“do you think, because i am poor, obscure, plain, and little, i am soulless and heartless?”

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. -C. Bronte, from the preface to Jane Eyre

reader, i will be on hiatus for a while to deal with important personal needs…so unless something seriously major pops up or i end up fighting writer’s block by blogging, which does occasionally happen, i’ll be off the intercats for a bit, and this post is a bit of a follow-on to my last one, so you’re not getting anything truly new and ground-breaking. also, Charlotte Brontë, wherever you are, thank you so much for existing…i bet you probably never would have imagined a creature such as i, and yet i think one of your books helped me through the darkest places in my life…you, Emily Shore, and Eva Gore-Booth.

about trans spaces and inclusion…and why “stop criticizing and make your own space” is silencing
one common silencing tactic in dealing with the criticism of the iron fist the local support cabal keeps on the “trans community” is “well, Erica, make your own space!”  yeah, sorry, that’s a separate but equal argument. it’s like saying that “well, Erica, they won’t let you drink at their nice water fountain, so you use the hose out back.” it might be my bitterness here but i remember how that worked out for my grandparents…add in that when nobody knows who you are, you’re going to have a very hard time competing with an established group of people who allegedly already fill that role where you live. i know some of you mean well, but even well-meaning silencing is silencing, and the reality is that a competing group would not be able to have the access to resources, connections, and, oh yeah, space to meet in. add in that i am decidedly not a leader and given that the issue involving the established group is their inability to accept difference, not nonexistence entirely, and it’s just not a workable solution. if it were, wouldn’t someone else have started it? plenty of other people have shared being unwelcome with this “support” cabal, so it’s not like my experience is all that unique…these tales are told in private, though, for you must not question things in public.

i know you mean well with this one, but the dominant and oppressive institution needs to stop being oppressive and people need to stand up to it rather than handing me a garden hose and telling me my half-colored ass can go around back because maybe there’s a tap there. don’t do that…we both deserve better and the solution isn’t trying to duplicate a resource that sucks up money and claims to represent the community, it’s to make that resource actually serve the damn community.

community and ‘where do we go from here’
well, we certainly talked about what next and people do have some ideas about what an inclusive community would look like. the problem is: this is still a far-off utopia for most of us, and the trouble with utopia is that its literal meaning in Greek…”no place.” (Sir Thomas More was quite the wit.) i feel like the reality is that community must take many forms, from starting your own group if there’s no group where you live and you want one to online communities to reforming transfundamentalist dominance of institutions that work to oppress people who don’t match their vision of who is and isn’t trans. also, part of building this community is freeing up information and that matters, too. when information is controlled by anyone, friend or foe, transfundamentalist or not, and then used as a bargaining chip or for personal gain, it hurts us all. if you won’t volunteer the name of a doctor who treats trans women, a fairly rare resource in many places, when asked, ask yourself why you’re not doing that…ask yourself what the gain is in keeping that information to yourself.

to see a fine example of someone who is an information-sharing rockstar, check out Catherine’s tumblr for lists of informed consent providers and the like. now, of course, someone claiming to be informed consent doesn’t mean they actually *are*, they might be informed consent for some but not all, but she does a great job. this is what we need more of; the willingness to share information to make each other stronger is a huge part of building an inclusive community the same way that transfundamentalists who hoard information use their position to keep community exclusive because of their fears and self-loathing. information is power, and when shared, we all benefit.

(ps: if you can get to Santa Cruz, CA, Dr. Jennifer Hastings is really amazing.)

politics and community-building, or ‘inclusion means inclusion’
uh, this is nice and easy. i don’t give a shit what your politics are outside trans space. inside trans space, you need to be polite, respectful, and inclusive.

in other words, if you’re “uncomfortable with feminists,” you “hate all Republicans,” or you think Tori Amos should be canonized as a saint, that’s lovely, but you need to leave your willingness to damage other people for your political ends at the door. respect and inclusion are not partisan values, or at least they shouldn’t be…some people can’t seem to figure that out. taking out your issues on other trans people, again, just weakens us all. i don’t give a hot fuck what corridor you voiced your identity in or who you voted for in the last election if you’re willing to work toward better outcomes for us all. i similarly don’t care if you don’t think this is possible, as people accomplish lots of things in this big green world without politics and it shouldn’t be any different just because we’re trans.

if your politics mean you can’t respect a safe space, the identities of others, the basic ability to be polite, or including all trans people, then you’re blaming your own personal fear and self-loathing on your politics. i mean, i hate myself too, so i know where you’re coming from, but i don’t use that to justify hating other people. i dunno, i just hope maybe someday neither of us will hate ourselves either way?

‘maybe you should just move’
yeah, no, sorry, this is not a solution at all. people are tied to where they are for any number of reasons, from where they can afford to live to where their family is to the fact that moving is expensive and no guarantee of success. i relocated to get closer to a place where i felt like there would be more opportunities for me to be out as being trans and fell back in with the same culture i dealt with in small-town New England, and i can tell you that you shouldn’t move because you’re told you can’t be queer where you are. yes, i needed to get away from the environment i was living in, but no, i did not get any additional freedom to come out as trans, which was one of the basic reasons behind my moving in the first place. i still live with isolation and a pass-or-die environment, i still live in poverty and did not succeed in becoming upwardly mobile because there were “more opportunities.” yeah, my poverty has become less crushing, and yes, i live in a place where the economic conditions are not as bad, so i moved up…

…but i failed horribly in the idea that i would find other trans people and not be isolated anymore. i tried the support group. i tried the livejournal community for queers here. i got nowhere, and fell right back in with an entirely new set of dykes who were the same dykes i was around through college and beyond…just different people. i’ve been pretty successful making friends with all sorts of people here. the trouble, though, is that i moved to not be isolated as a trans woman anymore, and that totally didn’t work. i want to be able to not live in isolation, i thought moving would change that, and i was very wrong.  if you want to move for whatever reason that is a good one (better job, more friends there, escaping a bad living sitch) do it, but don’t believe that being rural and queer means you have to move.

(major props to the Rural Queer Project, by the way. check ‘em out if you’re rural and queer, they’re building just such a community.)

maybe you really are doing it wrong
…didn’t they say this to women when we sought the vote? how about driver’s licenses, equality under the law, careers outside the home…yeah, actually they did. i, as an American, have the right to my own independence because of these women, and there are analogous women in many countries who have fought for similar rights. in some countries, our sisters are still fighting; in others, they’ve come much farther than the failings of the United States in terms of womens’ rights. scoffing that maybe we’re doing it wrong when it comes to fighting for our same basic rights as queers? perhaps you want to be known as a naysayer by history, like the newspaper headline we once mocked in Women’s Studies, the one where the Oneida Whig trumpeted its disgust for the Seneca Falls resolutions: “This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of womanity. If our ladies will insist on voting and legislating, where, gentleman, will be our dinners and our elbows? Where our domestic firesides and the holes in our stockings??”

and yes, i was a Women’s and Gender Studies minor, though it’s now called Gender, Sexuality, and Culture at the college i went to.  a century and change after Seneca Falls, society hasn’t collapsed, people are still getting their dinner…and i think i’m the only person i know who can darn holes in a stocking.

reader, i’ll see you in a little over a month for sure, and maybe a little sooner if the desire strikes me. until then, i leave you with a little more Jane Eyre, namely a quote which is what my next tattoo is going to say…I am no bird, and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will...  (and yes, i know it ends with …which i now exert to leave you but that’s not good tattoo material nor the message i want to send!)

at a crossroads: how do we build an inclusive trans community?

All you folks think you run my life
Say I should be willing to compromise
I say all you demons go back to hell
I’ll save my soul save myself…
 -Tracy Chapman, “Crossroads” 

i’ve had a hell of a bad week, folks; without going into explicit detail, it’s been full of things i don’t really want to deal with. and i say this not because i want your pity but because i am indeed at a crossroads, much like the one Ms. Chapman mentions in referencing a certain Robert Johnson tune, “Cross Road Blues”, which is supposedly about selling your soul to the Devil but is really about being Black and trying to get the hell out of Clarksdale, Mississippi before dark.

i’ve come to a point of frustration, you see. my stupid idealism has run into a sandbar and i realize that no matter how much theory i can hit it with, the “trans community” as we know it, mindlessly following the transfundamentalist thought process, has no desire to change and those of us who do not fit their very narrow definitions, i realize, are never going to be allowed in. theory, even if 15,000 of you have read it (and thanks for each and every one of those 15,000 views, readers…it’s quite humbling!) isn’t changing anything, and i feel like there’s this bad moment where i look back and realize i’m fighting a battle that is completely futile. i feel not unlike Mylène Farmer at the end of the “Desénchantée” video [TW: violence against children, gulag setting], where all there is is tundra all around. i’m still isolated and i don’t see that’s going to change anytime soon, and there’s never going to be a local outlet which isn’t the 300-pound gorilla which is the support group structure here, and that 300-pound gorilla is very fond of its isms and phobias because they keep a very narrow transfundamentalist mindset in charge. rather than open their resources to people who don’t attend the support group, they keep them locked down with an iron fist, and nobody gets any information. i’ve asked nicely, more than once, why they can’t publish a current version of their resource list in the name of broadening the availability of their information for those of us who need trans-friendly medical professionals, and those of y’all who need to know safe electrologists, laser providers, voice therapists, clothing stores, etc. i’ve asked, extremely politely, about six times over the past four years…they’ve never answered their email once…you do the math. 

the problem is twofold, as these problems always are: the trans woman fairy tale that once you’re post-transition you have no need for community or trans-friendly anything because you can go to “any doctor” and you have “normal friends” and all is toxic and blatantly, completely false;  when you couple this with the culture of exclusion, well-summarized in A Heinous Butch’s “Communities Built on Exclusion”, you end up with a treehouse built on these lies, but this is definitely a rehash of things we already have discussed at length and this is a recap of the problem, no more. i do think it’s terribly curious that the HBSer “successful transsexuals” stay in the scene to run things when they’re post-transition but they ridicule someone like me for reaching out from the position of being post-transition. it’s very, very confusing, but like all their double standards, it’s not to be questioned unless you want them lashing out at you.

i guess what i’m wondering is how the hell to persevere and get around the treehouse and to convince people who are working to uphold it who would ordinarily be more rational that they need to stop aiding and abetting our own oppression because they think they have to or that it’s the only way they can buy safety. the internet is great and all, but it’s limited, and travel isn’t an option for everyone given that it’s expensive and it doesn’t solve problems like a wholesale lack of medical access (or access to information about trans-friendly medical providers) in your area. it doesn’t solve that local isolation is frustrating to deal with because when you travel and return home, it’s right back into the darkness…i’m dealing with that this week, actually.

the crossroads i’m at is that i don’t know how to do this, and i don’t think any of us has the brilliant idea which will fix everything. i’ve got no map here, and i’m pretty lost…i wonder how we can build safer space online…you know, like what forums like trueselves promise and fail horribly to deliver on, because i think that would end up being part of how to build safer space offline and avoid the treehouses that keep many of us out and keep trans and questioning people from being able to ask questions and learn in safer space.  it would be nice to be able to have space where you don’t have to edit yourself for safety from self-appointed judgmental and hateful queen bees, but…i don’t know how to do it, and the inability to come up with answers is frustrating and flustering me. i’ve come to the conclusion things will never change without building community, but i don’t know how to build community and i don’t know how to get around the treehouse. i’d love to hear your ideas…because how can we grow without each other working together? that shouldn’t just be an option for those who are “perfect” enough for the transfundamentalists, it should be an option for all of us. now how the hell do we do it? 

a book review: Brian Katcher’s “Almost Perfect”

“Erica, Erica…have you read this book?”
“uh, no. been kinda busy lately actually…last four years or so, really.”
“But it’s about this trans girl in high school and this guy who falls in love with her…”
(Erica lets out a long, drawn-out sigh) “…so how bad was it?”

this review contains SPOILERS for the above book. if you want to know what happens, keep reading. if not, here’s a bunch of pictures of wombats. wombats are adorable!

okay so let me put it out there: while i did not dislike this book, it ends on a very conflicted note, and the author definitely wraps up the story arc way too fast and the end result is a little clumsy. i don’t like how the book ended because while i am not SO picky that you have to end up going into the sunset together and happy, the reality is that the book ends on an unclear note as to whether or not a person who is clearly happier and better off as a girl has purged, and that’s kind of creepypants. i know it happens but do books always have to end with “trans antagonist/protagonist gets screwed?” it’s kind of a theme in YA fiction, as a lot of early queer YA books that dealt with teenage same-gender lovers did. people remember Annie On My Mind for a reason, and believe you me as a gay teenager that book was not exactly holding up hope.

anyways, the book comes from the POV of Logan, a cis straight kid from a small town in Missouri…so small that Columbia, not far afield, is the Big City. Logan is getting over a bad breakup with Brenda, and in a small town breakups kind of are tricky…it’s had to avoid each other in a small beehive. not too far into the book, enter Sage Hendricks, a tall, large-handed, husky-voiced girl who he falls in love with. and, well, since you already know why i’m reviewing this book, you probably have figured out that there’s something about Sage: she’s trans.

Sage generally isn’t a caricature, and you can tell Katcher really tried to keep her as humanized as possible. her family is not too happy that she’s trans, and she is definitely portrayed much more sympathetically than her emotionally dead mother or abusive, engendering father. for example, Katcher gets it right that when you haven’t changed your ID, or if you can’t change your ID, getting carded really can be the end of the world, and his sensitivity to issues of documentation is pretty neat. that said, this is Logan’s book, and Logan screws up pretty bad in terms of how he takes Sage coming out, but i’ve seen/heard of guys doing stuff like that exactly and then come around, as Dylan does. this is where i point something out: i’d have an easier time reviewing this book had it come from Sage’s POV, rather than Sage being this mysterious person with the double-whammy of being mysterious as both trans AND a girl in Logan’s eyes. and you know what? i’m okay with how this book was written, but i know a lot more about being like Sage than i do about Logan. i know the reality of pass-or-die life in school, i know about how weird it feels to be  the exception, and i definitely know about doing the move far away to get rid of everyone who knew you before thing, as my family totally did that, and i know something about parental shame…most of my mother’s was over my appearance and sexuality, not my transness, but it still makes me feel so vulnerable about these things to this day.

at least one other review bitched about how Sage came out to Logan, and i really want to stick up for this because i think when i was a teenager i did exactly this a couple of times: “I…” She swallowed, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. “I’m a boy.”  alright, not exactly perfect in terms of how we present ourselves as adults but this is a book about teenagers and i know damn well i told my first few girlfriends what i was pretty much like this. let’s talk about the book’s good and bad and not seize on this, mmmkay? it’s not exactly easy to explain something you barely have words for when you’re a teenager…add in being trans and there’s often not even words that the other person would explain, and you say things like that.

the bad parts: Katcher goes a little too close to stereotype and lurid detail in dealing with Sage. the latter, well, the book was told from the POV of a teenage boy. i’ve never been a teenage boy, but i’m gonna assume that they’re probably into lurid detail since after all i really remember how much i thought about sex and the bodies of other girls as a teenager and i think maybe i probably would have been as bad. i also don’t like his proclamation against self-medication…sorry, dude, most teenage trans people only have self-medication as a choice. if you don’t like it, you fight the cis medical orthodoxy that says this, Mr. Katcher, and i’ll fight the trans orthodoxies that erase and trouble from within the trans community. also, there’s violence, because, well, it’s too common, and that violence ends up being the keystone to Sage’s crisis toward the end of the book.  Sage gets a very murky ending, not a bad one, but not one that made me smile or would give anyone hope, and that’s kind of troubling for me. i know it’s only a book but at the same time…trans kids out there could use something positive that affirms their humanity in their proper gender and nothing thus far has done so. i feel like this might seem a little whiny but at the same time please understand how weird it was growing up with no books about people like me and well maybe a couple of dyke “young love” books that weren’t that great in their endings either.

Logan ends up being a pretty cool dude, actually. he starts out kind of troubled but learns to accept, and even love, Sage. he stands up to Sage’s family when they’re bad to her, and though he and Sage end up not together in the end, he understands why and moves on and he gets the happy ending.  i think Logan was definitely supposed to be the nice sympathetic dude type and that’s fine. Logan is the kind of guy i would have been friends with in high school…one of the other poor kids, not pretentious or obsessed, but worried about his image almost as much as he worries about the people he cares about. i think in spite of some words he said the boy wised up and deserved his happy ending but i am one of those saps who identifies with people in books.

so Almost Perfect isn’t almost perfect at all, corny as that sounds. it’s a powerful, flawed, and intense read. i don’t think it’s good for transish teenagers because it presents Sage in sort of a tragic light that i really don’t think is good for someone dealing with it, though admittedly in hindsight i had a lot of “oh god that was me!” moments with this book and that was kind of tricky for me because it made it a lot more intense. proceed with appropriate caution and be appropriately forewarned but i think it’s a book worth reading.

maybe next time i’ll take apart Annie On My Mind since i keep referring to it here.

dear traditional values coalition: i am Mary and i do teach your kids.

so the “Traditional Values Coalition”, an anti-queer right-wing hate group with a long history of lying, has sent out an email to its supporters trying to raise money to stop the US ENDA, aka the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a set of legal protections for queers which would bring the United States closer to the protections enjoyed by queers in many other countries. so far it’s inclusive of trans people, and given the mess Barney Frank, an openly gay man who’s generally been an enemy of trans women (wonder why we don’t trust you, cis gays?) and the HRC got in for trying to throw us off the bus previously, i expect it to stay that way. i also don’t expect it to pass, but a girl’s gotta dream. anyways, this email is [TW: transphobia] casting trans women in a negative light, playing to stereotype, and saying that if ENDA passes, we’ll be teaching your kids.

guess what? i’m Erica, i’m a trans woman, and i already do teach your kids. while teaching is not my primary vocation, i’ve been a public school teacher, a private tutor, a nursery school teacher, and also a nanny. trouble is, my picture wouldn’t carry shock value…doe-eyed chubby butch girls really don’t carry a lot of danger in the minds of the American sheeple anymore, since through the media lesbians have been rebranded enough that we don’t form much threat…but once upon a time, it was indeed all “homosexuals” who were branded a threat when teaching America’s youth. Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative, was a 1978 proposal which tried to ban queer teachers in California. thanks to Harvey Milk and resistance from politicians like Ronald Reagan (whose editorial against the measure in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner is a thing of beauty to this day), Proposition 6 lost by a margin of nearly 17 points; every county from tip to tail along the California coast, from liberal San Francisco to conservative Orange, voted no. it wasn’t that long ago that there was an open war on gays teaching kids in a fairly liberal state in the US…for some time Oklahoma and Arkansas also banned all queers who professed or were known to have same-gender attraction from teaching.

but let’s get back to the “Traditional Values Coalition” and their new trick, something so odiously transphobic it got the HRC to stand up against it without the usual months of hemming and hawing it takes the HRC to ponder trans issues. needless to say they’re playing on a fear of a trans woman who doesn’t “pass” while begging for funds to oppose ENDA. while a group like the “TVC” hates all queers, they’re actually playing into something a number of cis queers use: the idea that trans women somehow are the lowest rung of queer society and represent the easiest point of attack, and then throwing your children into the mix of who is apparently threatened. the “TVC” is thus mixing up a number of social phobias and embodying them in a theoretical trans woman schoolteacher. i’m the reality of a trans woman schoolteacher, but given that Mary (if she actually existed, which she doesn’t, as she’s a “TVC” flunky with beard shadow and a cheap wig) should damn well be able to teach school if she’s good enough at it to merit the position, it’s important to tackle this the right way.

Mary is designed as a figure that one is supposed to fear for four reasons: she’s trans, she doesn’t “pass”, she is not especially beautiful, and she’s working with your kids. i don’t think anyone has ever shown conclusively that  being trans is somehow a communicable condition. despite all the wisecracks i can make about anime conventions and women’s colleges, those institutions attract people who are already trans whether or not they know it, and seeing other trans people and realizing that transition is possible is merely spreading that you can be trans and be a whole person. i talk about this, um, a lot. i have a pretty good life aside from the things you’ve heard me bitch about before and despite my social class and prospective placement in life that stems from it, i’m having a pretty damn good time…the disconnection from community sucks but it’s not something i foresee a fix for in the near future so i gotta keep living, i suppose.

“passing” is so tired but it’s the crux of what this emailed plea for funds uses for shock value, and that’s kind of why it needs to be addressed. what the whole thing ignores is the inconvenient fact that plenty of cis people don’t really constantly pass as their assigned gender on a consistent basis. however, with cis people this isn’t used to subject them to the same kind of ridicule, often treated as a small and harmless joke rather than used to degender and thus dehumanize them systematically. the elevated importance placed on “passing” bears an entry of its own.

“beauty” is also beyond tired. if you’ve taught in a public school you know that maybe 10% of the women are “beautiful” in the Caucasian-patriarchal western sense. public school is hard on you in body, mind, and spirit, and there’s no easy way around this fact. it’s not a place you can maintain this ridiculous beauty standard even if you were born into it or bought into it. so playing beauty games is gynophobic anyways, since all the “beauty standard” consists of is the boot of patriarchy stomping on women, but playing it with a public school employee is preposterous. do you know how much unpaid work one does?

finally, access to your children. yeah, i do have access to your children…my point in life is to protect small people. it might not always be what i’m doing, but i am the oldest in my family, a woman who lived through some awful things as a child, and yes, that kind of broad-hipped sweet-faced girl who people assume is the mother of every child near her, so i get assigned this role a lot. i’m damn good at it from experience. i don’t want to steal your children, i want to make sure your children are as unhurt as humanly possible by the big stupid world when you entrust them to me. so if you have some weird social phobia that Mary is going to steal your kids, why don’t you have it about me?

the “Traditional Values Coalition” is doing what desperate people do: lying. they’re also playing into phobias inside and outside the queer community about what trans women look like and what we will do if left with your children. guess what, world? i’m betting all your babies i’ve burped and toddlers i’ve changed turn out just fine, and that the kids in high school i teach probably haven’t had a damn thing change because of what their 2nd period teacher’s gender assignment was at birth. guess what, “Traditional Values Coalition”? Mary doesn’t exist, but i do, and i’m your worst nightmare because all your scare tactics are worthless when it comes to me, but i’m doing something far more dangerous than what you intimate: i’m Erica, and i’m in your school, teaching your children to think, forgive, work, and be positive. and i like those traditional values a hell of a lot better than yours.

a little therapy : what’s so dangerous about peace, love, and inclusion?

trigger warning for abusive language, tales of genital policing and/or shameless ignorance, and sexual assault, so as usual, if you’re not sure if you should read it, don’t read it. go learn about the weta, a giant Antipodean tree, uh, i think it’s an insect.  i’m blowing off a little steam here so please consider this to be a therapy-related blog post and not up to my usual standards or worth publicizing, though i am gonna tweet about it because i can.

i knew when i started blogging that i’d probably get some pushback from the four elements that tend to work hardest to oppress trans women: transphobes generally, wadfems (you know, “radical feminists”, neither radical nor feminist), “Men’s Rights Activists” (MRAs), and of course, transfundamentalists. i thus consider it sort of hilarious that 90% of the comments that i don’t approve are from transfundamentalists. yesterday, in a particularly eloquent comment, one transfundamentalist identified individual (she called herself an “HBS Success”) referred to me as a “fucking ugly tr**ny wannabe-cunt”. the rest of it involved race, my sexual proclivities, and some other fun stuff…wannabe-cunt, i think i saw them open for Tribe 8 and Bratmobile way back when, right?  needless to say, i declined to approve that comment…the ones with threats in them are lovely, or the ones that intimate i must not be able to pass so that is why i think this way. for the record, whether or not someone “passes” has nothing to do with their validity, and i’m not going to stoop to playing that game because i know better than to bow to that level. if you know me, you know what i look like, and if you don’t, it’s none of your goddamn beeswax.

not too long ago, my post about transfundamentalism made its way to a board called crossdressers dot com and was posted by a pleasant, politically astute and most intelligent woman who i suspect might have posted it to draw out exactly the responses she got. most of the responses are kind of reactionary and impart that their primary concern seems to be that the thread was going to get locked. i’ll quote some winners…i’m not going to provide a link but i’m sure you can Google it up if you really want. anyways, this forum declined to approve my account for some reason so i couldn’t respond directly, so in the name of Erica needing some stress relief, i took the liberty of responding here:

user LeaP states:
As a pragmatist, I believe some of the groups cited exist because of material differences and less because cisgendered society has magically imposed its views on, say, transsexuals. Gender queers and transsexuals have some common interests and characteristics, for example, but there are things the typical gender queer will never have to deal with that the transsexual will (and I’m not going to list them).

One should look to the easiest, most plausible answers first. Is it easier to believe, for example, that a transsexual might overreach in presenting because of clumsy inability and a lack of knowledge from having been raised male? Or a vast kyriarchical repression machine?

Nope. Not buying.

…so, um, i didn’t say anything about overreaching in presenting, really, so i have no idea where that came from, i don’t know what you’re on about “clumsy inability” and a “lack of knowledge,” and there’s this whole thing where when you deny kyriarchy you’re often doing your best to show it up. nice work, LeaP!  and also what things would a “typical gender queer” deal with that trans people huh what…yeah, not buying?  too bad, i wasn’t selling.

Julia_in_Pa opines:
It appears that the link you have provided led me to a person that loves to wear a giant “T” on her chest.
According to the article I am one of those that believe in a ” transfundamentlistic ” order and believe that there is a hierarchy within the context of trans society.

Usually those that are the most vocal about not subscribing to such a hierarchy are those that do not pass well, do not believe in successful medical guidelines concerning transition and or are projecting their own weaknesses or lower runged existence upon those that actually followed the prescribed path.

It’s always something coming from the ” We are all in this together bull Sh7t crowd ” that pollutes the minds of those weakest amongst us.
I never drank that cool aid and neither should anyone who actually wishes to successfully transition and live their life in normal everyday society.

…well, in the middle of her need to piss all over my theoretical self that she knows nothing about, at least she got my gender right, that gets messed with a little farther down the page. and, uh, i don’t love wearing anything in my chest for any number of reasons and…oh yes, here you come talking about how the hierarchy is favorable, imparting that i don’t pass well, and i’m projecting my own weaknesses or “lower runged existence”…i’m sorry, i’m just lost here, since generally people who visciously defend a hierarchy and think it’s good are the ones who it benefits.  “successful medical guidelines” seem to be the kind of code that transfundamentalists favor using, and apparently there is a “prescribed path”…hello, HBSer bullshit. everything about this comment is pretty much dropping with privilege and the “let them eat cake” mentality that pollutes the minds (nice turn of phrase there amidst your hatey bleats, totally gonna borrow that) of the transfundamentalist. because, really, how well you pass determines your value in this cute little fantasyland.

and here comes the degendering, right on schedule, from Kathryn Martin:
The article is clearly from someone with way too much time on her/hir/his/zee hands. My head hurts………

uh, so apparently you can conclude how much time i have on my hands and then get all degendering with it. her or their, please and thank you. by the way, wonderful job doing exactly what i pointed out the transfundamentalist does: mocking, degendering, condescending…somewhat amazing.

and finally, the forum moderator, Sharon calls my writing “simplistic” and takes a swing at my pen name…classy!
For those who think the article is confusing, just read the last paragraph. It neatly sums up enough to catch the gist of everything ranted about without all the BS. Now then — the author not so succinctly states that trans people must overturn the “kyriarchy” (seriously?) while offering no way to do so other than by simplistic and unrealistic methods. It’s up to us to discuss matters with “transfundamentalists” and show them the error of their ways. Yeah, that always turns out well. And Inchoaterica also addresses all the transfundamentalists (I bet you could count them on less than one finger) who read the blog and tells them to question their beliefs. Really?

The best way to show society that we deserve a place in the world is to act as if you already do have a place. Be yourself. Be proud. Live your life. Do not ask for permission or for acceptance from others — just do it.

Amen! It’s funny that the author’s nom de plume means “not fully formed or developed,” which is a rather apt name in my opinion.

well, apparently plenty of y’all read my blog because you enjoy leaving these ragey comments about my genitals, race (love to know which one of you called me a “dumb nigger” who “deserved to be raped because you enjoyed it”) appearance, parentage, and various other things. so yeah, i am “discussing” this with them. so apparently we aren’t supposed to talk it out with oppressive institutions…what are we supposed to do, then? and i hate to tell you this, Sharon, but i’m not asking for permission or acceptance. i’m asking that we include all trans voices in our community because that’s the only way we can grow, because like it or not my voice, life, existence, and experience is equally valid to yours, and frankly given that the “permission” of the transfundamentalist is obviously required in the eyes of this entire damn forum you post to, your shitty self-help “just do it” is completely loaded.

also, ha ha, you defined the word “inchoate” but didn’t bother reading enough to get why i use it. it’s apt, but not for the reason you think it is. you may kindly fuck off for going for that cheap shot, which isn’t exactly how a forum administrator should be behaving, is it? oh, wait, that’s right, you can’t question a transfundamentalist. nice work totally not modding the person who degendered me, by the way…says a lot about how friendly your forum is. transfundamentalism is toxic, and by buying into it and modding a forum based solely on it, you’re spraying your detestable reactionary poison, Sharon.

alright, this was rather cathartic and i did need to let off a little steam about this BS because the hate comments have ramped up in recent days and they’re making me sort of creeped out, but what’s really uncanny is how much they use the word “female”. a lot like Cathy Brennan. so to all you haters, i just have one question, as posed by Nick Lowe: (what’s so funny ’bout) peace, love, and understanding?  or maybe i should make that (what’s so dangerous ’bout) peace, love, and inclusion…because, quite frankly, the approach the transfundamentalist takes is more like another Nick Lowe song: “cruel to be kind” … and if you get what that tune’s about, unlike the other one…you really shouldn’t be taking that song literally.

your narrative is your narrative, my narrative is my narrative, and that’s okay.

oftentimes the ignorant believe that trans people, especially trans women, represent a monolith and are all the same. we obviously aren’t, but there are things within our community that cause us to boost this perception, and one of the most toxic is that there is a narrative that all trans people allegedly have in common; the narrative policing is ridiculous and often is obvious, when it ends up policed by transfundamentalists like HBSers and “True Transsexuals” as being the only allowed way to be trans, but sometimes it’s subtle, too, and when it’s subtle, well-intentioned trans people end up alienating those of us who didn’t follow the same path as others. either way, narrative policing hurts real people, and it’s high time we stopped talking about one narrative and considered all narratives valid so that they respect the diversity and difference that exists within actual trans people rather than the basic transfundamentalist ideals allowing only one unchanging narrative to be valid. this post in particular is mostly about trans women because that’s what i have experience being and also because narratives are delicate things and i can speak but for what i am. guys, i’d love to hear your insights, but this isn’t my place to speak…but send me a pingback if you blog about it!

let’s make one thing abundantly clear: because all trans people are valid, all trans narratives are valid. if you’re not on board with the idea that all trans people are valid, ask yourself why that is…i mean, aren’t there cis people who you have a difference of opinion with, or who you find intractably annoying? would you regard their gender as invalid on that basis? i’m suspecting that the answer is no. as a result, i have to wonder why you would do the same to a trans person. it establishes that our gender is, or should be, conditional on something we do or how we act, or on what you think of that person. as recognition of our gender is a basic part of our humanity, what you’re doing is relegating that person to conditional humanity on the basis of what you think of them. that’s pretty barbaric, so why would you do that to a trans person when you wouldn’t do it to a cis person?

…probably because it’s what’s expected of us. we enforce these narratives because we believe we’re not valid without them, because we need to tell the right things to gatekeepers to survive, or because transfundamentalists often control structures within the community and rule them with an iron fist and expect complete narrative compliance. the problem is that these narratives also center only certain experiences, generally which involve social class, culture, religion, and lots of other stuff that ends up normalizing the experiences of middle-class Caucasians with “traditional” family structures. and yeah, those experiences are totally valid…but experiences that don’t match that also need to be considered valid!  for example, i don’t have a father, so i don’t have that element to my narrative, and because i don’t blame my being trans on not having a father, i often find myself in an odd place…apparently you’re supposed to demonize a nonexistent father? that’s kind of weird if you ask me. similarly, as i don’t remember much of my childhood, i can’t tell you if i played with dolls. i know my brother did, though…and he’s a cis straight dude who is completely unthreatened by gender or sexuality differences. given that i am terrified of dolls, i’m betting the answer was no.

but isn’t there more to being a girl than how you relate to your father or if you play with dolls. there’s more to being a woman than whether you wear dresses and makeup or not. none of this is an inherent part of being female even if the patriarchy expects it to be. i don’t really care what you think of the feminist movement or its values, but the feminist point that the reality is that patriarchal values being enforced hurts all women is very much true…and rest assured that it might not have been how some feminists meant it, but it hurts all women, no matter what our chromosomes or birth assignment is/was. when someone is saying that you should be wearing makeup, guess what? they’re probably not asking what your birth assignment was before they do so. when someone says that’s not how “ladies” behave (itself a Caucasian-Western construct of femininity), they’re unlikely to be considering if you’re trans or not, they’re policing your gender expression generally. now, guess what? plenty of women wear makeup and if you choose to do so of your own volition because you think it makes you look better, do it! if you wanna behave in a “ladylike” manner, go for it. but don’t say that someone’s value or gender is determinate on meeting those expectations, or you are working to uphold the very patriarchal values that oppress us as women generally.

the expectation of meeting a narrow narrative does not mean that people who meet that narrative are any more or less valid, and furthermore the expectation of such a narrative really shouldn’t be used in seeking validation as a trans person because the very idea that narratives are necessary to be valid is accepting the idea, as discussed above, that someone should have to seek validity as a trans person from other trans people and/or cis people. this fact, and the community’s zealous defense of its precious narrative, plays into validating both institutional and internalized transphobia. if you need a “reason” to be trans it implies that being trans in and of itself is not okay. when i came out as a dyke, it was often considered back then that you needed a “reason” to be gay and frequently very poor assumptions were made as to why, like that being a sexual assault surivor meant i couldn’t trust men, so that lack of trust must mean i’m attracted to women. though some people still traffic in this kind of hokum, it’s largely discredited because we presented a united front and said that it’s alright to be gay. who cares what the hell the reason is…some people say they’ve chosen their sexual orientation, and i personally can tell you it’s always been quite immutable for me, but either way when we ceased providing reasons or justifications people stopped using that as a way to question our sexual orientations.

finally, there’s the perception of monolithicness. you know, all trans women are exactly the same so if you’ve seen one you’ve seen us all. this is horrible, because cis people often use one bad experience with one trans person in a pathetic attempt to justify transphobia, but also bad because it implies that whomever speaks first and loudest speaks for us all…this is why it’s dangerous when institutions are run by transfundamentalists because they end up being the people who speak and often use that platform to advance the narrative as completely universal because gosh everyone they know fits this. of course she knew since she was 3, of course she is white, middle-class, and femme…and nothing changes. of course nobody bothers to point out that transfundamentalists will exclude anyone who doesn’t match their description because of their monomaniacal focus on narrative, and the perception of monolith increases. this is bad to someone who is trying to figure out their gender identity as this kind of behavior often scares them off or tells them they’re invalid, and that’s really not okay. it’s bad for those of us who don’t fit the transfundamentalist monolith because we never get a place at the table and are thus assumed to not exist, and it’s bad for cis people because they’re being fed the lie that all trans women exactly match this one narrative when we don’t and furthers the misconception discussed above that you need a “reason” to be trans. if you’re trans, you’re trans. if you’re not, you’re not, and you don’t need any more “reason” than that.

it’s time to dump the expectation that you have to have a certain narrative to be trans. it’s doing us all a disservice, people openly and readily admit that they lie to fit the narrative so as to avoid being policed by gatekeepers and transfundamentalists, and it also makes us stronger because by accepting all narratives as valid people can’t seize on individual points in your narrative in an attempt to disprove your transness. it also respects our cultural, racial, social, and personal diversity and understands that we don’t all come from the same place but we do share the common thread of being trans people.

trans people, oppressive institutions, and Stockholm syndrome

from Wikipedia’s entry on Stockholm syndrome:
“In psychology, Stockholm syndrome is an apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.”

too often as trans people we mistake a lack of abuse, generally a lack of abuse towards one’s own self, for kindness. the problem, of course, is that a lack of abuse is not kindness, even by the most passive-aggressive measure, and that different people are often in fact treated radically differently. just because Person A felt that there was a lack of abuse in their interactions doesn’t mean that Person B felt an identical lack of abuse in a wholly different situation. what then happens is that when Person B raises their concerns about the problematic (doctor, support group, whatever) then Person A defends the (doctor, support group, whatever) through the lens of solely their experiences rather than listening to the merits of Person B’s complaint or considering that Person B is not the same person they are and may be being treated differently because of various characteristics that have little to nothing to do with their worth as a person.

and that sounded way more academic than i really want to, but the problem is that Person A unwittingly has considered dodging the bullet from the oppressive institution as a sign that the institution is not oppressive and thus furthers the oppression in silencing Person B or claiming that they’re “bitter and angry” or some similar dismissive language designed to paint Person B and not the oppressive institution as the problem. well, at least i hope it’s unwittingly, if someone is knowingly defending an oppressive institution then chances are they’ve already made their deal with the proverbial devil. by engaging in silencing Person B unwittingly (or because they’re too scared to challenge the oppressive institution), person A is embodying the idea of Stockholm syndrome, even if it’s a little less dramatic than a bank robbery and gentleman thief who walks around singing “Killing Me Softly.” (yes, that’s actually what one of the Kreditbanken robbers sang. his sentence was overturned on appeal…)

what’s the cause of this? well, i think it’s usually fear. as i mentioned in my post about transfundamentalism, it can be hard to stand up to a zealous support group if they approve of you enough to let you be there, and i can tell you firsthand how hard it is to stand up to a doctor’s bad behavior if that person is your lifeline for getting hormones. fortunately, the one time i did stand up to such a doctor, who summarily told me i wasn’t going to be getting hormones from him anymore, i had the (fantastic, wonderful) Mazzoni Center right across the bridge. the Mazzoni Center is a fine example of an institution that works as hard as it can to not be oppressive and to center the needs of all queer people, not just some queer people. i suspect it’s just the same with the support group structure in places where the support group holds a lot of social power and keeps all their information close to the vest. i have no clue since despite my being decently accepted by the outside world, no support group has ever let me in, so i’m taking a stab at why people are so fearful. i don’t think Person A really intends to be a tool of the oppressive institution, because i think Person A just doesn’t actually see the nature of the oppression or alternately believes that they have to accept that some trans people are disposable because they’ve been told they have to, not because they actually think that.

erica admits her personal investment herein: i confess that i am frustrated because almost all of the local “trans community”, which i would like to participate and be more active in, uses the support group as its hub, and i don’t really see any way that i’m not going to get shouted out of there since i’m, like, 3 for 3 with that happening and at no time did i start the shouting or even raise my voice. i’m sorry, getting called “it” and told how bog-ugly you are by a facilitator is not okay, and i don’t give a shit what the excuse is supposed to be, because there isn’t a valid one. an attempt to open dialogue with the support group in question’s leaders has failed, since i could supposedly “contact them through Facebook”…i was given three names, two of which didn’t come up with any results when searched and one person with a public Facebook profile never answered a message asking if we could talk about how to make the group more inclusive. conveniently, this woman is the one who called me “it” and went on for two minutes about how ugly i am after i asked her politely to stop. hilariously, the only way i can get called “she” is to show up in boy drag…so this institution’s not broken again how? end personal investment. 

let’s talk about how all the community can benefit, though, since the rest of y’all are all way more important than i am really, because if we’re whole maybe behaviors like these will go away. we have become conditioned to accept being treated worse because we are trans people, especially trans women, and we need to stop accepting being treated poorly because of what and who we are.  we can do better than this and we ARE better than this, but we have to stand up to our potential first. part of that is questioning why othering and exclusionary behavior has been accepted as okay…but the problem here is that the people being kept out and kept silent can’t be the ones to question that because we’re being ignored and we will be ignored by people who cling like a tree sloth to the idea that they have some right to decide who is and is not “trans enough” in the name of keeping the trans community as monolithic as humanly possible rather than recognizing that we come in all shapes, sorts, colors, and sizes. these people who do actively oppress need to hear it from the people they believe will never question them. if your doctor treats trans men but not trans women, ask why. if your support group is not welcoming to all trans people, not just some trans people who may well be the majority of trans people, ask why.

it’s time, my Stockholmies, to rise up, to start asking questions, to start questioning the uncomfortable things, and to quit believing that we should accept “not being abused” as good enough because we’re trans. we deserve fairness, inclusion, and dignity…you deserve better, i deserve better, and we all deserve better.

sing for the teachers who told you that you couldn’t sing: a follow-up

trigger warning again about psychosurgery, sexual abuse and medical abuse. it’s also kind of gross!  as usual, if you think you shouldn’t be reading this, you probably shouldn’t.  go watch this YouTube video of adorable tiny piglets instead. actually, i suggest the video of the adorable tiny piglets either way as they’re really, really cute.

so about a month ago now (gosh, where does the time go?) i wrote about my experience as a lobotomy survivor, or whatever the hell i’m supposed to call myself, on this blog. if you somehow missed it, here’s the original article. it’s been kind of defining ever since because it’s been a heavy generator of hits to this blog, and been criticized on Reddit, something i discussed earlier. i’d like to clear the air about and clarify a few things, and then i’m not going to initiate posts on it further for the foreseeable future in case you’re sick of hearing about it…i’m kinda sick of hearing about it, too…i mean, this is Erica’s blog, not Lobotomy Girl’s blog, okay?  so here’s a few follow-up points and probably some new stuff.

1) something good came from the bunch of posts on Reddit, namely that someone PMed me credible and complete information that the hospital in question ceased performing lobotomies, mechanical or transorbital, in the late 90s. i consider this a good thing as it means my statement that they’re still doing it was incorrect; they’re still performing psychosurgery, at least mostly (though not completely) on the informed consent model, but they’re not doing this anymore…oh, but it’s also proof they were doing it in the first place.
1a) i’m dead serious that i’m not going into naming and shaming publicly because that puts my cards on the table. do i intend to sue them? kind of. actually, what i intend to do is show them what i have in a complaint and see if they’re willing to talk. in case you didn’t notice this, i don’t want money, i want answers and my intent is not to seek or obtain a large judgment or settlement. hell, if the damn doctor apologizes and explains i’ll settle the case for a buck.

2) yes, i have multiple slides from head CT scans in my possession. they’re in a safe deposit box, somewhere in New Hampshire (wonderful privacy laws) that i and my brother have the only keys to. i also have a neurologist’s opinion explaining exactly what that is and he has kindly agreed not to dispose of my file. in other words, conjecture aside, i possess proof. for all that it can be alleged that my frontal lobe was accidentally separated (with lesions from that happening) the degree of atrophy, and the pinhole scars, tiny but scary, above my eyes tell another story. i have spent much of my life trying to disprove this; i spent almost two hours on the phone with one of my closest friends last night talking about why i want people to tell me i’m full of shit. the problem is this: all the people who say i’m lying have no good proof other than “you’re lying.” nobody has managed to put together a coherent story to feed my denial, and guess what? that means i need to get out of denial. i know what i am now and i can’t deny it anymore, and part of writing that piece was me coming to terms with something i’ve been wrestling with for a long time. this has something to do with why i’m talking about it more than one might be expected to.
2a) said friend put it all together a couple of weeks ago: until late 2010 i was pretty much actively medicated into a stupor. one day i decided to stop taking all my crazy meds just to see what would happen, because there was no real reason that i could see that i was on some of these meds and i was beginning to have trouble affording them because my insurance sucked. so i stopped all seven of ‘em, cold turkey, Wellbutrin to Thorazine. and you know what? i had a splitting headache for a week…and the fog slowly lifted. and my little sister told me she’d never seen me looking so, well, “alive”.  i didn’t turn into a raging beast, something i’d pretty much been promised, i didn’t become a catatonic vegetable (also promised this), i didn’t become violent  and frankly it was like putting my face in a tub of ice water. it was like…waking up. i started telling a few close friends about my psychosurgical past, but i also came out as trans to more of my friends, and the fog and dreariness over my life lifted.

3) i’ve had some personal revelations over the past few months, definitely before i wrote my post…namely that i have some memories pre-lobotomy, which challenges the notion that earlier-in-life psychosurgery results in a total wipe of the brain because of trauma. i have not managed to reconstruct the “why”, which is left to theory. needless to say much of this is trying to put a puzzle together without half the pieces and with only an educated guess as to what the picture on the puzzle is. this is tricky because a lot of it is stuff i don’t really want to remember (rape, rape, and having my teeth pulled out to facilitate such) but it’s also part of putting together those pieces.

4) i think you’re picking on Amanda Palmer!!!!!!! yeah, well, perhaps if she stopped using disabled people as parody objects we’d be good. she isn’t admiring us, she’s using us for vicarious thrill and humor. i gave some links in the original post, and i really can’t express enough how frustrating it is that she’s expected to be able to excuse out of treating those of us who live with mental disabilities as props in entertainment. in other words, stop making excuses for her. i want to love Amanda Palmer, as she writes so much amazing music, like “sing”, the song referenced in the title of this post, the song i think of about 30 seconds before going on stage because when i sing i do sing for the people pre-transition who told me i’d never be able to sing, i sing for the middle school music teacher who taught me that my voice could be beautiful, i sing for me because it’s the only way i’ve ever felt pretty…the song connects with me in ways it sounds preposterous to say that it does.  i just hate that she reduces us to mocking when clearly she could be making amazing music without making fun of us.

5) you talk about negative things too much!!!!  alright, yeah, i admit that. right now i’m in my mid-30s and realizing that i don’t know who the hell i am. it is a strange and alien feeling because i’m breaking free of so many of the lies people have told me and which i dutifully have repeated to myself all my life, lies telling me what an awful person…beast…thing that i am/used to be/might still be and i’m gonna tell you something a little bit scary: it’s really hard realizing that it’s not all your fault. when all you know is fear and kicking yourself, that’s not living, and i spent most of my life doing that. so, people on the internet: don’t do that. but at the same time, i may sound awfully negative because this blog is part of me processing through a lot of these things, and realizing that the freedom of knowing it’s not all your fault is fucking terrifying., because so much of who i am is built on that and releasing myself from that leads to…who am i? i don’t know. i have a feeling that if you didn’t know who you were either you might seem a bit negative, too. i’m bargaining with that i hope when i wake up from the nap that i’m about to take that i will have taken the blue pill and everything will be back to normal but i know damn well that it won’t. i know none of my damage is my own failure but that my only failure is when i try to run from it.

6) i might not know who i am, but at least i know what i want and i know what i stand for. and you know, i kind of like that…because i think maybe when i get all the negative stuff out, maybe i can love authentically and maybe i can believe in myself and maybe, just maybe i can be the person i want to be and not the person my fears turn me into. whoever i am, i might be able to do some great things.