I was recently contacted by Jeremy Mann, a researcher I met last year. He’s currently working on an awesome-sounding project to demonstrate the lack of trans and gender-varient folks in history and archives. I’ll let him explain:

I am currently working on research that calls attention to the lack of space and concern in history and archives for trans and gender-variant people.  My goal is to not only point out the ignorance, violence, and accountability surrounding this issue, but to also offer solutions to archivists for how they can better serve all people in safeguarding memory and the past, especially past struggles.  The struggle to be who you want to be in the face of constant oppressions should not be lost, forgotten, or lived over and over again.

Please help me in this research/activism by participating in a questionnaire I developed for the purpose of empowering the “subjects” by centering their voices in my work (rather than me speaking for others).  If you identify as transgender, transsexual, trans, and/or genderqueer, or cross-dressing is a significant part of your life, please take the time to help me keep historians and archivists responsible.

There is a horrific absence of trans and gender-variant people in US and global histories, especially archives.  People in power often use history as a tool to deny other people’s rights, such as gender expression or employment nondiscrimination.  When people and struggle are missing in history/archives, others take advantage of them.  Help me change this.

Here’s the documents you need:

• Consent Form
  • Trans History & Archives Consent Form (Word Document)
  • Trans History & Archives Consent Form (PDF)
• Questionnaire
  • Trans History & Archives Questionnaire (Word Doc)
  • Trans History & Archives Questionnaire (PDF)

You only need one of each, I’ve just included both formats in case one is easier than the other. Email completed forms to jmain@luc.edu by 6/3/2011!

Sorry for the short notice, but I hope you’ll be able to help with this project.

At first, I wasn’t even sure what was making me uneasy. The idea of word reclamation is very attractive as a member of an opressed group, and there is something extremely powerful about turning a word on oppressors. Because, lets face it, “tranny” is not generally used in mainstream media as a positive term. With the exception of an Urban Dictionary link*, most of the top search results for “tranny” are sex sites, as good an example as any of the societal fetishization and objectification of trans women. Searching for “lesbian,” in comparison, brings up links to Wikipedia, Lesbian.com, resources about being gay, etc. That sends a very specific message about what being a “tranny” means, and could actually strengthen the argument that “tranny” should be reclaimed, or needs to be reclaimed. Which is what I used to think.

I’ve changed my mind.

Cedar does a good job pointing out the major problems in the “reclamation” argument in favor of using “tranny” in parts one and two of hir essays on the subject, so rather than try to restate them and fail I will simply quote hir:

I don’t think that the “reclaimed” sense of “tranny” can truly be isolated from that context of trans misogyny & subversivism within queer, trans, and punk communities, at least not for me, and I find it almost as offensive as the original. It’s still a signifier of non- trans woman/cis supremacy–just this time it’s non- trans woman queers, as opposed to cis men.

And…

So, from all these references that aren’t really about trans women, we can gather the following picture of what “tranny” is supposed to represent: sexually polluted, perverted/slutty/sex-obsessed/promiscuous, ugly, bitchy, really-male, exist only for sex, fake, doing femininity wrong/badly/not feminine enough/hyperfeminine.

What, pray tell, does the “gender neutral” “reclaimed” version of “tranny” do to reclaim or reject these concepts? It gets some of them, ok. But it doesn’t hit the most common theme running throughout its use against cis women–doing femininity badly.

That’s really what it boils down to. Whether or not I agree with the “reclaimed” visions, so-called positive uses of “fag” and the-N-word do offer strengthened identities of an oppressed group, outside of the grasp of the oppressors. Indeed, I’m realizing that is the reason I actually like “queer” as an identifier – it offers a (to me) positive identity of non-mainstream sexuality, gender, and expression beyond a “queer=bad” mindset. But I agree with Cedar that “tranny” has no such vision that I’ve seen. Rather, it seems to foster a dismissive view of transgender people (and particularly trans women), and so I’ve tried to stop using it.

Any thoughts from the (usually silent) peanut gallery?

-R

*I do have to give a shout-out for Urban Dictionary’s first entry for “tranny,” and particularly their rather humorous example sentence:

That said, the last few entries for definitions are (shockingly…) transphobic and trans-misogynist**. Go do your part and vote ‘em down!

**A term which may require it’s own footnote***, and is defined by Julia Serano as “Sexism that specifically targets those on the trans female/trans feminine spectrums. It arises out of a synergetic interaction between oppositional and traditional sexism. It accounts for why MTF spectrum trans people tend to be more regularly demonized and ridiculed than their FTM spectrum counterparts, and why trans women face certain forms of sexualization and misogyny that are rarely (if ever) applied to non-trans women. ”

***Nested footnotes!