Recently in Trans Activism Category

If I could have given a speech on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, this would have been it:

Last night I had a dream. In it, a trans woman was given a chance to go back in time and live for a day in a world where her birth gender had been female. The day was her birthday and she was being encouraged by her parents to embrace some of the very gender binary ways of being a girl. Having lived her entire life being rejected by her family, she was confused and scared, clinging tightly onto the old basketball hoop they had on the patio. She didn't understand at first that she was free here to embrace all the possibilities of who she could be. Slowly she opened up and enjoyed this one day where her mother treated her as a daughter who would someday grow into a woman, a woman who would experience all the trials and all the joys that come of being female.

Suddenly, a long, black car arrived and a man in a suit whisked the little girl away. They drove silently until they came to a quiet street corner in a place the girl did not recognize. The man offered the girl a choice: "When you set foot outside of this car", he said "you'll either return to your old life or you can stay as you are now. If you choose the latter you will lose everyone you have ever cared about, you will have to start your life over completely without the support of anyone but yourself. You'll be alone but your mind and the vessel that contains it will finally match."

So I have major issues with this "Operation: Sex Change " project that surfaced on Facebook. If you don't know about it, here is their mission statement:

Starting November 9 and until November 20, 2009, we're running Operation: Sex Change, a campaign to raise awareness around challenges facing transgender people everywhere in the world. The campaign is simple. For those 11 days, we'd like you to change your sex on Facebook and make that change visible in your profile. The purpose is to grab your friends' attention (and confusion) and remind them that transsexuals, who undergo changes in their gender expression in real life, face a lot of prejudice and discrimination everywhere in the world.

Ok.

So for 11 days people on Facebook are switching their gendermarkers to do what? Spur conversation/confusion? To me it seems that this project presents switching gendermarkers as an easy endeavor. Operation:Sex Change doesn't really articulate that for many transpeople on Facebook, changing gendermarkers is not a lark. Moreover, it doesn't really make the distinction between the "conversation" this project is striving to cultivate and intrusive and inappropriate questions transpeople are subjected to when they DO change their gendermarker.  When the "you" changes your gendermarker (and by "you" I mean the cisgendered participant in this project) people are going to ask "you" about it. They're going to ask you because to them it will seem weird, strange, or confusing. Why would anyone miss-mark their gender? THE DIFFERENCE, however, is when trans-people are asked these questions, we do not get to revert to our cisnormitivity. We do not get to say, "OH, well, I'm still normal, but let me tell you about the injustices faced by poor trans-people..."

With the storm of transgender posts lately, I thought I'd point interested parties in the direction of transgender vloggers on YouTube. YouTube is FULL of absolutely fantastic transgender vloggers who are talking. They're telling their stories. They're sharing with the world the rewards and struggles of what it's like to be transgender. AND they will more often than not, answer your questions (if you ask politely) because they have chosen to put themselves out their to increase visibility, raise awareness and educate. Some of my favorite channels are TrannystarGallactica, Grishno, MighTierMenFTM, Transjosh, freshlycharles, MensRoomFTM, DefineGender and TMatesFTM. The last one is a collaborative channel made by the partners of transmen and they share their experiences on what it's like to date an FTM-- they answer viewer questions and even take topic requests!

To get you started, here is a video by SamanthaZero34 addressing what she terms "The Dick Association."

Question proposed to me today:
What do you think of the HRC speech?


My Answer:
First off you have to understand my complete and deep rooted hate and dissatisfaction with the Human Rights Campaign. In the last 5 years the HRC has pulled all funding and support for the transgender community. This started with pulling their only trans board member out of public policy and agenda making. She retaliated by defaulting her contract and leaving the campaign. Since then the HRC has be unresponsive to trans policy and non-discrimination acts based on gender. I would go as far to say that they actively are hurting the trans gender movement. They would much rather focus on big ticket policy that will make them money, instead of "grassroots" activism which has no place in public policy.

HRC started as a grassroots organization and has since grown into the largest Gay and Lesbian supported organization working on policy and rights in the United States. Unfortunately, they do only focus on gay and lesbian rights, pushing many more marginal groups into nearly helpless situations.

I was happy that they invited President Obama to speak, but I also see it as one more big ticket buy that the HRC is pulling. It saddens me that something like human rights can become so politically driven that the less desirable and marginal groups within the movement are forgotten. To me this seems like a deconstruction of community and the larger queer movement. I hope that Obama can change the "don't ask don't tell" policy but I think it will do very little for the movement entirely. I also am very happy to see the president moving on this front so quickly seeing as it was the only "queer" promise in his entire campaign (which I still find disheartening). I hope that things continue to change and that human rights can be exhibited throughout ever aspect of life and politics. I understand the President's reasoning to speak for the HRC, but I can't support them because I can not support the HRC in any form. Also the fetishizing of Matthew Shepherd continues to upset me because so many more queer and even trans people have died since that time that no one ever cares to mention. I can not help but hate the way media is played and in turn used against us. Also Obama is focusing mostly on the gay and lesbian issue, including maybe some more queers because of new hate crime legislation. This legislation, though, still only focuses on sexual orientation. The whole gender and trans issue is left out of the game. I can not support change until it supports me.

I made a decision a while back to distance myself from me being transgender.  I moved to a new city where no people knew my past, and since then have largely remained silent.  The only people I told my secret to were in the LGBT community and mostly transgender people at that.  And I thought living stealth was what I wanted, but it really handicaps speaking out on any transgender issue.  Not least because of the fear of outing myself.

Don't get me wrong, I think that everyone can speak out on trans issues regardless of whether they are cisgender, genderqueer, transgender, or any other identity, stealth or otherwise.  And I really think that allies and stealth trans people can make a positive difference in changing society's attitudes and tackling transphobia.  But without trans people actually giving their experiences directly and having a degree of visibility, progress will surely be slow.  And if society doesn't visibly see trans people, then it makes it harder to convince people that we are "normal" instead of whatever caricature a person believes.

And in the past I've attempted to give my experiences of being transgender, while avoiding attributing them to myself (along the lines of "I have a trans friend  who...").  But all I've found is that this often results in me being dismissed as "not knowing what I'm talking about", particularly if it doesn't fit a trans stereotype.

Certainly I don't think it is a duty of trans people to educate, advocate, nor out ourselves in the process, and hope nothing I've written above is misinterpreted as such.  It's absolutely a personal decision, and there obviously are personal costs to it.

But for me personally, I've come to the decision that I don't want to be silenced by my desire to remain stealth.  I haven't quite figured out what that means yet, and am not quite sure the balance I want between being stealth and out.  But I am now willing to out myself in at least some situations (not just online), if it helps educate, advocate or tackle transphobia.

The number of stories I've been hearing about transgender passengers being hassled, harrassed and humiliated at airport securities is snowballing. 

Transmen are being asked to take their packers out of their pants and to remove the silicone taping from their chest scars. 

Inappropriate questions are being asked in front of other passengers. Pronouns are being misused. Extra searches are being done. Teasing is happening. Trans passengers are being laughed at.

A transwoman friend of mine was going to fly as male because she was terrified of airport security giving her shit and making a scene in public. I had to convince her to travel as herself and she, luckily, didn't have any problems. Trans people should not have to alter their gender presentation just to get on a damn airplane without being publicly humiliated.

 Is there an organization out there that would be willing to make some kind of training video for airport security to watch about how to handle transgender passengers? I have this idea and I think it needs to be done, but I don't have the resources or connections to do it. Chicago police has a somewhat decent video (although it is full of errors) about how to treat trans people. Can't the airports have something similar? 

Dear Feministing commenters, posters, moderators, and everyone else:

A while back, you may remember, a great many trans readers decided to boycott this site. At the time, I had only been reading Feministing for a few months, and only been commenting for a couple of weeks. I decided to stay, believing that I was doing some good here.

Every time someone said “Oh, I never knew that could happen!” or “I never thought of it that way before!” I felt like “Well, at least someone has learned something new, and maybe will take a broader and more accepting view in the future.” That was encouraging, made me feel like it was worth staying.

However, this effort has been exhausting me emotionally (which is why I have not commented on any of the most recent things here).

The community within the “comments” section has fostered argument as opposed to discussion, repetition as opposed to new insights. Repeated failure on the part of many to even read the existing comments (or sometimes even the entire original post!) is staggering, and leads to constant pointless derailing.

The lack of understanding of even basic concepts like “privilege” makes discussion next to impossible. Privilege is not a contest, or a game of golf in which the lowest score wins. It is not something you can ever get away from or get out of. Neither is cultural bias – and yet, when a commenter is called on such things (often in an accusing way) what most often ensues is not insight but bickering about whose privilege is bigger than whose.

The transphobia alone is enough to drive one mad, particularly since most of the concepts (ie: listening to those with personal experience, not disregarding that experience, not using tone arguments, not placing personal comfort/bigotry above the safety and dignity of another human being, respecting unique individual identity and not resorting to stereotypes or “medicalizing” the experiences of an entire group) apply equally to women, to minority ethnic or religious groups, to homosexuality. The rules of dignity and non-bigotry don't start and end with specific groups who get to be deemed “normal.” They apply to all people.

Is this how you treat those you do not understand by default? By silencing, analyzing, and accusing on the basis of speculation? By dismissing and belittling our experiences without listening to us or bothering to take a second look? By accepting stereotypes and scare tactics at face value, and, even when there is no evidence or reason behind them, still saying “Well, it MIGHT be true, somehow” as a justification to keep the “others” out of your space?

Bigotry is believing that some people are “OK” while others are not. Becoming a liberal, accepting society is not about slowly adding oppressed groups to the “OK” category while still allowing oppression of everyone else. This happens when people think they know what all the issues are, what all the people groups out there are like, and then encounter a new group they've never encountered.

I have neglected other blogs where I could have been doing more good and getting less transphobic nonsense by devoting my time to this site. I have exhausted myself emotionally by attempting to constantly counter the bigotry and transphobia which inevitably emerges whenever transsexuals are brought up in conversation. No more. As I have seen little evidence of overall change, greater acceptance, or even basic education (or even, for the most part, an overall willingness to learn) I am leaving Feministing, and joining the boycott.

-Zyfron

This was originally posted at The New Gay, and sent in by our San Francisco reader Gina.

Lateisha Green was a vivacious, loving 22-year-old, African American transitioning transwoman living in Syracuse, NY. Unlike many young transpeople, Teish was accepted by her family. She was very close to her mom and siblings, including her 18-year-old gay brother, Mark.

On the evening of November 14, 2008, Teish and Mark received a call from a friend telling them about a house party not far from where they lived. After they arrived in their car, many (but not all) guests at the party started shouting homophobic/transphobic insults at them, mostly about their sexual orientation. Teish and Mark were stunned as they sat in the front seat of the car.

One of the people shouting insults, Dwight DeLee, a 20-year-old man they didn't know, is alleged to have approached the car with a .22 rifle and shot once at Teish and Mark. Mark, in the driver's seat, got a surface wound, but the bullet passed through to Teish and hit her in the chest. Mark was able to drive to the hospital as Teish was dying. They told each other they loved one another. Teish was pronounced dead at the hospital.

The trial of Dwight DeLee is coming up on July 13 in Syracuse. It will be tried with a hate crime attachment, although in a cruel twist, Teish will be referred to by her birth name, Moses Cannon, because the NY State hate crime statute only covers crimes against sexual orientation, not gender expression or identity. In a sense, Teish will have her transwoman identity stripped away from her. The generally conservative Syracuse media has repeatedly referred to Teish as a "man" and used her birth name and male pronouns even though, in her life, she identified as a transsexual woman and everyone referred to her as Teish and used female pronouns when referring to her.

Sadly, this case has received a minimal amount of media coverage both within the LGBT community and mainstream media. It is every bit as important a hate crime as those perpetrated against Matthew Shephard and Gwen Araujo but, sadly, most of the numerous murders against African-American transwomen (and there were many such murders in 2008) tend to be under-reported, often unsolved and under-prosecuted.

This outrage cannot continue and our community cannot allow Teish's murder to be swept under the rug. I've created a Facebook site to publicize the case, the trial and as a memorial to Teish's life. I welcome all of you to join it and to spread the word in the two weeks we have left before the trial begins. You can reach the site by clicking here or you can Google "Justice for Teish."

Via gudbuytjane.livejournal.com

Call for action: www.tranny-alert.com
From www.tranny-alert.com . This is not just appropriative or transphobic, it directly threatens the safety and privacy of trans women:

In light of the murders of trans women such as Gwen Araujo, Angie Zapata and others, it is indefensible to run a website that requests readers submit photos of trans women (or people they've read as trans women) without their consent and publicly out them. This site threatens the safety of every person they post a photo of. Please spread the word and take action.

Please contact www.tranny-alert.com and let them know this is NOT okay.
The site appears to be hosted via Blogger, so please enter a complaint against their hate speech and endangerment of the lives of trans women.
Please Twitter about it with the #trannyalertfail hash tag.
Please send complaints about their Facebook page .

ETA: To enter a complaint at Blogger, follow this link: http://help.blogger.com/bin/request.py?contact_type=hate_speech&blog_URL=http://trannyalert.blogspot.com/ (Thanks queersubversion!)

ETA2: TrannyAlert's response on Twitter : "Wow people really need to get a fucking sense of humor."

ETA3: If you have access please post about this on LJ trans communities, as this account isn't a member of any of them (and will have to wait for approval to post, etc.).

- gudbuytjane

 You can go here, http://tinyurl.com/n34flk

to file a direct complaint to Blogger against this blog, you can also do it as many times as you like so please try to do it as much as you can so as to draw attention!  Thanks!

There has been a lot of talk on this blog lately about trans issues, and how they relate to feminism more generally. There has also been a lot of tension – should cis women get involved? What level of ignorance or knowledge should be expected? In light of this, as a trans woman I have some questions to pose, this time, specifically for the cis women here. I want to gain a better feel for what people think, and how you feel about things.

Should trans issues be an integral part of this space? Feminism more generally currently holds to the idea that promoting trans rights is an important part of the feminist movement. However, it has frequently been my experience that movements (such as feminism and GLB) frequently invite trans people in, only to then tell us to wait our turn while matters more personal to the majority of the movement get their own issues sorted out. In some ways, this is perfectly fair. My attitude towards this sort of reaction has always been “you don't have to help us, but if you're not gong to, then please, stay out of our way.”

Promising us safe space and then not providing it is getting in the way (we could be at other blogs instead). Building an expectation that certain issues can be freely discussed, and then being unwilling to discuss them, gets in the way. I appreciate that cis women are oppressed in many way, but I am not willing to sit back and ignore my own issues until these are resolved. At the same time, I don't want to be getting in the way of anyone else doing the same.

This is a feminist blog. As such, certain knowledge and views are expected (ie: a basic understanding of offensive vs respectful terms, rape, patriarchy, etc.) Obviously, this is not true of all topics. If I thought that some topic in say, thermodynamics was relevant – I would expect that most readers knew next to nothing about it.

So, should trans issues be part of the expected knowledge at this blog? Should a basic acceptance that trans women ARE women, and trans men ARE men be expected? Or do you feel that this is simply not the place for it? And, out of curiosity, do you feel that only trans women are a part of feminism, or are trans men as well? And, why?

Please, don't feel nervous about commenting anything – I want to know how people really feel.

From Choice Words

March 8th is International Women’s Day. This year’s global  theme   is “women and men united to end violence against women and girls.”

An internationally recognized day to focus on violence against women is absolutely vital; women and girls experience a  staggering amount   of violence around the world. My generation has grown up during the backlash against feminism; we’ve been told all the important work had been done and feminism was no longer necessary. So we need a day to remember just how wrong this is.

One way feminists have responded to the backlash is by deliberately opening up the movement, actively demonstrating that the battle against oppression of women can and should involve everyone. Thus this year’s theme of “women and men united,” an overt attempt to show that anti-violence advocates include men and that they want more men involved in this work.

But “women and men” is not the universalizing phrase many treat it as being. Framing International Women’s Day using the compulsory gender binary excludes all of us who do not fit; gender non-conformists the world over whose identities fall outside an incredibly limited conception of gender where there are only two options. And, in excluding gender non-conformists, I fear this year’s theme also excludes many who experience violence against women.

In patriarchal cultures violence against women is violence against people who have failed to be men. When power has been deliberately concentrated in male hands and men have positioned themselves as the norm, women experience violence because they are treated as an other, as less than. Less worthy of life, less worthy of choice, less worthy of bodily autonomy. Women’s consent is deemed unnecessary, their cries of pain ignored because they are seen as less than human.

There are many people, including too many women, who experience violence because of their failure to be men but who also fail to fit a definition of woman rigidly defined as those who were identified female at birth, self-identity as female and also dress a certain way, speak a certain way, move a certain way, desire a certain way. In fact, failure to fit perfectly into the woman box also leads to violence.

Transgender women experience a disproportionate amount of identity based violence. This year on the  Transgender Day of Remembrance   we commemorated the lives and mourned the deaths of  too many people , those whose names and stories we know, those who we do not, who were killed because they failed to fit someone else’s conception of the compulsory gender binary. Many of the people on this list are transwomen of color, a group for whom the intersections of racism, sexism, and transphobia play out in catastrophic ways.

We remembered  Angie Zapata , a transwoman who was beaten to death in her own home with her own fire extinguisher because she did not fit Allen Ray Andrade’s definition of woman. Angie was 19. We remembered  Lawrence King , who was shot and killed because he wore jewelry, women’s clothing, high heels, and makeup, failing to fit Brandon McInerney’s definition of a boy. Larry was 15. We remembered too many others to list here, and many more of them were young people.

In what could potentially be a landmark decision, retired Army colonel Diane Schroer will finally have her day in court Tuesday, in a case that could set a precedent for federal transgender anti-discrimination laws. Schroer is a retired US Army colonel, who, after 25 years of service, including going to Ranger school and being Special Forces qualified, applied for a job as a terrorism analyst with the Library of Congress. After accepting the job, she came out to her future boss that she was transitioning, and the offer was withdrawn.