Disclosure, Trans Panic, and Ciscentric Narratives of Honesty
So a story that’s going around the news this week is about Nikki Araguz, widow of firefighter Thomas Araguz. She’s also a Texan and a trans woman.
Thanks to the Christie Lee Littleton case, there’s precedent that says trans women are not and cannot be legally female or women in the state of Texas, which can be used to deny trans women spouse benefits, although this primarily seems to come up when the spouse’s family wants a legal hook to deprive a trans woman of such benefits. This isn’t the first or the last time this will happen, and as much as it makes me sick to my stomach to see yet another trans woman’s life dragged through the mud because American (and specifically Texas in this case) law is regressive and oppressive.
But I think this story touches on somewhat larger, more encompassing issues that trans people have to deal with. Thomas’ mother, for example, insists that her son didn’t know that Nikki was trans and separated from her shortly before his death, and that Nikki herself married Thomas for the money – that she’s a gold digger. Nikki, on the other hand, says that Thomas knew all along and was fine with it.
I believe Nikki’s telling the truth. I believe Thomas’ mother, Simona Longoria, is appealing to the narrative that will ultimately purchase cis sympathy for her plight. Simona’s claim makes Nikki out to be an opportunistic predator, a stealthy deceiver, a liar who wormed her way into Thomas’ life in order to not only feast on his assets while alive, but to cackle merrily on the way to the bank after his death. It is dependent upon (in addition to the Littleton precedent), painting Nikki as someone who deceived Thomas in order to not only get into his bed, but also into his life.
This is how many cis people love to paint trans women. This is how Focus On The Family and its affiliated activist groups around the country talk about trans women – they claim we’re pedophiles and rapists just waiting to catch cis women and children alone in a restroom, or that cis men will pose as trans women to do the same. This is how murderers get light sentences after they murder trans women of color – by claiming they found out she was trans and killed her in an uncontrollable rage. Even when she’s been strangled after having slept with him for months, or when she’s been shot in the back. And then they walk free to kill again.
This is how cis columnists talk about how trans people are discreditable and dishonest if we don’t admit up front that we’re trans, or at least say so within the first few dates. This is how cis people describe that having sex with a trans person who doesn’t disclose is akin to rape or exposure to STDs. Cis people, on the contrary, are never expected to disclose their transphobia and unwillingness to date a trans person on any date. Cis people never feel the urge to say, “Oh, by the way? If you’re trans, I will bash your head in with a fire extinguisher.” And yet who takes the blame?
And as much as we talk about these things, these conversations fail to convey any amount of depth about the variety of trans people’s lives. It presumes that trans people are gendered properly a significant amount of the time. It presumes that trans people who are not gendered properly are perhaps not worth talking about quite as much. It presumes that trans people who are gendered incorrectly and recognized as trans are not often almost immediately subjected to hate speech and harassment, let alone threatened or even outright assault and violence. One of my friends on livejournal routinely talks about her encounters with cis people hurling hate speech and threats at her. To these cis people, apparently her very existence is too offensive for them to bear.
And that’s what it comes down to. It’s not about honesty, it’s not about disclosure, it’s about existence. Often, cis people see trans people as unbearable and intolerable just because of who we are, where we dare to go, who we dare to talk to, who we dare to find attractive, where we dare to work, what clothes we dare to wear, which street we dare to walk down. That we dare to breathe and speak, and be present.
So the problem is never “she lied to him” or any of that nonsense. The problem is that she’s trans and tried to live like a cis person, and that’s just not acceptable.
So, if we’re going to ever have a useful conversation about disclosure? It has to start there. It can’t be a debate about when or if trans people should tell cis people that they’re trans. It can’t focus on the needs and problems of trans people with reliable passing privilege (or who are assumed to have that passing privilege). It can’t even be about disclosure because disclosure is not the problem. It has to be about the fact that transphobia is a systematic, institutionalized force, and its primary purpose is to deny us the right to exist.
Edit: Apparently, all of Nikki’s assets have been completely frozen and she’s living off charity. If you want to donate to help with her legal fees (because this case could, if appealed far enough, change precedent in Texas), you can find the information here. Thanks to Drakyn for the link, and Charlie Butler for this link that also has more explanation.
No different at all from this, really:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/07/racist-patriarchy-in-israel.html
anonymous (berlinerin)
24 Jul 10 at 1:04 am
Yeah, I want to link to and post about that, and about the narrative that constitutes marginalized bodies as dangerous and potentially polluting, but I wanted to get the whole “the problem isn’t disclosure, it’s cis people” out of the way.
Lisa Harney
24 Jul 10 at 1:07 am
Even telling people on the first date wouldn’t be enough for these people, it could be the first thing you say and they’d complain about being “tricked” into going out, maybe a long complaint about how out of the way the date location was, or how “humiliated” they felt.
I don’t even think wearing a big sign, or a facial tattoo outing oneself would even be enough for them, nothing good enough until we no longer exsist in their world, until we’re forced into one small part of the country/city/town, away from everyone else, except when they want to show how progressive, and accepting they are.
*I had a point, but I’ve forgotten what it was, so I’ll leave it there*
Jenny
24 Jul 10 at 1:26 am
Yeah, that’s my point nothing’s good enough. The problem isn’t whether or not we disclose, but that we exist at all.
For anyone reading these comments: Please be sure to read the entire post. The conclusion may not be what you expect.
Lisa Harney
24 Jul 10 at 1:40 am
Dating? What’s that? Been so long since I dated anybody. Is it any wonder when the minimal risk is some messy (and probably public) scene, and the maximum death in some horrible fashion?
No one comments on things that cisfolk don’t disclose because that never seems to come into it, mainly it seems, because it’s cisfolk who are creating the narratives.
Laura Ess
24 Jul 10 at 4:14 am
No one comments on things that cis people don’t disclose because cis people are never constituted as the problem.
Lisa Harney
24 Jul 10 at 4:22 am
Goodness heavens, why can’t we ever think of the cis people?
averydame
24 Jul 10 at 5:57 am
Another reason disclosure wouldn’t matter is that it’s all about sustaining the deceiver narrative. I’m not sure even a signed and notarized declaration would be sufficient to them.
We can easily find this in the murder of Angie Zapata. There were plenty of people falling over themselves to defend Andrade, insisting that his claim, in spite of the circumstances, was more believable than all of the testimony to the contrary. That states that a trans woman (and I’ve no doubt they’d extend this to trans men as well) was automatically less believable than a multiply-convicted felon who had a vested interest in his version of events being believed.
D W
24 Jul 10 at 7:52 am
“disclosure is not the problem. It has to be about the fact that transphobia is a systematic, institutionalized force, and its primary purpose is to deny us the right to exist.”
yes. one thing that always horrifies me in reading the comments following these type of articles, are the finger-wagging pieces of advice: “this is why you trans people should be more careful / disclose earlier / steer clear of the straight bars…”. and that’s it, that’s the “solution” to them- trans ppl just need to control their behavior better. thus pretty much making any violence against a trans person seem legit and reasonable, because we should have known better than to exist in the same space as a cis person.
you don’t see a lot of comments saying “this is exactly why all people, including cis people, have a responsibility to press for the rights of trans people… to educate their communities and workplaces… to teach their children not to hate… to challenge transphobic comments”. because transphobia is never the problem, trans people are the problem. something must be done about trans people? ugh.
there was a quote from a news item about a fired trans woman here… I think it brings home exactly the point about her existence being framed as the problem:
“It makes me think about things I don’t like to think about, particularly at work … I think it’s unsettling to think of someone dressed in women’s clothing with male sexual organs inside that clothing”
from the guy who fired her.
MHS
24 Jul 10 at 10:41 am
What makes it worse, is the fact that cis people make claims that they can spot a trans person at 500 feet and in a crowd, as a way to devalue a person’s gender identity and personal choices, but then turn around a “claim” that they didn’t know. In cis world, either we’re totally unnatural and not deserving of life, or we’re total deceivers and not deserving of life. Either way, trans people end up dead.
Trans rights needs to be about making trans people comfortable and safe, and not about making cis people comfortable and safe (which I think is your point.)
sebastianbound
24 Jul 10 at 12:29 pm
Edited to clarify, but yes, that’s the gist of it.
Lisa Harney
24 Jul 10 at 12:32 pm
Seems from this – http://www.tgctr.org/2010/07/24/nikki_araguz/?awesm=fbshare.me_AQ5Aa – that it’s even worse, and they’re trying to grab the money Nikki Araguz herself earned during the marriage (where she was the major breadwinner), as well as the life insurance, benefits, etc. It’s hard to see how they can claim her earnings if they don’t think the marriage was valid, but where there’s bigotry there’s usually a way.
Charlie Butler
24 Jul 10 at 2:00 pm
I don’t remember where someone said it, but someone said that it’d be great if cis people were required to start conversations with “By the way, if I find out you’re trans I’ll smash your face in with a fire extinguisher”. It really would. I’d love to see the tables turned and cis people have to disclose their prejudices.
A$%^$^$#%$@^$%&%TB$ RARGH
Please at least tell me she’s in a field where this won’t get her fired? *massages temples* I can’t help but wonder- how GREEDY and SELFISH do you have to be to think this is okay to do to anyone, and what could she have possibly done to anyone to justify it? Just… no words. I will never understand this. It’s so awful.
Z
24 Jul 10 at 5:34 pm
That kind of thing gets said a lot, I actually said something like that quote (with the fire extinguisher) in this post.
Lisa Harney
24 Jul 10 at 5:37 pm
…So if they were separated, or if they had any kind of marital discord ever ever, it was definitely because she was trans and totally deceiving her husband into believing that she was some kind of real woman. I see. I mean, cis spouses never separate, do they?
Oh and she earned most of their income but was a gold-digger. I see.
Thene
24 Jul 10 at 7:05 pm
They can’t have it both ways. Either she was his wife and their marital estate is valid and she is the next of kin. Or their marriage is null and her assets legally can have nothing to do with his estate. I’m no lawyer but this seems like commonsense to me?
Jane Laplain
24 Jul 10 at 9:28 pm
unfortunately prejudice and bigotry tends to revolve around the absence or perversion of common sense (as evidence by the common yet related tropes that all trans are clearly trans yet also stealthy deceivers) it’s entirely possibly the court will apply the different interpretations in the way that harms her the most.
venatus
25 Jul 10 at 12:07 am