That’s So Gay
Comments (2) Think B4 You Speak is a recently launched campaign aiming to eradicate the use of ‘gay’ as a slur or an insult:
Penny Arcade makes a counter-argument (click for the original):
Posts tagged: theory
Comments (2) 
InCISting on labels
By Rebecca, August 16, 2009 4:44 pm
Cedar over at Taking Up Too Much Space just weighed in on the whole cis debate, and summed things up pretty well:
I think it’s high time we admitted it: “Cis” IS an insult.
That’s right. Because by calling you cis, we’re calling you no better than a fucking tranny*, and THAT, my friends, is one of the worst insults we’ve got in US culture. We’re calling you no more real than us, and we’re not real. We’re calling you no more a woman than us, that you deserve no more respect than us, and in your eyes, that means tranny-alert.com, that means Ann Coulter jokes, that means it’s fine for the general public to post videos of your genitals all over the internet with big purple arrows and random fetishizing speculations, and fire you unless you show us photos of your genitals. It’s saying you can’t apply makeup. It’s insulting your penis size and your manhood. It’s saying that the only difference between us is that you think you’re better than us.
Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to have a conversation with Carolyn Ann at CaroLINES about the same topic. (Edit: Carolyn Ann told me to use masculine pronouns, so that’s been changed.)
On the Edge of Trolling, pt 4
By Rebecca, July 21, 2009 10:23 am
Name change went well, and I’ll post a much expanded retelling later.
For now, I wanted to turn once again to comments that are barely questionable as trolling. That is, comments that are almost certainly posted just to be obnoxious, but there’s the slimmest sliver of a chance the person honestly thinks that way and isn’t intending to be inflammatory. This latest comment was posted to in reference to Misogyny and the Male Gaze:
What I love about trans is this: They were sensitive and easily hurt to begin with, but now they feel they have a reason. The dude’s always bothered you because he doesn’t think like you, but now the way he thinks *directly* deals with you, or so you think.
Get over it. Yes, you are “a pair of tits with a dick”, and lots of people are going to see it that way. Is that cool and fair and right? No. But how many minds are you changing by whining about it? Whining implies that you have no balls.
I mean, cry all you want, but you had your chance, still have your chance to be the man you were born as, so I think the crying is a little weird, forced and irrelevant at this point.
How delightful!
Are we really doing this again? (OR: The Great Trans Blogging Shakeup of 2009, pt 2)
By Rebecca, July 8, 2009 12:17 am
Back in May I posted about The Great Trans Feminist Blogging Shakeup of 2009. Less ridiculously described, it was a series of posts and discussions in April about how Feminist blogs can/should foster discussion about trans issues. The post was prompted by my own disappointment in a discussion over at Feministing, and I was trying to process my own experiences by going through how others had viewed the conversation in April.
Well, the (queer) blogosphere is (once again) up in arms over trans related discussions, so I thought I’d (once again) try and construct a timeline so that I could better understand what the heck has been going on. Here we go!
Raising Children without Gender
By Rebecca, June 24, 2009 2:22 pm
From an article about a Swedish family:
Pop’s parents, both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information.
“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”
…with a second child on the way, Pop’s parents have no plans to change what they see as a winning formula. As for Pop, they say they will only reveal the child’s sex when Pop thinks it’s time.
I think this is pretty cool. There’s something powerful about allowing a child to notify the world of their gender, if and when they choose to. But, of course, there are those who are objecting:
“Ignoring children’s natures simply doesn’t work,” says Susan Pinker, a psychologist and newspaper columnist from Toronto, Canada, who wrote the book The Sexual Paradox, which focuses on sex differences in the workplace.
It sounds to me like the parents aren’t “ignoring children’s nature,” they’re allowing their child to identify for his or herself what that nature is. At the same time, I do think this statement of Pinker’s is probably more accurate:
“It’s unlikely that they’ll be able to keep this a secret for long. Children are curious about their own identity, and are likely to gravitate towards others of the same sex during free play time in early childhood.”
But, nevertheless, I think it’s worth it to give Pop the ability to state his or her own gender, rather than having it be built into every interaction before he or she makes a conscious decision about it. Thoughts from the peanut gallery?
On the Edge of Trolling, Pt 3
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.
On the Edge of Trolling, Pt 2
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.
On the Edge of Trolling, Pt 1
By Rebecca, June 11, 2009 12:39 am
The definition of Troll from Urban Dictionary:
One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument.
Someone decided to grace a few of my posts with some comments that I would consider on the edge of trolling. That is, I think she believes what she’s saying and I’m not convinced she’s trying to cause “maximum disruption and argument,” but she’s definitely being rude and disruptive. Rather than approve her comments, or even just simply ignore them, I’m going to focus some posts on them and try to respond to what they’re saying as best I can. The goal of this is more to get my thoughts in order – and to hear from the peanut gallery – than to engage her in a discussion which her tone has indicate she isn’t willing to have.
First up, Anonymous posted a comment to Are You Undergoing a Transgender Experience:
I’m sorry, but it’s not rude to ask those kinds of questions– grow some thicker skin. You decided to do this, become a woman, and so– figure it the fuck out and stop crying about it.
And if you don’t pass, then figure that out too. You’re the one who wants this .
The definition of overwhelming?
By Rebecca, May 29, 2009 7:20 pm
Trying on swimsuits all by my lonesome.
That in and of itself deserves a larger post sometime soon, but I also wanted to mention before it slips my mind that I was at the Target my roommate brought up a while back. I saw a woman who I would, indeed, read as trans . And although I hated myself the second I did it, my first reaction was thinking, “Oh, that’s who my roommate meant.” I hated myself for thinking that because I don’t want others to think that way about myself. And, as a larger issue, because I still have a lot of internalized transphobia.
When I started writing this post, my first draft included “I saw a woman who I would, indeed, read as trans (although very pretty)” (italics are what was removed). I subconciously or unconciously felt I needed to soften my reading of her by calling attention to the positive aspects of her appearance, as if being read as trans was inherently a negative. That reading her as trans was the same as saying “Oh, no, you can hardly see the stain,” because the point is you can see the stain and everyone knows the stain is bad.
I don’t know how to get out of this mindset. I would love any thoughts or suggestions, becuase I think it’s ultimately a very self-destructive place to be.
And I’m not even sure where I want to be when thinking about gender. Should I have simply taken in her appearance as part of her and and not leapt to ‘trans’? Should I have still acknowledged that she appeared to be trans but not placed a value judgement on that? Should I not be trying to assign gender to people I see in the first place? I don’t know. All of those mindsets also seem to have some problem associated with them.
Thoughts?
The Great Trans Feminist Blogging Shakeup of 2009
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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