The big tent and the Day of Remembrance

grvsmth

In my family, when we celebrate Passover we often have non-Jewish friends join us for dinner. Enjoying their company in an overtly Jewish context helps to defuse potential prejudice, and the specific activity of the night, the retelling of the story of slavery in Egypt and our exodus from it, gives them the opportunity to condemn the slavery and in turn reaffirm their tolerance for us and our different practices.

I should point out here that I’m actually not that different from our guests, being half-Scottish and pretty well assimilated. Like most American Jews, I don’t do much outside of Passover and Hanukah. My Jewishness is much more a matter of cultural heritage than religious belief. I checked online and this inviting non-Jews is apparently a relatively new tradition: there are some people who believe that non-Jews should never participate in a Seder, because it involves sacrificial lamb meat. The rabbinical consensus seems to be that since the Romans destroyed the Temple there’s been no such thing as true sacrificial lamb, and Paschal lamb is just a tasty symbol.

The reason I’m telling you about our tradition of sharing Passover is to note that we do not challenge the separate identities of our non-Jewish friends. We do not ask them to believe in our god or pray to him. We do not ask them to believe the plagues and miracles. We don’t give them a hard time if they fail to use the proper forms of addressing our god, including capitalization.

We simply ask our friends to accept the historical aspects of the story, and to reassure us that they do not approve of enslaving minority populations. We give them the opportunity to reaffirm their acceptance of us as friends and neighbors, deserving of respect and equal treatment.

I propose that we as trans people do the same with the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. This is a day (November 20), when we talk about those of us who have been killed, for being trans and presenting as women, and often for being poor at the same time, for not being white, for being immigrants, for loving men and having sex with men.

We trans people are diverse, but we have a lot in common with each other and with lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. Among our family, friends, spouses and lovers, there are many people who share goals with us. Those are the people we want to have by our sides when we are fighting for our goals, celebrating our lives, or supporting each other. Like most trans people I know, there are times when I want to be treated like my target gender (a woman), with the appropriate pronouns and facilities. These are the people who are most likely to treat me this way.

The problem is that a lot of trans people treat alliances like they’re black and white. You’re with us or you’re against us. You believe in essentialism and determinism, and you support our entire agenda, or you’re worthless. I understand why people use these ideological tests to screen allies: someone who doesn’t believe that we’re even provisionally women (or men) is likely to bargain away some of our rights. You don’t want to depend on people who don’t really share your goals.

The key is that alliances are never permanent, and if you act like they are it’ll get you into all kinds of trouble. An alliance is not absolute trust, it’s just a recognition of shared goals. When you’re dealing with goals that aren’t shared, the alliance is meaningless.

As I wrote before, there is a large number of people who believe that we shouldn’t be killed for being trans. Not killing us is an idea with broad appeal. A lot of those people will not be on board with free surgery on demand, or birth certificate changes, bathroom rights or even using our preferred pronouns. But they are on board with not killing trans people. If we don’t let them show it, that’s our loss.

We should follow Incohate Erica’s principle of nihil de nobis sine nobis: feminine spectrum trans people who are poor, nonwhite, immigrants and sex workers should be at the center of any Day of Remembrance activities. They, not me, not other bloggers and authors, and not the leaders of mainstream service and advocacy organizations, are the ones most at risk, and they should be doing most of the talking. And their loved ones, who also suffer greatly, should share center stage.

We trans people who are not most at risk should participate too, out of solidarity and because every once in a while one of us gets killed too. Our dependable allies should be there too. But on this day, and on this day most of all, we should reach out beyond our normal alliances and build new alliances around the shared principle of not killing us.

This year Queens Pride House will be observing the Day of Remembrance a day late, on November 21. I will attend, and I have made the case to other members of the support group that we should reach out beyond our normal comfort zone to people who are on board with not killing us, but maybe not much else. I hope you will consider doing the same. If you’re not trans, check with your local Day of Remembrance organizers to see if you’d be welcome. And consider writing a blog post or an editorial that will reach people who might not normally think about this issue, making it clear that you don’t think anyone should be killing us. They need to hear that.

Presentation fatigue

grvsmth

I thought about going out presenting as a woman today. I really had too much work to do, but even if i hadn’t it would have meant spending over two hours on my presentation. It’s mostly makeup, but it’s also showering, shaving (face and chest), brushing teeth, deodorant, picking out clothes and getting dressed. Every couple of weeks I need to spend an hour shaving my legs. I usually don’t bother painting my nails unless I’m planning to present as a woman all day. Today, instead I skipped all shaving, brushed my teeth, showered and dressed in about twenty minutes.

SAMSUNGI know this difference is not just because I’m trans. The line, “But it takes me so long just to figure out what I’m gonna wear,” in “Manic Monday” resonate with non-trans women because our society polices women’s presentation much more strictly than men’s. Laura Topham spent eight hours getting the “Essex girl” presentation, and a lot of it was procedures like hair extensions and spray tan that full-time Essex girls don’t get every day, but the average woman spends more than twenty minutes a day on her presentation. Even many men spend more than I do to go out as a guy. When I was in high school, a friend of mine would be in the bathroom for hours.

But my female presentation requires more than the average woman, and if I had transitioned it wouldn’t take as long. I would have gotten permanent hair removal, so I wouldn’t have to shave anywhere near as much, or put on so much makeup, and hormones would have reshaped my body to some extent.

If I had chosen to transition in my twenties my shoulders probably wouldn’t be as wide, so I wouldn’t have to be so careful about my clothing choices. In fact, when I first started wearing women’s clothes in my teens, I wore anything I could find. I never wore makeup, because I didn’t have much facial hair until my twenties. Going out in public has also raised the stakes. When I was fifteen, my presentation time was about ten minutes.

The presentation has always been part of my enjoyment of presenting as a woman. But not two hours of it. Not worrying that if I miss a spot on my foundation I might get sirred or even beaten up. Not worrying that if I nick my ankle I’ll have a scab for days and a spot for weeks. Not worrying that if I get my tuck wrong I’ll be uncomfortable for hours.

But of course, I will be uncomfortable for hours, because wearing heels and nylons and makeup and “foundation garments” is uncomfortable. On top of that, even a good tuck is uncomfortable, and so is a padded bra and enough makeup to hide a beard shadow. Some people put up with that every day for years. I’m okay with it once in a while.

I know some of you transitioners who are reading this are thinking smugly, “I don’t have to shave. I don’t even wear heels or makeup most days! I’m a -” Yeah, we get it. That was the point of this post. The point is that this presentation fatigue is a factor in decisions to get permanent hair removal, to take hormones, and even to get genital surgery. Presentation fatigue is a factor in transition.

Colonizing ontologies

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Brin pointed me to a great blog post about how we relate to other people’s categories, especially the categorical systems used by other cultures. (The author, posting as “Boldly Go,”* calls them “epistemologies,” but they seem to be what I’ve heard called “ontologies” or “taxonomies.” I think “categories” is the most straightforward term. And yes, I do recognize the irony there.) Boldly Go also makes the point that these categories are referred to as “social constructs,” which mean that they’re not essential and can vary from culture to culture – and, critically, that they change over time, even in a single individual.

Boldly Go argues persuasively that abolishing gender is not a realistic approach. We all have a basic need to categorize people: who is a potential ally, sex partner, life partner, co-parent, leader, friend, collaborator? Who is a potential attacker, rival, rapist, burden? Figuring all those things out based on the individual characteristics of everyone we encounter would be exhausting and time-consuming, so we use roles and spaces based on gender and other categories as shortcuts. This becomes truly problematic when we forget that these categories are only shortcuts, when we essentialize them.

Here’s my favorite part of Boldly Go’s post:

Hidras of Panscheel Park II, New Delhi, India, 1994. Photo: R. Barrez D'Lucca / Flickr.
Hidras of Panscheel Park II, New Delhi, India, 1994. Photo: R. Barrez D’Lucca / Flickr.

For example, a great many people familiar with the trans* community may have heard of hijras, a concept of gender that exists within South Asia. A great many usually white trans* people have called hijra’s “trans*” or put them under the trans* label. Regardless of their intention, to take the epistemology of “trans*” and apply it to something like the hijra can be seen as an oppressive or colonising act. The hijra are hijra. That is their name. Unless a hijra specifically identifies as transgender or trans*, applying our own concepts of gender and sexuality constructed within white supremacist cultures to people outside of our epistemological framework is redefining them on our own terms for our own benefit.

They (that’s Boldly Go’s preferred pronoun) go on to talk about two-spirits and quote their friend Tiara’s thoughts about gender in Malaysia and Bangladesh, and to argue that gender abolitionism is colonization in the same way.

Much as I agree that it’s not realistic to abolish gender, I think it’s not realistic to ignore our own gender categories when trying to understand people from other cultures. We may say, “that’s kind of like our idea of ‘transgender,'” but it becomes problematic when we ignore the way others categorize themselves. It becomes colonization when we seek to replace their categories with our own. And it’s downright offensive when we act as though our way is the One True Way of categorizing the world.

This is not to say that it’s all relative, and all categorization systems are equal. Some may have particular virtues relative to others. But we can’t just assume that our own categorization system is superior. We have to make a coherent argument for it.

I’m less concerned with borrowing another culture’s categories. If it’s done respectfully and with full credit and an open mind, it isn’t appropriation. It’s just recognizing that other people may have come up with a better way of doing it than we did.

I’ll have more to say on this in the future.

* Boldly Go seems to have let her domain expire, so I’ve changed the link to point to a copy she posted on Medium under the name Lola Phoenix.

Gender roles are a kludge

grvsmth

A while ago I talked about gendered spaces, and how they’re something of a kludge, a shortcut. Gender roles are also a kludge, but one that’s even less justified than gendered spaces, given what we can do with modern prosperity and technology. They persist out of some combination of tradition, politics, personal preference and convenience.

Stewardess: Is your...
Photographer unknown.
The primary sex difference is of course the ability to bear children, so a thousand years ago if a man wanted to raise healthy children, the way to get them was by marrying a healthy, young, maternal woman. Of course, not all women can bear children, as numerous frustrated European kings have shown us, but looking for a man was definitely an unproductive strategy.

Nowadays it’s possible for gay couples or even single men to adopt children, so women are no longer necessary, but marrying a woman is still the most convenient way to get children, and it’s acquired the weight of tradition and politics. For men who are sexually attracted to women, marrying a woman tends to be the preferred way of getting a child, because it pretty much ensures that the man will have sex with a woman.

Other gender roles are based on secondary sex characteristics: men tend to be larger and stronger, so they’re preferred for fighting, smashing and lifting. Women tend to be able to lactate, which made them the obvious choice for caring for infants before formula was perfected.

Once these roles are established, they make it easier to segregate other roles. If women are taking care of infants, it’s easy for them to keep caring for older children, and eventually for the elderly and sick. If childcare happens mostly in the home, it makes sense for women to take care of other household needs.

If men are fighting, it makes sense for them to be policing internal order, and then it’s easy for them to be the ones who set the internal order. If they’re smashing and lifting, it makes sense for them to build houses and fortifications, and then it’s easy for them to be the ones who make machines.

Women and men also tend to form communities of practice based on these activities. Any father who’s spent time with a “mom’s group” knows what I mean, as does any woman who’s attended an engineering conference.

All these tendencies make sense. What doesn’t make sense is to be so rigid about them. Natural variation means that these sex characteristics aren’t a given. Some people are naturally infertile. Some women are big and strong, and some men are small and weak.

Technological and social changes have made a lot of these biological generalizations irrelevant. If we do most lifting and killing today by pushing buttons, how strong does a soldier or construction worker have to be? If we can feed infants with formula, we don’t need nursery school teachers to have functioning breasts.

Some roles have undergone gender flip-flops, or simply diversified over the years. In the nineteenth century, the position of secretary was considered too cerebral to be entrusted to women (with all the misogyny that implies), then in the late twentieth century it was treated as exclusively female; in Binghamton in 1992 a retired temporary placement agent told me that they would never send a man on a secretarial assignment. “Stewardesses” were once all female and doctors male, but last month I flew on a plane where most of the flight attendants were male, and my last dermatology appointment was at a practice that was mostly women. The best nurse in my son’s neonatal ICU, who taught me to change a diaper, was a guy named Scott.

There have long been exceptions to these roles. The US Army’s recent official inclusion of women in combat is notable, but women have been fighting throughout human history. There have been women leaders and male nurturers.

There will probably always be roles in every society that are more strongly associated with one gender or the other. There will also be people who will, for one reason or another, be drawn to the other roles. We need to be flexible and ask if there’s really any good reason why a role should be rigidly reserved for one gender. If there isn’t, we should accommodate everybody.

Come jump on the “Don’t kill trans people” bandwagon!

grvsmth2 Comments

The killing of Islan Nettles in July followed an all-too-typical pattern: a man classified her as a woman, found her attractive and flirted with her. He then reclassified her as “a man,” fought her and killed her. In response to this terrifying event, I’ve told you about two alternative visions for this type of scenario. In Janet Mock’s vision, everyone accepts all male to female trans people as women, that status as is never questioned, and the man never feels any desire to attack her. In Desmond Child’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” people may see trans women as men, but we can still be attractive, and there is no shame for any man who is attracted to a trans person.

Those are definitely the best alternatives, and I pefer the second, but there’s a third one. It isn’t as good, but it’s still better than what happened to Nettles. It’s simple: nobody should die just because they’re trans.
Outcomes2
Here’s my vision: A man sees a trans woman and is attracted to her. He reclassifies her as “a man,” and loses interest in her. Maybe he even feels angry and calls her names. Maybe he even attacks her physically. But he doesn’t kill her.

This is what happened with Lewis Dix, Jr. and B. Scott. Dix called Scott a “faggot,” and Scott was right to give him hell for it. But Dix stopped there. He didn’t attack.

Nettles’ killer could have stopped at name-calling. Or if he didn’t stop there, he could have stopped after a punch or two. Even if he was too drunk or too much of an asshole to stop, his “crew” could have stopped him. They could have said, “It’s okay, we get it, you’re not gay.” they could have said, “This is a human being who doesn’t deserve to die.”

I know, it doesn’t seem like a lot. I wouldn’t be satisfied with “just” being called names and beat up. But it would be better than what currently happens to black and Latina trans people.

The thing is that there’s a large constituency for not killing trans people. A lot of people don’t think we’re women. A lot of people don’t think we’re sexy. Some people think we’re sinners. Some people think that any man who’s attracted to us is gay, and that being gay is bad. These people may disapprove of us in all kinds of ways, but they don’t think we deserve to die.

This constituency for not killing us is largely untapped. On stage at the vigil for Islan Nettles were her family, three trans people, and some lesbians and gay men. Attending were people from the entire trans spectrum, and straight allies, including several politicians. Besides the politicians, what I didn’t hear about were “thought leaders” in broader African-American culture beyond LGBT subcultures: clergy, musicians, actors, athletes.

Who are the people that Nettles’ killer and his “crew” listen to? What if they said, simply, it’s not okay to kill someone because they’re trans? What if we asked them, nicely, to say it now? Not to say “trans women are women,” not to say “it’s okay to be gay,” and not to say anything negative about us either. Just “Don’t kill trans people.”

How many of them would sign a statement? How many would appear in a public service announcement? How many would perform in a music video or television episode?

Don’t get me wrong. I want more than this. I want people to treat me with respect. I want people to treat those who love me with respect. I want to be treated like a woman when I present as a woman. I know you want those things too.

I’m not giving up on what I want, and I’m not telling you to give up on it either. Laverne Cox argues that it’s the same problem, that we need those things to be safe, to be alive. The actions of Robert Wace and Lewis Dix, Jr. show us that that’s not true. People don’t have to endorse our entire program before they can treat us like human beings. They don’t need to agree with us about anything else to speak out against the violence. Let’s get them to do it.

Gender fog update

grvsmth

It’s really hard for me to write this post, because it’s not my highlight reel.

I worry that someone might read this and use it to undermine my credibility on issues that are not really related to it. I worry that people might make incorrect assumptions about me based on this.

Still, I think it’s important to post this. Not very many people are writing about gender fog. But I’ve talked to other people, and I know I’m not the only one who feels it. So here goes.

As I wrote back in July, I went out in public as a woman and had some serious gender fog. I actually had difficulty sleeping for two weeks. I finally decided to go out cross-dressed again, and the night between making the decision and going out was the least restful of all. After that I had one more difficult night, and then my insomnia returned to its baseline.

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I couldn't hold the phone steady for long enough to take a picture. That's how excited I was to go out for the second time this year. I don't want to get that excited.
Last Saturday I went out for the third time this year, and this time I only had trouble sleeping the night before. Since then, I’ve been back to normal. I don’t know for sure why I had such a strong reaction back in July, but I have a few guesses.

When I went out in July, it was the first time in two years, and that made it much more exciting. In August and again this weekend, it had been a month or less. It was still exciting, but not exciting enough to keep me up for several nights. So that was a factor.

I also got a lot of affirmation in July. I spent the afternoon with one of my best friends, and he was really nice to me, even though he’s going through a lot of his own issues. He said I looked good, said he didn’t know how anyone could have read me. He picked out clothes for me to try on and gave me helpful feedback. He asked thoughtful, sympathetic questions about my trans feelings and experiences. I also dealt with security guards who were uniformly polite, friendly and gender-affirming. I ran into a co-worker who said I looked great.

The second time I went out this year, I made the mistake of riding Citibike in the heat. My friend is out of town, so I went to regular middlebrow stores, where people didn’t pay much attention to me, and probably less than normal because I was sweaty. I had a nice conversation with the same co-worker, but it wasn’t as exciting the second time.

This past weekend, I got sirred by the woman in the dressing room at Burlington Coat Factory. I had a nice time and got some fun clothes, and had a short conversation with my co-worker, but overall it wasn’t that exciting.

The combination of novelty and affirmation was probably what made my gender fog so intense in July. Since the intensity was unpleasant, I need to manage those and try not to get so much of both at the same time. I’m planning to make my outings a bit more frequent (every month or two) without doing anything too exciting. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Who will sing the black “Lola”?

grvsmth

This weekend I was talking with a bisexual friend, and I described Janet Mock’s vision of a world where trans women will no longer be killed because everyone will see them as women. My friend didn’t even let me finish before she put her finger on one huge problem with Mock’s idea: it only applies to a small subset of potential victims.

Vince Neil, the dude in question.
Vince Neil, the dude in question.
As we’ve seen, this exact same scenario – boy meets girl, boy decides that girl is “a man,” boy is afraid someone will call him “gay,” boy attacks girl – doesn’t just happen with “trans women.” It happens to people like B. Scott, including when he identified as a gay man, and it happens to people like Bimbo Winehouse, who identifies as a man but wants to be seen as a woman part of the time. It happens to people who aren’t even presenting as a woman. It even happens to guys who aren’t gay at all but simply are mistaken for gay, like Ever Orozco, who was killed earlier this week. It’s pretty clear what the problem is: men lose status if someone thinks they’re gay, they’re afraid of that, so they try to prove they’re not by attacking the person they were attracted to.

What my friend objected to was that Mock’s vision doesn’t do anything about the underlying problem. It doesn’t make it any easier for potential targets who really are gay or straight men and don’t wear women’s clothes. It doesn’t make it easier for people who identify as cross-dressing men. With its relentless hammering on the “trans women are women” dogma, it doesn’t even help people who are viewed and accepted as woman but are reluctant to claim that category for political reasons. It just attempts to draw a charmed circle around people who are willing to claim the status of “woman,” and those who are attracted to them. And of course it doesn’t protect any of us from the violence that is regularly directed at women.

Now I want to look at another vision of a better world. There was a fascinating article by Sue Kerr about the story behind the Aerosmith song “Dude (Looks Like a Lady).” I remember when that song came out. I wasn’t an Aerosmith fan, and i didn’t listen to the lyrics. The refrain sounded like a distress call, the video was boring, and I didn’t want to be a dude that looked like a lady. I wanted to be a lady, or at least a girl. I changed the channel whenever it came on MTV.

The backstory is interesting, though: songwriter Desmond Child told SongFacts about a conversation with Steve Tyler: “He got the idea because they had gone to a bar and had seen a girl at the end of the bar with ginormous blonde rock hair, and the girl turned around and it ended up being Vince Neil from Motley Crue.” Tyler came up with the line, “Dude looks like a lady” and eventually shared it with Child, an out gay man who had been hired by their record label to improve their songwriting. Child liked the line so much he made it the title of the song. Here’s the kicker:

And then Joe (Perry) stepped in and said, “I don’t want to insult the gay community.” I said, “Okay, I’m gay, and I’m not insulted. Let’s write this song.” So I talked them into the whole scenario of a guy that walks into a strip joint and falls in love with the stripper on stage, goes backstage and finds out it’s a guy. But besides that, he’s gonna go with it. He says, “My funky lady, I like it, like it, like it like that.” And so he doesn’t run out of there, he stays.

Note that the narrator is attracted enough to go to bed with her, even though he continues to classify the stripper as a “dude,” and says “Ooh, he was a lady.” I wouldn’t be surprised if Child based it on a friend or acquaintance.

Both the real and fictionalized stories bear some resemblance to the Kinks’ 1970 hit “Lola,” which I heard a lot on the radio. It’s never been my favorite Kinks song, but I did listen to the lyrics. The narrator is ambivalent about how to categorize Lola – there’s the famous line “I’m a man, I’m a man, and so is Lola,” but he uses “she” pronouns throughout.

The backstory to “Lola” is just as interesting. Dave Davies recalled that he was inspired by a party at the home of band manager Robert Wace. “In his apartment, Robert had been dancing with this black woman, and he said, ‘I’m really onto a thing here.’ And it was okay until we left at six in the morning and then I said, ‘Have you seen the stubble?’ He said ‘Yeah,’ but he was too pissed [intoxicated] to care, I think.”

Contrast “Lola” and “Dude Looks Like a Lady” with another song from the eighties, Tone L&#333c’s “Funky Cold Medina.” In the third verse the narrator gives the eponymous aphrodisiac to sexy Sheena, but to his surprise, “Sheena was a man!”

So I threw him out, I don’t fool around with no Oscar Mayer wiener.
You must be sure that your girl is pure for the Funky Cold Medina.
Know what I’m sayin’? Ain’t no playin’ with a man.
This is the eighties, and L&#333c is down with the ladies, no joke.

(As I was putting this post together I came across another post by Andrea James that also mentions “Funky Cold Medina.” James hits on some good points, but I want to go in a slightly different direction.)

“Lola” explores the ambiguity of gender and ends by categorizing Lola as a man, but the final message emphasizes her humanity and the narrator’s affection for her, implicitly concluding that there’s nothing wrong or unmanly with being attracted to a “man,” especially if you’re really plastered. “Dude Looks Like a Lady” echoes the alarm over the stripper’s unexpected dudeness, but ends by affirming her ladyhood and sexiness. In “Funky Cold Medina,” thought, Tone L&#333c responds to Sheena’s manhood with callous rejection (but not violence).

“Lola” and “Funky Cold Medina” both explore the question of what it means to be attracted to a “man.” The narrator of “Lola” is naive and inexperienced, and Lola in fact offers to “make you a man,” by giving him his first sexual experience. Whether or not this happens is left to the listener’s imagination, but the narrator eventually concludes that he can be a man even if Lola is too. Tone L&#333c makes it a point to reassure everyone that he’s “down with the ladies.”

It’s hard not to notice that African Americans are vastly overrepresented in any list of trans people murdered in this country. Correlation is not causation, and it’s important not to discount factors like poverty, discrimination and civic neglect, but I think everyone agrees that American black culture is more intolerant of homosexuality and transgender actions than white culture.

What if a few male black cultural leaders – singers and rappers, but maybe also athletes, politicians and religious leaders – followed the lead of white guys like Dave Davies and Steven Tyler, and black women like Tyra Banks? What if a famous, respected black man spent some of his cultural capital to tell the world that he thinks trans people are sexy, and he’s not afraid of anyone finding out?

I know how this might sound to some people, but I’m not saying “do this because white people do it.” I’m saying give it a try because it might be working for us, just like the Kinks and Aerosmith saw that the music developed by African Americans was more fun and expressive than their own and gave it a try. It’s got more evidence of success than Janet Mock’s magic circle of fiat womanhood.

I think DJ Mister Cee and his boss Ebro Darden have shown enormous courage and humanity, and I think people will respond to that. I’m looking forward to the first black “Lola” to top the charts. The guy who makes that will be gold. After all, Steven Tyler and Dave Davies enjoyed years of success after these songs, and are regarded today as elder statesmen of rock. Tone L&#333c? Well, what’s he done since 1991?

Green eyes

grvsmth

I was glad to see Janet Mock writing about the shame that many men feel for being attracted to trans people. As she points out, this shame is based in fear, and the fear is real. She describes a torrent of negative comments directed at DJ Mister Cee in response to a revelation Wednesday that he had tried to have sex with a trans prostitute, and lists a number of other entertainers who have been publicly shamed for actions as simple as posing for a picture with a trans fan. I’ve got problems with the way that a number of people are trying to spin the incident with Mister Cee, including Mock, Bimbo Winehouse and Mister Cee himself, but that’s for another post.

DJ Mister Cee.
DJ Mister Cee.
Tonight I want to focus on Mock’s vision of trans acceptance. It’s an incomplete vision, but it has far-ranging implications, so it deserves to be explored. It begins with her moving story about disclosing her trans status to her boyfriend, and his decision to accept her, which you should definitely read if you haven’t already.

Mock goes on to say that her boyfriend Aaron is constantly challenged by others on his love for her:

Our relationship is marveled at largely because most people do not believe that a man like Aaron should have to “compromise” his heteronormative social standing by being with a trans woman or a woman who is not “real.”

It is rare for an openly trans woman – no matter how “passable” or attractive she is – to have a man who openly loves her, who has an unabashed desire to be seen with her, who proudly stands beside her — despite the stigma and other people’s curiosities and inappropriate questions. Those questions regarding Aaron’s sexuality are constant and fraught with assumptions that this essay can’t begin to unpack, and for a man less secure it can be difficult navigating these questions, especially if you also perceive the women you’re attracted to as shameful, as less-than-human objects you must keep secret at all costs.

She then articulates her vision:

It’s important that we begin truly accepting trans women as who they are, women. We are not objects to have secret sex with, to discard and to laugh at on the radio or the gossip blogosphere. We are worthy of being seen and are not dirty or shameful. Until we begin checking how we delegitimize the identities, bodies and existence of trans women and stigmatize the men who yearn to be with us, we will continue to marginalize our sisters, pushing them further into socially-sanctioned invisibility, left in the dark to fend for themselves with men who are don’t have the space to explore, define and embrace their attraction to various women.

As Mock acknowledges, her “passability” gave her some advantages in dating, but she wants other “trans women” to have the same advantages regardless of passability. When she says, “their attraction to various women,” she’s imagining a culture where transness is seen as just a possible trait that a woman can have, like green eyes or broad hips or freckles, and attraction to trans women is a simple matter of taste. I want to explore this vision and move a little past the scenario of her relationship with Aaron and the scenario of DJ Mister Cee and Bimbo Winehouse, to this scene of flirtation:

PAUL is hanging out with his friends, Steve and Dave. They’re laughing, chatting, catching up. All of a sudden PAUL stops for just a brief moment as he catches sight of a woman he’s never met. He slips away from his friends and goes to chat with her. After a few minutes he returns.

STEVE: So, did you get her number?
PAUL: Oh yeah, I got it. She’s cute, right?
STEVE: Eh. She’s got green eyes. I saw them as soon as she looked up.
PAUL: So? That’s a bonus! Green eyes are hot.
STEVE: They don’t do it for me. Not into green eyes.
DAVE: I’m not that into green eyes either, Steve, but did you see her smile? With a sweet smile like that her eyes could be purple for all I care.
STEVE: Whatever. She’s all yours, Paul! Maybe tonight I’ll find me a nice brown-eyed girl.

Replace “she’s got green eyes” with “she’s trans,” and you have Mock’s vision for men flirting with trans women. The men see trans women as just a kind of women that some guys like. Liking trans women doesn’t make the guys gay. There is no danger of humiliation, discrimination, or physical attack. There is nothing for them to fear.

The setup for the scene may be familiar to you, because it’s based on what happened right before Islan Nettles was murdered. This is another way the story could have turned out, if the culture had been different.

As I said, I have some problems with this vision. I’ll talk about them later. For now, I think it’s very positive that someone – Janet Mock – has articulated an alternative to murder, a vision of how things could be better. That’s important.

12 things this gender-non-conforming child wanted you to know

grvsmth

This article was clearly well-intentioned, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. I was a gender-non-conforming child, and overall I agree with most of those, but I would never have put them that way.

I most definitely do not sign onto Duron’s #1, and I wouldn’t have when I was a child. If you asked me whether my sex and my gender aligned (by that definition) I would’ve said yes. That did not make me gender conforming.

I also didn’t subscribe to her #3. I was trying to make some people uncomfortable. I was much more into genderfuck rebellion in elementary school than I’ve ever been since.

I was more like four years old here.
I was more like four years old here.

Here is my best attempt to reach back through time and channel my eight-year-old self. In the spirit of my #1, and in the grand tradition of Epimenides, take it with a huge grain of salt.

  1. Kids can speak for themselves. Listen to us. Don’t listen to some grownup who says they know what we want. Don’t ever pretend to be one of us, cause you’re not.
  2. Definitely don’t listen to women who say they know what we want. What’s with all these women taking care of us? Can I talk to a man?
  3. Why do women always Peter Pan in plays and movies, anyway? It’s not fair. Peter Pan should be played by a boy!
  4. It’s all right to cry. Boys cry too.
  5. It’s not fair that girls and women get to wear pants or skirts, but boys can’t wear skirts. No, I don’t want a kilt. Yes, I know my name is Angus, I still don’t want a kilt.
  6. It’s not fair that girls can have long or short hair, but people make fun of me for having long hair. I just have long hair because my mom won’t cut it short enough.
  7. Sports are unfair.
  8. People shouldn’t watch horror movies because they’re scary and not real. They should watch happy movies, and Star Wars.
  9. Girl chase is unfair to the girls. I refuse to chase girls.
  10. I won’t go inside the nursery school. Stephanie, my teacher, wore tights yesterday.
  11. Boys can dance too. They can’t be ballerinas, but they can be ballet dancers. They can dance modern dance too, like my mom’s friend Dennis. I want to dance, but I don’t want to be the only boy in the class.
  12. Miss Mary Mack and Miss Lucy and jump rope and jacks look like fun. They should let boys play too.

And yes, I’m aware that I sounded like a child. I was one.

Not because she was a trans woman

grvsmth

Pronouns matter. A few months ago I lost a friend over pronouns. There were other factors, but the breaking point happened when this former friend was complaining about a neighbor of ours, a trans woman. I agreed that it sounded like the woman was being a jerk, but after my former friend told me the story, she called her “it.” I asked her not to dehumanize our neighbor that way, things escalated, and I haven’t talked to her since. I had to change a number of regular routines to avoid my former friend, and the whole experience was very upsetting, but I would do it again in an instant. All for a neighbor who’s never said a word to me. Sometimes pronouns are a big deal.

I mention this now because there’s another case that’s a lot less clear-cut. Last week I went to the vigil for Islan Nettles, who was murdered in Harlem. I’ve been trying to figure out how lives like hers could be saved in the future, but Janet Mock is worried about pronouns, and her post has been going around the net, so I want to respond to it.

My heart dropped each time I watched your face cringe with each misgendering. This is more than semantics, more than a family issue, this is our lives. We all know Islan was beaten to death because she fought hard to be Islan, to be she, to be her.

We don’t all know that. I didn’t know that at the time, so I asked.


Jen Richards was angry:

Laverne Cox told the Huffington Post:

I know as a trans woman, and I think so many trans women in the audience understand, that when we’re misgendered, that is an act of violence for us. It’s a part of the violence that lead to Islan’s death.

No. Misgendering can be a whole range of things, from an honest mistake to incitement to violence, but in itself it is not an act of violence. It’s not part of the cause of Islan Nettles’ death. Nettles was not murdered because she was a trans woman. Here’s what the New York Post reported:

Paris Wilson, 20, is said to have made a pass at Nettles and was shocked to learn she was not born a woman, sources said.

Humiliated in front of his crew, Wilson then got into a heated argument with Nettles and the other women, hurling derogatory slurs at the group.

The two eventually came to blows, but Wilson eventually overpowered Nettles, beating her to a pulp, sources said.

The problem with Richards’s argument – and with Mock’s – is that you don’t have to use female pronouns for this to happen to you. It happened to B. Scott in 2009:

I was just called a faggot by Lewis Dix Jr. of the Jamie Foxx @Foxxhole radio show because he saw me and was confused/attracted.
[…]
people don’t know what gays like me go thru. he came from across the room to speak to me cuz he was attracted and then I said I was a man.

If this had been at a different kind of party – if it had happened on the corner of 148th and Bradhurst, with a violent enough person – B. Scott might have been killed that night. It wouldn’t have been because he was a trans woman, because Scott called himself a man right then. It wouldn’t have been because of pronouns, because Scott doesn’t reject “he” pronouns.

Scott has recently begun identifying as trans, and a few weeks ago I gave props to Mock for accepting him as such, even when Monica Roberts wouldn’t. But she stopped short of identifying him as a “trans woman.”

My wife pointed out that this happens to non-trans women as well. If a man finds out that a woman he’s attracted to is lesbian or that she not interested in him, or if she responds in the “wrong” way, he can feel humiliated and take it out on her.

There’s a whole range between B. Scott’s 2009 presentation and pronouns and Janet Mock’s current presentation and pronouns. Ultimately, the “right” pronouns are not the matter of faith that Mock makes them out to be. It’s not “trans woman” = “she” pronouns. It’s what the person wants. It’s respectful to use “she” pronouns for Chelsea Manning because Chelsea Manning told her lawyer to tell everyone to use “she” pronouns.

Some people want one set of pronouns, some want another, some don’t care. When I present as a woman I prefer “she” pronouns, but if I were killed in a dress I would expect (and prefer) that my family and most of my friends would use “he” pronouns, because that’s how they’ve known me.

From what I’ve heard it sounds like Nettles’ pronoun preference was closer to Mock’s, but it’s not obvious that she would have objected to anyone using “he” pronouns, especially not her family, and maybe not even a certain well-meaning but clueless Gay Man of African Descent. That’s why I asked for some evidence that she cared.

Here we have someone who wasn’t murdered for pronouns and didn’t necessarily object to her family using “he” pronouns. We have a family who says they’re ready to fight for justice and community leaders who say they want safety for all.

The intent of the pronoun user matters as well. When my former friend referred to our neighbor as “it,” I could hear the hate in her voice. In Delores Nettles we have a woman who has shown she is ready to fight for justice for her child, and we tell her that she’s not doing it right because she said “he was a beautiful woman,” instead of “she was a beautiful woman”?

Those of you who are putting the focus on pronouns: I want to know how you think pronouns are the solution. You’ve already schooled Vaughn Taylor. Suppose that tomorrow you could get everyone on that stage, in that park, to switch to “she” pronouns forever, just the way you want. Suppose you could do that for everyone in Harlem, in New York, in the whole country. What would that accomplish?

Please tell me how “she” pronouns would have saved Islan Nettles’ life, when so many unquestioned “shes” have been killed in Harlem. I’m looking forward to your evidence. I’ve got a Ph.D. in language change, and I’d be happy to help guide your research if you need it.

I completely understand if Mock, Richards and a lot of other trans people were carried away by the anger and frustration they felt at the moment. But if we want to actually solve this problem and save lives in the future, we have to put the pronoun issue in perspective. This is not about pronouns, or about being accepted as women.

This is a danger for transitioned trans women like Nettles, but not for trans women alone. Trans women don’t own Islan Nettles’ murder, they don’t own murders of gender-non-conforming people, and they don’t own murders of women. Transitioned trans women don’t know how to make Harlem safe, and they don’t have the right to dictate other people’s response to this tragic killing.

I hope that Mock and Cox will back off the pronoun agenda and refocus their efforts on building safe, welcoming communities for all women and gender-non-conforming people. And I hope that everyone who’s reblogged and linked Mock’s post will now re-read the New York Post‘s description of the events leading up to the murder of Islan Nettles – or any other detailed account – and try to think of one thing that might have prevented it. And write that up, too. Thanks.