Questioning Transphobia

Jam, “School Competition” skit, Channel 4, UK, 2000.

[Warning]: This skit is not safe and is extremely disturbing.

What I’m also keenly aware of as we discuss the austerity measures is the keen sense of resentment that is allowed to drive public discussion and policy.  But it’s resentment only of a certain licensed kind.

What I mean is, whether you’re talking about “dole bludgers” in Australia or “welfare cheats” or immigrants in the US or “lazy postal workers” or whatever in the UK, the resentment is levied at public programs.  What are universal forms of human rights are instead refigured as selective drains on the public good in ways that the subsidised finanical sector is not.

The grotesque Jam segment I’ve posted above (recently posted on Nina Power’s blog) shows the ways in which Baby Boomers who benefited from free education programs have a false sense of scarcity and an overwhelming sense of resentment that fuels their behaviour and their politics.  Only I deserve what I have earned, and in order to safeguard it I will do whatever I can to destroy the lives of those others I resent.  In contrast to me, they have not earned it and thus I must exert my efforts not in making more opportunities for everyone but in preventing the illegitimate from accessing the ever-diminishing options.

The quite obvious example of this is the response of the Tea Party in the US, who as this recent Rolling Stone article showed, ignore those forms of government support they receive whilst whole-heartedly resenting those they do not.  Needless to say, this is hypocritical, base politics at its worst.

But there’s other forms of resentment that we should make politically viable.  I resent that the people who had free educations now expect me to have a debt, and that this is ever-increasing, I resent that financial markets fail and receive golden parachutes while poor people get squeezed even harder, I resent that corporations are not held accountable for wrecking the earth and that governments are more afraid of regulating them than hurting the people they are supposed to serve.  I resent how trans people are almost always not protected by law, society or business.  The invisible hand of the market will not protect us, it allows more discrimination and legitimates our oppression.  I resent the politics of resentment, the people who will leave systemic institutional inequity aside in order to get their own small slice of the pie, no matter the cost to others.

Those are legitimate resentments in my opinion, and they can and should fuel political solidarity and social change.  As the amazing Sarah Jaffe said recently at Global Comment:

The U.S. right now, of course, talks about socialism a lot. But most of the people talking about it know very little of what it really means. Socialism is a catch-all term for “big government,” which lately seems to mean any government program that helps people of color–even if that program also helps white people.  Tim Wise notes that when social services began to be seen as programs that helped nonwhite people, rather than, as the New Deal had, explicitly privileging white folks, they began to be much less popular.

Socialism now, then, is used as an epithet by people who hate one another–or perhaps fear one another would be more accurate. The Tea Parties are full of hateful language, from Sarah Palin’s “reload” to the chants of “Take our country back.”

Sarah articulates a hopeful alternative to the politics of resentment.  Resentment can be useful in channeling political anger, but it must be supplemented with more, with alternatives to the world-as-it-is – a world that can and should be better.  Defeating pessimism is its own self-fulfilling prophecy, and leads us into the ever-diminishing returns of the neo-liberal state.  Sarah says that:

I want a world in which people are doing things they love because they love them. Imagine what people could accomplish if instead of bosses who make us feel like shit in order to get away with paying us less, we could spend that time truly doing what we love and getting good at it. Rather than wondering what happens if we don’t have money as an incentive, why don’t we think about the things we could do if we didn’t have to worry about money?

I don’t want Stalinism or Castroism. But I do take inspiration from the democratic shifts in Latin America, from countries moving without violence toward a better society for all. Despite the anger and the attempts to reinstitute a hierarchy–through violence, of course–Latin America perseveres with its experiment.

Global capitalism is crumbling and people are angry. They’re taking to the streets around the world, and they’re looking for a solution. Isn’t it the time now to think about real, long-term changes? About not “taking the country back,” but taking the country–the world–forward?

I know humanism was discarded for some good reasons and some extremely bad, but perhaps it is time to more strongly use a language of human rights, which are universal.  Because it seems to me that the problem is articulating things as compelling outside of a capitalist framework wholly determined by current or future moneymaking capability (something I slipped into even in the post).  We must have spaces that are not wholly commodified, that are not wholly determined by exchange, power and violence.

We have an inherent, universal right to not only survive but flourish, a universal right to learning (education), to be in as little pain as possible (health), to safe roads and jobs and fulfilling vocations, a universal right to imagination and creativity, to literature and thought and art and life and love.

These things are not always measurable by money, but sometimes that means they are more valuable for that very reason.

Just wanted to note this post by Adam Kotsko about the climate of austerity cuts and the dubious justifications employed by governments and bureaucrats, especially in the light of the devastating budget cuts on education in the UK (I mean, surely the judgment of the former head of BP can be trusted to understand education?  Surely *snerk).  Adam points out that:

If we can afford to spend billions of dollars on weapons systems we will almost certainly never use, we can afford to have a system where a dedicated tax stream pays for some bare-bones retirement and disability benefits, with no more overhead than it costs to print and mail the checks.

If we can afford to endlessly occupy two countries for no apparent reason, surely we can afford to help people get health insurance.

If we can summon up $700 billion out of thin air to bail out banks, surely we can afford to fill in the state and local budget gaps that would lead to firing people who provide essential services.

If we can afford high-tech laboratories to do scientific research the results of which we will basically give away to corporate interests for nothing, then we can afford humanities instruction, which requires a teacher, a chalkboard, and enough chairs for all the students.

Again, if universities can afford to run money-losing athletic programs, then they can afford to provide the minimal research support funds humanities people require — basically time off to focus on research and maybe the occasional plane ticket, since the other resources they need consist of little more than the pre-existing infrastructure of a good library that you’d need for the university anyway.

The pattern is the same again and again and again: the thing that actually costs not too much money is denounced as unaffordable, while the insanely expensive thing is never even questioned. It’s like if I overdrew my checking account and decided I needed to start buying store-brand cereal while never questioning if I can afford that Lexus.

It is amazing indeed as the comments point out that the governments of the world could instantly summon capital and action for the “crisis” of finance but not for any kind of human needs – which is somehow implausibly “idealistic” next to the raw “need” of capitalist realism.  Indeed, in the United States what was clear in the way the bailout was handed out was the way in which finance is not remotely subject to the same degree of disciplining that those in the public sectors or on welfare are  – even when finance is requiring the most substantial bailout of any industry just about ever.

Imagine the education sector, which is also “too big too fail” given the number of students, teachers and office staff employed, being handed 700 billion with barely any conditions.  No fucking way.  And then imagine that higher education the very next year responded by giving its executives the highest number of bonuses ever (or any for that matter) – as Wall Street just has.  There’d be riots in the streets, and justly so.

There is no human right to finance, no human need which requires the bulk of the population to subsidise the immoral and often illegal speculations of the ruling class.  No, it is time as Digby said recently, to start the prosecutions, to treat the financial elites as the criminals they undoubtedly are, and to stop disciplining the wrong industries and begin putting money into the vital areas which are not merely useful but fulfill universal needs – health, education, public works.

Anything else is simply idealism of the worst kind – the idealism of a capitalism which is failing on every possible score, even its own ability to make money (the only legitimating quality it is suggested to need).  It is realism to treat human rights first and capital second.  Austerity cuts are simply doing the short-term work of the financial/political ruling class themselves, and it will profit no-one – not even they themselves – in the long run, because as the 2008 crash and the Louisiana oil spill have both proven,  capitalism can not be trusted to do even basic care to prevent a disaster if there is the shortest of short term profits involved.  And the rest of us will pay the price, again.

Quinnae Moongazer of The Nuclear Unicorn has agreed to join Questioning Transphobia as a co-blogger. Please treat her kindly.

I wish I had more words for an appropriate introduction, but I think Quinnae used up the supply with her latest post.

In looking out at the vast, expansive canon of gender studies literature, and in light of even the most superficial analysis of its myriad failings it is easy to feel dispirited by what it has to offer trans people. It is all too easy to understand the instinct to abandon both queer and gender studies as a privileged exercise in neo-pathology, the postmodern turn of the same ideologies that guided the hegemonic psychiatrists of decades past. One could find yet more examples, of course.

Judith Lorber, someone readers of my blog may remember my past disagreements with, had this to say in 1994 about trans people: “[trans folk do not challenge the gender order because] their goal is to be feminine women and masculine men” (Lorber 1994: 20). Yet again we find the tireless obsession with attributing a politics to identity in the simplest possible terms, yet again we find the clutching of pearls with regard to the innate, literal body politic of trans people. It might perhaps be too obvious to tell Professor Lorber that for all of her elegant theorising about the socially constructed nature of gender she cannot bring herself to describe trans people by their proper pronouns (for example calling Renee Richards “he” and Billy Tipton “she”) nor to belabour the questionable hypocrisy of being unable to break out of the role of arbiter even as she derides the imposition of gender schema upon people.

However, to simply shine more light on the white cis women of gender academia and call them to the carpet for their tacit transphobia does a disservice to the armies of trans folk that have devoted their not inconsiderable intellectual, emotional, and spiritual energy to challenging these things since before I even drew breath.

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Stonewall UK, “the lesbian, gay and bisexual charity”, has recently – and not for the first time – found itself the centre of perhaps unwanted attention following a number of controversial statements by its executive chief, Ben Summerskill. The tale over recent weeks has been long and tangled and this post is more of an attempt to unravel it than anything else.

First, Mr Summerskill was reported to have said at a fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrats’ party conference last month that he was opposed to the same sex marriage (SSM) equality policy – which would allow straight and gay couples to have the option of both marriage and civil partnerships – because it could cost up to £5 billion.

To which the Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Gilbert, who proposed the policy, argued that it should not be subject to a cost/benefit analysis and was later reported as saying that “It should not be for me as an MP to lobby Stonewall to support gay equality, it should be for Stonewall to lobby me”.

The exchange was believed by some of those attending to be an argument against SSM by Mr Summerskill although he said he was still consulting with Stonewall supporters about it. The policy was subsequently adopted at the Liberal Democrats’ party conference.

Then, a week later, Mr Summerskill caused another stir at another fringe event, this time at the Labour conference in Manchester, when he attempted to defend Stonewall’s apparent lack of any position on marriage equality. He stated that Stonewall would not be “jumped into” declaring a position on the issue and that there remained a “wide range of viewpoints” on the matter.

At the same meeting a member of LGBT Labour, Darren McCombe, raised the subject of the current legislation enacted in the Gender Recognition Act which requires transsexual women and men to end their marriages in order to obtain full Gender Recognition Certificates. Mr Summerskill acknowledged the “terrible unfairness” of this situation but said he had been in talks with ministers and officials about amendments to the GRA. This sudden and unexpected interest in trans issues by the GLB charity caused an interesting variety of responses from members of various trans communities.

Now it seems that a further controversy is about to erupt following the announcement of the nominees for their 2010 awards. In 2008 there was a groundswell of opposition to Stonewall’s nomination of a journalist known to many TS/TG women and men for her transphobic views, and which culminated in the largest recorded public protest in Britain by TS/TG women and men outside that year’s awards ceremony in London.

Could history be about to repeat itself? I begin to wonder if it might be a possibility, now that the nomination of Bill Leckie for the same Journalist Of The Year Award has been made public. In 2007 Mr Leckie was criticised by, of all people, Stonewall Scotland for his writing on trans issues, which was held up by that organisation as an example of extremely transphobic writing. The following year, 2008, he wrote that those trans people who are convicted of criminal offences should be denied the right to assert their own gender identities.

Stonewall’s deputy chief executive, Laura Doughty, has now attempted to justify the nomination, claiming that it’s for Mr Leckie’s “recent, pro-equality journalism”. It transpires that Mr Leckie wrote an article for The Sun in December 2009 about a sports star which “showed a passionate, powerful defence of LGBT equality in sport”. So apparently just one relevant article in an entire year is enough to qualify Mr Leckie for a nomination for the Journalist Of The Year Award. I can think of a few people who might be somewhat less than impressed by that news.

Be that as it may, it will be interesting, to say the least, to see how this latest controversy continues to develop over the next few weeks as we count down to this year’s Awards Ceremony on November 4th. And for anyone wishing to Demonstrate against Stonewall duplicity and transphobia, there’s a Facebook event page here.

The photo is from 1queer1′s Stonewall Protest photo set and used in compliance with the Creative Commons License for non-commercial use.

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Cross-posted from Bird of Paradox by Helen, who has been a regular contributor here at QT for nearly two years. That’s Helen. Not ‘Helen of Troy’, not ‘Helen Hunt’, not ‘Helen Keller’ – and categorically not ‘Helen Boyd’.

Hello there. My name is Static Nonsense, though you can call me SN for short. I’m a queer, nonwhite trans person with physical and mental disabilities, along with a host of other things that I don’t remember right now due to being undercaffeinated in the wee hours of the morning. I write over at Some Assembly Required, about all sorts of things ranging from ableism and psychophobia to sexuality and BDSM – even gaming (because I’m such a dork like that). I don’t typically talk a lot about trans issues, but it’s something I’m getting back into after having essentially gone into hiding. So yeah. Hi.

I’ve been avoiding the trans community for a few years now. The pushback I get is too much for me to handle, and I’ve never been able to get the support I need from a community that really should get why having this support is so necessary. This wasn’t always an issue – it only started showing up when I became to understand that I am also mentally disabled. Even moreso when I started to come out about that fact, a part of myself that I didn’t see as having much relation to me being trans. Just, yanno, an extra tidbit of information. Which isn’t exactly true. I’m noticing that yes actually, my disabilities are a major factor in why I identify as trans. That shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Apparently it is.

Trans people get othered a lot. We’re pushed off as crazy, disordered, for challenging the social norms of gender and sex. Either by choice in trying to deconstruct this ancient structure, or simply by existing. Throughout history we’ve been institutionalized or “fixed” (or tried to be) simply for existing as ourselves in a world that focuses so strongly on the cissexist concept of penis = man = masculine and vagina = woman = feminine. Even now the disconnect of the body and one’s self identity is seen as a disorder, one that must be treated and fixed so that we can fit neatly into this dichotomy again.

This has pushed a lot of us on the defensive, and understandably so. Transgenderism isn’t a disorder and shouldn’t be treated as such in society – it’s an identity, an intricate part of who we are as people.

But it sometimes goes to extremes. All too often people are quick to point out that they’re not crazy. People with mental illness are crazy, and people shouldn’t conflate the two. Trans people aren’t loony like those real loony people are. Which causes a whole mess of problems a la ableism, psychophobia and a combination of misunderstanding and misinformation.

For one, it isolates trans people with mental illness, even when they don’t relate. Because suddenly, they are those real loony people. The ones being targeted, within a community they’re seeking support from.

Second, it asserts that the only true and appropriate identity is one that isn’t a result of mental illness. Which is leaving me with the question of “WHY?”

Various mental disorders can shape one’s identity. What exactly is the problem with that? Why exactly is an identity shaped without the influence of mental illness more valid than one that is influenced by them? An extreme but perfect example is Dissociative Identity Disorder, where the identity of the self is so fragmented that the system can be composed of so many identities, some of which can directly contradict others. This is in constant fluctuation, and many of these can be present all at once, individually or sometimes none at all. This is effectively the case with me, where I can identify as a man, a woman, both, neither or something else entirely – be it all at once, one or two of these at a time or fluctuating constantly throughout the day. And while it can last for just minutes or days, it can also extend over several years, to the point where I originally sought out transition as a trans man due to the disconnect between being female-assigned-at-birth (FAAB) and identifying as a man for so long. And that’s not including the added fragmentation of schizotypy, where I see the world abstractly and thus didn’t have a clear grasp on this concept of penis = man = masculine and vagina = woman = feminine, even when my abusive peers tried to teach me this clear absolute true fact of the world, and I still don’t.

Since then I’ve come to the general identity of genderqueer or genderfluid (depending on which day you ask me), allowing myself to shift between these various gender identities freely as my mind naturally shifts in response to situations and just its own natural state. But this is a state I had to come to entirely on my own. I did not have the support of my own community, because in their eyes I am crazy and not “really” trans because of the possibility of my identity being a result of my mental disorders. I make them look bad, because crazy is automatically bad and I’m the reason they’ve been victimized for so many centuries.

When in actuality, maybe the issue isn’t with who is really crazy and who isn’t. Maybe the issue is with our society’s concrete idea of the gender and sex dichotomy, its complete disregard for the identity and rights of people regardless of where they stand on the spectrum, and how it treats people that don’t line up perfectly with their ideals. Perhaps this concept of craziness has just been a scapegoat for the actual issue at hand, a weapon used to demonize the people that don’t line up with their ideals. An age-long system of oppression built on cissexism and transphobia, utilizing ableism and psychophobia to attack, ostracize and well, oppress.

But what do I know. I’m the crazy one, after all.

But matter doesn’t care if you took the pill or estradiol, a body with a certain estrogen level is a body with a certain estrogen level.  You don’t get a free pass from blood clots, migraines and breast cancer to name just a few because you are supposedly “not a real woman.”

I’ve just been reading a news report of what appears to be the murder of yet another trans woman, known only by her first name (Stacey), this time in Point Breeze, Philadelphia. I’ve only seen this one report so far and, as ever, some of the language – mostly from the Police Department’s report – is, well, just plain wrong. Offensive and demeaning, frankly. Really, if someone lives as a woman and is known to her family, friends and neighbours as a woman, why would you want to misgender her?

Usually it’s because of a legal system which is too busted, and those who run it too bigoted and transphobic, to allow for the possibility that, although some women may well be trans, that’s no reason to dehumanise them by denying appropriate documentation. By the look of it, the local PD in this instance is another one which has yet to make that great leap forward into the 21st century, where trans women are treated like the humans we are.

So via the Philadelphia Daily News, the main points (edited for clarity) seem to be:

A [transsexual woman] whom neighbors described as “beautiful” was found dead in her Point Breeze home Monday night by her live-in boyfriend.

Initial reports from police said the victim [...] was found with a pillow case around her neck, but Homicide Sgt. Bob Wilkins denied that yesterday.

He said there were no visible signs of trauma to the victim, such as stab or bullet wounds, but he declined to speculate on a cause of death until an autopsy report is released.

As of last night, police still had not received autopsy results, and declined to classify the death as a homicide.

But several neighbors who said they knew [Stacey] said police on the scene Monday night told them that the victim had been found face-down – either naked or half-dressed in provocative clothing – and that she had been strangled.

Wilkins said [Stacey] was found on the floor of a second-story rear bedroom in her home, on Manton Street near 18th, but he declined to elaborate.

[...]

Neighbors described Stacey and her boyfriend, who had lived on the block for less than a year, as a quiet, private couple.

One neighbor who asked to be identified only as Darlene said she would sit on the steps and talk with the victim some mornings while she waited for a cab. She described the victim as “really nice and very friendly.”

[...]

Darlene said she remembered watching a hulking, white, bald man leave Stacey’s corner rowhouse sometime before 4 p.m. Monday.

It was several hours later that neighbors said Stacey’s boyfriend came home and ran out of the house screaming.

Police said the victim’s roommate called them to the scene about 9:30 p.m. and flagged them down as they arrived.

RIP Stacey; I hope justice is served against your murderer very soon. My condolences to your loved ones.

Press Release bit:

Oct 10, 2010 – Boolean Union Studios is reviving the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) Webcomic project. Originally created by webcomic artists Jenn Dolari and Erin Lindsey, the TDOR webcomic project is intended to memorialize transgender individuals who lost their lives due to murder or suicide. Each November 20th, a new group of webcomics is unveiled, each dealing the issues raised by the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

The TDOR webcomic project ran from 2004 through 2008, but unfortunately the project lapsed in 2009. However in 2010, Boolean Union Studios, a small, independent movie studio, will host the project, taking over from Jenn Dolari, the previous host.

In order to ensure the project’s success, Boolean Union wants to solicit as many submissions as possible. It doesn’t matter if you are a great artist, if you have your own webcomic, or even if you are transgendered youself; what matters is that you care. Submissions can be anything from a single panel to a multipage work. There is no set theme this year, though submissions should deal with issues related to TDOR. All submitted webcomics for 2010 will appear on our website on Nov 20th, and will be archived there for future viewing.

For more information about the TDOR webcomic project, or to see submissions from previous years, please see the TDOR website athttp://tdor.boolean-union.com/. Questions, comments, and submissions can be sent to contact@boolean-union.com.

Boolean Union Studios was launched in 2006 on the principle that anyone who is interested can contribute. Boolean Union specializes in 3d computer animation and content creation.