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By Rebecca, April 11, 2011 1:29 pm

News has come of a transgender man in Canada who is refusing a settlement which would silence him from telling the story of his discrimination:

Last September, the school board offered Buterman $78,000 cash — approximately a teacher’s salary — along with a one-year teaching job in exchange for dropping the complaint. The settlement came with a confidentiality agreement which stipulated he could no longer talk about the complaint or refer to the incident.

Buterman didn’t want to give up talking about the case, since it involves documented proof of anecdotal experiences of many transgender people.

I think that’s pretty awesome, and more power to Butterman. Unfortunately, for financial reasons, it does look like this will be the end of his case against the school: “Buterman’s lawyers have advised him refusing the offer would result in the school board moving to dismiss the complaint because a “fair and reasonable” settlement has been put on the table.”

I want to applaud Butterman for not only standing up to the school, but refusing to accept a settlement which would silence him. I’m always frustrated when I hear stories of injustice silenced after a we-didn’t-do-anything-wrong-even-though-we’re-paying-you-off ‘settlement.’ (I’m not faulting folks who take those settlements, I just wish they weren’t so common.) There’s a good expansion of the issues over at Dented Blue Mercedes.

PS – Check out Show Me Your Feminism, a Tumblr project by a Than Blog reader. (Feel free to take credit in the comments – wasn’t sure how public you wanted your involvement.)

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By Rebecca, April 7, 2010 4:04 pm

Some links for your Saturday enjoyment. First, from The Guardian, Nawal El Saadawi: Egypt’s radical feminist.

El Saadawi already seems to have lived more lives than most. She trained as a doctor, then worked as a psychiatrist and university lecturer, and has published almost 50 novels, plays and collections of short stories. Her work, which tackles the problems women face in Egypt and across the world, has always attracted outrage, but she never seems to have balked at this; she has continued to address controversial issues such as prostitution, domestic violence and religious fundamentalism in her writing.

Very worth reading.

Next, from Feministe, Hipsters, Hasidim and a Bike Lane in Brooklyn.

…this is where I lose sympathy. I get it you’ve lived here longer. And you know what? I do believe that when a wealthier, more powerful group comes into a traditionally marginalized community, seniority does matter. But at some point, you don’t get to pull the seniority card when it comes to your religiously-based objections to female use of public space and transportation. And here, the hipsters weren’t making rules for the entire community. They were using a public street, paid for with everyone’s tax dollars, to ride their bikes. I run out of patience for objections to people using public streets because your religion objects to the female form. I run out of patience where people object to having to see people who are different from them in New York City. This isn’t about, “Damn, all these outsiders are coming in and driving up the rental market and now I can’t afford my place” or “I moved here to live in a neighborhood, not to have a bunch of loud bars built on my block.” This is, “I think that my religious belief regarding the appropriateness of women in public should trump the rights of women to move through public space.”

Continue reading 'Feminists, hipsters, and a cuddling seal'»

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By Rebecca, October 14, 2009 12:06 am

There’s a post over at Slashdot, FOSS Sexism Claims Met with Ire and Denial (warning: the discussion has gotten large, which means the page takes a while to load) that’s prompted some interesting discussion.  (FOSS = Free, Open Source Software) Basically, someone wrote an article about sexism within the FOSS movement, as well as a followup article about the responses to his first article, and was met with a…less than enthousiastic reaction:

Raise the subject of sexism, and you are met with illogic that I can only compare to that of the tobacco companies trying to deny the link between their products and cancer. Because I took a feminist stance in public, I have been abused in every way possible — being called irrelevant, a saboteur, coward, homosexual, and even a betrayer of the community.

As Slashdot is a mostly-male discussion site, I expected resistance to any claims of sexism, and wasn’t disappointed. To be fair, some of them were totally legit, indicating that the examples given in the article weren’t representative of the community as a whole:

If I haven’t seen it, and no around me has seen it, isn’t the onus on you to give some more proof other than, “Really, guys! Sexism in OSS is real!”

At the same time, there were a lot of people who missed the point, and trying to find examples of tactics listed at Derailing for Dummies quickly got old – there were just too many of them.

However, there were also some great comments in support of the idea that maybe, just maybe, the highly educated and libertarian individuals who tend toward FOSS can also be sexist, and that simply dismissing cries of sexism isn’t really helpful.

Continue reading 'La la la, I can’t hear you!'»

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By Rebecca, August 11, 2009 7:19 pm

I was recently emailed by Christine Brooks, PhD and Shayna Korb, “two feminist women researchers from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California.” The ITP is an organization which describes itself as “at the frontier of psychology and spirituality,” and with an educational paradigm which “[values] the mind, body, spirit connection.”

Christine and Shayna are doing a study on third wave feminists and their spirituality:

Are you a 3rd Wave Feminist?
How do you experience spirituality?
Share your voice with us. We’re doing a pilot study on third wave feminists’ experience of spirituality. If you identify as a woman and a third wave feminist and you’re between the ages of 18-40, fill out our short (we estimate under 20 minutes) narrative survey!

The study is at http://ThirdWaveSpirit.questionpro.com and Christine and Shayna said they could be emailed at ThirdWaveSpirit@gmail.com. I just completed the survey, and I’d say their time estimate is pretty accurate. It also has some interesting questions that required some thought about where I am with religion, spirituality, and my sense of self.

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By Rebecca, July 9, 2009 12:09 am

Queen Emily has a great post over at Feministe about a women’s-only Vancouver pharmacy that’s excluding trans women. Even more interesting, however, are some of the questions she brings up:

To cis feminists, when you are building new resources, what do you gain by excluding trans women? Is that gain worth the harm you cause trans women? Is that not status quo with the rest of the patriarchal world – to see trans women as disposable, valueless and not worthy of protecting – and shouldn’t feminism be doing better?

Likewise, in light of the ridiculous cis debate, it’s refreshing to see a really constructive discussion surrounding a trans-related issue.

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By Rebecca, June 21, 2009 1:40 am

I just got back from the fundraiser I was volunteering at tonight, and had an experience I wanted to share.

Throughout the evening, and particularly later in the evening as I was more and more tired and my mental filter dropped, I found myself looking down and being somewhat awestruck at the sight: Boobs (my boobs!) in a dress (my dress!) framed by hairless arms topped with painted nails (my arms and nails!) leading down to smooth legs (my legs!) ending in heels (my heels!) tipped with painted toes (my toes!).

This was the most femininely I’ve dressed up since starting to transition, and even though I was exhausted from helping out rather than having fun, I sort of couldn’t get over the experience.

Continue reading 'Looking down from a great height'»

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By Rebecca, June 13, 2009 12:19 am

A brief comment was posted for the final installment of On the Edge of Trolling. (At least until I get some more ‘lovely’ comments like these have been!). This one was from to The Great Trans Feminist Blogging Shakeup of 2009 and, of the series, comes the closet to simply being an outright troll:

sorry, but cis trumps. Born this way. You chose the new territory, so perhaps you’ll be able to be a feminist in time, but right away? No way

Once again, I think I’m just going to quote myself:

Neither Dictionary.com, nor Wikipedia, nor Stanford, nor any other resource I could find indicates feminism is a philosophy exclusive to women, or people raised as women. Feminism, at least the feminism I identify with, isn’t a womyn-born-womyn space, and doesn’t benefit only women. CrimethInc says it better than I could but, in short, for every girl who was told she couldn’t be a firefighter there is a boy who was told he couldn’t be a ballerina. Yes, women are ultimately the victims of sexism and the benefactors of feminism more often than men, but it’s naive to think sexism doesn’t cut both ways and its elimination wouldn’t benefit people other than those who have “been oppressed because of their genitalia or reproductive organs.” (Which, by the way, trans women have too.)

And that’s that.

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By Rebecca, June 12, 2009 9:17 pm

Welcome back! In our last episode I mentioned that I’d received a few comments that stradled the line of what trolling means. Rather than just approve or ignore them, I’m responding to them in a more open format. Enjoy!

Anonymous’ second comment was to The Transphobic, Cissexist People in our Lives. It’s a little long, so I’m going to break it up and respond section by section.

So this is something that makes me angry… Trans people, specifically the M to F people, saying they are feminists. They weren’t raised as women, they were never oppressed because of their genitalia or reproductive organs, never told they couldn’t be firefighters. Perhaps they were told they couldn’t play with dolls?

I don’t understand why they think they expect to be automatically considered “women” when they are obviously MID-TRANSITION. You are, by definition, IN THE MIDDLE, not on either side.

So claiming to be a feminist!? is distasteful to me, at the very least, because you want to shuck your privileges as a male and then whine about how hard women have it. When YOU WERE NOT BORN THAT WAY. You have CHOSEN to become a woman, so STOP THE FUCKING WHINING.

Continue reading 'On the Edge of Trolling, Pt 2'»

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By Rebecca, May 26, 2009 12:33 am

I recently mentioned that I had submitted a question about trans women’s sexuality to Feministing and the question was chosen for their sex advice column and posted here.  To my surprise, the discussion in the comments was mostly about how to hold a discussion on trans issues, and responding to transphobic posts. I was disappointed to see this, and this post is an attempt to gather my thoughts about how (whether?) a trans-specific discussion can be held on a site that does not have a trans-specific focus. (I do want to make sure to point out that the vast majority of the posts were not transphobic, and that there were definitely some good comments, advice, and links. I don’t want to make it sound like there was nothing of value in the discussion, or that I regret submitting the question, because neither of those is true.)

But first, lets go back in time a month or so and look at a similar discussion on trans issues which happened at Feministing and Feministe in mid April.

Continue reading 'The Great Trans Feminist Blogging Shakeup of 2009'»

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By Rebecca, May 25, 2009 1:29 am

Feministing has a regular sex advice column called Ask Professor Foxy. I submitted a question about sexuality changing over the course of the transition, which was posted – along with a response – earlier today. The basis of the question was this: I’m a trans woman in the process of transitioning, and having a lot of frustration in figuring out how to deal with my ever-changing sexuality.

And from the resposne:

Part of this process is also going to have to be exploring your new body and your new desires and not judging yourself during this process. You can even think of it as a burden or as an extra gift during transition. Unlike cisgendered women, who typically have to get used to things on their body, you are going to be able to explore things on your body that you very much want: the breasts, the hips you will likely develop. Enjoy it!

It’s definitely worth reading, but what’s a lot more interesting is the comments…

Continue reading 'Transitioning and Changing Sexuality'»