Questioning Transphobia

Tyjanae Moore Arrested on Nov 17:

HOUSTON – Tyjanae Moore is the transgendered woman who was cited and thrown behind bars by a Houston police officer because she was caught using the ladies restroom. “I felt so belittled going to a jail over something so simple and stupid,” says Moore.

A 26-year-old native of Minnesota, Moore moved to Houston to be closer to family, but after a year in Texas, she is ready to move back.

Moore was arrested Nov. 17 at the Houston Public Library in downtown. The offense? Police say despite being a transgendered female, she is still officially a man — a man who was caught using the ladies’ restroom.

“When I came out, the female told me I wasn’t supposed to be and I asked if there was any particular reason why not. She said I’m a transgendered female and I was really shocked that they even stopped me for this,” says Moore.

The rest at the link.

This is yet another example of the ways in which trans people in specific (and marginalized people in general) raise the majority’s ire for daring to behave as if we’re their equals. Just using a restroom prompts a backlash even though the mayor issued an executive order allowing trans people to use the appropriate restrooms:

But there are some people who believe until Moore undergoes a full sexual transition, she should remain in the men’s restroom. That is why the Houston Area Pastor Council is asking the Texas Attorney General’s Office to take up this case. Members of the group say Mayor Parker’s executive order allowing transgendered people to use the restroom of choice contradicts state law.

Texas law prohibits the opposite sex from using a restroom unless given permission.

In the article, Tyjanae says she felt unsafe and was followed around when she used the men’s room. Apparently, if you’re trans in Texas you should just use the street or an alley or hold it until you get home? Clearly the desired solution is for trans people to disappear, move away, or maybe just die.

Australian people: this one passed me by, but better late than never:

The Australian Human Rights Commission is conducting a short consultation regarding federal protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and sex and/or gender identity.

Currently federal law protects against discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability and age. However, there is little protection in federal law, unlike in state and territory laws, from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and sex and/or gender identity. The Commission has called for federal protection from discrimination on these grounds for many years.

This consultation will consider the possible inclusion of protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and sex and/or gender identity in federal anti-discrimination law.

You have until the end of the week to comment, so please do so here.

[I wrote this several weeks ago elsewhere, and it's appeared in a slightly modified form]

The trans community’s marked by violence – so many of us have experienced it, live with it, and so many of us die from it. When we hear that one of us have died, we remember the violence we faced, the threats, the fear we live with.

And yet, whenever a trans person is murdered, the very first thing we trans people have to do is sort through the layers and layers of transphobic misinformation from police, media and families in order to work out who that person was, how they lived their life, what their appropriate pronouns and identifications were.

Because the words are almost always wrong, and almost always an act of erasure. First they will begin by making a reference to assigned sex, as something this person “is” – most commonly, “a man was found in woman’s clothing.” And it’s like, ok it’s certainly possible for it to have been a male crossdresser. We must be cautious and not jump to conclusions, because that would be an act of erasure. And it is after all being reported as a fact by the media. It “makes sense,” because the “knowledge” of the majority always makes sense.

And then they will use an assigned name, a name given to the person at birth. But then, almost always, it will turn out that wait no it was a trans woman. And then we find out that she’d changed her legal name. And had been on hormones. And she was most certainly not known by the name she was assigned at birth to the people in her life. That yes, she was a woman, that she lived and died as a woman, not a “man in women’s clothing.”

But none of that matters to the institutions that create someone’s public memory. Because another reality has intervened – cissexual reality – and how she lived and who she was has disappeared.

Because in all likelihood maybe her real legal name will be put in quotation marks after the false name she discarded – like she was just living some wacky nickname which everyone indulged – and maybe she will be referred to as “a transsexual,” this mystical beast which is somehow not a woman. But she will rarely if ever be described as a transsexual woman by the media, and certainly never as just a plain woman.

And maybe – almost certainly if she was a woman of colour, as so many on the TDOR list are – they’ll suggest she was a sex worker before there’s even any evidence, because you know. “Makes sense.” Nobody would ever be with her knowingly and willingly be in a relationship with her.

And maybe then, even with all this evidence, her family might not have accepted her, and will then superimpose their stories of who she was on top, and because they are grieving they will get more respect for this then perhaps she ever did. And maybe their friends or workmates will step forward with some stories about what a lovely boy she had been before she got all confused and went on hormones, as though their false perceptions were objective truth. As though what they saw was what she was, as though they could feel the pain that leads to medical transition. As though visibility equals existence, when the change was not her (she was always a woman) but them, their perceptions. You saw a boy, therefore it must have been. Makes sense, right?

Very occasionally, maybe she has even been one of the lucky few of us who scraped together enough money to pay for surgery, thus allowing her the correct legal sex and not walk through life with the wrong documents compounding the discrimination she faces. And it is only then that just maybe she might be referred to by the right name with the right pronouns, even though they will still probably gratuitously refer to her former name and to her appearance and to her genitals (because a trans person’s genitals are always relevant to discussing them. Always. Privacy is for real people).

And maybe there’ll be a sexy photo, or maybe a before-and-after tableau because you know, that’s what y’all cis people are interested in, right, what wonders hormones do. How you can totally tell what she “really” was. And people will imagine how she must have “tricked” her killer, must have deceived him, because that too “makes sense” because hey we’re all just pretending and deceiving you anyway, right? Living our lives, we’re already lying about what we really are apparently. So course, the killer must have been “surprised.” Because it’s easier to emphathise with a killer than a trans woman, one of those.. things.

Never mind how we rarely don’t declare our transness to our lovers for this reason, and how often it turns out to have been something the person had known for ages, and how our murders are less about “surprise” than about the fact that we are not considered valuable, barely considered human. And that the presumptions about gender, sexuality and race you have made all along have contributed to this general cultural climate of trans disposability, which too makes sense, which is why you deny jobs and homeless shelters and housing and even in prison you chuck us into the wrong prison. No wonder you identify with murderers.

And after all this, we have not even begun to actually do justice to that person, to their personality, to the circumstances of their life and death. No, we have at best simply attempted nothing more than pushing through the layers of lies contributed by a transphobic society. We have discovered little more than that someone was a trans woman in a society that does not want us to exist, and that even after her death she had been mocked and disrespected. And finally, she had been largely erased us from society’s official record, not even remembered as the correct name or sex.

And you wonder why we’re so bitter, when we see this every time one of our own dies publicly, when we can almost certainly guarantee that a good portion of that objectification and erasure will happen to us whether we die from violence or accident or peacefully in our sleep. Because of the ways you make sense.

Every two days, somewhere in the world, a trans person is murdered.

In August 2010, the Trans Murder Monitoring Project (TvT-TMM) published an interim update showing that, from January to June of this year, 93 reported incidents had occurred worldwide.

Today, on the eve of the 12th International Transgender Day Of Remembrance, the Trans Murder Monitoring Project has posted on its website a further update on the reports of murdered trans people from November 20th 2009 to November 19th 2010.

This means that, this year, there are almost 180 trans people to be included in the list of names to be remembered, mourned and honoured at the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance tomorrow (20th November).

The TDOR 2010 update has revealed a total of 179 cases of reported killings of trans people from November 20th 2009 to November 19h 2010. The update shows reports of murdered or killed trans people in 19 countries in the last year, with the majority from Brazil (91), Guatemala (15), Mexico (14, and the USA (14).

Cases have been reported from all six major World regions: Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Europe, North America, and Oceania. As in the previous years, most reported cases were from Central and South America, which account for 80 % of the globally reported homicides of trans people since January 2008. In 2008, 97 killings were reported in 13 Central and South American countries, in 2009, 136 killings in 15 Central and South American Countries, and in 2010 so far 122 killings in 12 Central and South American Countries. The starkest increase in reports is also to be found in Central and South America, e.g. in Brazil (2008: 59, 2009: 68, January-November 2010: 74), Guatemala (2008: 1, 2009: 13, January-November 2010: 14) and Mexico (2008: 4, 2009: 11, January-November 2010: 12). The data also show an alarming increase in reported murders in Turkey in the previous years (2008: 2, 2009: 5, January to November 2010: 6).

In total, the preliminary results show 487 reports of murdered trans people in 39 countries since January 2008. [Via TvT-TMM]

—————

Cross-posted from Bird of Paradox by Helen

(This is a crosspost from/to my blogthing.)

Dear Auntie Kate, (can I call you that?)

I have had more than a few reservations about your gender theory for quite a while now but have held my tongue for a variety of reasons. Yet as I read through your latest op-ed in Out magazine, The Trouble With Tranny, I was profoundly troubled. I came to a point where I realised I just couldn’t stay silent any more because of the venues in which you’re promoting a certain kind of theory that is, perhaps despite your good intentions, very transphobic. If I haven’t already lost you, allow me to explain.

You begin the article with fond reminiscences about your time with Doris Fish, a prominent drag queen, whose views regarding trans women you characterise in the following way:

“I was afraid of her raw sexuality, but bowled over by her courage. Doris was amused by my quest to become a real woman.” (Emphasis mine)

“Like me in the late ’80s in San Francisco, the majority of MTF transsexuals just wanted to live their lives as closely as possible to whatever their notion was of “a real woman.” They considered drag queens beneath them. The drag queens were amused by the MTFs pursuing the dream of real woman.”

Let me be the first to say that the disparaging of crossdressers and drag queens on the part of transsexual people is, yes, quite morally wrong and represents internalised transphobia. It evokes that hierarchy of legitimacy that too many people of all backgrounds buy into in order to buttress their stability and position in a world that is built on domination. Yes, it’s wrong. I am not more legitimate than a crossdresser, no DQs do not make me “look bad” and I call out any person who claims such. The problem lies with a society that will not learn about us and lumps us all together as one blob of freakish bad, and not with any individual member of our diverse community.

All of this said, I get the distinct sense that you feel more ‘enlightened’ and ‘evolved’ now and agree with Doris Fish in her ‘amusement.’

Auntie Katie, let me reveal to you a bit of truth here. Willing to listen? Good:

I did not transition to be a “real woman”- that’s a useless concept, and a fairly sexist/transphobic one. I transitioned to be a woman, my kind of woman, the kind of woman I want to be, and that involves expressing myself as I am, as a whole person, in ways that break gender stereotypes as much as ‘caters’ to them. I’m not alone in this. A lot of trans women out there feel exactly the same way, and as we’ve unlearned our internalised transphobia and misogyny we are becoming all the more proud to be unique types of women, not archetypes of women. This leads rather nicely into my next point to you. You say the following:

“Years earlier, when I went through my gender change from male to female, I glided through life under the commonly accepted assumption: I was finally a real woman! That worked for me until I ran into a group of politically smart lesbians who told me that I wasn’t allowed to co-opt the word “woman.” Woman was not a family word that included me. My answer to this exclusion was to call myself a gender outlaw: I wasn’t a man, I wasn’t a woman.”

Here you’re making exactly the same, utterly fallacious mistake that too many “meanies” (as you might call them) make. Your experience was thus and so, therefore we all must be such.

Here is a bit more truth- I know, work with, and study the work of politically smart cis lesbians and queer women who would utterly balk at the idea that a trans woman “co-opts” the term “woman.” They are increasingly part of mainstream feminism, from the street to academe, they and their trans sisters would without a moment’s hesitation label such thinking outdated and transphobic. Why? Because how exactly are you going to break apart patriarchal gender norms if you cede “man” and “woman” to biologically essentialist definitions? If you say it’s not possible for someone assigned male at birth to truly be a woman, you’re not being a gender outlaw, you’re being  gender riot police. I don’t think you’d look very good in a black helmet and gas mask, Kate, so I invite you to reconsider your stance on these issues for the benefit of us all.

Because right now, you’re not helping by delegitimising people’s identities. By making womanhood more diverse, trans women are also in the vanguard of disrupting normative notions of womanhood and in case you were not aware, Kate, feminists do internalise gender norms as well; it’s what makes it so easy to take biological-essentialism for granted, as you yourself appear to do.

Read the rest of this entry »

TRIGGER WARNING: Some of the external links in this blog post contain graphic descriptions of violence and may well be triggering. PLEASE approach them with great caution.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the murder of a cis man in a Philadelphia hotel room and the subsequent arrest of Peaches Burton, who was charged with murder.

Now, via The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and others, I learn that a second suspect has been arrested in connection with the incident.

Twenty-year-old Richard Collins of Bridgeton, N.J., was taken into custody Monday and charged with criminal conspiracy, theft, abuse of a corpse and related offenses. Authorities accuse him of helping another person try to cover up the Oct. 30 slaying of 49-year-old Patrick Michael Brady of Chester County in the Omni Hotel.

Police said Burton called Collins after the killing. Collins hurried to the hotel and allegedly helped the prostitute arrange the slain man’s body to appear as if he had died accidentally, said Lt. Ray Evers, a police spokesman.

After staging the crime scene, the pair allegedly took Brady’s cell phone, credit cards, and identification. Collins took a Bose radio belonging to the hotel, police said.

—————

Cross-posted from Bird of Paradox by Helen

TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains hyperlinks to external websites and blogs, some of which have comment threads and other material which some people may find triggering. The links here are posted in good faith but, as we have no control over the content of external sites, readers are advised to use their discretion and approach them with due caution.

Better late than punctual, here’s this week’s open thread for discussion and our regular round-up of some of the articles and blogs we’ve noticed over the last week or so but not had time to post about.

If you have a link or comment that doesn’t fit anywhere else and would like to share it, feel free to drop it in the comments here.

• Open door: The readers’ editor on the right pronouns and respect for transgendered people (The Guardian)
• Close shave for wife killer (Boston Herald)
• Civil Liberties are in the interest of National Security (Chris Mills blog)
• Male, female or neither? Gender identity debated at same-sex colleges (CNN International)
• A VERY peculiar engagement (The Daily Mail)
• Itchy genitals? There’s an app for that (Wired)
• Undercounting the Often Uncounted (Socialism and…)
• New FAQ: Charing Cross Hospital’s Gender Identity Clinic (Bird of Paradox)
• Androgynous woman seeks safe washrooms (The Daily Gleaner)
• ‘Straight Pride’ shirts become free speech fight at St. Charles North (The Daily Herald)
• Transgender prisoner Scott Konitzer rejects his underwear settlement (City Pages blog)

No videos of dancing robots or sparkly rabbits with floppy ears and twitchy noses, I’m afraid – so here’s a video of a woman with a cello and a computer.

Ain’t technology wonderful? [Y/Y]

—————

ETA: Added trigger warning at head of post.

TRIGGER WARNING: Some of the external links in this blog post contain graphic descriptions of violence and may well be triggering. PLEASE approach them with great caution.

Via CBS News, Philadelphia Inquirer and others:

Police arrested a transgender prostitute believed responsible for the death of a Thorndale, Pa. man whose body was discovered a week ago Saturday after a fire at an upscale hotel in Philadelphia’s historic district.

The woman, who goes by the name of Peaches, was arrested Tuesday and charged with the murder of the cis man Patrick Brady. Mr Brady is believed to have died on Friday night during “an extreme physical altercation” in his hotel room.

According to police, Brady had been robbed, beaten, and strangled. Police say his eighth-floor hotel room was then intentionally set ablaze by the [trans woman] to cover the crime [...]

Further updates to follow as and when available. I predict that, as the case develops, the following transphobic tropes will be repeated by the media: all trans women are sex workers; trans women are deceitful/men in dresses (followed closely by the inevitable trans panic defense); trans women aren’t “really women”; misgendering; detention in gender inappropriate conditions; denial of basic human rights, etc.

—————

Cross-posted from Bird of Paradox by Helen

TRIGGER WARNING: Some of the external links in this blog post contain graphic descriptions of violence and may well be triggering. PLEASE approach them with great caution.

Via San Jose Mercury News, SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle) and others:

A transgender youth leader was charged with murder Monday in the fatal stabbing of her boyfriend in Walnut Creek, a prosecutor said.

Akira Tajah Jackson, 24, of Oakland was also charged with an enhancement for using a large kitchen knife to kill 56-year-old Alan Gray in his home on Santa Rita Drive at about 9:20 a.m. Thursday.

Further updates to follow as and when available. I predict that, as the case develops, the following transphobic tropes will be repeated by the media: all trans women are sex workers; trans women are deceitful/men in dresses (followed closely by the inevitable trans panic defense – even though Mr Gray was apparently aware that Ms Jackson is trans); trans women aren’t “really women”; misgendering; detention in gender inappropriate conditions; denial of basic human rights, etc.

—————

Cross-posted from Bird of Paradox by Helen

Nearly half of living trans people–surviving trans people–have attempted suicide.
Nearly half of those of us who did not succeed in killing ourselves have tried.
Nearly a tenth of us will be murdered.  Nearly half of us will be raped.  Most of us will experience violence from loved ones and almost all of us will be denied homes and jobs.  This is not hyperbole.  These are the numbers as the world currently stands.  But the most devastating one, as far as I am concerned, is that first one.  Nearly half of the living have tried not to be.  That is:  let’s leave behind all the nearly.  More than half of us have tried to end our own lives and many of us have succeeded.  We are a heartbroken people.

This is not arbitrary.  This is not a mistake.  This is not for no reason.  This is because we live in a world that has systematically forced into us the falsehood that we are unworthy of the basic consideration of humanity.  This is because we–and we are a beautiful people, a powerful people, a beloved and phenomenal people–have been fed falsehood after falsehood until we were convinced that we were the problem, and not the campaign, from the institution on down to the individual, to erase, denigrate, break, and murder us.  This is the failure state of the communities we live in:  our families, our religious communities, our political leaders, our movements, our governments, our cultures.  This is us–trans people–as a people–being forced to carry the weight of an entire world’s failure.
If we are so desperate to escape this world–if we see no other alternative, or worse, loathe ourselves so very much–it is because our communities have failed us.  They can do better.  We can do better.  We deserve better.  We are not so full of self-hate because something is wrong with us.  We do not do such terrible violence to ourselves because that is what we deserve.  We do not abdicate the belief in our own inherent dignity and worth lightly or easily.  It is torn out of us, little by little, in daily, tiny murders.  And every time we cringe and scrape and apologize for breathing, for taking up space, for speaking, for loving, every time we ask for forgiveness just for being what we are, every time we internalize story after story about how we are dead to our loved ones, ask to be brutalized, need to expect that what we are will merit every door closed in our faces, we are participating little by little in our own suicides.

I am no longer interested in sweet words about this.  Read the rest of this entry »