picnic while men-stru-ating, thank goodness!)
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I wish I remember who recommended Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men to me. It may have been through this blog, but…oh well! The book is written by Lori Girshick, a “sociologist and social justice activist,” and is an exploration of 150 interviews she conducted with individuals who responded to a survey looking for “gender transgressors.” Much of the book directly quotes these interviews, with Girshick interjecting her summarized opinions and conclusions throughout.
It’s
What is the difference between a label and a keyword?
Time Traveler Captured In Museum Photograph
Themocracy