Let’s face facts.
We are all human and we have limited levels of effort and energy to put into things. Activists are no different. An activist will be unable to address every issue in the world, no matter how worthy, due to these energy constraints.
Feminism is, in and of itself, a specialization of egalitarianism (the concept that all peoples should be equal, none should be granted inherent privilege over others and marginalization should be eliminated) concentrating on issues and inequalities of gender.
But while we’re facing facts, let’s face another fact. Specialization as a concept is a system that requires compartmentalization to work. Things need to be separated conceptually in order for specialization to be applicable. So to be entirely honest, specializations of egalitarianism tend to either fail to achieve their aims or not truly be specialized. Because of Kyriarchy. The concept of kyriarchy is both intensely simple and irritatingly complex. It is simple in that conceptually it encompasses the entirety of what egalitarianism fights against. Namely intersecting lines of hegemonic dominance that privilege those with some characteristics over those with other characteristics, in shifting axes of privilege and marginalization that overlap and interlace like nasty little threads (think of it as a “Tapestry of Fuckery”). The irritatingly complex part of this is how many of these threads there are, how they interlace and the sheer complicated bullshit that arises from trying to deal with it. One can literally have several hundred privilege axes and several marginalization axes and have to navigate through this quagmire of privilege while still fighting against their marginalization, all at the same time. It poses difficulties. So, most specializations of egalitarianism either aren’t specialized at all (and try to tackle the entirety of kyriarchy) or specialize, forgetting that there is no compartmentalization of intersectionality (they always overlap and interlace), and fail to even achieve their own ends of fighting the axis of marginalization that hurts their people (since other intersections invariably shift and worsen the effects of that particular axis, and sometimes even changing the damage it does).
But this is less about movements and more about people. Namely the specializations of individuals within a movement on various zones within a given axis or given set of axes of oppression. And here is where things really fundamentally fall apart in their logic. Dancing Grapes is running into the same problem that a huge number of feminists are running into and the fundamental failing of the entire movement in terms of kyriarchy. And that is the lack of realization that axes of marginalization are not compartmentalized and separate. I’m not picking on Dancing Grapes here, she’s been excellent about asking questions and exploring where her mistakes and issues are in this zone. And she’s shown her mistakes visibly, allowing a critique that can now be used to help others repair this issue in their own worldview. Let’s have an example.
Notice this quote:
But I can’t do everything, I can do some things. I still have to live in this world, in this society. I still have to use gas to get to work, and can’t always afford organic, and I can’t go to every rally. But I spend my day job working against Gender Violence. Specifically Domestic and Sexual Violence. I work really hard against Gender Violence, and I spend a lot of time thinking and learning about it – but I still don’t understand everything even in my little segment of the movement. And I know I know less about trans rights and disability and race and orientation. I’ve had varying exposure to each, but I feel like my role is to realize how little I know about each and to respect those who know more to lead the way.
It seems reasonable on the surface right? She specializes on “Domestic and Sexual Violence” and doesn’t have time for “Trans issues”. Well here’s the problem, Domestic and Sexual Violence on gender lines IS a “Trans Issue”. In fact it’s a disability issue, a race issue, a class issue, etc etc etc. And this is because trans issues, disability issues, race issues, class issues and etc are not separate, compartmentalized issues from gender issues. These intersections inform each others’ effects, adjust them, shift them, change the impact, increase the damage and change the ways they can be dealt with. In other words you are not addressing gender violence if you’re only addressing it for cis, white, upper class, abled women. Literally, you have failed to specialize in any meaningful way (or you have accidentally “specialized” yourself in a privileged and bigoted way). She does have one part of specialization correct, and that’s the specific issue zone to be handled. Domestic and Sexual Violence is an appropriate specialization, while it is caused, influenced and in turn causes and influences other realms of marginalization within feminism’s purview, the interlacing of these things is not as deep and entangled as intersection. Rape culture, objectification and bodily ownership can cause and influence DV/SV. But they do not interlace. They can be compartmentalized in terms of effort and still be functional. You literally cannot compartmentalize intersections without completely defeating the aims of egalitarianism (which is, presumably, the whole reason anyone gets into feminism or any other activism movement. Equality for all).
So what this comes out to be in the end, is that specialization being used as a reason for not being knowledgeable of intersection or mindful of it in one’s activism is wrong and wholly indicative of a lack of comprehension of how marginalization works in the first place. (Or alternately, it’s being used as an excuse to defend bigotry or to remain in ignorance of one’s bigoted actions. This does happen and generally is much harder to address due to the hostile nature of excusers and apologists) It is also entirely self defeating in egalitarian terms because in the end what this pseudospecialization means is that instead of seeking equality, you are merely seeking to add yet another group to the privileged groups, essentially stepping on the necks of those with more intersections just to elevate those without them. This is completely unacceptable for anyone who professes (and actually does) seek out equality as an activist. Really, it’s unacceptable always, but anyone who truly seeks equality would find such an issue in their efforts specifically unacceptable to themselves personally and seek to change it.
Privileging some over the many is not activism. Nor is it specialization. And if you’re trying to or inadvertently “specializing” intersections out of your activism, that is exactly what you are doing. Privileging some while the rest drown.
So if you’re making this mistake, now is the time to fix it.
Filed under: activism | Leave a Comment
Tags: ableism, cissexism, feminism, intersection, issues, kyriarchy, marginalization, privilege, society, specialization
I don’t often write posts like this. Usually things have an activist slant. Or they’re more general. Or even when they deal with me personally, I’m writing it after I’ve already mostly figured it out and have some advice to offer. Normally I save stuff where I’ve got no clue and I’m reeling for dreamwidth (and other venues that I talk about personal things at).
But sometimes, those small, insular zones aren’t really enough. Sometimes something ridiculous happens and you have the widen the net because now you need advice, or support or just knowing someone else is going through the same thing. Because now you’re grasping and scared and you feel completely screwed. It’s one of those times for me now.
It’s been a rough week.
Some background for the uninitiated. I am a poly individual in a V shape relationship. I’m on one of the V ends. My partner (a nonbinary trans person, hence the pronoun “they”) is the V tip. The other part of the V is long distance and has been somewhat hard to contact lately (nothing I’m going into detail on or even know enough to speak on, that’s their business.) so it’s just been us two handling life lately. My partner and I, we both have disabilities in different zones. I have fairly severe Attention Deficit Disorder, steadily worsening problems with badly fallen arches, semi chronic back pain (possibly caused by this arches, the doctors, back when I could afford them were somewhat clueless on the cause of my back problems), past trauma that impacts my mental state (no clue if I have PTSD or something similar), possible Seasonal Affective Disorder (and no money for a sunlamp) and I have been getting consistently more frequent serious migraines (yanno, the kind that literally put you out of commission for 6 hours and have auras the day before that put one fairly close to out of commission). My bodily dissonance as a trans woman isn’t something I’d call a disability, but it certainly drops an extra bit of fuckery on top of the pile. My partner has a massive chronic pain thing going on (diagnosed fibro but it might be Ehlers-Danlos syndrome instead), they have schizotypal personality disorder (with the psychosis component), trigger finger, IBS (like mine), lactose intolerance and also may be dealing with something akin to PTSD (as well as migraines here and there). They’ve also got bodily dissonance that fluxes and changes. I’m not going into as much detail for them because I don’t experience things on their end and I’m not the best to talk about what they go through.
Normally, we get by. We get by pretty well. Provided we stick with the diet restrictions, usually we just switch off when one is a bit more able to get things done than the other. Chores basically go to whomever is in less pain at the time, or in less of a bad mental state or who can actually do them reliably without issue (like me defocusing and being unable to even read a recipe because I can’t keep on it). Usually even when the chronic shit we deal with is flaring the other one is just dealing with the baseline of the chronic shit for them, and the other disabilities coming up are all spread out over time.
Not this week though.
This week was the perfect storm of flare ups, semi chronic appearances and stress induced aggravations of all of the various things we deal with on a regular basis. While my partner fought off a pain flare, struggling just to walk, I was nailed with a “Richter 7″ migraine. Auras the day before so severe (nausea, nearly threw up in the supermarket, disorientation, hallucinations, shakiness and weakness) that they rivaled the loss of functionality I faced when the full tilt migraine hit (I couldn’t even operate a phone or make coherent sentences the pain was so intense) the next day, heralded by my more normal blind spots and colored swirl vision aura. The hits did not stop. Each of us got these coordinated flare ups that all happened at the absolute worst possible time that just drained us of even more of the already tiny reserves of spoons we both had left. For the first time in my life, I actually had to drag a chair into the kitchenette area to cook because I couldn’t stay standing for long enough to do anything to make a meal, before the migraine pitched me over from the pain. My partner had to clean dishes with heavy bursts of pain from trigger finger and the EDS/fibro all over because I couldn’t stop crying and shaking when I tried to do them myself (the seasonal depression has seriously wrecked me this week, I’m not sure how I’m gonna get through winter classes when they start).
And those were just the things that we dragged ourselves painfully to finish. Endurance resources ran out more often than not and shit just didn’t get done. Dishes piled high, meals were delayed as long as possible because neither of us could manage to make them and neither of us would allow the other one to put themselves through the ridiculous pain, misery and/or trial by fire to make food. Health vetos weren’t terribly useful since we were both doing so badly that the other could easily make a case to veto the first’s self sacrificial attempt to protect the second’s health and so on. The worst part of all this was how, pushing ourselves way past the point that we ever should, just cuz these things needed to get done, meant that we burned out quickly, had to rest or fell apart and then the other one would have to take up the torch and do the exact same thing. The shit cycle only really ended today (mostly, as in today was when my partner health vetoed my washing the dishes because I started crying uncontrollably in the middle of doing so) or at the least, has lowered in its fucked oscillations enough that we can both breathe a little again and maybe take some time to recover.
Things like this, where Murphy’s Law plays havoc on our lives with our disabilities, really really stresses the hell out of me. Times like this where we’re both in so much pain that neither of us have the spoons to comfort or help the other are times when the frustration with my own disabilities mounts to its highest point. I hate that someone I love is in pain and I can’t even hold them or hug them because moving makes me feel like I’m gonna throw up and that my head is in a vice, and if that blindfold falls off, light will slice into my eyes like daggers so I can’t even see them to hug them. I hate that they feel guilty and broken (similar to how I feel) due to their own pain and disabilities because I’m hurting and they hate watching me hurt when they can’t help. It’s a whole other kind of pain, different from the unrelenting headcrush of a migraine, the dull ache of depression, (presumably different from) the slashing pain of joints falling apart or the stress of not being able to walk and wondering if this flare is a sign of more permanent loss of mobility. Sitting on the chair, horrified, wondering if it was going to be a permanent fixture for cooking still doesn’t compare to watching someone I love hold me in their arms, trying to comfort me, while tears of pain are in the corners of their eyes from their own disabilities. I imagine it’s much the same for them when I try to hold back those tears of pain while holding them close.
Times like this drain me. They drain me so deeply and completely. And they are not rare. Not common but still not rare. I wish they would never happen at all. It’s hard knowing too, that a lot of people will read this post and go, “good god, that’s awful, I can’t imagine being in that situation” and being completely unable to relate. These people don’t realize or don’t grasp that this is our life. That sometimes you just want to curl in a corner and disappear because it’s so goddamn hard and you have no idea how you’re gonna get through the next hour. That sometimes you have to only think to the next task that you have to finish because if you think about how many things lie between you and getting home where you can collapse and finally rest (like a car ride, it’s terrifying hell on earth driving while in a major migraine aura), you’ll never be able to finish anything and will never get home. That sometimes you grit your teeth through the pain, wipe away the tears and do something that’ll take a few days to recover from, because someone you love would go through the same horrible thing if you didn’t do those things.
That is life for us. That’s what we deal with. Sometimes it’s as bad as this. Other times it’s easier. But through it all, especially during times like this, I really have to wonder how the hell I live through it. How anyone does. Because I know there’s other folk out there experiencing the same or worse.
Sometimes I just need someone to tell me it’ll all be okay, even when we know that it’s anything but.
Writing this is cleansing though. Letting it all out. My frustration, my stupid really wrong self loathing for not being able to handle this stuff better, how draining these perfect storms and Murphy’s Law explodefests are. I needed to get this out. Needed to tell someone, anyone that yeah, sometimes it’s all way too much and we survive by pure will, luck and just fighting for every goddamn step towards getting a break. And yeah, that’s not some unusual, abnormal tragedy. That’s life for me with disabilities in a relationship where you both have disabilities. Just needed to get it out.
I’m gonna go lay down now and try to recover a little more.
Filed under: personal | 9 Comments
Tags: disability, family, medical, PWD, relationships
This post has been guest posted at Harlot’s Parlour
Chasers. Admirers. Fetishists.
Words that often create a very emotional response from trans folk and many other groups for whom such things apply to. If you’re not in the know (and you probably aren’t, considering my audience) there’s a bit of explaining to do here. Let’s start with attraction.
Attraction (physical or conceptual) is, quite simply, a tendency towards sexual arousal or interest towards a given set of physical traits or a given set of conceptual traits. This tendency is almost always inherent to the individual, sometimes functions in a fluid fashion (but not always) and often results in physical and psychological effects when triggered by being in the presence of, in contact with, or in the position to notice an individual with these traits. This may not occur if traits that would constitute a “turn off” are present on the other person (something that either causes revulsion or simply reduces any sexual interest without causing revulsion). And only if the individual in question has turn offs. Not all people do.
Yes, I know, it sounds a little bit cold and science-y. But that really is the best way to describe it. All it is happens to be what sparks sexual interest. It can be parts of a body or it can be concepts orientated around a person. Your attraction triggers could include someone’s conceptual existence as a goth, or round perky breasts. You could be interested in folk who sing beautifully or in feet. There are certain accepted zones of attraction. These are called orientations and tend to be erasing to other attractions (fetishphobia/kinkphobia) and largely cissexist and binarist in their organization conceptually (as I’ve pointed out in this post). Then there are mostly ignored conceptual attractions (like being attracted to goths) that are pushed into personal taste, despite being as personal, as inherent and as major a part of one’s attraction as orientation. And then there are the attractions that are not accepted (but in varying degrees) and those are fetishes (and in the worst cases, paraphilias). Now, attractions are not wrong. In fact they are never wrong. They are simply a naturalistic part of many human minds, present in all but those who are asexual (no attraction type, not asexuals with no sex drive, they may still have attractions). There are some attractions that are a serious problem for the individual, for instance, pedophiles have an attraction that will invariably lead to rape if they act on it (due to children not being able to consent) but even in those cases, the attraction isn’t the bad thing, the actions are. And there are some attractions wherein the concepts are dangerous for the attracted party, like certain fetishes wherein one is eaten by another. Cannibalism basically. Engaging in sex based on that attraction could get one killed. Rape/surrender of control fantasies are risky because if you’re with someone who doesn’t care if you need to stop, you will likely actually get raped. Most dangerous attractions can be circumvented with simulation, which doesn’t actually invoke the dangerous or problematic aspect, just fools one’s arousal with simulations and faking of the triggers. So even in those cases, the attractions aren’t a problem, provide an adequate simulation and outlet can be found.
So attraction itself is simple and not really subject to ethical quandary.
This includes attractions to marginalized folks. Yes, there are attractions to marginalized folks. Every body type, likely even every concept can be an attraction trigger. In my case, there are folk out there that find the mixture of certain bodily traits on me very attractive. I have a penis, breasts, a curvy body, a minimum of body hair and no vagina. Some individuals find me attractive. Some of those individuals who do, refer to themselves as chasers/admirers/fetishists.
And here’s where things get sticky (that was not a sex joke, fuck off). You see, the attraction itself is not the issue. It never is. What is the issue are the things that surround the attraction, the attracted person and the person who is attractive to them. These things are referred to here as a Sexual Culture. Sexual Cultures are a combination of cultural elements, social trainings and ideologies that orientate themselves around sex, usually in a given context. A puritanical sexual culture is one wherein all forms of sex are evil except for one and only done in certain situations. BDSM sexual culture is one wherein the policies of the ethical system of RACK (risk aware consensual kink) rule every interaction and any that are not ruled by RACK are labeled abuse and struck down. Sexual Cultures are where stereotypes about sex, dating rules, sex rules, sexual conduct guidelines, sexual philosophies and the way that people are treated comes from when it comes to sex.
This exists everywhere. Rape culture theory in feminism? It’s a description of the Sexual Culture of straight cis men. This sexual culture is one that takes the wholly harmless attraction to women (usually cis in that context, cuz feminism fails at accounting trans stuff, even though rape culture affects trans women worse usually) and piles on objectification, bodily ownership, bodies constructed as worth less, sexual violence and a host of other awfulness. The attraction to women is not the problem, the problem is the Sexual Culture around it.
So too does this apply to chasers and attraction to trans women (and the lesbian community’s fetish for trans men and possibly even FAAB nonbinaries). I can’t speak too much on fetishes for nonbinaries in general as I’m not familiar with most of what they deal with. Same with trans guys (luckily others have gone in depth on the topic like on this link). So I will be discussing the Sexual Culture of Chasers/Admirers and folks who are attracted to us but don’t id as chasers/admirers. I may also make some references to the Sexual Culture of Devotees (or individuals who are attracted to people with disabilities that do not id as devos) due to my own disabilities. If you want more in depth material on this topic in relation to disability you should read the FWD post by meloukhia on it. Another source on devotees and the PWD community can be found here However, the concepts are more or less the same for these two groups (and presumably, this may even be able to be extended to fetishes for POC and fat individuals, but as I possess white privilege and thin privilege I am not in a position to say much on those two topics.) so you can safely extend what I’m discussing here to the Devotee Sexual Culture as well.
One of the things you’ll notice in the posts above is a laundry list of awful, objectifying shit done to PWD by some of these folks (picture stealing, pushing for sexual stuff before trying to get to know the person, etc). A similar laundry list exists for many Chasers. The oppositional assumption on our parts goes a bit off the wall however as most will assume that simply possessing the attraction in question is enough to make someone a creepy objectifying asshole (something the second post linked goes into). This is a flawed assumption, due to the fact that attractions aren’t what causes objectification, Sexual Culture is. Much like how some radical feminists will assume that any cis man attracted to cis women (once again erasing trans folk, yay unradical feminism) will invariably objectify her by the mere fact that she is marginalized and he is privileged. The power dynamic is certainly a problem and not being mindful of it can create serious problems for partnerships wherein one or more individuals are privileged and one or more of the other individuals are marginalized on the same axis. But this doesn’t necessarily mean one will objectify the other(s). Much like with straight cis men vs. women (cis or trans, of any attraction type), devotees and chasers only can become objectifiers if the Sexual Culture they are steeped in is an objectifying culture and they allow themselves to be influenced by it.
And this is not assured.
Now that we have the reflexive assumptions handled let’s talk about how objectification finds it’s way into these groups (and yes it is out there) The Sexual Culture of a group that is attracted to a marginalized group is often subject to the same dehumanizing elements of the primary culture it exists in that causes the marginalization of the group in question. Cis men have cis male privilege and participate in the culture that marginalizes all women (and does so even worse to trans women). Their sexual culture has been influenced by this primary culture, adopting the dehumanization, worth loss, public ownership, removal of agency and exploitation that all women face (trans or cis, although trans gets nailed harder due to the intersection of womanhood and transness). So too does this apply to the sexual cultures of Devotees and Chasers/Admirers alike. PWD and trans folk are subjected to dehumanization, worth loss, public ownership, exploitation, removal of agency, construction as having wrong bodies and construction as being irrelevant just through the standard function of the primary society that these groups all operate in. These forces exert an influence (sometimes a very strong one) on the Sexual Culture. In turn, the influenced Sexual Culture can take on these aspects, which are made intensely worse by the fact that the Sexual Culture is orientated around sex (wherein loss of agency, dehumanization and etc creates a Rape Culture because these things translate to ridiculously harmful sexual involvements when sex is thrown in). So bam, just like with het cis guys and women, these cultures spill over folks attracted to PWD and folks attracted to trans women. Which means that these folk (just like het cis guys) have an uphill battle to fight against a culture that tries to drown them in the idea that we’re all just sexual objects.
This is not helped by the number of devotees and chasers (I don’t have exact numbers, so I can’t say if it is a minority or a majority. Most likely, somewhere in the middle) that give into this social training (or absorb it unawares) and become creepy stalker fuckjobs or exploitative assholes. These folks not only marginalize the hell out of us, engaging in exploitative, boundary ignoring behavior that at best is stalkeresque and creepy and at worst involves rape and violence, they also create a very strong fear of anyone having the attraction in our group (as per the assumptions made above). Because let’s face it, many of the creepy asshole types in these fetish groups will try to abuse sex positive views and twist the situation into a question of attraction, while trying to push the eyes off of their just utterly awful behavior. This fucks things up fairly badly for the folks who aren’t creepy at all and still id as the group in question. And this is an issue in and of itself. Individuals attracted to PWD and individuals attracted to trans women are often regarded as sick, fucked up or wrong somehow. Which isn’t good for them and it’s pretty damn bad for us too. It constructs our bodies and us as undesirable (both PWD and trans folk face this) and anyone that does is broken somehow. The creepy fuckjobs who infest these groups and thrive due to the problematic Sexual Culture of the group further enforce this idea of an attraction to my body as being broken (which further stigmatizes my body, just a giant clusterfuck everywhere) because they act so awful that we start practicing oppositionalism just to protect ourselves.
You really do get into a habit of flipping out when you hear the word chaser or admirer. That protective shell builds when someone gets the “omg that’s hot” look in their eyes when they find out you’re trans. That protective shell is even thicker if you’ve been stalked, had pictures stolen, or even was exploited, abused or raped by a possible chaser type (as I was). And this has an effect, just like in the linked comment, the solution Goldfish offered to the friend in question was to not identify as a devotee. Because the name itself, the identity associated with the attraction is in and of itself stigmatized now because of this oppositionalism and because of the creepy fucks who claim the title. Same with chasers. I mean, let’s face facts. If someone came up to me and said, “hey, I know you’re trans and I find that really attractive, I’m an Admirer” my alarms would go off and my walls would go up really quick, unless I knew the person well and knew they weren’t one to objectify me. But the solution really isn’t for them to find a new name. Identity is a tough thing to drop and really the identity isn’t the problem. The problem is that they are steeped in this very bad culture that creates some very bad apples and those apples subsequently go out and make our lives a living hell. Oppositionalism doesn’t really solve this, it also doesn’t really protect us. The really creepy fucks will just pretend not to be chasers at all if they really want to manipulate us. Putting guards everywhere to keep out folks with a given id will not fix that.
So what do we, as marginalized people, do? What should they, as those who are attracted to us, do?
Well for one, it isn’t our responsibility to fix the people who hurt us and subsequently clear the names of the people who don’t hurt us but are associated with those people who do. In fact, our only responsibility is to be mindful of the actual risks and dangers and to avoid stigmatizing ourselves to ourselves. So we need to learn to carefully separate attraction from objectification so that we’re no longer asserting that finding our bodies attractive is some awful horrible thing. That’s the only thing left to do. We aren’t obligated to trust folk as, after all, none of you wear signs. So handling the conceptual end of it and preventing our bodies being further construed as wrong, broken or bad is where our work ends.
The majority of the work falls to those who are in these communities, who id this way, to clean up their own houses. What does this mean? Ethical Devotees and Ethical Admirers, the folks who just have an attraction and are decent folk, who don’t objectify and love the person not just the body or concept, have the job of cleaning up their respective communities. This entails many of the same things that cis heterosexual men have to do to avoid objectifying and hurting women (cis or trans) in general. I’ll give it to you all in a list:
So to ethically minded Devotees, Admirers, Chasers and other fetishists, this is what you need to do to clean house and clear the names of your communities, while clearing the harmful objectifiers from your ranks and avoiding becoming one yourself:
1: Be Mindful of Privilege: There is a very unequal power dynamic in any relationship you have with the folk you’re attracted to. Work to compensate for it. Work to comprehend what advantages you have and avoid invoking them. Make sure that this mindfulness is an expected trait in your community. Understand that as a cissexual and/or cisgendered and/or currently abled person you may be regarded as a danger to us because we can’t determine who’s who among folk. So be cautious and be respectful.
2: Fight The Culture: Boycott the websites that steal pictures of folks with disabilities or take unwanted pictures of trans folk and display them. Speak out against objectifying behavior and stress the importance of safety, consensual involvement, love, empathy, safe words and the dangers of privilege. Call out problematic statements and actions by your devotee or chaser peers. If you know a friend in your community who goes into support group chats or goes to activist and support conventions to troll for a quick fuck, call him, her or hir out. Make sure the community knows of that person’s bad actions and make sure that such a thing is not condoned.
3: Don’t Expect Cookies: Face it, it’ll be years before many of us will feel safe with fetishists. Many of us never will. In fact, some of us will likely always just be creeped out by your attractions (cuz of personal taste). And that’s even if you make huge strides in changing your Sexual Culture overnight. Chances are, there will still be static from folk on you for your attractions and ID, because this fear and disgust at the objectifiers has been building for a very long time. Not everyone is gonna wanna be your friend. Don’t push it. We do have a right to protect ourselves and since we can’t know who is trustworthy, if someone is creeped out by you or wants space, give them space. The more you push your way in with folks who already have reason to worry about your peers, the more you’ll end up coming across as one of the creepy ones and hurting your cause.
4: Be Mindful of Context: Having the hots for someone can sometimes make folks act stupid. I fall over myself when a cute girl is nearby, usually blushing and making words not function quite so well in my mouth. Folks who are used to being pursuers can sometimes come on too strongly and not think when they meet someone who really sparks them. Be mindful of where you are, who you’re talking to and other factors. You might be at a kink rally, lots of fetish minded people together, but that doesn’t mean everyone is going to have the same fetish as you. Assuming that a PWD or a trans woman at a table is going to be cool with you trying to go into scene with them or even swooping right in to ask them out is a bad call. It really comes down to the same sort of thing as regular dating. Get to know the person before you go for the sex. Unless you’re in a context where it’s basically an orgy party or something, and even then, considering the assholes who are your peers, you might still want to ask permission first.
5: Stop Bad Shit From Going Down: If you see someone creeping us out, acting fucked up or exploiting one of us, don’t let it continue. Step in and say, “hey, look, she doesn’t want to talk to you, back off” or “stop trying to touch him”. Or if you’re less confrontational take the offending individual aside and speak to them in private about their lack of tact and their creepy bullshit. Oftentimes apologizing on behalf of your peers goes a long way to reminding us that hey, there are ethical devotees and chasers out there, that aren’t giant douchebags. They’re also helpful to us cuz well, life is stressful for marginalized folk.
6: Be Mindful Of Our Feelings: Don’t say things like, “I love your people”, or “your kind is so hot to me”. That’s creepy, othering, privileged and just fucked up. We aren’t sex dolls. We aren’t walking porn. Treat us like people. And if you already do, make sure your peers do too. If we look uncomfortable, back off (or get your friend to back off). Don’t expect sex and don’t let your peers expect it either. A big portion of rape culture is entitlement and a lack of empathy. If you care about our feelings more than how much you want us in bed (or even just want to date us) you will be golden in avoiding going down the bad path. If we find your attractions creepy, don’t make a damn argument about it. It’s no different that being a little freaked out by bloodplay or scat (ew scat), different folk have different tastes and certain things just squick certain people. If you stick around and try to push us, you’re just adding to the problem. If one of us says, “get the fuck away from me”, go, “I’m sorry you feel that way. Bye.” and walk. Any other option will likely just add to the problem, stress us the fuck out (which we do not need as marginalized people) and make you look like a creepy doucheface.
7: Don’t Blame The Victims For Not Trusting Your Kind: Always remember too, it’s your peers who ruined this for you, not us. Cis het guys don’t have call to yell at girls who don’t trust them for being untrusting. The massive number of rapes done by guys, the abuse, the exploitation and the unwanted objectification done by het cis guys is why this is going on. Same for us. We’ve gotten stalked, our privacy has been invaded, some of us have been abused and even raped by people who have your same attractions and claim your same title. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t like them because there’s no way for us to know what you’re like at first or even second impressions (like mentioned on this post). So instead of pissing and moaning at us because we’re rightfully very scared, worried and apprehensive, handle your people, fix your group, clean house. Don’t expect us to endanger ourselves cuz you’re nice. That means you aren’t so nice after all.
8: Avoid And Stop Entitlement: In the end we’re people. We have agency, will and we make our own choices. We have our own wants, needs or desires. Those needs and desires may not include you. Get over this. And for those that are already good there, make sure your friends get over it too. Us being rare or unusual does not entitle anyone to sex with us, pictures of us or anything else. It does not entitle folks to stalk us or try to learn our address, real name, etc. It does not entitle folks to catcall or to walk up to us and say sexual things without even knowing our names. Don’t walk around as if you own us and if you don’t, make sure none of your peers do this too.
And that’s just the main ones. The fact is, folk being attracted to my body is a good thing overall. The disgust I see on the faces of lesbians and the hate from straight cis guys isn’t ever pleasant and I rarely feel sexually appealing or even nice looking. Someone finding my body type attractive is good and it’s a huge fucking shame that a whole mess of objectifying, creepy douchenozzles have to ruin that. Now, if you find it creepy that someone finds your body attractive, that’s fine too. I know for a lot of folks, they don’t want to have a mixture of traits or they’re working to treat whatever is causing their disability. That’s fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that many of us are not changing anything (non-ops, PWD who are happy as is, etc) and would like to be loved. I’m not ever gonna look at you and say, “oh god, you’re attracted to trans folk/PWD? You’re fucking disgusting.” There are certain fetishes that I find a little offputting (if you find my IBS sexy, that would be offputting because it involves poop and ew poop) but your attraction is not bad. What is bad is your peers (or you, if you’re not so ethical) acting creepy, not respecting us as people and doing exploitative, abusive or objectifying things without our agency, will and choice being honored. That is the problem. And it’s up to you to fight it.
Clean house. Clear your name by stopping the awfulness. And then maybe we can all enjoy the benefits of living in a world where everyone’s body has someone that can get that spark from it.
Filed under: activism | 27 Comments
Tags: ableism, cissexism, fetish, identity, kyriarchy, marginalization, objectification, orientation, PWD, rape culture, sexual culture, sexuality, transgender
I Will Not Forget Them – TDOR
This is a day that is hard for me.
But really, it is a day that is hard for all of us. The day that drives home the war we’re fighting, is one that has many causalities. That even those who aren’t fighting directly, who just try to live and love, are struck down by the hands of cis hatred, infecting the minds of cis folk everywhere.
There are years that I don’t even want to think about it. And there are years that I do the candlelight vigil and cry the whole day. And then there are years like this. Where I look at the lives of those lost, try to find their stories and think about our own.
Every one of us is precious, beautiful, amazing. Those who have been murdered and those who still yet live. Today is not a day for statistics. You can look those up yourself. You can see how many of us die through murder, how many more of us by percentage than nearly any other minority group and certainly more than the majority groups. You can grapple with that sobering, horrifying number on your own time. It’s your responsibility to.
No, today, we talk about the people. Those who lived. Those who loved. Those who were taken away. There are lists of those who were lost and pictures if they are available. Look into those eyes and try to imagine speaking to that person, loving that person, being that person. Some of you have lost someone already. A partner, a loved one, a dear friend, family, or perhaps other connections. Some of you already can celebrate their lives because you have direct access to the life they lived, the beauty they wrought in the world.
I am going to make a request of you. This blog is structured in a way that largely educates cis folk. I know that I have a notable cis readership. Well now, you have homework. Go out, research. Find one person who was lost. One of my sisters (or brothers or nonbinary siblings, as they are taken too). Find out everything you can about them. Don’t pry. Only public things. Things they offered to the world. Imagine them in real life. Imagine knowing them. Imagine losing them. And then celebrate their life.
Learn those stories. And always remember, someday, I could be on that list.
So celebrate their lives and celebrate ours. That’s what we’ll be doing.
I Will Never Forget.
Filed under: personal | 3 Comments
Tags: society, transgender
Update: Going over the comments and other suggestions, I’m finding that Currently Abled (CA) is so far the best one out of all (including better than CAB/M/S). Further comments should discuss CA as I’m no longer in favor of CAB/M or CAB/M/S over just CA.
There’s something that twigs me out a bit about the abbreviation TAB. But first, for those not in the know, let’s go over what it means.
It means Temporarily Able Bodied. It summarizes fairly well the counter situation to many PWD (Person/People With Disabilities). It stands for the group who are, temporarily, in a position of elevation over PWD folk socially (either through visible elevation or through simply not having to deal with what PWD with invisible disabilities have to deal with in attempting to avoid the bs from society). It also describes folk who don’t possess disabilities, in the simple sense, a classification tool used for discourse and community in the same way that PWD does.
It also explains the temporal nature of not possessing disabilities. It just takes an accident, a hidden genetic condition, even the steady movement of aging and really many other things to cause disabilities to accumulate for a person, removing TAB status and forcing one into the constructed list of bodies that are considered “wrong” or “broken”. Temporarily makes it clear that no, you may not be spared for very long, folk (ironically, even though it’s the marginalization that’s the easiest to get smacked with due to the temporal nature of being abled, it’s also one of the most frequently erased and ignored.)
But there is a flaw. A serious, even ableist flaw in the terminology. And that is what twigs me out.
Have you noticed it yet? Temporarily Abled Bodied. You might say, “well, I’m confused. I mean they are able bodied aren’t they? So they aren’t PWD, right?” But you see, the body is not the only aspect that can be temporarily abled. One who is PWD is simply so due to any kind of disability, mental or physical. So those who are entirely not PWD would be inherently abled body wise. But they would also be abled mind wise. Bodily disabilities are not the only disabilities out there. The mind is another area that can be subject to disability and the ableism that folks with mental disabilities; disorders, mental illness, brain injuries, neurological difference, atypical thought patterns and functionality and a host of other things face. This ableism shows itself in words like “idiot”, “crazy”, “insane”, “retarded” and the host of insults built around the autism spectrum and its cousins. This ableism shows itself in the erasure of the thoughts, hopes, mindsets, viewpoints and ideas of those with disabilities connected to the mind. It shows itself in the usage of disorder terminology by folk who don’t possess these disorders as a joke. “Haha I’m so ADD!” or “Oh geez, sorry, I’m so OCD.” or “Man that game was completely schizo”. It shows itself in the term TAB because there are PWD folk who are temporarily able bodied, just not temporarily able minded. The abbreviation constructs body as the only important aspect that can be abled or disabled and acts (probably unintentionally) in erasure of those who are PWD simply due to something like ADD/ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder), Autism, Aspergers, Schizophrenia, Bipolar, BPD (borderline personality disorder) LD-NOS (learning disability), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a host of other zones.
Then there’s the issue my partner pointed out when helping me proofread this post. Even temporarily is problematic. Some folk never have a disability. Aging doesn’t do too much to them in those terms and some folk have things calm down or disappear. “Currently” is the word being suggested to fix this, so I’m just going to slide that into the terms right now.
This is, obviously, a problem. And it’s one that’s very simple to solve. You see, the word CAB still has use. Folks with disability related to the mental aspect (but none for physical) will not face the same things that folk with disability related to the physical aspect will face (but none for the mental) and vice versa. CAB and CAM (currently able minded) would be perfectly applicable in discussions and discourse about the specific types of ableism that each group faces. But ultimately, the overall term that represents those who are not PWD in any way needs to represent the full spectrum of disability by including all the aspects that are subject to it. Body and Mind.
So I suggest this: Currently Able Bodied/Minded. Or CAB/M (alternately one could just say CABM but I like me some back slashes). I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect solution. Terminology tends to go through many evolutions of adjustment and editing to fit just right. But it’s a good step. Others have other suggestions: see the language note at the bottom. And that’s completely fine. But in the end, something needs to change. The terminology needs to be fixed. Because it is beyond important that the PWD community, one of the only really safe places for folks with disabilities in a world where most groups ignore us or hurt us, does not engage in even unintentional ableism towards its own. The last refuge for PWD folk should be a refuge for all PWD folk, intersection or primary line, either and any way.
So there it is. The case for CAB/M, instead of TAB (or even just CAB). I hope it catches on. I’m tired of half of my disabilities being ignored in the terms.
Filed under: activism | 48 Comments
Tags: ableism, CAB/M, disability, PWD, TAB, terminology
Most of you may know by now. I have Attention Deficit Disorder. Technically Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Inattentive Type, as the new DSM edits have revealed. I was diagnosed a while back, even medicated. I’m not currently as the stimulants trigger my IBS and I need a new diagnosis to get back on any med, even a non stimulant due to complications from being trans (the doctor who has the records doesn’t know and I risk myself by revealing to him.) Oh yeah, I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome too.
I’ve been dealing with this for most of my life, maybe all of it. School was rough, basic tasks were rough, hell life was rough because of it. Still is. Focusing on basic things, on everyday life things like chores, eating and maintaining stuff like even this blog is a constant battle. I fight a fog in my head, a thick, unyielding obscurement constantly, the defocusing which makes it all but impossible to hold myself to a single task for any period of time without bouncing to something else all while not even realizing what just happened. And then there’s the entrapping web of hyperfocusing. One single thing pulls my attention so hard, as the light switch of my focus is flipped to all the way on, and I lose everything else around me: Pain, verbal communication, other tasks, people, etc. Everything disappears as I zero in.
ADD is when the dimmer switch of attention, one’s ability to defocus or focus harder, modulating what one works on, multitasking, focusing deeply or just kinda scattering oneself when there’s nothing important to do doesn’t work so hotly. Sometimes doesn’t work at all. I don’t have the most severe of ADD I’ve seen but I also have it pretty damn bad.
The IBS on the other hand is a stress and food trigger based spasming of the intestines. It can cause intense, mind breaking pain, sudden and violent bouts of sickness (the unpleasant kind where you do an evil kind of number 2 that burns like napalm) and sometimes follows no rhyme or reason in terms of food triggers because of the stress component. There’s no treatment that I know of. It constantly drags me down, affecting my diet, my eating habits and how I function with the pain. Having a reaction (what I call my IBS attacks) shuts me down. The pain is often severe enough that I start to become incoherent at times, it certainly fogs my thoughts when in a reaction.
Fun of intersections comes up especially with the IBS because when it hits I generally have to find a bathroom quickly to stop the pain. You all remember that I’m a trans woman right? Bathrooms are a deadly game of Russian Roulette for me and for that reason they terrify me. IBS gives me no choice though, no matter what the risk. I either get to a bathroom or the pain puts me out of commission completely.
I’ve faced a lot of static because of these things. People give me problems about what I can eat and my diet restrictions due to the IBS, as though it’s their job to advise me on how to deal with that. People love to tell me how similar their inability to focus on work sometimes is exactly like my ADD. People really seem to enjoy telling me that I’m just “lazy”, “ditzy”, “unmotivated”, or that I’m not thinking positive enough or have the will to focus on things or break out of the hyperfocusing. People really seem to like to say, “hey I get sick from food sometimes too” or “sometimes stress makes me feel ill too”.
My dad, whom you’re all already aware is a giant transphobic douchebag, was the worst with the ADD. He’s fine about IBS (he actually has it himself), although for some godawful reason he thinks my IBS made me trans through the pain. >.< Goddamn wire chewer. But the ADD he’s the worst about. I got the most accusations of laziness and unmotivated from him. I got the sarcasm when I finished things when I pulled off focusing. He probably didn’t believe that it was even real until the change caused by the medication. And then when I got off it he constantly pushed it on me. He also did this to my mom, who has the same disorder. Because, you see, to so many the way my mind works is “broken”, “disordered”, “wrong” and needs to be “solved” and “cured”. To so many I’m broken and incapable of living life. To so many I’m a tragic figure and not even because I’m trans but because I live in pain a lot of the time and have to put a whole lot more effort into the basics for focusing and disengaging. These attitudes are part of a world of bigotry that is largely invisible and largely accepted among society even in progressive spaces like feminism, much like transphobia is. This might all sound familiar.
This is ableism.
And it’s about time that I admit that I have disabilities. That I’m PWD (a person with disabilities). And let me tell you, writing this post is abjectly terrifying. I’ve been in this sort of state of nail biting fear pretty much ever since this site came into being and made me think about some really scary questions about myself and the things I live with. I thought to myself, disability isn’t what I have, I don’t have it nearly as bad as Person A, B, C, D or E with Aspect G, H, I or J. I told myself, “I’m just being whiny, I’m searching for attention.”
I made up excuses, “the ADD isn’t disabling enough to really adopt that title”, “I’ve never heard of anyone referring to IBS as a disability, so it’s probably not, right?”, “I’m taking away time and attention and resources from people who need it far more than me”.
Finally I cut through the bullcrap and got to the reality of why I didn’t want this title. I was scared. Terrified. Shaking. Intersections are scary because their effects are exponential. Are you a woman? You face a given set of awful shit by simple virtue of being a woman. Are you a trans person? You face a given set of awful shit by simple virtue of being trans. Are you both? You face far more than just the summation of those things. The transphobia and misogyny (combined we call it transmisogyny) swirl together and create a breeding ground for a hatred so vile and vitriolic that even fully avowed feminists of the highest caliber will start to spout truly sexist and vile misogynistic shit at you as though they were a Tucker Max mind clone. Mix race in there? Super fucked. Mix poverty in? Holy fuck you’re done. Being queer? Even worse. Intersections of kyriarchy do not have mercy on anyone and admitting that I’m not only a lower class queer trans woman facing the things white poor and gay trans women face but a all that with disabilities? Truly frightening.
A friend of mine summarized the attitude I had best: “Maybe if I ignore it, it’ll go away and I’ll be safe?”
But that’s wrong. It was the wrong attitude in relation to me being trans and a woman. It was the wrong attitude about my lack of financial solvency and my lack of money. It was the wrong attitude about being queer. Ignoring it didn’t make me safe. I was exploited during my denial/exploration phase. I was raped and abused by a exploiter of trans folk when I continued to deny that being trans and a woman put me at risk. I still was close to eviction and not being able to eat despite denying that I was poor.
Well, my disabilities and the horrid ableism of the people around me still affects me, even when in denial. I’m not safe. I never was. And it won’t go away. My ADD is a part of me. My IBS is a part of me. My pain and difficulties are a part of this beautiful woman just as much as my womanhood, fought so hard for, my transsexuality and my sexuality are all a part of me. And ableism’s harm done to me won’t just disappear because I put my fingers in my ears and go “LA LA LA I’M NOT PWD.”
But what I was denying myself through my own denial was a community. A group of people, with resources, support, similar experiences. All who get it, at least to some degree. People I can go to. People I can have solidarity with. The same thing I got when I finally admitted, “yeah, I guess I am trans and a woman…”. The same thing I got when I finally admitted, “Yeah, I guess I am queer.” My friends in the PWD community waited patiently, knowing how hard it is to get past that fear. Having all gone through it themselves, they didn’t push. Just waited. The PWD community is waiting. It’s about time I got up, dusted myself off, raised the flags.
I’m not just trans, a woman, lower class or queer. I’m all of those things and a person with disabilities. And I’m ready to accept that now. I’m PWD and no one, especially not myself, will silence me on that again.
Filed under: personal | 21 Comments
Tags: ableism, disability, expectations, identity, medical, PWD
This has all been said before. But I might as well offer some repetition because people aren’t getting it.
There’s been a whole lot of talk about marriage lately. I’m sure you’ve all noticed the flurry of activity on the part of the GLB…(t) community to get legal marriage extended to gay couples all over America. A move that might, maybe, cover trans folk who are still legally seen as their birth assigned sex and are heterosexual. Maybe. And prolly cover gay trans folks unless folk really want to be giant cissexist douchebags. Numerous states have blocked it or simply not succeeded in passing it. Some have judicially crushed laws blocking it and legalized it, others have gone to civil unions instead.
But surprisingly, that’s not important. Yes, I know, you’re thinking: “Wait, did she just say that trans folk being affected by gay marriage isn’t important?” Well you’d be partially wrong, because I actually said that about the entire damn deal. Marriage. In general. And now, you’re prolly twitching a bit going, “But RP! How can you oppose gay marriage!? I didn’t think you were homophobic!” Well after I finish laughing at that statement, wipe the tears out of my eyes and regain my composure, I’ll set you on the right path. Marriage is the problem. Overall. Straight folk marriage too. Not just gay marriage. Marriage is an issue.
So now that you’re suitably thrown off, I might as well explain why.
Analogy time. Imagine if you will that you just got impaled by a 37 inch long metal spike/pipe (only quarter of an inch in radius). Let’s say a construction accident winged that sucker at high speed right into your gut. Sort of a shitty situation right? You’ve got this nasty long thing of metal in some of your internal organs and you’re losing a bit of blood. Okay, a lot of blood. Well the hospital guys get out the electric cutters and take down enough of it so that you’ve only got maybe a few inches sticking out on either side. Now, you’d expect them to, yanno, take the damn thing out right? Maybe give you some antibiotics, stitch up the wound, give you some painkillers, give you some down time so you can heal up good as new, right?
They give you a gauze bandage and some medical tape.
“Wtf,” you say, “what the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
The doctor stares at you like you’re a fuckstupid wire chewer and says, “put it over the wound, duh.”
Let me sum this up in very distinct terms. You have a big fuckoff pipe of metal in through your insides. And he gives you a goddamn bandaid. You’d be pissed right? Right. Well snap back to reality. One this is not a statement on how fucked up our health care system is (although this could happen for real). That impaled person is not actually you. That impaled person is society. The 37 inch long steel spike is a bunch of social issues created by poorly written laws, social problems, poorly set up financial systems and an overall structure within society that fucks over people within certain financial classes and benefits only those in others. Antibiotics, taking the fucking pipe out, stitches, down time, heavy bandages, and painkillers are all the things necessary to make it so society can function (infected, slow bleeding pipe in your gut makes it hard to do that). These things are, quite obviously, reform. Changing the broken laws, changing the broken financial systems, regulating them too, fighting the classism in our society and etc.
So what’s the bandage, you ask? Marriage.
Yes that’s right. Marriage solves some problems, but only in a few places and in a very limited fashion. The bandage the doc gives you slows the bleeding, might even stop it. But the infections will spread, the pole will still interfere with your function, and the lack of painkillers will make it tough to deal with the pain. Marriage is a bandaid that benefits a certain class of people. Monoamorous, middle class, upper class folk who are employed in such a way that allows medical payment. Everyone else, it fails to help at all. And the way that it handles things creates a host of legal entanglement issues that lead to messy and nasty divorces instead of reasonably smooth splits. So that bandage? Spiked with kerosene and salt. Yeah, it’s a shitty bandage.
Why don’t we get some examples of things that marriage bandages?
1: Hospital Visitation Rights:
This one arises from our shit poor privacy laws. There’s nothing wrong with laws protecting privacy. What’s wrong is how they’re written. They only let in your blood or legal family (and spouse is considered a part of your family). This is fucked on several zones. One, not everyone is on good terms with blood family. Abusive parents, hated siblings, etc are all very bad folk to allow to visit someone in a hospital. Especially if an abusive parent put them there. The spouse end of it fucks over polyamorous people, who may have more than one partner, law allows only one spouse. And there’s absolutely no way to allow in non legal family (i.e. family you’ve adopted as your own without law stuff), close friends (which many folk are closer to than their family and even their spouse or partners), or even business partners or lawyers. Why does the government decide who’s allowed to see us in the hospital at all? I have several really close, deeply loved friends (who are not in any way partners) but I regard them like family. They are more important to me than my blood family and if they were nearby, I’d want them to visit me in the hospital and be there for me.
Real Solution: Establish legal allow lists so people can choose a set of folk who are allowed to visit them.
2: Health insurance access:
It’s a well known fact that health insurance benefits are offered sometimes to partners (domestic partner benefits), almost always offered to families and almost always offered to spouses. But this is, once again, only to legal families and one spouse only (one partner too). And really, it’s a part of the intensely fucked up and broken system of health insurance that America has. You know, that system where greater profit is gained by not providing the service that it’s your job to provide? In a system (capitalism) where greed is a virtue? Familiar with that? Insurance systems are not functional in capitalism unless competition is enforced to such a degree that startups are literally fed money by the government to challenge established companies on a constant basis. That will never happen. Cuz the same people that support epic capitalism hate the idea of any government interference (even though market forces don’t work with insurance. Oh well)
Real Solution: Public, nonprofit single payer healthcare coverage for every American that doesn’t opt out to get private healthcare.
3: Joint tax returns + financial entity merging:
I put two of them together because really, they’re the same damn thing. This is a little thing we like to call financial symbiosis. One would say that this is particularly unique to partners and couples but one would be excluding poly folk (as there’s more than two involved). And even if one included poly folk, this is still romantic relationship specific. There are instances where one would want to tie finances together with a semi permanent or permanent housemate/roommate, a family member, a close as hell friend they live with, etc. These people are fucked.
Real Solution: Legal system for financial symbiosis, that people can enter on their own, irregardless of romantic or non romantic relationship and w/ multiple people.
4: Making medical decisions for spouse, death arrangements etc:
Did you know that some people have friends they trust with that right more than their family or spouse? Why the hell is this automatically family centric?
Real Solution: List of decision makers for given contexts and legal power of attorney (already exists!)
5: Automatically renewing leases signed by your spouse:
And if you live with a close friend who you possess a financial and legal symbiosis with? How does that get handled.
Real Solution: Legal symbiosis functions in similar way, allowing for decision coverage for mutual things like joint accounts.
6: Visiting rights in jails and places that are family only:
They shouldn’t be fucking family only. They should be allowing more than just family. Not everyone makes family out of legal or blood ties. And close friends are often the only connection many people have.
Real Solution: Reform the jail system and include legal symbiosis on lists of allowance.
7: Immigration passage for spouses:
Legal symbiosis would cover this too but really, the whole immigration system in America is a giant clusterfuck. Why not fix the entire damn thing at once, instead of handling one small portion of the overall problem?
Real Solution: Reform the hopelessly broken immigration laws of America.
There’s a lot of things I didn’t go over here given to married folk that are actually exclusionary as hell to folk who aren’t in relationships and for no good reason either. It’s just randomly giving privileges to monopartnered folk, elevating them over friendships, non blood family and multiple partners. This is a problem overall, one created by marriage; which has more or less become a classist issue to begin with. It also creates this idea that a married relationship is more valid, more committed, more acceptable than an unmarried partnership. Which is fucked up.
There’s some things on that list I didn’t include because it would be redundant. Those issues would be included under the solutions already placed and I’m trying not to make my posts giant fucking novellas anymore.
This stuff is not hard people. If we fix these problems at their roots, society will be better for pretty much everyone, instead of a small group that can afford a marriage license, is monoamorous, is straight in a lot of places, gay in some others and only possess the kind of connection that warrants legal symbiosis with a partner. Oh and actually likes their family and has not expanded beyond blood and legality to make family or has not replaced blood family and legal family for adopted family. You know what I like to call a solution that solves a bunch of nasty social issues for a tiny group of people based on certain, more widely accepted traits over individuals who have less accepted traits, leaving them in the dust? Privileged bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a call out against monogamous folks who go off and get married. The way you express your partnership and love is entirely your zone. And I support that. But the way the concept of marriage is handled in law, the things it is used (poorly) to solve (for very few) is still a problem. None of that has bearing on your marriage, how happy it is, or the wild sex you have (I would hope anyways). But it has a shit ton of bearing on the goals of social movements. Especially the population marked as middle class monoamorous GLB (cis and trans) with a few realistic straight trans folk too who see how such laws might benefit them despite the dissonant bullshit they have to deal with there. When several communities (feminism, GLB….(t?) mainly) are concentrating more efforts on something that only helps a tiny subset of them instead of everyone (including that subset) shit. Has. Gone. Wrong.
So let’s take the goddamn bandage off the impaled pipe wound, get it the fuck out of society’s left lung, patch society up, give some antibiotics and painkillers and give it the down time it needs to heal. Instead of creating a shit funnel that people have to squeeze through to exclusion of others each time just to get the basics. Fucking self explanatory.
Filed under: activism, personal, rant | 10 Comments
Tags: expectations, family, issues, kyriarchy, legal, marginalization, marriage, privilege, society
Oh look, yet another intermission post!
So I was silly and I decided to engage civilly with a rad fem who was claiming all porn is rape.. Things started out fairly well, we analyzed each other’s points, the conversation went nicely, there were concessions on both sides and then suddenly, she found out I was trans. Cue (these links may be triggering for vitriolic hate) transmisogyny, reality denying, misgendering and absurdity
I left a response comment but chances are it won’t go through. I do feel bad if I came off condescending (I don’t believe anyone should be condescending to anyone) but beyond that I tore her a new one.
I apologize if I came across condescendingly, it was certainly not my intent. I always link fallacy definitions, for anyone I don’t know (and I mean anyone) when I use them as a just in case. As soon as you showed that hey, you’re on the level, I stopped doing that.
Of course, none of this changes the fact that you’re a utterly bigoted and subject to the same old boring stupid as fuck bullshit assumptions about trans women that so many rad fems are.
I can point out to you pretty solidily that every inch of my male privilege has been stripped away by transition. Society operates towards me as they do to women, and in the rare times that they discover that I was assigned male at birth, I get treated worse than any cis woman can ever claim. Even the money I had from getting better jobs was lost by not being able to get a job now. Use your brain and actually analyze reality instead of running on your bigotry. Really, I had hoped you weren’t as bad (well really, rabidly bigoted) about trans folk as most rad fems are, but well, I’m just naive about people.
Manly essence, huh? You’re sounding remarkably essentialist for a rad fem. Are you gonna start accusing me of building Miranda Coils and sapping your womanly essence through pink lightning female energy vampirism, now?
Trans-infiltration huh? Go on, keep on digging your hole. We’re just magical ninjas, biological weapons created by the patriarchy to eat your souls, right? Go on, continue to be absurd.
You were the first one to take an overly unemotional, academic tone. I thought that’s what you wanted. If you want emotion, here it is:
Your analysis is shit. It excludes those women who enjoy porn and acts prescriptively to all women, telling them what they can or can’t consent to. It is destructive, unhelpful, reactionary and a blanket statement. Oh and by the way, you still haven’t addressed a single goddamn thing I’ve said, just spouted cissexist and transphobic venom all over your post.
So I guess you’ve got nothing to back your point up then, if you’re so easily distracted from the topic by your own bigotry.
I won’t be surprised if this comment doesn’t make it through. So I’ll be crossposting this with my analysis at my own blog.
Going back to read the comments will likely be a large waste of my time. Some folks have come to my aid but largely I think they realize how useless it is to try to reason with a transphobic radfem. Their bigotry so intense, their hatred so consuming, that trying to use rational talk with them on the subject is like trying to stop a train with your face. So really, fuck that. I feel I made my point perfectly and established well enough that she’s wrong. No point in subjecting myself to misgendering and claims that I’m “spraying manly essence” all over her blog.
It blows my mind how absurdly essentialist rad fems can be sometimes. The irony is mind blowing. And yes, I did in fact make a Miranda coil reference. Because really folk, she’s an example of #cisparody (on twitter) being too close to truth to be just parody. Poe’s law applies
In case anyone is unfamiliar with cisparody (and can’t access them cuz twitter can’t grab the old tweets), it’s a hash tag on twitter regarding a set of satirical jabs at rad fems, second wavers and feminist transphobes.
It goes over such absurdities as:
1) Trans vampires, soaking up female energy (looks like pink lightning) which turns cis women into trans women
2) Trans women being biological weapons devised by the patriarchy to destroy the feminist movement, that went out of control and got all T-Virus Resident Evil Zombie Apocolypse outbreak on their asses.
3) Miranda coils being the tesla coils of female energy, filled with ultra femme trans women and stealing the energy from all directions.
4) Etc.
It’s hilariously bad until you remember that people genuinely believe this shit. It just took that rad fem gate jumping wire chewer to say “manly essence” and I could think of was cisparody. And the humor of the absurdity helped to lessen the blow a bit, let me tell you.
In regular life stuff:
1: I’m doing some follow up on DV resources for queer folk in my city. The chances that I’ll still be fucked over by them are fairly high but I’d really like to actually deal with having been raped and abused in a setting actually designed for that. Yanno instead of crying alone, talking to just close friends and writing private shit about it. (Although I have to say, writing about it and making art related to it has been really helpful)
2: My family is still out of contact and at this point I’m pretty much ready to give up even thinking about them. I guess I’m on my own for good now.
3: Thesis work would be going faster if I could catch the fuck up with my thesis work. The ADD is trouncing the fuck out of me on this one.
4: Being that temp time is over, I am once again (it seems like this happens every fucking few months, at least this time I can guarantee it isn’t due to being trans) unemployed. So I need to find work again so that I can afford rent, food, yanno basic shit that keeps me doing reasonably well (i.e. not dead). It’s gonna be fun going back into that clusterfuck.
5: I’ve been dodging the GLBT group at my school. I’m one of 3 out trans women that has a connection to that group and the other two are way too busy to go to the meetings most of the time. So when I’m there, I am the only out trans woman there. Feeling out of place, uncomfortable and unsafe seems part of the game I guess. The only time I feel safe is when several of my close cisGLB friends (and the one out trans guy that goes to the meetings who I’m pretty good friends with) who have acted as brill allies in the past and continue to do so are there. And even then I still don’t feel comfortable. I feel like an education receptacle as soon as I make it clear I’m trans (and people don’t know normally, I’m fairly able to blend into the cis populace by appearance and voice). Which means I invariably get the somewhat backhanded compliments of “wow you look so normal“, “oh wow, and you’re so pretty too, I never would have guessed“, etc and the epic facial twist contortion dance from formerly interested lesbians.
Like so:
Interested -> (I tell them I’m trans) -> Surprised -> Confused -> Uncomfortable -> Troubled -> Disgusted -> Realization (that they just looked disgusted) -> Guarded but Polite
Gotta love drop kicks to the good old self esteem. You can’t just go from Interested to Disappointed? The “damn, she’s not my type” disappointed? You really got to go to troubled and disgusted? Really, jerk?
6: My partner is getting a lot of ableist shit at work. So we’re both looking around for better employment for them. Right now the employer fail has gone from being largely dismissive of my partner’s issues to SUPER “HELPFUL” & “ENCOURAGING” EXCITED. I.e. this horrid fuckjob of a manager told the other people in the place about my partner’s issues and claps when my partner does the stuff that is hard for them due to their disability. That’s right, you heard correctly. Claps. I want to find this fucker and verbally facemelt her for that shit. Don’t make PWD into spectacles. You are not helping, goddammit.
7: I’m still struggling with the concept of ADD being disability and the idea that I would be PWD if I so choose to enter that arena. The problem would be icy talons of fear as I discussed here. As far as intersections go, there are some really bad ones to have. PWD + Trans is a fairly unpleasant one, mostly because both are very erased in most communities, even in each other’s communities. So I’ve been really hesitant to identify as PWD and write on these issues within the context of my own life. It’s always been safer for me to write about my partner’s experiences (with permission and constant supervision of course) with chronic illness, chronic pain, mental illness and physical disability. Mostly because my partner is even more removed from this world of blogging and so they aren’t hit with any of the backlash if people get ableist on my ass for what I write. So putting myself out there like that is utterly terrifying. At some point I feel like I should. I feel like my way with words could be intensely beneficial to the PWD community and their support could be just as beneficial to me.
That first step is always the hardest though…
Filed under: personal | 75 Comments
Tags: ableism, ADD, feminist fail, kyriarchy, privilege, PWD, random, transgender
This is probably going to be a long post. I’ll probably also piss a lot of people off. But that does tend to be my modus operandi, bringing the unpleasant messages to the populace. Sit down, put up your feet, relax a bit.
Let’s talk sexuality.
Whoa! Sit back down! Relax. Have an iced tea.
Okay, little less skittish now? Good. Writing a For The Uninformed post on what sexuality is seems sort of silly. So let’s just do a nice primer. Sexual orientation is, at its most basic, a measure of what types of people you love, are attracted to, or primarily involve yourself with (depending on context). It’s also an identity which subjects it to the postmodernist complications that identity always loves to put into play. Sexual orientation started out quite simply as who you were attracted to (and if you weren’t attracted to anyone you were asexual, although back then people prolly just labeled you as broken. Go fucked up society, right?). Attraction being primarily the sexual attractions that one possesses to a certain grouping of body parts commonly placed under the categorizations of “male” and “female” (oh look, another link to my dissertation on how broken m/f terminology is). This was back when the terms were heterosexual and homosexual. Note the word structure. The terms were also based on your own placement in the categories of “male” and “female”. Troublesome, no? That hasn’t really changed much. Now we have Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Pansexual, Asexual, Straight and the umbrella term Queer (which mostly seems to only include the first 4.) And now the definitions are a great deal more expansive.
Quick run down for the uninformed folks:
Lesbian (Gay Woman): Woman (or “female”) aligned with woman (or “female”)
Gay Man: Man (or “male”) aligned with man (or “male”)
Bisexual: Anyone aligned with both men (or “males”) and women (or “females”)
Asexual: Anyone aligned nowhere.
Pansexual: Anyone aligned everywhere.
(You’ll notice that bisexuality, asexuality and pansexuality lack self references. The individual who is attracted (or not attracted as the case may be) is irrelevant to the label. This is not true for the two primary single alignments, lesbian and gay.)
For instance, sexual attraction is now not the determiner (unless you’re using the term to mean so for yourself only), love and romantic interest are instead. Even though the GLB community has moved away from the sexual elements of sexuality (Yes, I could see how that would be a confusing sentence) there doesn’t seem to be much effort to drop the explicit (but ultimately shitty) categories of male and female to determine what the alignments are. Or at the very least, even if they are using the conceptual elements (woman, man, etc) that often doesn’t change the inclination to default back to the m/f dichotomy of poorly categorized physicality.
For that reason, cissexism is alive and thriving in the very terminology of sexuality. This is somewhat unhelpful (oh look, intense understatement) to those of us trying to stop the shit storms of cissexism and transphobia in the cisGLB zone.
But wait, it gets worse! You see, there are trans folk referred to as nonbinaries (NOT GENDERQUEERS. Genderqueer as a term is only applicable when it is requested as an identity marker. Calling all nonbinaries “genderqueers” is asinine, erasing to other types of nonbinaries and seriously binary privileged). It’s a fairly simple concept, there isn’t only guys and girls. There are other types of folk too. Agendered/neutrois (without gender and/or without sexual characteristics for physical transitioners), genderqueers (this one’s tough to sum up, research it), fluid gendered (person’s self conceptualization changes gears, causing intermittent dysphoria), bigendered (feeling like both at the same time, alternately a type of plural system), plural systems that have individuals in them that have genders that don’t fit the body (or individuals with DID who have such) although technically a given individual in a plural would be considered a binary trans person if they were binary, as each individual should be taken individually (not doing so is intensely dehumanizing to the individuals in a system). Much of this terminology might be confusing. I would suggest heading to WiG to learn more, because I’m not the best to ask (being pretty much binary myself).
Well you’ll notice that nonbinaries don’t fit the specific zones of woman or man. At all. Guess what sexuality is based on? Well shit. There is not a single term that accounts for nonbinaries except for pansexual. Lesbian and gay and bi especially are based on a binary gender system and these phrases completely erase nonbinaries in every way and form. And you’ll notice that if a nonbinary is attracted to women only or attracted to men only, the word lesbian or gay isn’t applicable. Because nonbinaries are not men nor are they women.
So a lot of complications come out of the very terminology we use to describe our sexual and romantic interactions as human beings. And by complications, I mean cissexist and binarist bullshit.
There have been attempts to fix at least some of these problems, far be it for me to ignore the tiny, minuscule progress (and various useless lateral moves) made by a community that largely pretends to care but doesn’t. Efforts have been made to devise words that don’t reference the attracted or loving party’s gender or sex. Gynephilic, androphilic both respectively replace straight guys/lesbians and straight women/gay guys. They also provide a functional word for nonbinaries that can’t articulate that they’re attracted to women or men with a specific word as lesbian, gay and straight are all based on “attracted to the same as you or opposite as you”. The amusing part of it all is that under this paradigm of terminology, an nonbinary that’s attracted to men or women is actually heterosexual or straight, because that’s an attraction to a different gender. And nonbinaries that are attracted to nonbinaries are gay. Obviously the system doesn’t take this into account and folk have actually complained to me (and others) about this statement. These complaints usually come down to the “there’s only two genders!” bullshit though, so really, who gives a fuck what they think?
There’s also not a -philic word for nonbinary types. I suppose one could be “neutroiphilic” for agendered folk, androgynephilic for androgynes, and etc. But largely such orientations are not recognized as anything other than fetish, effectively cutting nonbinary people down pretty hard. And of course, changing the words to non self referential terms doesn’t really change the inclination to default to body type for conceptual sexuality (yanno, the one based on who you love, not on sex or body parts. Huuuuuuurrrrrr WAT?) Seriously, if you’re attracted to women, then that means you’re attracted to women. Not vaginas. Not tits. Being attracted to individuals with vaginas and tits is fine (I don’t find penis the least bit sexy on anyone), that’s just not conceptual sexuality. That’s physical based sexual orientation and a huge component of the cisGLB zone has moved away from that to break the public association with sex (which is a whole other convo about being anti sex positive assimilationist douches). Furthermore one can easily make the argument that one’s personal tastes simply don’t match certain things. I don’t like a lot of body hair on someone, really big feet or significantly different height. I find goth styles absolutely enthralling on a girl but if I see a cheerleader type getup, yeah, my interest goes *piff* and disappears. Personal taste does not denote what makes a woman. When you deal with conceptual sexuality, body hair levels, foot size, scent of a girl (I dunno why the scent matters so much to me, I am odd), the style of clothing they wear have no bearing on whether they’re a woman and whether you’re more of a lesbian for not wanting them or less of one. So when it comes to conceptual sexuality, a penis being there being a turn off is a matter of personal taste and need. And really physical sexuality in and of itself is so heavily based on the poorly structured terminology of male and female that the whole set of terms are likely a giant clusterfuck of cissexism and binarism and fuckery.
I’m not going to pretend to have the solutions. I really like what folk have done with the word Queer, which retains identity, can still be used to gauge oppression applied to GLB folk (cis or trans) for specifically sexuality related things (like say mistreatment for dating certain people, not wearing a fucking tux. That would be gender based mistreatment.) but largely queer may not necessarily adequately explain one’s sexuality.
And the solid fact is, sexuality is so intensely complicated and affected by so many things that summarizing it based on the most shallow level of categorization (the grand set of people you’d give the time of day to vs. the ones you wouldn’t give a chance to) seems flimsy at best. But that’s more of a personal quibble and part of the reason that I refer to my sexuality as “complex”. Cuz well, it is. Everyone’s is.
In any case, while we find solutions to this issue, some things you can do in the meantime:
1: Avoid the terms that depend on M/F: Try to avoid using physical sexuality terminology because of how it depends on the nonfunctional and largely problematic arbitrary classifications within sex terminology (i.e. male and female have arbitrary as fuck lines that make no sense). So not only are you yielding fairly confusing and nonsensical information by depending on that broken system (“XX chromosomes are soooo sexy, seeing someone who has them makes me sooo wet! Because you know, I have an innate chromosome detection system. I can sense them”) you’re also acting in erasure of women and men (trans or cis) who don’t fit those arbitrary lines and acting transphobic towards nonbinaries and trans folk who fit the set of arbitrary lines that they don’t belong in or want to be in.
2: Avoid cissexist usage of the terms: When using conceptual sexuality terms (based on the concept of a person; i.e. woman, man, androgyne, and love not sex) like gynephilic and lesbian, don’t default to the male/female as your base for the concept. Include trans folk. Don’t be cissexist. And if you’re with a nonbinary or binary trans person, don’t degender them just to protect your image as a lesbian or gay man.
3: Avoid erasure of Nonbinaries: Don’t refer to a nonbinary as a lesbian or gay person unless they themselves give the okay. The terms don’t apply. Only use bisexual in the context of identity if you’re with or attracted to nonbinaries. Claiming the objective use of it degenders them and erases their identity by claiming that they are one of the two genders that bi encompasses.
4: Work towards using neutral, non erasing words: Gynephilic, androphilic, queer, pan (or omnisexual) etc. These words all operate better than the terminology currently in place and they have less chance of erasing or harming trans folk, binary or nonbinary. Using them consistently will help you incorporate them into your identity, which in turn will make it easy to avoid identity clashes wherein one person’s identity is erased and stripped away for another’s.
5: Operate on concepts for orientation, default all other concerns to personal sexuality: I don’t find penis attractive. On anyone. And that’s fine. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if you’re operating on conceptual sexuality, that lack of interest in penis is no longer a deciding factor in what your orientation is. And using it as such is cissexist. There’s nothing wrong with simply saying to someone, “you’re not my type”. You’re not obligated to explain why and I know that I wouldn’t hold it against you for not finding my genitals physically attractive. Anyone that does is being fairly fucking unreasonable. But don’t couch it as “well, I’m a lesbian, I don’t like people with penises”. Yeah, that’s fucking cissexist as hell. If you really feel the need to explain, simply say, “you don’t fit my type for sexual needs” and everyone moves on. Simple.
These will largely make the situation a lot more livable for the folks fucked over by this system while it slowly, painfully changes in short choppy bursts (like many major elements of our society that are a problem and deeply ingrained). I’ve spoken out against self referential terminology in the past (self referential as in recursive, it refers to itself and has no base case. I.e. identity term A means: One who identifies as identity term A. Well what’s identity term A? One who identifies as it. But… what is it? One who… *repeat ad nauseum*) but that doesn’t mean that one can’t have a functional word with a self referential definition that refers to the other definitions. My favorite example is: lesbian (n): A woman who is principally attracted to, loves, and/or dates women or one who self conceptualizes with the previous aspects and seeks to match them. Terminology being restructured in this way does allow one to retain their identity in the face of a lot. One has to be careful to make sure that it is known that they’re using the identity version though, when they’re dealing with trans folk. Or you’re likely to degender someone.
It’s complex and I can understand how a lot of folk don’t want to deal with it. But situations like this do need to be dealt with. They are major components of trans oppression and some of them are major components of sexuality policing, an issue still very prominent in the GLB zone (cis and trans, although it seems to happen more with cis. We’re too busy gender policing…). Someday things will change in this area, but for now, we all have to make efforts to fix this and negate the effects of it on marginalized people.
Filed under: activism, personal | 21 Comments
Tags: cis, gender, identity, marginalization, privilege, self expression, sexuality, transgender
In tradition of my previous post of building trans women up and decentering cis folk’s oppression of us for a while (as well as avoiding the stress inducing shitstorm of anger toxicity that I get when I let rage consume the fuck out of me, as I have been doing lately), I’ve been working on finding ways to do a little healing magic for my sisters instead of engaging in mortal combat with the cissexists.
Don’t worry, there’s still plenty of us with swords taking them down a notch. But it’s time to tend to the wounded for me.
Let’s talk shaming. Specifically self shaming. Body shape and size is a source of much consternation among all the womenfolks (although I feel reasonably safe in virtually guaranteeing you that we fuck with ourselves way more than cis women on that area) and self shaming is especially a problem, as the source provided says. After all, when you self shame based on characteristics shared by other people, you are implicitly shaming them as well. The post and video is size orientated specifically (and prolly cis orientated simply through the assumed default for women) but is certainly applicable to us and can be extended to so much in terms of body type than just size.
Let’s get trans specific now because cis girls already have a support net and medics running into the fray. When it comes to body size, a lot of us get hit fairly hard. Often artifacts from the circumstances of our birth and testosterone will contribute to bulking certain areas. Larger hands, wider arms, wider rib cage. Stuff like this doesn’t usually change with estrogen (especially the bone things) and are often viewed (when not being turned into cissexist weapons to degender and misgender us) as elements of undesirable body shape. Whether it leads a trans woman to call herself fat, or ugly, or even just possess a generalized dislike of her body these elements of physical structure are used to create shame. Even when they’re used in a misgendering fashion, they’re still hits against body image, self esteem and self love. The really sad part about how these aspects are used to misgender is actually how fairly common they are in cis women. Testosterone and estrogen levels in even cis women are not deeply set in stone the way a lot of folk like to assume. The developmental paths triggered by all sorts of things (far more complex than just XX and XY) result in so many different body types that even the words female and male as a binary of physical structure is a tad bit… broken (this is why I write the basics down first. I can always link back to the 101 and 211 material to keep things simple. It’s nice.)
As a note, I’m separating the concept of bodily dissonance and gender dysphoria from the concept of self attack and self shaming for having a different structure. Bodily dissonance is an internal thing, a confusing, painful rejection of the body as foreign. While some may confuse that for feeling ugly it’s not something that can be traced back to self shaming attitudes regarding body type. It is especially nonresponsive to self affirmation and is even worsened by it quite often as the self affirmation acts as a reminder of that feeling of foreign wrongness. Self shaming can actually be combated by self affirmation and building others or yourself up and removing bodies being constructed as the only valid option. This won’t work for my dissonance definitely and I feel safe betting that it won’t do shit for most other trans women who possess stand alone bodily dissonance or even really bodily dissonance built from pure self conceptualization conflicts.
So there is, quite simply, multiple layers of shame, self attack and implicit shaming based on constructed views of acceptable women’s bodies. These layers range from intensely cissexist, to mixed cissexist and heavily sexist. There are even layers in there that are distinctly racist and especially drop like a half ton bomb on trans women of color. I wouldn’t say I’m in a good position to speak on that, being that I’m white and of European blood, but it’s something to certainly keep in mind.
The fact is, the message in that video is perhaps even more applicable to us than it is to cis women. We shame the fuck out of ourselves and each other. Constantly. On things that a fairly good portion of cis women don’t really attack themselves and each other on anymore. Like clothing styles, self expression and etc. But the physicality is where it gets really nasty. Pretty much every trans woman I know has attacked her own looks, her own body and her own shape and structure (bar maybe two, and I feel safe betting that they’ve said such outside of my presence). I’ve done it too. I’ve attacked my breast size, my hip size, my facial structure, my rib shape and such in the past, before I really worked hard to fight those instilled notions of what’s the “right” sort of body to have. And that’s even with someone who’s actually fairly close to the form constructed as ideal by society for women, sans the whole lack of uterus (I assume, never checked that one out, but I feel it’s highly unlikely that I’m IS) and presence of penis part. This isn’t just the media that I went over in my blitz post linked way far above. The very same concept of passing and stealth that permeates our community creates these intensely damaging standards for body type. Taken far beyond the concept of blending into the woodwork so we can avoid being murdered in horrible ways, passing and stealth often take the form of a body hierarchy, much the same way beauty is over the entirety of women, affecting cis, trans, tab/m (temporarily abled bodied/minded), pwd, woc, white, poor, affluent, and etc and all the combinations you can think of (plus many you can’t). This throws an even worse bit of pressure on trans women, because now, we’re not only dealing with beauty being constructed into something that is unattainable by 98% of the population (even cis women, whom the standard is made in mind of with our erasure) we’re also dealing with an in house standard of validity that goes so far as to even degender us through the efforts of our own.
Not surprisingly, things like this get internalized.
So here we have trans women even wondering if they should bother dealing with their bodily dissonance and/or gender dysphoria because they don’t want to be “ugly women”. We have this plague of body image damage, not only built by the media blitz but also built by our own systems of self protection, built from a system of forceful and damaging assimilation and stealth. And of course, we’re our own worst critics more often than not. Just like sizeism and calling yourself fat is damaging to all women around you of different body types and sizes on the thin and fat spectrum, such applies to internalized cissexism, passing based self attacks and attributing ugliness to one’s own body shape and type. When we shame ourselves for our proportions, looks, shapes and bodies, we shame all of the trans women we know, any one of us who can receive the message said. We’re not only hurting ourselves when we play the shame game, we’re hurting our sisters too.
None of us should feel ashamed of our rib cages, no matter what shape. None of us should feel ashamed of our size, no matter what height we may possess. None of us should feel ashamed if we have body hair or facial hair. Or if we have a penis and don’t want to get rid of it or don’t care to. None of us should feel ashamed for our breasts, no matter what size and shape. None of us should feel ashamed for our body shape (returning to the linked inspiration and expanding on it), whether curvy, needle thin, round, blocky, or etcetera. Every one of us needs to make a solid effort to stop the self attacks, to stop self shaming. It will save us from so much damage to ourselves and it will also save our sisters.
It’s hard, I get it. Self shaming is a habit that is backed up by society, pushed on us from all ends (even the ends that cis women can depend on to protect and shield them) and enforced by the more vicious of our own. Largely it comes down to the concept of repetition and self training. The fun thing about social engineering is you can actually use it on yourself. In fact, by self shaming, you are already using it on yourself but in a very self harming way. So change the tide. Fight those internalized elements. There are a lot of methods to combat internalized self shaming but the best way to start is to break the cycle. Don’t let yourself self shame. When you catch yourself saying something awful about yourself or your looks, restrain yourself. Say, “no. I’m not going to do this to myself. I’m not. No.” After you’ve stopped the cycle (even if temporarily) it’s time to fight back. I used self affirmation. Tell yourself something that counters your brainwashing long enough and you start to break the brainwashing. I told myself I was beautiful continuously. Even when I felt like I was lying through my teeth to myself, I still said it. In front of mirrors, with my partner, under my breath and sometimes loudly. And bit by bit, it chipped away at that shame. Eroded the toxic coral growing on my self esteem. Much in the same way that the toxicity eroded my self esteem previously but in the opposite direction.
One of the really nice things about self affirmation is that it also puts an air of confidence into you. You feel better about yourself, moving with confidence and self love and people can see that. They react better to you (provided other issues aren’t in play. Self confidence isn’t gonna make a cissexist treat you better) which in turn builds your self esteem. Now that’s a good cycle to have.
Other methodologies include selective self vision. Often we do this in the wrong way, fixating on the things we don’t like about our bodies. One of the ways to fight this is to find at least one thing we love about ourselves and then talk about it. Affirm it, talk it up, let it fill your thoughts about you. Concentrate on the things you love about you, the things that you feel make you beautiful or awesome or snazzy. If you start fixating on the features that you like you’ll be less inclined to judge the entirety of your self based on the things you hate. You may even slowly start judging the whole package positively, finding self confidence, self esteem and self love coming from those parts of you that you truly like.
So no more shame game. Accept that you’re beautiful and stop undermining the self esteem of yourself and others.
Filed under: activism, personal | 5 Comments
Tags: body image, cis, expectations, feminism, gender, identity, kyriarchy, self esteem, self expression, transgender
