BELOW THE BELT

Thinking Queerly: A Review

2011-02-07T15:22:00.012-05:00

David Ross Fryer was my teacher at university. His classes transformed my way of conceiving the world – they opened up theoretical and practical possibilities that seemed inconceivable within the social scientific framework that saturated the academic environment. And in doing so, they made me believe that new worlds, new ways of living, and new forms of gender and sexual existence could be created. They motivated me to sink my teeth into queer theory, feminism, and Continental Philosophy – but most importantly – they encouraged me to remain critical, to ask questions, and mistrust boundaries. David inspired me to think about how I live my life, how I relate to others, and what I do to combat oppression. My writing on Below the Belt is one of the fruits of that inspiration.

What a pleasure it is then to read and review David’s latest book, Thinking Queerly: Race, Sex, Gender and The Ethics of Identity. Like his classes, it has that rare quality of providing a highly accessible introduction to the main issues in queer theory, while at the same time making a very innovative contribution to it. Put simply, Thinking Queerly deftly strikes a balance that most academics (Judith Butler exempted) spend their careers fumbling towards: it can be easily understood by the layperson, but it also provides rich food for thought for the specialist. In describing and explaining queer theory so well, David re-constitutes it, shows how it can be transformed, and even transcended.

So what does it mean to think queerly? The first chapter, “On the Possibilities of Post-Humanism,” grapples with this question. According to David, queer theory is stuck in a rut. It has criticized dominant norms of gender and sexuality but has failed to truly surpass them. The problem with queer theory is its almost exclusive anti-normativity: in dealing with socially-promoted values about gender, sexuality, and the body, it has ended up simply lifting the opposite on a pedestal. Polyamory counters monogamy, sado-masochism sneers at vanilla sex, threesomes mock the couple, the transgendered body challenges the cis one, genderqueer and genderfuck attack gender normativity, and so on. In other words, various queer life-forms have thrown down the gauntlet and started to fight the governing straight life-form.

To be sure, the development of this oppositional stance is a necessary step in the struggle for liberation – something to be welcomed. But David argues that queer studies should not stop there, that the full promise of queerness cannot be realized within this kind of framework. Turning to phenomenology, which he describes as a philosophical tradition requiring the suspension of “all presuppositions and agendas in [a] search for truth,” David extends the critical gaze that queer theorists have directed at heteronormativity towards queerness itself (4). And his findings are noteworthy: queer and heteronormative modes of existence are not necessarily in substantive opposition to each other; there is nothing about heterosexuality, monogamy, cissexuality, and monosexuality in themselves that is anti-queer. Rather, the problem lies in the social status of these forms of existence, in the modes of normative discourse that give them such a dominant role.

In this sense, the normative is “a methodological enemy,” a way of thinking that circumscribes the possibilities of human existence to a narrow set of socially-enforced identities (5). For instance, as David puts it, “normative thinking is the kind of non-thinking we engage in when we refer to an unnamed doctor as ‘he’…when we ask our children if they want to have children when they get married…when we take for granted the way the world seems to be” (5). Queer thinking, on the other hand, requires us to “think, really to think, about gender, sex, sexuality, and indeed all forms of identity and expression as being open to various instantiations, as having multiple – even infinite – modalities” (6). In the framework David proposes, a society should not be evaluated on whether most of its members are genderqueer multi-sexual polyamorists, but on the extent to which it is open to a diverse array of “possible modalities of being human,” which may very well be limitless (9).

In encouraging us to think queerly, therefore, David seeks to undo a knotty philosophical debate, and ultimately move the discussion past it. As described above, he aims to replace the entrenched divide between queer and normative thought with what he calls “post-normative thinking” – an approach that does not get wedged in the binary between dominant and suppressed identities, but instead inquires into the various possibilities of gendered and sexual existence and the ways in which societies enable or foreclose particular options. Implicit in this theoretical move is, I think, an unease with oppositional discourses and a recognition that queer thought has not really surpassed the heteronormative paradigm. In defining queerness as the opposite of the heteronormative, the latter ends up being tied to the former, and even becomes weirdly dependent on it. Truly getting over modern heteronormativity requires defining queerness as something other than the purely non-heteronormative, thinking queerly in more transcendental ways, and pushing queer theory in challenging new directions.

Having laid out this vision at the outset, David then boldly implements it in the rest of the book. The second chapter, “African-American Queer Studies,” offers one of the best summaries of the various definitions of the word queer that I have ever read. But more importantly, it provides a critical introduction to a long-neglected body of literature, a much-needed genealogy of African-American queer thought which puts to shame anyone who believes that queerness and African-American identity are antithetical. David gives us informative readings of classic writers such as James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker and bell hooks – and he also whets our appetite for exploring the work of modern African-American queer theorists, Philip Brian Harper and Robert Reid-Pharr. While all of these authors are concerned with analyzing and struggling against the combined weight of gender, racial and sexual oppression, David does a fine job of highlighting the often subtle differences between their approaches.

Chapter three, “Towards a Phenomenology of Gender Identity,” takes on the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, two of queer theory’s most canonical thinkers. David argues boldly that “these theorists fail to offer a sufficient answer for how to overcome the oppressive [gendered and sexual] regimes they are exposing” (53). Having convincingly uncovered the historical contingency and tyrannical character of the current gender system, they are nevertheless painfully vague on how exactly it can be transformed. Foucault talks about moving people to engage in “the undefined work of freedom,” but hardly says anything further, while Butler urges people to destabilize the system by “perform[ing] subversive acts of gender parody” (53). These are hardly impassioned rallying calls, and according to David, “they have not even engendered a radical following on a small scale” (42).

To make matters worse, Butler fails to move beyond the scientific positivism that seems to be part-and-parcel of oppressive gender regimes. To support her argument that sex is a cultural category impregnated with assumptions about gender – and not the soulful and bodily essence producing gendered behavior – Butler relies mostly on textual analysis of the work of French feminist thinkers, such as Luce Irigaray and Monique Wittig. But she realizes that this is not enough, that her “audience, academic and lay, wants evidence—cold, hard facts” (52). For her work to be applicable in reality, it cannot limit itself to the world of obscure academic texts. And to deal with this problem, Butler relies on scientific evidence – exactly the kind of move she herself has criticized. Near the end of Gender Trouble, she develops further groundwork for her claims by drawing on the work of Anne Fausto-Sterling, a feminist biologist. And in doing this, Butler again places science on a pedestal as the ultimate arbiter of whether or not the sexed and gendered binary is real. David thus identifies a hypocrisy at the core of Butler’s theory: she negates the validity of positivist science while lying in its bosom.

So where do we go from here? Can we overcome the dead-end in which Butler and Foucault seem to leave us? How should the current gender and sexual regime be challenged and how can we get over the continued obsession with positivist science that Butler subtly reinforces? As in the first chapter, David suggests that we should turn towards the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. He describes this approach as “a form of thick description of our experiences of the world [which] aims at uncovering the essences of our experiences as well as the structure of…consciousness itself” (53). Starting from the individual human subject and her life, and comparing/contrasting it with the life-experiences of as many others as possible, we can build up a knowledge of what is transcendentally true about sexuality and gender. Crucially, David emphasizes that this is not a search for the essence of – for example – what it means to be a woman or a homosexual. Rather, it is a revolutionary search for all those existential possibilities that gendered and sexed categories hold within them, one that is likely to uncover a multiplicity of possible identities, from genderqueers and ladyboys to men and women.

This challenge to established thinking in queer theory is laudable, a welcome revitalization of a drowsy academic debate. Nevertheless, it also leaves a lot of questions unanswered. David argues that knowledge of gender and sexuality should be grounded in the sum of our individual experiences of these phenomena – but in putting forward this view, does he assume that all our experiences are of equal weight? In a world where heteronormative, misogynist, racist, ableist, classist, and cisnormative perspectives and practices are dominant, is there not a palpable risk that our experiences will be polluted by them? Or at least that it may be structurally difficult for marginalized experiences to be taken into account? Moreover – as fellow-blogger Julian Real has warned – what are the consequences of positing change in solely ideational or experiential terms? Will oppressive structures really be overthrown through a deeper analysis of our own and others’ experiences? And should we be ditching an oppositional queer framework, when heteronormativity is still in such a dominant position?

In the end, David’s book has left me with more questions than answers. But I am not disappointed: I am simply hungry for more. It is my hope that David and others will continue to take queer theory to new levels and to apply it in a variety of interesting domains, thus ensuring that it stays relevant in a rapidly changing world. The closing chapters of Thinking Queerly provide a glimpse at some possibilities for further exploration. And in dealing with subjects that are broader than gender and sexuality, David shows us that it is possible think queerly in many other areas of theoretical and practical life.

The fourth chapter, “What Levinas and Psychoanalysis Can Teach Other,” attempts to reconcile phenomenology and psychoanalysis, two philosophical traditions which have historically been at odds, by showing how they can actually complement each other. And in the final chapter, “Reading Responsibility in The Hours,” David gives us a beautiful interpretation of a classic film, while applying the seemingly incompatible ethical philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Levinas to it. In this, he deftly combines Sartrean and Levinasian views of the essence of the ethical, showing through The Hours that it is found both in respect for one’s own inherent freedom, as well as in the responsibility we have for the fate of others.

Overall, in Thinking Queerly, David develops a treasure trove of useful resources. He turns a critical gaze on queer thought and exposes the dangers of a purely oppositional mindset. He also challenges canonical thinkers in queer theory, and moves beyond the poststructuralist critique by positing individual and collective experience as foundational for true knowledge of gender and sexuality. And in addition to these insightful contributions, he introduces us to long-neglected topics in academic and popular discourse, such as African-American queer studies, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis. But perhaps most importantly, David gives us a memorable lesson in heuristics: do not allow seemingly irreconcilable binaries to dominate your thinking – challenge them, try to bring them together, and you might find new worlds unfurling before your very eyes.

***For More Information***

David Ross Fryer is a Professor of Women’s Studies at Drexel University. In addition to Thinking Queerly, he has published a number of books and articles, including The Intervention of the Other: Ethical Subjectivity in Levinas and Lacan. I highly recommend this book – although its title sounds very arcane, it provides an accessible introduction to these two thinkers, as well as a useful overview of recent developments in philosophy through the lens of the humanism/anti-humanism debate. Regarding the substantive issues that Thinking Queerly brings up, I have a hunch that Judith Butler’s somewhat veiled endorsement of positivist science has been reproduced elsewhere in queer theory – and certainly in my own writing. This could be an interesting area for further exploration. It might also be useful to read Thinking Queerly alongside Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl. While these two books are radically different, they share a desire to move past certain roadblocks within queer theory and to put our individual and collective experiences of gender and sexuality front-and-center. You can read excerpts from Whipping Girl here and you might also want to check out the discussion that this book spawned on Below the Belt.

On Gabrielle Giffords, or, a linkspam on the violence of patriarchy

2011-01-26T22:37:00.007-05:00

[Trigger warning: This post deals with virulent misogyny and violence against women.]

I had a whole post planned earlier this month about my challenges trying to reconcile genderqueer-ness with being female-bodied and a feminist. And then a gunman opened fire on US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, killing six people and critically wounding her. And I locked myself in my room, scared and horrified, and wept for hours. I cried because it was a tragedy, but also because it was entirely predictable; for many of us watching the US political scene, it confirmed that fact that the question had never been whether something like this would happen, but only when.

After the shootings, there was a lot of discussion of the shooter's mental health. But in the end, it doesn't matter whether the shooter was neurotypical or not; as an internet friend of mine pointed out, even people with paranoid schizophrenia do not make things up out of thin air, but are influenced by the culture around them. And in this case, the culture is not pretty. It is no coincidence that the Democratic Congressperson who was shot in a literal extension of the US right-wing's violent rhetoric is a woman.

But why just talk about Representative Giffords? Let's talk about Hilary Clinton, or Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, or even Sarah Palin. Let's talk about the women in our entertainment who are killed off after their plot point is done, or the polytechnic students who were murdered here in Montreal 21 years ago, or, like, every feminist blogger in the history of everything, or the fact that most of the trans people who are murdered each year are women. To be a woman in this culture is to be on permanent display, and to be found wanting. And while men who hold divergent views or don't live up to expectations meet disapproval and disagreement, women who dare to transgress their patriarchy-assigned roles (which are, paradoxically, impossible to satisfy) must be put in their place. Witness the Playboy article that suggested “hate-fucking” was appropriate punishment for female politicians with whom their readers disagreed. Witness every single street harassment case where a woman's refusal of some guy's sexual advances is met with violent threats and, occasionally, action.

If you are a man, and you believe I'm blowing things out of proportion, ask your female friends what they think they should do to be safe if walking to their car in a dark garage. Compare it to what you'd do. Whether it's warranted or not, we are taught to be afraid. Constant fear is it's own kind of violence.

There are times when I think things are ok. After all, women in Western countries can drive, and work in almost any field (albeit at lower rates of pay than men), and choose who and whether to marry (most of the time), and vote, and access birth control (some of the time), and I have a number of male friends and colleagues who don't forget too often that I am actually a person too. And then my friend holds the door for me and I realize he doesn't think I'm as capable as he is, or I become suddenly aware of how short my skirt is and how high my heels are as I walk home, or a female politician I'd never even heard of is shot in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses. And then that little spark of fear that never quite goes away flares up again, and I am afraid.

And so, the next time someone tells me that feminism has accomplished its goals –– or that what women really need to be successful is to make more money — I'll laugh, and laugh, and laugh. And then I'll cry, because while the punishment for being female can still be death, the work of feminism is not fucking over.

Red-Hot American Hospital Visit

2011-01-11T18:43:00.009-05:00

I was three paragraphs into my article about my holidays, mainly how being "out" and/or being "stealth" affected my treatment at the hands of other party guests, when the sharp stabby abdominal pain, now 26 hours strong, finally forced me to the floor, vomiting undigested pepto-bismol and calling everyone, anyone who had access to the sort of painkillers I purposely keep away from myself lest my mental anguish ever reach such nowhere-to-run, nowhere-to-hide state of agony.

Within a few hours I found myself hooked up to an IV and subjected to tests and machinations of the medicinal. It was determined I had acute cholecystitis, an inflammation of the gallbladder. I was scheduled for surgery the next morning, just three days into the new year. I tried not to think of it so much as losing an organ (albeit a totally useless one), and instead of learning a valuable lesson in how to maintain your dignity when insisting your trans identity be respected in a medical environment.

You don't.

When I checked in I was asked what medications I was taking. I truthfully recited my hormones and their doses out of some strange sense of caution that has been cross-bred with pride for generations in hopes of appeasing me, the Monarch of Awkwardly Honest Land. I tried abdicating the throne just hours later, to no avail.

"Are you currently on any medications?"
"..no..."
"You don't seem so sure."
"Well, I'm on estrogen and spironolactone, for hormone replacement therapy, but I wasn't sure how relevant it was to my treatment."

Apparently it was mondo relevant, which is the equivalent of two and a half super relevants. My hormone therapy had likely agitated a pre-existing condition to the point where it required surgical intervention. I know this because three doctors, a nurse, and a surgeon told me. The only explanation I can come up with for why this fact needed to be repeated to me by various individuals over a course of two days is to shame me for trying to keep my transition a secret from the medical staff (albeit a poorly kept secret, as it was listed on my intake form), or to reprimand me for playing with nature, as many medical professionals have accused people in my position of doing. Either way you look at it, it's a hard sell. Look at it from my perspective. I'm developing the feminine features that aid in presenting my gender identity and I hastened the inevitable removal of an organ that might have ruptured and killed me. Give me some sunglasses and a clip of an 80's hit. I need to celebrate in freeze frame.

I can be nonchalant about it now because I survived the operation and have eaten my first big ass bowl of ice cream sans kaopectate, but at the time I was scared and in the most pain I'd ever felt in my life and what I really needed from my medical caregivers was reassurance and information and maybe a bedpan so I wouldn't need a dose of morphine to make it to and from the damn toilet. I didn't need to be blamed, however subtly, for what you perceive to be a misjudgment in body chemistry. I have a doctor, a therapist, and two clinics to make sure I don't walk on a landmine in my journey to grow into body and mind I'm comfortable with (and tame a unicorn, if applicable). Just shut up and take this ticking time bomb out of me before I die and your billing department has no one to bill for all this morphine I've consumed.

Is what I wish I said.

Instead I remained silent. Because I was in pain. Because I was terrified I wouldn't live through the operation, or denied it at the last moment because I couldn't pay, because I was trans, because my maniacal and delirious laughter at my first dose of morphine might suggest that I was just faking it all along. I let the doctors and surgeon say this shit to my face without so much as an eye roll of assertiveness. I didn't want to become one of those trans women left to die in the hospital that I had read about as I was first coming out and deciding if being happy with myself was worth my life (which it totally is, yanno, before we get too dark and depressing). And I didn't. They did the operation and I survived and here I am dancing to "I'm Not Your Toy" by La Roux in a friend's chair, which many will agree is the opposite of "dead in a hospital". My plan to be spineless in the face of criticism with the hopes of receiving the treatment that will save my life succeeded.

While I really need to focus on kicking the shit out of myself while I'm down, I will take a moment to say I wasn't in much of a position to advocate for myself, after you factor in the drugs being pumped into my bloodstream, the hunger and thirst from not being able to stomach anything without pain for over a day, and the pain and terror I was in. I can't stand up for myself and be curled in the fetal position on my girlfriend's lap, crying because deep down I'm worried I'll never see her again. But god damn it if I won't self-flagellate myself in hopes I can in the future.

When asked "if I had any questions" about the surgery, I asked how big a gall bladder was. I wasn't going to be any good for myself.

That's probably why I brought backup.

Throughout my hospital stay, my partner, my bff and their boyfriend all stayed with me in shifts so I wouldn't be alone. They impressed upon the nurses what name and pronoun I should go by, and corrected them when I was mis-identified. Eventually, all the nurses came to name and gender me properly, even the ones my visitors had no contact with. And unlike the anesthesiologist, who asked me when I was having "my transgender surgery" minutes before she put me under, no nurse asked me the details of my transition or operation status (though that might be because I was wearing a fucking hospital gown and that question could be answered with just a pinch of the fabric). While likely that this is due in part to nature of nurse profession and philsophy, which is to treat people rather than the illness or something like that I'm not a nurse so I wouldn't really know, I couldn't bring myself to overlook the importance of having people who validate my gender identity close to me during the process.

An uplifting and potentially informative ending to this ordeal? No angsty socratic questioning and letting the commenters sort it out? Yes, it's a new TCMV, for a new BTB, for a new year.

If you end up going to the hospital, bring your friends. Or bring your enemies, even, if they'll stand behind you and insist on you being treated with respect by medical caregivers. You, like me, might find yourself too racked with fear to stand up for yourself when going mono e mono with the doctors, but if you've got a posse you might be able to get them to give you that respect in a public setting.

Or maybe this won't apply to you. Maybe when you get checked into the ER or have your appendix removed, you'll stand where I laid down and contend for your rights. Or maybe the work of this current generation of activists can make it so you won't have to.

Or you do what I did, and cleverly time your exploding internal organ to coincide in the same week as your court date to change your name, and have your friends drag your vicodin'd, sutured and glued ass to lean shakily before the judge who approves your name change so when you go to your follow up appointment later in the month, you can make the hospital put your correct name and gender on file.*

*If you have forms from your physician who attests that you've completely transitioned to your current gender even though I haven't had bottom surgery SHHHHHHHHH don't tell anyone!

So add this to your collection of horror stories slash uplifting real life lessons involving trans persyns for when you find yourself in a similar situation and want to know what to expect.

And for those of you looking forward to my holiday essay and disappointed that it's not being posted, spoiler alert: I was treated better by people who read me as cis lesbian than those who read me as trans, even if those people had known me for years. BIG SURPRISE YEAH THAT REQUIRES A WHOLE TWO PAGE OP/ED.

BTB needs a lot of work for the new year. We need more contributors, more multimedia, more everything. There's a lot of shit going on. The blog, much like myself, needs some time to reach battle operational.

Then it's back to the fray.

Equality?

2010-12-29T08:33:00.002-05:00

With the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, there's been a lot of talk of the “success” of the American gay/GLBT movement, and questions about where to go next. Alex Blaze, at The Bilerico Project, recently pointed out that straight* support for queer rights only goes as far as erasing the most obvious markers of discrimination (marriage equality, exclusion from the military, perhaps adoption rights or immigration rights). The deeper quality of life issues, he argued, will only be fought for by queer folks themselves. Gender policing, workplace discrimination, lack of media representation, generally speaking, the oppressive heteronormativity of our society – these are things that cis straight people are neither well-equipped to notice, nor particularly interested in dismantling. But it's amazing how internalized these assumptions can be, to the point that even many LGBT activists cannot conceive of advancing queer liberation very much farther than straight allies.

This point was brought home to me several months ago by a service at Washington, D.C.'s All Souls' Unitarian Universalist Church last year. All Souls' is a welcoming church: at the time, they had two gay/lesbian pastors, were deeply involved in the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in D.C,, hosted a gay men's group and other queer-oriented discussions, and otherwise supported the large minority of queer parishioners. But none of that prepared me for my shock when the pastor used the story of two male partners as the core of a sermon on love and relationships – and the only example of romantic love. The mainstream LGBT rights movement focuses on allowing queer people to participate in heteronormative culture. Sometimes we advocate for better representation in the media – better meaning more proportional to the size of the LGBT population, more positive in the straight majority's eyes, more in line with mainstream LGBT movement goals. Rarely, if ever, do we think that queer people could, or should, be role models for the rest of society.

Even LGBT rights activists often buy into the myth that what's good for the majority must be good for everyone. Add to that the need to be politically palatable, and we find a lot of heteronormativity in mainstream LGBT activism. But I know that I, too, moderate my presentation, and maybe even my goals and aspirations, so as not to make straight people too uncomfortable. I think most of us do so, consciously or not. I don't just mean staying closeted out of a real fear of violence – which is understandable – but rather censoring yourself about the rather wild queer party last night so as not to support the idea that queer people are degenerate, and nodding along with talk of “when you're married with kids...” because it's too much effort to disrupt everything by saying that you don't believe in marriage and plan to live in a queer poly household where any children will be by adoption only. The other day, I hesitated before recommending a book to a friend because, well, it has mostly queer characters, and maybe my friend didn't want to read about them. I think we expect queer people to identify with straight protagonists (because they're the default, don'tchaknow, and so they stand for everybody), but believe it would be too much to ask straight people to identify with queers. When we do this, we're still positioning ourselves as less than our straight counterparts.

This is why I burst into tears at that Valentine's day service, hearing someone say to a straight audience: let these men be an example to you, and know that their relationship is worthy not because it is an imitation of yours, but because they are humans, doing what humans do – forming relationships and loving and fucking – and doing their best to do it with honesty and integrity and respect. I think we need to remember, in our queer communities, that our worth cannot be earned by trying to play someone else's game. We are already worthy by the simple fact of our being human. Our feelings, our ambitions, our ways of acting and interacting – these are all legitimate, and worthy of respect. Can we imagine a world in which our diversity of experiences and desires are valued and supported, instead of trying to stretch the normative model a tiny bit wider so a few more people can squeeze in? I want to hear your thoughts and dreams – how would the world look if you could fully be who you want to be? And what steps can we take toward that goal?

Hat/tip to my friends at Against Equality, who helped me first think about where the mainstream “Equality” paradigm went wrong. And they're planning a speaking tour for the spring, so perhaps you can hear them yourselves!

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* I'm using the word “straight” here to mean non-queer. There are many heterosexual people who consider themselves part of the queer spectrum (being trans-, kinky, poly, gender non-conforming, etc.); they are not who I mean here.

What Do You Wish To Do - About Rape, Genocide, and Poverty - on Below the Belt?

2010-12-28T11:32:00.007-05:00

This post comes out of a lively debate about the differences between radical activism and academia that I have been having with fellow-blogger Julian Real. The discussion started after I posted some comments on Andrea Dworkin's book, Pornography, which you can read here. To see Julian's response to my original post, please click here. And also click here, to read my answer to Julian, as well as his reply. The post below starts by attempting to answer the following question that Julian posed: What do you wish to do about rape, genocide, and poverty on Below the Belt?

Below the Belt can do a limited number of things about rape, genocide and poverty. Only about 30% of the world's population currently has access to the Internet and an even smaller percentage of Internet users speak English. Therefore, on a global scale, Below the Belt cannot directly affect the lives of the poorest people and the most oppressed - those who have to struggle on a daily basis for survival, for food, water, shelter, and freedom from bodily harm. Its immediate impact is limited to those who have access to the Internet and to those who are fluent in English. This is, on a world scale, a relatively wealthy minority. And I think all bloggers should be conscious of this - whatever they publish online is only directly accessible to a small number of people, usually those who are rich enough to have the Internet, a global "elite" of sorts. This is not to say that groups and individuals within this "elite" are not subject to systematic rape, poverty, or the risk of being killed, but that they are (relatively speaking) in a privileged position vis-a-vis the majority of humans around the world.

Does this mean that Below the Belt and other blogs can do absolutely nothing about the worst forms of oppression? I do not think so. We can influence the way that those who are relatively privileged think and act towards the most oppressed and towards issues of oppression. I cannot speak for everyone on Below the Belt (we have a variety of writers - all with different goals), but in my writing, I want to do two things: (1) to examine and critique ideas that form the foundation for oppressive practices, with the aim of getting people to think about how they think about the world; and (2) to provide an introduction to some issues in gender studies, feminism, queer theory, history, and philosophy - a sort of 'Gender Studies 101'.

You might say that this an anti-radical, anti-activist, anti-anti-oppression agenda, but I don't agree. Let's take the issue of genocide. What needs to happen in order for a genocide to occur? There needs to be an elite willing to slaughter an entire group of people, a specialized 'armed group' to carry out the majority of the killings (I'm thinking of the Einsatzgruppen during the holocaust or the Interahamwe in Rwanda), a majority of the non-target population brainwashed into staying silent or participating in the slaughter (with dissenters murdered or tortured), a sufficient military buildup, development of ways of identifying the people to be killed (I.D. cards, badges, and other symbols), an animalization/de-humanization of the target group (in Rwanda, Tutsis were referred to as Inyenzi or cockroaches), assurance that no other state or international organization will intervene to stop the bloodshed etc...

In addition to all of this, and perhaps prior to it, something has to happen at the ideational level. Both the elites organizing the slaughter and the masses co-opted into it need to be able to believe that a certain ethnic/religious/national/gender category is capable of doing things as a group - that the individuals within it are all virtually the same, with the same biological characteristics (usually biologically inferior, but sometimes also with some laudable aspects, e.g. - Hitler occasionally showed admiration for ‘the cunning' of the Jews), and that they have all signed a social contract with each other to support certain nefarious activities against "the state" or against some other entity: "the Jews" or "the Tutsis" or "the Women" or "the Indians" all have the same aims and the same goals, they are all "in league" with each other. Genocide and ethnic cleansing depend to an extent on our capacity to think about large groups in a particular way, to reduce individuals to their collective identities, to believe that ethnic/gender/national etc.. groups can actually behave in unison, all with the same purposes and with the same goals.

What I aim to do on Below the Belt is to criticize conceptions such as these and thereby challenge the ways of thinking that form the foundation for oppressive practices. I want to get people to think about how they think about the world, how they think about others, how they think about other(ed) categories of gender, nationality, race, sex, and ethnicity. This isn't as important as providing material resources (food, shelter, or arms) to people who are at risk of genocide, undermining the flow of such material to the genocidaires, exposing the existence of genocide, mobilizing international public opinion against the actions of the oppressors, or getting international organizations to develop mechanisms for stopping mass slaughter. But it is still a worthwhile endeavor. Genocide will be harder to undertake, harder to justify, and it will be harder to co-opt people into genocide, if ideas about the ontological validity of fundamental national/gender/ethnic/religious characteristics are discredited.

Andrea Dworkin herself recognized that the ways we conceive of the world (the ideas we have about other subjects and objects) are crucial enablers of genocide. In the essay you recommended for me, "Biological Superiority: the World's Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea," Dworkin rejects matriarchal arguments about the biological superiority of women to men because she recognizes that such a theorization of an entire gendered category could lay the groundwork for genocide against it - this has already happened to women all over the world, would it really be a good thing if something similar could happen to men? I completely agree with Dworkin in this case, but I would extend her argument: it is not just ideas about the biological superiority or inferiority of particular national/ethnic/gendered groups, but sweeping generalizations about the supposed immutable “character” (whether cultural, biological, or political) of these categories that can form the basis for genocide or ethnic cleansing. In practice, the cultural and political generalizations are never really that distinct from the biological generalizations – but ultimately, they can have similar effects.

I realize that there are some serious problems with this argument, because people do do things in groups. I am just now doing some research about Iceland and I’m looking into how, in the 19th Century, wealthy landowning farmers developed a social system which guaranteed them a steady supply of cheap labor. In order to get permission to marry and own land, ordinary people had to earn a certain amount of money, and basically, the only way they could earn it in such an isolated and rural country was to become paid servants to landowning farmers. The farmers collectively kept wages low, which meant that poor Icelanders would have to work for them from at least their mid-teens until their thirties, thus providing a steady supply of cheap labor and keeping their profits high. Clearly, “the landowning farmers” created a social system that functioned to support their material interests. People can and do act collectively – but can they really do so in extremely large groups, such as nations and genders? And what are the consequences of imbuing such big collectives with sweeping generalizations? Does it set the stage for ethnic cleansing or genocide? At what point do broad statements about "group characteristics" become dangerous? I don’t really know how to solve this problem (aside from marshalling the rather primitive distinction between "small" and "big" groups or drawing on the difference between "organized interests" and "identity categories"), and I would appreciate any insights you or other readers may have, as well as any guidance about writers who have tried to wrestle with this issue.

Nevertheless, I do want to note that I have not acquired these ideas about genocide, generalizations, and collective identity through academia, but mainly through the personal experience of living in a context in which genocide and ethnic cleansing were quite close to home. I am, unfortunately, very familiar with the kinds of mindsets and theorizing that it takes to justify mass slaughter of a different nationality. Contrary to your assumptions, I am not from the United States, although I did go to university there. I bring this up because you seem to think that I am invested in the U.S. liberal academic project with my heart and soul, and that all my ideas emanate from it. I realize that my recent writing does give a very academic impression, given how full it is of citations, academic protocol, technical language, and academic authors. But it was never my intention to be a parrot of U.S. academia, and I am sorry to have made myself seem like that.

About the U.S. academic project, I do agree with you that it is, in general, about maintaining the status quo. In many cases, it also directly links into supporting U.S. global hegemony, the spread of capitalism, developing technology for the U.S. military, and a whole host of other atrocities. Nevertheless, I would argue that while academic institutions are thoroughly involved in upholding things as they are, individuals within academia are able to use the resources of their position for liberatory and subversive ends. Being an academic means being bestowed with astounding privilege – with the time to gather information, to read, to think, to write, and to speak on a variety of subjects. It is rarely the intention of the institutions, or the people and organizations that fund them, to allow this level of freedom. And while they often succeed in curtailing it, some individual academics have been able to use the time and money that they have been given as a platform from which to inform people and move them to action.

For example, Judith Butler has spoken and written eloquently about recent conflicts in the Middle East and she has also recently refused a prize at the Berlin Gay Pride Parade, after speaking with Muslim queer activists and hearing their stories of oppression within the German mainstream LGBTQ movement – thus bringing attention to the problem of Islamophobia in queer communities. Many of the people you cite on your blog are academics – bell hooks, Catherine MacKinnon, Patricia Hill Collins – which gives me some hope that there will continue to be space in academia for radical, liberatory voices. Although, as you point out, the situation is getting more difficult, with cuts to public education funding limiting academic posts, with increasing corporate sponsorship of academia, and with the internet providing more opportunities for surveillance and censorship of people’s voices - it seems that the potential for inspirational and transformative education within academia is unfortunately diminishing by the day.

And it has also diminished in the broader society, with the mainstream media cutting off radical activists’ access to the public – in this case, I also very much agree with you. But I don’t think at all that radical activists are bad at expressing themselves, or that the increasing poverty of political discourse is in any way their fault – did I say anything to suggest otherwise? And if I point out that radical critiques of society should indicate pathways for getting out of hell, how is this "seeing what activists do and don’t do as the problem"? Or blaming the victim? I am really not saying that the reason oppression still exists is because of things activists have or have not done. There are many reasons for this – very few of which have to do with the people working practically for change. The reason I like to encourage radicals to develop theories that leave open possibilities for change and to develop solutions for the problems they describe is because not doing so could lead to a resigned pessimism of the following type: "the powers that be are the powers that be, they are evil and all-powerful… but there is little that you and I can do about it, things will most likely stay the same." Noam Chomsky’s writing about U.S. hegemony does this, to an extent. I would argue that Dworkin’s Pornography also risks inspiring such an attitude. But what I am definitely not saying is that it is the fault of people like Noam Chomsky and Andrea Dworkin that things are the way the are.

As you probably gathered from my discussion above, I don’t subscribe to a sharp distinction between "thinking" and "acting." Thinking, reading, and speaking are, in a literal sense, actions. And in order to inspire people to act, you first have to get them to think. The Andrea Dworkin books that I have read are all about showing people a different way of perceiving the world and thinking about it than what is presented to them in the mainstream. It is about exposing the systematized violence and harm that societal discourses generally keep out of view. This inspires people to act – but before they act, they have to think. Otherwise, they would be automatons, robots, flinching instinctively at every juncture. Perhaps this should be the natural response to violence and oppression, perhaps it should not be necessary to think about it, perhaps it should just instinctively feel wrong and inspire a reflex action (akin to burning oneself on a stove). But unfortunately, this does not happen often enough, and in order to realize the reality of racism, patriarchy, genocide, and rape, people have to "un-think" years of socialization. Getting people to think more, to think about how they think, and to think differently is part-and-parcel of inspiring them to act – the two projects cannot be separated.

A similar logic can also be used to deal with this very important question, that you posed:

"I'll bet you that there are far more books on 'how to critique the idea of gender' in Academia right now than there are on "how to end male supremacy". Why? I'd be interested to know why you think that is the case, and what the function of such anti-activist 'gender discourse' is, politically/socially?"

I do agree that, right now, books and articles on "critiquing the idea of gender" are much more prominent in academia than work on ‘how to end male supremacy’. There are a variety of reasons for this. Firstly, I think that a number of feminist theorists have adopted the view that male supremacy and female subordination may be embedded in the way we conceive of gender itself. The way that the binary gender system sets up males and females as inevitable "polar opposites" and embeds oppressive distinctions between the sexes such as strong/weak, big/small, powerful/powerless, basically assures a priori that females will be oppressed. Since females are portrayed – by definition – as the opposite of males, the discourse will ensure that they remain "the second sex." I have dealt with this issue in some of my previous posts (see "Gender As Discourse," and "Strong Man, Weak Woman"). I don’t think that activists and academics who have moved towards critiquing the idea of gender do not care about ending the subordination of women – they are looking for the root causes of it. Undermining modern discourses about gender, and encouraging the creation of a gendered world that transcends the current binary is, in my view, not a separate project from combating male domination.

Secondly, the popularity of "critiquing the idea of gender" also has to do with increased concern for ending violence against people who do not identify within the binary gender system and those who do not meet expectations of masculinity and femininity. Transgender people and others who fall outside the current gender structure cannot even claim an existence for themselves under the current rules, and feminine men and masculine women live in constant terror of the threat of violence. However, it is important to note that the violence is aimed disproportionately at feminine men, transfeminine people and at femininity in general, which suggests that homophobia and sissyphobia are basically misogyny, enacted on male-bodied people. This is not to say that masculine women and transmasculine people do not face their own struggle against violence, but that the attacks on femininity are often much more intense, savage, and systematic. Some feminists, by focusing on the category of "woman" as the sole subject of feminism, ended up not paying enough attention to those who do not identify as either men or women or who are identified by others as somehow not in line with these categories.

Nevertheless – I do see how post-structuralist critiques of the idea of gender can be almost completely irrelevant in the context of, for example, a rape crisis center, female genital mutilation, or the fostering of gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia. For the raped and battered woman, gender is unfortunately all too real and dithering on about its social construction may not be helpful (although, admittedly, understanding gender as a product of oppressive social forces, rather than natural instincts, may help to deal with the trauma). Ultimately, while the “here-and-now” work of ending gendered violence – and violence in general – may draw on some academic ideas, it is not at all dependent on them. And the dominance of the "critiquing the idea of gender" view in academia has served to divert attention away from practical efforts to combat the continuing structural violence against women and feminine persons, from the struggles for liberation waged by feminists around the world, and from the connections between movements for environmental sustainability, racial justice, and women’s survival. Academia has betrayed activism – there is no doubt about this. Academics are, as such, unwittingly complicit with those who wish to continue the violence, the oppression, the hatred, and the murder.

But this does not mean that we should completely discard intellectual responses to oppression! As I outlined in my discussion of genocide above, there is a place for both the practical work of ensuring that mass slaughter does not happen (providing resources to populations likely to be affected, giving out humanitarian aid, developing international institutional mechanisms to prevent genocide) and the intellectual work of critiquing the ideas and world-views that make large-scale killing conceivable and possible in the first place. Ideally, the two should not be separated and they should work in tandem, although I do see how, in a condition of primary emergency, the “here-and-now” work of ensuring the killing is prevented and helping the (potential) victims is more important. I believe that, in academia and in the broader society, there should be a place for practical activist work on ending oppression and for the more theoretical endeavor of thinking about the ideas and conditions that make structural violence possible. It is unacceptable that the former is currently marginalized and this situation needs to be changed.

On the subject of post-structuralism, I don’t think that ideas about the normative foundations for (and functions of) empirical claims are entirely useless for activists. The way that I was laying out my position on this issue was far too depoliticized, and I see how you could have perceived my point of view as fundamentally impractical and nihilistic. When I said that different empirical claims about how the world "is" are tied to normative ideas about how the world "should be," I should have added that empirical world-views are index-linked to specific power-political interests, often buttressing oppressive social structures. Thus, supposedly "empirical" claims about women’s physical and intellectual capacities have served to ensure that women remain physically weaker than men and that they are excluded from academic, scientific and political positions. Activists could therefore use post-structuralist ideas about the connection between ideas about how the world "is" and nefarious political goals in order to undermine the worldviews that form some of the foundations of structural inequality. I certainly don’t think that oppression originates in the improper "exchange" of ideas, nor do I believe that ideas are "freely exchanged." Rather, I would argue that one of the primary ways that structural inequalities of power are maintained is through the propagation of ideas about reality that have the function of upholding them, that make them seem invisible, and that make them appear natural.

In my work, I aim to evaluate claims about "reality" not only on the extent to which are truthful but also on the basis of whose interests and which normative goals they will uphold. I therefore support any depictions of reality which uphold the interests of women, queer folks, indigenous peoples, and non-whites. This does not mean that I view things like whether patriarchy exists or whether American Indians are under assault as "debatable" – and this is a charge that is often thrown at people engaging in post-structuralist analysis: "you doubt whether the sky is really blue and you might even believe that pigs can fly." This is not at all the case, and I think it is a profound misreading of post-structural theory (caused in some cases by the obscurity of the kind of writing this theory inspires). But while there is no need to debate the existence of patriarchy or the oppression of non-whites, there are questions about these phenomena that are definitely worth much consideration, the answers to which will directly impact how they are dealt with: what causes patriarchy? Through which mechanisms does it work? Does it exist in all societies, and if not, under what conditions has it not existed? Why is it currently in place? What are the causes of racism? Why does it exist and how does it work? Getting to the vital issue – "what is to be done?" – first requires thinking about and responding to some of the questions such as the ones I enumerated above.

I am also by no means requesting that Andrea Dworkin and others put forward their positions solely in “this-is-how-I-see-it” terms. I do not see worldviews and theories as being a "personal" thing, with each individual having their own unique way of seeing things. This would be to deny the social nature of knowledge and to make all claims about the world contingent purely on individual experience. Rather, what I noticed in Dworkin’s approach is a long-standing tradition in Western (especially liberal and capitalist) thought of conceptualizing individuals as rational actors, seeking to minimize costs and maximize benefits. I also noticed that, in line with social contract theory, Dworkin imbued very large collectives with the capacity to form informal pacts, think rationally, and operate for their own survival. I am sorry if I gave this impression – but I was not critiquing the views laid out in Pornography because they were Dworkin’s personal views, or because they were the views of a white woman, but rather because those views were based on certain ontological assumptions about human nature and society which have a long and distinguished history in Western philosophy and with which I have disagreements – this is as much a critique of Dworkin as it is a critique of, for example, Adam Smith or Jean-Jacques Rousseau or John Rawls. I was also not criticizing Dworkin’s views so that I, as a "white man" (for the record, I don’t identify as a "man"), can claim objectivity and ownership of the way the world really "is." My post was written in the style of a philosophy-student-cum-wannabe-academic: you might think that this is an oppressive identity to take on, or that this is the identity that "white men" who want to author reality adopt. There is truth to this, but as I described above, there is also a positive side to academic intellectual thought and this is what I want to be a part of on Below the Belt.

In The Queer And Now w/Fucking Trans Women Editor Mira Bellwether

2010-12-27T17:45:00.007-05:00

Reports of my banishment to the Phantom Zone have been greatly exaggerated. Rather, I was drafted for a tour of duty in the North Pole, taking pictures of crying children with Santa for peanuts.

Last month, I held a benefit for myself, called "Apocalypstick Now", to help cover living and medical expenses so I could continue my activism work in the Bay Area and not relocate to my mother's house in Phoenix, AZ. A few days before the event, I received a message from Mira Bellwether, asking if I'd like a free copy of FTW #0 in lieu of a monetary donation.

After reading it, I am sure you will agree that this was very much like Stephen Hawking offering you an advanced copy of A Brief History Of Time because he couldn't make it to your symposium. Or maybe you won't. Maybe you didn't read A Brief History Of Time, and you aren't going to for a while, because you need to read this first.

This is the most important ongoing work on trans female sexuality ever. No takebacksies.

Mira not only agreed to come on BTB and pop off some good shit about sex and gender, but she has enabled my dream of being a zine writer by letting me contribute to a future issue FTW. Oh, here's the website. You might need that. -- TCMV

1) What prompted you to create FTW? Was it born of a desire to create a resource or were there more personal motives at play?

Several different factors motivated me to start "Fucking Trans Women." Most basically, I wanted to start talking to other trans women about our sex lives, and I wanted to write it all down so that we could share that knowledge and conversation. I would include that among "personal motives" but it's also a desire to create a resource. Certainly some of my desire to create the zine came from wanting to inform and introduce potential and current lovers to topics that directly affect my own sex life.

I wanted my lovers to have resources that they didn't already have, and I also wanted a resource of my own and ideas from other trans women. I have a strong desire to create a community resource developed by trans women coming from very different places, but really that came after the initial motivations. Certain teaching moments and difficult interruptions in sex prompted the more pointed or urgent pieces: it seems that I am forever introducing lovers to thinking about soft penises and about sperm; that I'm always having a 101 type conversation about pregnancy or about erections when I really just want to get on with it. Some of this is due to who I tend to fuck: mostly cis women and some trans men, and more rarely some gay cis men. But across the board sexual partners seem to be very ill-prepared for having sex with trans women. Soft penises are a particular sticking point because our culture defines the sexuality and prowess of a penis by its hardness. Size, yes, but something large and soft is not nearly so desired as a penis at any size that is consistently erect on command.

I find that my sexual partners come from a range of experiences but their knowledge is generally quite limited when it comes to trans women. It's very rare that I date or have sex with folks who have experience with other trans women, especially more than one or two trans women. Much of the information and experience that is necessary to having good sex with me is simply not widely disseminated information. At least so far, trans women have not been particularly good at communicating and disseminating information about our sex lives. Whether with other trans women or with everyone else, we don't usually talk about sex in informative and instructive ways, When I was researching the zine I felt that I must be missing something, that there must be a treasure trove of information out there that I was missing. And perhaps there still is, but in truth I don't think it exists. That's why this zine needs to exist.

More than one of my lovers has lamented that they wished they had a reference manual for my body, at least as a departure point, and that has played a large part in its development. Most of the people I have sex with have never had to seriously consider the possibility of a woman impregnating them, for example, or the idea that a soft, biological penis is a receptive pleasure center. Some of my past lovers had never had anal sex, gone down on a penis, or touched semen.

A certain amount of basic education is necessary. And because topics like these are so erratically discussed, if at all, a basic guide and an ongoing conversation is exactly what we need, Trans women, of course, have a wide variety of bodies and genitalia. But whatever our bodies are like, it's helpful for our lovers to have some bearing and understanding of what's going on in our pants. That isn't the same as knowing how boys' penises work, nor is it the same as knowing how cis women's bodies work, although being informed on both is certainly helpful. Part of my goal is therefore to create a resource specifically for trans women, drawn from our own knowledge and experience.

There were, of course, other motivations for creating "Fucking Trans Women" that are frankly a little depressing. It's a common complaint among the trans women I know that lovers either have to be educated or have prior experience, or else sex is probably going to suck. You hear horror stories, and you experience horror stories. It's no fun being told by a lover that they want you to fuck them because they fantasize about "being dominated by a man." It's no fun revealing your sexy parts to someone who responds "wow, it's been a while since I've seen one of those." The wildly inaccurate assumptions that I've encountered regarding my sexual activities and practices and desires certainly prompted me to begin writing down all the things I never wanted to be asked again, comments that I never needed to hear again, and questions that needed to be put to bed with a definitive answer. To a certain extent banishing bad sexual practices that are caused by ignorance is a motivating factor. Or as one friend put it, getting really sick of bad blowjobs.

There are all sorts of cold-shower-comments and questions that we can and should address in public, documented discussions rather than trusting to impromptu pillow talk. Why is the "101" conversation so annoying? Because so much is riding on it, because it usually happens at the worst time possible, and because it can feel repetitious. Why should we have to explain everything on the fly? Why not have something to point to and say "here, check this out." Or better yet, something that our lovers will have already read, so that they come to a conversation prepared to discuss personal desires and preferences rather than very basic questions and assumptions. Those are the kinds of questions I want to talk about with my lovers, because really I'm much more interested in having sex than in giving monologues.

I should reiterate the role that my lovers had in instigating this project. Many, many hours of conversation with past and present lovers have contributed to this zine. Beginning with statements that begin "I wish I would have known..." all the way through my writing process and publication, these are the folks who gave me the most support and the best ideas. I wish I could give equal credit to other trans women, but with a few delightful exceptions most other trans women I know have been quiet on the topic, no matter how much I poke and prod. That's a sign to me that the zine needs to exist, and needs to continue on, because clearly sex is a topic that we're not entirely comfortable talking about.

2) Though an e-zine, FTW #0 has an unmistakable "cut and paste" aesthetic telltale of the older generation of paper and ink zines. Can you explain how and why you gave it this look?

There are at least two answers to that question. One is basically "money." Let's start with money.

There is a very simple explanation for why the Zero issue has the look of something cut and pasted together, and that's because it was. I did the entire initial layout with paper and scissors and glue sticks, and then scanned it all into my computer. From there I edited it several more times using the very basic tools I had at my disposal. I don't have a ton of experience using either photoshop or layout tools, and I was making do with very little.

I do prefer the aesthetic of older zines made in this fashion, but at the time I was making it my own aesthetic preferences weren't the motivating factor. The deciding factor was money. I was working with a barely-functional computer with a cracked LCD screen and a budget of about $80, all donated by friends. I was (and still am) unemployed, and was at the point of quite literally begging for glue sticks and paper from friends and family so that I could assemble a zine. The decision to distribute the zine digitally was also a cost-saving measure. The cost of running the website and various fees for payments is much less than printing several hundred copies and trying to distribute them through the mail or in person. At present I don't operate the zine for profit, all of the sales and donations go right back into the zine itself, including gathering the capital for (hopefully) a print run of the next issue. But sales and donations also pay for the tools to make the zine. Initially that was glue sticks and paper and print cartridges, but since the Zero issue went on sale I've been able to make some repairs to my laptop and acquire some software. But you know, I do think that the aesthetic will probably remain much the same for issue #1, for an entirely different reason, even though I'm not exactly raking in the dough.

The other major reason for the zine's aesthetic is that it brings to mind an earlier time in queer and women's movements when paper zines were the best tools readily and cheaply available for distributing information. During an excursion to the archives I discovered zines by trans women from the late 60s and early 70s, which is really quite remarkable considering just how short a time transsexual women have existed in the public imagination. What's equally remarkable is that the things we talk about to each other have not substantially changed. I'm not just talking about the problems we face not shifting, I'm saying that our discourse has really not advanced very far in the past 50 years. The majority of written or otherwise documented discourse among trans women is really very limited and focuses by and large on identity and theory and rights, not shared goals or building community or being into who we are in substantial, sustained, and shared ways. As we all know, there's also a TON of internet debate that boils down to "why I don't like other trans women" and "someone said something offensive." I don't want to get into a lengthy critique, so for the sake of brevity I'll make a comparison instead.

Consider what trans men have done with media in the past fifteen years, or even the past five, and then compare some of those achievements with what trans women have done. We have done less. No doubt some of our achievements, especially individual achievements, have been spectacular, but on the whole I see us lagging behind tremendously. Another comparison I would make is between the organizational and artistic efforts of trans women in the last 50 years and the work done by cis feminists and/or queers. Now, to be fair, there aren't as many of us as there are cis women or queers by a long shot, and we're often quite widely dispersed, but nonetheless, what have we got to show for ourselves? That question will make some people bristle and no doubt several examples of the awesome things we're doing will immediately come to mind. But really, let's take stock. Why is it not possible for us to have something like "Original Plumbing"? And I think the answer to that question is probably cynicism and negativity and lots and lots of shame.

Even the most radical, the most gorgeous, the most productive, and the most self-assured of my trans women friends still have doubts that it's possible for us to create our own art and media and shape our own images. My go-to example of this comes from a friend, an artist and a performer, who mentioned during a conversation that she "couldn't take pictures of naked trans women and hang them in the Lexington Club. There's already a name for that: it's shemale porn." I was truly taken aback by this statement. If anyone could make that project happen, she would definitely be on my short list of artists who could do it amazingly well. But also I was surprised by the sheer negativity of her appraisal. Not only did she say that she "couldn't" do it, she was implying that it couldn't be done, and even if it were, the art that would be produced would be pornographic by nature.

What that moment said to me was that we are behind. We have a lot of catching up to do in terms of self-esteem, building community, and taking control of our images. Part of that work is to create space for trans women to be sexual without being reduced to our sexuality. And there's really only one way to do that, which is to start making our own self-representations that include our sexuality. That's part of the impetus for the zine, and part of the reason for its aesthetic. I think perhaps we need to be reminded that we're working with the same problems that cis women were dealing with in the late 70s and early 80s and are still tangling with today. The "virgin or whore" duality applies just as much to us as it does to cis women, and lashing out at any representation that either sexualizes us or desexualizes us is NOT going to help. So I think, let's remind ourselves aesthetically as well as discursively that much of what we're working on aren't new problems. They've been dealt with before, and we're lucky that we have examples to draw from. Writing off feminism and queer politics because they haven't embraced us in the past isn't doing us any favors, especially because we can learn so much from what has come before. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, most of the time we just need to modify it to better suit our own needs.

So why choose an aesthetic that brings to mind an older generation of activism? Because we could use the reminder that entire generations of activism have gone before and have made a lot of progress on goals that we're still too timid to even consider realistic, like being sexual without being reduced to our sexuality. We need the reminder.

3) FTW #0 is to my memory the first discourse on sexual activity that actually talks about engaging with a soft, unerect penis. Why do you think others have shied away from this subject, leading to an "erect penis only" philosophy in most sexual discourse?

The short, harsh answer to this question is that in the public imagination a limp penis is considered worthless, or an unfunny joke. As I mention in the zine, the operating word here is phallocentrism, a term that (much like the cut and paste format of the zine) is perhaps a little unfashionable, and brings to mind angry second-wave feminists. Well, good. Again, we could use the reminder that others have been here before, even if they weren't interested in exactly the same issues.

Why don't sex writers talk about soft penises? Because they lack the imagination and/or the drive to think about them sexually. It's unimaginable that a penis could be both sexual and soft. The quintessential sign of a sexual penis is an erection, and without it there'd nothing to talk about, at least as far as they are concerned. Why don't sex writers talk about soft penises? Because our culture is still phallocentric. It is obsessed with penile hardness and penetration.

That's my answer to the question you asked. The question that you didn't ask that I'm going to answer anyway is why I *did* write about soft penises when no one else does.

This was one of the first topics that I simply knew had to be in the first issue to make me happy, because it's a subject that's been on my mind since I was a child. In the zine I tell a story about my first experience measuring my own penis at a very young age out of fears of inadequacy, and measuring it soft instead of hard because that's the way I generally experienced my penis, as all penis-having individuals do. Penises are soft 98% of the time, and I am a sexual being 100% of the time, even if I don't feel like having sex at a given moment. Overwhelmingly, my penis is soft most of the time.

I would say that most writers on sex think of the penis as a sort of container for erections, and that erections are the real sex organ. They would say that to have sex you have to "achieve" an erection and then bring it to the point of orgasm, which is more or less the same thing as ejaculation. And at that point, one sex act is presumed to be complete.

This is not how I think about penises. I think of them first and foremost as organs of pleasure, designed to receive as well as give pleasure, but for the moment let's concentrate on receiving. It can be counter intuitive to think of the penis as a receptive organ, particularly because we usually think of it erect. But once you think of a soft penis, it's easy to see how it can be a receptive organ. With one or two differences, biological penises are almost identical structurally to biological clitorises: spongy tissue interspersed with an extremely high density of nerve fibers and nerve endings. They develop from exactly the same tissues in a fetus and contain approximately the same number of nerve endings, despite what the Vagina Monologues may have led you to believe. (Those in the penis are not as concentrated in the glans but are dispersed more widely through the shaft.) The tissues that make up the penis are by default extremely elastic, soft, and sensitive. Nerves don't stop working when a penis is not erect. And once you banish the assumption that penises only work when they are erect, it's remarkably easy to imagine a variety of ways of stimulating their sexy parts and giving them pleasure: orally, manually, with any number of vibrators or sensations. It's more difficult for most penises to reach orgasm soft, but in my opinion that's a question of habit.

I think this is a particularly important topic for trans women because we don't always feel fantastic about our genitalia. I think some of the reason for that discomfort is that we, along with our sexual partners, make determinations and assumptions about how we ought to have sex based on our biology. We think about genitals prescriptively, about what they should do, rather than descriptively, in terms of what they actually do.

Simply put, part of the project of FTW is to write about the bodies and sex lives of trans women descriptively.

4) Do you, as a writer on sex and a sexual educator, agree with the idea that there is an inherent "sexphobia" in the trans community that prevents us from having meaningful, informative discussions on intimacy, and do you see FTW as a means to challenge fear or ignorance around sex in the community?

I wouldn't call the sexphobia I see an "inherent" part of either being a trans woman or having community with other trans people. Again, look at what the trans guys are up to. They're able to objectify themselves and each other in ways that feel good, or positive, or inspiring, and at the same time are having conversations about non-consensual objectification and fetishization. These are very similar to some of the conversations I see happening between trans women, but what we *don't* have yet is an organized effort to take back our own sexualities and sexual representations. That is to say, we need to be able, and to feel able, to make our own art, write about our own sex lives, and in general start representing ourselves.

I think that there's a strong taboo against talking sex, and that comes from several places. Most of them are historical precedents: reasons for not talking about our sex lives that, in the past, made a great deal more sense than they might today, or that make much more sense in a clinical/medical context than they do socially. There have been times, and there are still times and places, when talking about your sex life honestly could disqualify you from a surgery or from receiving proper medical treatment. That's real, but luckily I think that mode of medical and psychological care is on the way out. This makes things easier because we can look at that and say "oh, right, that's part of our history but it doesn't need to be part of who we are forever."

I think that the "sexphobia" you're naming could be compared to periods of sexual prohibition within any community, sexual prohibitions that eventually pass away if they're not functional or helpful. Lesbian feminism in the 1970s, for example, strongly discouraged penetrative sex, and although some of those writers have an ongoing impact on how we think about and talk about sex, and while we can still see vestiges of that thinking in some lesbian communities, on the whole we mostly recognize it for a bunch of nonsense that is not to be taken seriously. Likewise, I think that fifty years from now trans women will look back at sexphobia and be quite confused.

So yes, I know the phenomenon that you're talking about, and it's a problem, and we need to do away with it. It's not doing us any good refusing to talk about our sex lives, especially with each other. I think it's important to write these conversations down, make them productive and accessible, and to start building models for healthily sexual lives as trans women. Again, I think this comes back to reinventing the wheel, a really wasteful use of our time when we could instead be building knowledge bases together and cataloging various aspects of our sex lives for each other and, ultimately, for future generations.

I see far too many disparaging comments about the sex lives of trans women coming from other trans women. Absurdly, I hear just as much derision toward sexualization as I hear about desexualization. I think the way to deal with this is basically to ignore those conversations and give people something to think about. "Fucking Trans Women" is definitely about challenging fear and ignorance of our sexualities. This is trickier to talk about but I want to include self-hatred in that list of opponents as well, and shame. We excel at treating each other poorly and avoiding each other, and that has to stop. Political and social movements gain traction in direct proportion to how many people work together. When that number is generally less than five, an obvious problem presents itself. Sex is one of those subjects that seems to divide trans women and discourage working with one another. As I see it that makes it all the more urgent to discuss and build community around.

This zine is designed to be a collaborative catalog of our sexualities and sexual knowledge, and one goal of making such a catalog is to dispel the idea that there's just one right way to be sexual as a trans woman. Our sexual practices are as various as we are, and absolutely none of them makes any of us less a trans woman. We have a lot to gain from talking to each other frankly and without shame about our sex lives, and the only way to do it is to start doing it.

5) Have you given current or potential partners copies of this zine to read before having sex with you? It seems the obvious thing to do...

Ha! Doesn't it?

And on the other hand, it's something that I want my friends to have and read just as much as people I'm interested in or am involved with. There's this "eureka" effect that many people seem to get from reading the Zero issue, and that's just as important to me as informing the people who I, personally, want to sleep with.

But yes, of course I have. That's part of what it's for, and I encourage anyone who buys a copy to do the same!

6) So let's talk about "shemale porn". Some trans women (who are attracted to other trans women, myself included), find it hard to enjoy porn involving other trans women because the focus is entirely on our genitalia and who needs to process body dysphoria when you're trying to get off? Do you think our cultural disdain for our own sexuality contributes to this sentiment, or is it entirely a symptom of cis hetero men trying to objectify us for the money? Should we get over ourselves? Is there any smut you would recommend as an alternative?

When I think of shemale porn, I think of "girl on girl" porn because to my mind they have a great deal in common. They're produced for the benefit of a specific audience that really has nothing to do with the people who are making the porn except to fetishize and objectify them. In that sense shemale porn also has a lot in common with the overwhelming majority of mainstream porn.

I like having sex with other trans women as well, and I like porn, and I hear what you're saying about shemale porn being excessively focused on genitalia. But honestly that focus isn't what turns me off about shemale porn. We're all at different places with our bodies, whatever our bodies may be like, but even though I don't find a focus on genitalia distracting or bothersome I still don't have much interest in shemale porn.

I think what turns me off is that porn involving trans women exoticizes our bodies and makes our entire body the erotic object in question. There's a presumption of juxtaposition, as if the parts themselves shouldn't go together, or that when they do they are sexual by nature. All that's really required to make shemale porn is our bodies in a state of semi-undress.

Not only is that boring, there's also no place for me in that equation. I don't enjoy watching another trans woman pull down her pants and stand still so some straight cis dude can jerk off while staring at her, nor do I get off on being leered at myself by some anonymous straight dude. That's what I find myself looking for in porn: a place in which I fit either as a voyeur or a participant. Knowing who shemale porn is largely consumed by, and being totally disinterested in straight cis dudes, I get turned off.

I guess that what I'm saying is that crotches don't turn me off, the format of shemale porn turns me off for most of the same reasons that other mainstream porn turns me off: it wasn't designed with me in mind.

There are a few trans women out there trying to make porn with trans women in it that isn't shemale porn, and that's really awesome and commendable. I think the best alternative to mainstream shemale porn is to make our own porn and erotica, and to ask around about what our friends enjoy and what people are making, ideally in real conversation.

That's not a one-stop answer for where to find something better, and really that's the point. It's healthy to enjoy our own bodies and to watch each other having sex. Normalizing conversation about sex is an absolutely essential part of making that happen. Figuring out what we really want to see and participate in is way more productive, I feel, than waiting for someone else to make it happen.

My answer to this question is rather anticlimactic, so I'll add that I'd love to see someone do an article for FTW on this subject.

7) In Issue #0 you discuss pregnancy and why a trans woman who is sexually active with cis women needs to have a contingency plan if she "knocks up" her partner. I can't thank you enough for bringing this topic to the floor. The "estrogen makes you sterile" myth has proven untrue time and time again and yet you can, without any effort, find trans people on message boards saying they don't need condoms or can't have babies. What's with that shit? Is there any correlation between a reluctance to talk about sex and unrealistic ideas on how our bodies work?

There is absolutely a correlation between misunderstanding our bodies and reluctance to talk about them! I know that for myself, the things I know the least about are also the ones I feel the least comfortable talking about. Teaching myself more about how my body works always helps me gain greater confidence in myself and a greater ability to communicate what I need and want, including what I don't need or want.

You do still find people with wild misconceptions about their own bodies and that's one of the many good reasons for a zine like this to exist. There's a fine line between self-definition and, on the other hand, wishful thinking. I think that the variable effects of hormones and genetics and other factors, combined with a lack of reliable information, leaves a lot of trans women wishing and hoping for the impossible or the improbable, particularly about our own bodies. The more informed we are about our own biology the less apt we are to mistake magical thinking for reality.

Pregnancy is an especially obvious example of where gaps in our knowledge meet magical thinking. Who can realistically afford to get a sperm count, and even for those who can, wouldn't you rather be doing almost anything else in the world with your time and money? Pretending that because you are a woman you no longer have sperm is an unrealistic and dangerous alternative as long as you still have testicles, and for a lot of us that's the hard reality of it. Whatever you're doing with your hormones, it's simply not possible to be sure unless you check, so I think the most sensible option is to take precautions and make a plan for what happens if you get someone pregnant.

It makes sense to me that we should develop an understanding of ourselves as women who are differently equipped (in a variety of ways) from cis women. I don't see any advantage in denying that what I have in my pants is a penis, for example. But as I say in the zine, my penis is a woman's penis. The very combination of those words can feel absurd at first, but to me that's what feels most accurate and most realistic. I like it when my lovers call my penis my clit and that doesn't feel strange to me or inaccurate, because it's both things, not one or the other.

I feel better adjusted to myself for thinking descriptively, expanding the category "women" to include women like me. I can change things about my body if I want to or need to, and I might feel better about myself for doing so, but I'll be a woman either way.

The alternative is magical thinking, which is a kind of associational logic. I think of this as a sort of prescriptive thinking: these two things go together, so when one thing changes the other must change as well. That kind of logic says that because I'm a woman, all sorts of things must be true about my body, my mind, my behavior, and so on.

But that's just nonsense. Some things might change, or might have been so to begin with. But it's no more true that being a woman makes your body one way than it's true that being a boy or a man makes your body another. We know that's the case. I think the potential consequences of that stripe of magical thinking can ultimately be very damaging, particularly when certain elements of the body or the mind or behavior fail to magically change. We can fall prey to thinking of ourselves as not "really" women if one aspect of who we are isn't stereotypically feminine, and again, that's just not the case! Nor is it the case that estrogen causes you to desire men, shoot blanks, or behave in stereotypically feminine ways. Women come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and some of us can get other women pregnant.

So what's up with that shit? The short answer (after my long answer) is that misinformation and wishful thinking are to blame.

8) You're accepting submissions from other writers for future issues of FTW (I know this because I'm working on my contribution as we speak). Let's reassure everyone at home reading this who might want to contribute but is afraid their voice or experience isn't "welcome". Who are you interested in hearing from? What perspectives are you looking for? Yes, you in the back, I'm getting to that. Can cis people or trans men who have experience in having sex with trans women contribute?

FTW is seeking contributions from trans women and anyone who has sex with trans women, no matter how much or how little sex you've had, no matter with how many partners, and whether you're a cis person or a trans person. The objective of this project is good information and accumulation of knowledge, and all sorts of people have contributions to make regardless of identity, or because of identity. In point of fact, some contributions will necessarily come from people who aren't trans women. Ideally sometime soon, say a year from now, I'd like to be able to say that we have articles and art by, among others, queer cis women, queer trans women, butches, femmes, trans men, cis men, genderqueer folks, straight trans women, folks in BDSM community, people who make porn involving trans women, people with disabilities, people of color, couples, singles, people in polyamorous relationships, intersex folks, and folks in trans-trans relationships. Some of these will describe the same contributions, but all of these will be about different aspects and experiences of having sex with trans women.

In short, everyone is welcome and encouraged to contribute.

9) Have you received any static from other trans women about this project? Have you been accused of "shit-stirring" or "objectifying" our bodies or some other naysayer nonsense like that?

There are always naysayers, some more or less vocal than others, but in the way of most naysayers they have largely kept their complaints limited to the area immediately surrounding their own private soap box.

When I was making the first issue of the zine I imagined I might see a lot more resistance than I actually encountered. It's easy to second-guess your work when you have little or no feedback on it and nothing like it has really been done before. Luckily that's no longer the case, and after almost two months of the first issue being available, I have to say that the vast majority of feedback, we're talking 99%, has been really supportive. On the whole I find that lots of people really want this zine to happen and think it's due (or overdue.)

10) Would you be interested in future issues of FTW featuring erotica? Do you think smut can be a tool to educate?

Absolutely! I've already accepted one piece that I would call semi-autobiographical erotica. I've said that this zine is about a lot of things during the course of this interview, but it would be totally remiss not to mention that this zine is sexy. There are dirty pictures and art inside for a reason. Truthfully I'm not interested in producing something that isn't thoroughly hot, sexy, and fun, because those are qualities that I think are truly essential to all good sex.

Andrea Dworkin & Queer Theory, Part II

2010-12-18T16:17:00.010-05:00

“Men want women to be objects, controllable as objects are controllable… Adult men have made their seedy pact with and for male power…and no matter how afraid [they are] of…other men, [they have] taken a vow – one for all and all for one – and [they] will not tell”
- Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (65-66)

“Men are shits and take pride in it”
- Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (146)

In my previous post, I argued that Andrea Dworkin’s Woman Hating cold be seen as a proto-queer theoretical text. But in my reading of Pornography: Men Possessing Women – which is considered to be Dworkin’s magnum opus – I found that the kind of feminism she developed later on in her life does not sit very comfortably with modern trends in queer, feminist, and gender theory.

Pornography – what is it about?

In Pornography, Dworkin provides a sharp and lucid portrayal of the power men hold over women in Euro-American societies. She argues that masculine power is established, firstly, through the subliminally propagated notion that “men have [a] self and…women…by definition, lack it” (13). This male self has “the right to take what it needs,” and if resistance is encountered, physical strength is used to ensure that it can gets what it wishes. Importantly, Dworkin emphasizes that men are not a priori stronger than women, but that the difference in strength between the sexes is at least in part the result of socialization: “in the raising of women, physical strength is undermined and sabotaged. Physical incapacity is a form of feminine beauty” (14). Thus, the socially created absolute physical strength of men over women functions as a pillar of domination and gives men a stick with which to terrorize women (and each other).

Male dominance also relies on “the power of naming,” through which men are accorded the right to “define experience, to articulate boundaries and values…to control perception itself” (19). For example, the use of masculine pronouns or the word “man” to refer to humans-in-general signals that women are excluded from the category of humanity. Furthermore, systems of money and property, as they have stood for much of recorded history, clearly empower men: “in many parts of the world, the male right to own women…is still absolute,” and with money, men can buy “women, sex, status, dignity, self-esteem, recognition,” etc… (19). Ownership of women, in turn, “licenses [men to do] whatever [they] wish” to the women they buy: her body belongs to him for his own sexual release, to beat, to impregnate” (19). And sexuality is defined on this basis:

“…the male, through each and every one of his institutions, forces the female conform to his supremely ridiculous definition of her as a sexual object. He fetishizes her body as a whole and in its parts. He exiles her from every realm of expression outside the strictly male-defined sexual or male-defined maternal.” (22)

Sexual power is thus established as “authentically originat[ing] in the penis,” as centered on the sexual objectification, abuse, humiliation, and violation of women (24). In this system, sex is interpreted as being essentially about force and violence, and sexual freedom is defined “as men doing what they want” (99). Pornography is a literary, artistic, and cinematic genre that reflects and propagates this misogynistic system of values. Dworkin is often misread as arguing against erotic art in general, which is not the case, as she clearly points out that:

“The word pornography does not mean ‘writing about sex’ or ‘depictions of the erotic’ or ‘depictions of sexual acts’ or ‘depictions of nude bodies’ or ‘sexual representations’ or any other such euphemism. It means the graphic depiction of women as vile whores…The word pornography, derived from the Ancient Greek porne and graphos means ‘writing about whores.’ [In Ancient Greece], Porne mean[t]…specifically and exclusively the lowest class of whore, which…was the brothel slut available to all male citizens.” (199-200)

Thus, when discussing pornography, Dworkin refers to all those depictions of sexuality that propagate the pillars of male domination described above, e.g. – the idea that men have a self and women do not, that men can legitimately use physical power to terrorize women, that they can possess women’s bodies, and that sexual satisfaction is achieved through force and violation enacted upon these owned and enslaved bodies. Pornography must be opposed, Dworkin contends, because it is a reflection of misogyny and because it will teach a new generation of men to treat women as their property, as their whores.

Problems of Rationality and Collective Action

Despite the conceptual clarity and power of Dworkin’s vision, I believe that there are fundamental problems with her framework for analyzing gender relations, which make it difficult to reconcile Pornography with the queer theoretical tradition. Put simply, Dworkin implies that the adoption of patriarchal and misogynistic values is a rational choice that virtually all men make at a very young age. This dynamic is then extended to the collective level, where men consciously form a pact to take ownership of women’s bodies and to treat them as non-humans, as “chattel property” (102). Basically, Dworkin contends that all men are basically in league with each other, conspiring to put women in their place.

To support this contention, she cites Shulamith Firestone’s argument from The Dialectic of Sex, arguing that the development of misogynistic mindsets originates in early childhood and that it is basically the result of a decision by boys to prioritize their own physical safety. The young boy is given two options: “Be the mother – do the housework – or be the father – carry a big stick. Be the mother – be fucked – or be the father – do the fucking. The boy has a choice” (49, emphasis added). And since “men are distinguished from women by their commitment to do violence” (53), the boy will inevitably experience the father’s physical aggression towards his mother, himself and others. He will thus realize his mother’s powerlessness, her degraded role in the family and in society. On the basis of these perceptions, he will conclude that “it is safer to be like the father than like the mother,” he will become a man to “escape being [a] victim” (51). The adoption of a misogynistic worldview and the process of becoming a man is therefore portrayed by Dworkin as a rational choice that the young boy makes for his own physical health and self-preservation. And this choice ends up forming “the basis for his adult behavior” (66).

Dworkin then goes on to claim that these choices for self-preservation are subsequently transferred to the collective level: the individual rationality that men possess as boys continues to be expressed by virtually all adult men as a group. For instance, in Dworkin’s view, the point of homophobia is to shield “men from rape by other men” (61). Since “male sexuality is expressed as force or violence, men as a class…enforce the taboo against male homosexuality to protect themselves from having that force or violence directed against them” (60). “Men as a class” are thus imputed with the ability to make collective rational choices, geared towards the preservation of the extant misogynistic/patriarchal system: “Adult men have made their seedy pact with and for male power…and no matter how afraid [the individual man] is of those other men, he has taken a vow – one for all and all for one” to protect and uphold the common values and desires of men (66).

But can we assume that collective agreement and action by virtually all men – billions of them – is possible? Queer theorists have critiqued Second Wave feminists’ presumptuous attempts to speak for “all women,” and I believe that this would also apply to any attempts to speak on behalf of “all men.” Can it really be said that all men have a tacit agreement with each other, that they have common values and desires, and that they work collaboratively to make them a reality? Are social contracts amongst all members of a particular gender practically tenable? I would argue that they are definitely not. While men may discuss values, agree with each other, and collectively implement decisions as a gender in fairly small groups (e.g. – in college fraternities), there are far too many men in the world for collective thinking, contracts and choices to be made. Dworkin almost makes it seem as if men as a group consciously choose to create the kind of social structure that promotes violence against women.

Moreover, can it really be said that, prior to this collective agreement between adult men, virtually all boys make individual decisions to adopt a misogynistic framework, on the basis of protecting themselves from their fathers’ violence? Dworkin offers little evidence to support this view and the reader is left to evaluate it largely on the basis of its “commonsensical” appeal, e.g. – men are more violent than women, and therefore, it follows that the majority of violence in the family will come from fathers. But does it make sense to claim that the adoption of demeaning ideas about women is a rational (cost/benefit) choice? Do individuals actually think that way about gender issues? Should we be assuming this level of rational thinking among human beings, especially very young ones?

Overall, I believe there is reason to doubt the empirical value of Dworkin’s two central assumptions: (1) that most boys individually choose to become violent and misogynistic in order to protect themselves against their fathers’ violence, and (2) that men as a group collectively agree on and implement commonly-held gynocidal values. There is no way of actually knowing if the decision to become a misogynist is a rational one (that would require going into the minds of most young boys while they are growing up) and it is impossible to imagine a consensual and collective contract among all men to oppress women. Despite the intuitive plausibility of these ideas, it is unlikely that social dynamics actually work in this way.

Can men change?

Another problem with Dworkin’s way of viewing the origins and maintenance of a misogynistic system is that it makes changing the system seem like a virtually impossible task. Indeed, in contrast to Woman Hating, Pornography contains hardly any ideas about how misogyny, patriarchy, and sexism can be overcome. And indeed – the theoretical framework that Dworkin develops makes change seem very unlikely: boys make conscious decisions to become sexists at a very young age, in response to a practically inevitable phenomenon (the father’s violence). Once made, this decision is fixed, agreed upon, and further ossified at the collective level. How can we even conceive of men being changed, if their development into misogynists is viewed as a practical inevitability, an act of individual self-preservation and collective will?

This problem is compounded by Dworkin’s pessimism about the existence of non-misogynistic men, whom she makes out to be almost as rare as unicorns:

“An absence or repudiation of masculine aggression, which is exceptional and which does exist in an eccentric and miniscule minority composed of both homosexual and heterosexual men, distinguishes some men from most, or to be more precise, the needle from the haystack.” (57)

So what kinds of solutions for ending misogyny and gender fascism are conceivable, if non-misogynistic men are so few and far between that they are barely significant? While Pornography offers hardly any concrete solutions to the problem, Second Wave feminism has given us an idea of what a response to men, as a gender that is unlikely to change, would look like. For instance, Valerie Solanas outlined a plan for eliminating the male sex in The SCUM Manifesto, and a score of theorists (such as Mary Daly and Sheila Jeffreys) have advocated a quasi-permanent female separatism from all male influence. Dworkin herself, in a book titled Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation, argued that the proper response to global misogyny is to establish a women’s homeland with “land and guns” – like the Zionists did in Palestine.

Thus, not only are there empirical problems with Dworkin’s approach to gender issues – it also leads to ethically impoverished responses to sexism whereby the only way to get rid of oppression is to eliminate men, completely separate oneself from them, or take up arms. This is what happens when gender relations are portrayed as ossified and unchangeable – when the oppressors, rather than the systems of oppression, are imbued with rationality, consciousness, and intentionality.

A Queer(er) Conception

In my view, therefore, Dworkin’s approach to gender in Pornography is incompatible with queer theory. It is an essentialist view that undermines the possibilities for changing gendered behavior, since it posits that misogyny and sexism are rationally chosen at a very young age, reinforced through macro-collective agreement in later-life, and extremely difficult to undo. A queer theoretical perspective would be different from this in several important ways.

Firstly, the adoption of a misogynistic worldview would not be conceived as the result of a rational cost-benefit analysis, derived from experiencing the seemingly inevitable violence of the father. Instead, the young person would be conceptualized as coming into contact with social discourses about men and women, and thereby, acquiring ideas about what they are really like and beginning to see oneself as a gendered being. In that sense, queer theory does not assume that most fathers are violent (or that most mothers are non-violent), and it sees the process of gender construction as heavily influenced by the ideas that are dominant in society.

In seeking to understand why many men are misogynists, queer theorists would most likely argue that it is because social discourse is misogynistic, because it contains demeaning ideas about women’s bodies, intellectual abilities, and personalities. It is therefore not necessary to assume that the decision to become misogynistic is the result of some internal rational calculus – rather, practically everyone drifts into misogyny by virtue of their membership in sexist society. I do not think that becoming a sexist is a rational, conscious, purposeful decision – at least not at the individual level. And if such decisions do exist, they occur in the context of having already been socialized into believing certain things about men and women “in general.”

Secondly, having understood that misogynistic mindsets originate in the way that gender is socially constituted, it is then irrelevant whether or not men get together and collectively agree to oppress women, because social discourse already ensures that women will be oppressed. Indeed, we do not need to imagine hypothetical and unrealistic “social contracts” among all men to oppress women because such an action would not even be needed to ensure the subjugation of women. The ideas that are dominant in society ensure that nearly everybody will be a participant in that subjugation, that it will be embedded in social interactions, and (re)enforced by social institutions.

Finally, conceptualizing gender oppression as the result of system-level social discourses inspires different kinds of solutions for gender progress. Instead of requiring the elimination of men or separation from them, changing social discourse will lead to the possibility of changing men and changing gender. Queer theory invests the human subject with an ability to change for the better, and in that sense, it enables us to imagine a differently gendered world – and one that is not created as such through violence or separatism. In Pornography, Andrea Dworkin’s vision is devoid of this impulse.

Conclusions

Overall, the conceptions of gender relations outlined in Woman Hating and Pornography could not be more different. The former takes a revolutionary approach to gender and sexuality, calling for a complete overthrow of the binary gender system as it stands today. People are conceptualized as changeable, as having the capacity to transform themselves and to end the gender system as we know it today.

These ideas are not found in Pornography. Instead, this work is so firmly rooted in analyzing the misogynistic system – as it stands today – that it fails to provide any alternatives. Dworkin conceptualizes men as evil, unchangeable creatures who are rationally, intentionally, consciously and collectively crushing women. Unfortunately, with such a portrayal, the scope of conceivable solutions for ending misogyny and patriarchy can only be very narrow.

***For More Information***

While her books are, unfortunately, quite hard to find, there are plenty of websites where you can access Andrea Dworkin's work. For more on radical feminism, I recommend Alice Echols' Daring to be Bad, which also reveals further unacknowledged connections between radical feminism and queer theory. On queer theory, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble remains an excellent introduction. For a more contemporary discussion, check out the recently released Feminism is Queer by Mimi Marinucci.

In The Queer And Now w/Genderbusters Director Sam Berliner

2010-12-05T18:21:00.010-05:00
And now, a word from our editor:

In an effort to steer BelowTheBelt in a more interactive, community discussion-oriented direction (and, frankly, increase readership), I'm reaching out to other queer artists and writers to like, talk about stuff.

Today my metaphorical "guest" is Sam Berliner, director of Genderbusters.

TCMV: I think it's best we get the awkward "ask the artist their inspiration" part out of the way and move on, eyes averted, as if nothing happened. Where did Genderbusters come from? Was it born solely out of creative expression and/or is it a response to the current gender environment in our culture?

SB: Genderbusters is my first year film for my Cinema MFA program at San Francisco State University that I completed this past May 2010. My classmates and I were all required to make 5 minute 16mm films in order to continue onto the second year of the program. I knew I wanted to make something about gender, something with a positive spin, and something that would spark direct action and education. I went through a number of different ideas before finally coming up with gender superheroes. (One of the earlier incarnations was on an airplane where the flight attendant speech was altered to say something along the lines of "the gender road in life can be bumpy and difficult so please be careful when opening overhead bins as the contents may have shifted throughout the flight." Haha. Yes, clearly that one found its way to the trash pretty quickly.) Seriously though, it was and will continue to be my core driving passion to create films in which people of all genders, bodies, sexual orientations, and the beautiful combinations of all of those things are able to properly represent themselves on the screen. My goal as a filmmaker is to create a positive voice for the trans, genderqueer, androgynous & gender-fluid folks not yet represented on screen, document our history, serve as a call to action to be recognized and respected by society at large, and force our culture to evolve.

TCMV: How did you assemble your cast and crew? Did you hold auditions? Were they friends/classmates of yours? How does a queer filmmaker begin the process of putting together a project like this?

SB: I assembled my crew from my classmates and my colleagues in the Bay Area. I have lived here since 2005, have worked on many projects over the years, and met some fabulous people who share my passion for telling these kinds of stories. I feel very lucky as a queer/trans filmmaker to have the wonderful connections that I do to a network of other queer/trans filmmakers all with different skills and passions that they bring to each new project. In terms of casting, it was extremely important to me to have the actors playing the parts actually inhabit those identities in their real lives. I was not interested in actors "acting" genderqueer or trans. I wanted folks with those identities to be able to authentically represent themselves on the screen. So I asked friends of mine, both from "real life" and YouTube, to be a part of the project, and taught them about acting and how to work on a film set as we went.

TCMV: How much of the film was the result of collaborative input and how much was your vision as the director?

SB: The film's core is my vision as writer and director but I could not have done it without the help of many people, most directly, my classmates and professors in my program at SF State. The film went through copious revisions every step of the way from script-writing to editing to color correction. So in this way, as well as through the work of my amazing crew on set, I was able to hone my vision for the project and make it come alive. It was a beautiful, if incredibly painstaking and detail-oriented process. But I love every step of it and that's why I know I am in the right profession. A fun example of my vision coming through the process is the Genderbusters logo which I doodled in my notebook in class one day. It is the letter G busting through a 3-dimensional box (the gender box) with pointy triangle-edged "busting" power. I had asked my friend to design the logo and brought my doodle to him and he said "that's it!" So all he had to do was bring it into Illustrator and clean it up so I could bring it to the screen printing shop to be put onto our T-shirts! (Which *achem* are for sale. Check out the website for more information: www.wix.com/berliner/genderbusters.)

TCMV: Student films are a very voluntary labor. Do you know how much it would have cost to make Genderbusters if you were to compensate cast/crew and rent equipment/locales?

SB: It definitely would have cost a lot of money if Genderbusters were not a student film. As it is, the film was costly in terms of shooting on film (stock, shipping, developing, telecine, color correction, travel to LA), renting lights in addition to the equipment we got from school, all kinds of other costs like craft services and reimbursing people for transportation, not to mention post-production costs like making DigiBeta tapes to screen at festivals, DVD duplication for sale, post office costs etc. Whew! We were lucky enough to get some food donated, some equipment from school, and the kindness of people’s hearts to work for food and a copy of the film. The costs would have been considerable had it not been a student production and there would have been much more emphasis on fundraising, grant writing and fiscal sponsorship.

TCMV: The film utilizes a lot of color. Bright, vibrant, primary colors. Was this purely an aesthetic decision or was it intended to symbolize diversity and inclusion, you know, like that thing the LGBT community uses as its logo, with all the colors and everything, you know what I'm talking about, right?

SB: Interesting that you bring the film's colors back to the LGBTQ rainbow aesthetic! I actually hadn't thought of that! The reason behind the color pallet is that I wanted the film to look like a comic book for the superheroes (which my friend has coined "super-queeros") with the brightest, punchiest colors possible. This informed the costumes, the set decoration, and the film stock-- we shot on Fuji 160T which is extra colorful.

TCMV: Were there any comic books in particular you used for inspiration in creating the look and feel of Genderbusters? Would you say the Genderbusters are more like The Avengers or the Justice League (alternatively, The Runaways or Teen Titans, if you're going for more of a "youth" vibe)?

SB: I was inspired specifically in terms of color schemes and camera movement by the Pixar film “The Incredibles.” The film’s rich primary colors in the costumes/set decoration and quick tension-building movements/cuts were quite the high standard and kept pushing me to be more creative and fun with the look of the film.

TCMV: Many of the scenes in the film depict real-life situations many queers encounter in the binary world. Did you, the cast or crew draw on personal experiences while filming them? Are there any other "like real life" situations that you wish you could have depicted in the film?

SB: In writing the script I brainstormed the most common awkward binary dilemmas that I, and those in my community, have experienced as non-gender-normative folks. Specifically, I drew from the work I have done on the YouTube collaborative channel that I was a part of for two years called GenderqueerChat. (www.youtube.com/genderqueerchat.) On the channel, we discuss a different topic every week as genderqueer people and over the years we have created a significant body of work. I went back through the videos and pulled out the most poignant experiences. Throughout the semester, I whittled the list down to 3 since the film had to be 5 minutes. But there are many more dilemmas to be explored. In fact, people have come up to me and said "I needed the Genderbusters the other day when..." The best stories are when people remember the tag line for the film, "there's a hero in all of us," and take it upon themselves to resolve the awkward situations. Real life action sparked from film is my goal and it is phenomenal when people feel inspired and confident to do so. -- During rehearsals and filming it was very natural for the actors to draw from personal experiences to inform their performances since they inhabit the identities in their real lives as queer/trans folks.

TCMV: True or false: the increasing visibility of gender variant persyns on youtube can serve as a response to the misrepresentation of the community in other media?

SB: Tricky question. I would hope to say true but I think that the YouTube community is rather insular, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, being somewhat insular ensures it as a safe space for those who need it. On the other hand, it means the messages of growth and diversity within the gender community are not getting out there into the public where they need to be seen in order to help facilitate social change around these issues. I think that being on YouTube one can certainly respond to and criticize the misrepresentations that are out there, but as a limited medium it can only reach so many people. That being said, of course there are some exceptions. For example the It Gets Better project has breached the gap between the folks who frequent YouTube as well as the public in general. I even heard a story about it on NPR! I would hope that more uses of YouTube could breach this gap moving forward.

TCMV: What could/should be done, in your opinion, to help the gender community breach that gap from "corner of the internet" to mainstream media the same way that the "It Gets Better" project has? Do you believe that the continued circulation of your film and projects like it can help?

SB: I think that the gender community can continue to breach the gap to the mainstream by continuing to make films, blogs, artwork, books, music etc. Movements take a long time to gain momentum and infiltrate the rest of society and there’s a lot of really fantastic work being done that is slowly getting these messages out there. The more the better! And I think it’s working! On NPR they said the word transgender and had a whole story about transgendered little girls and the Gender Odyssey conference in Seattle, on a DVD jacket I saw the words non-normative gender, Obama even said the word transgender in an address to the entire country! I think we all just have to have the strength and bravery to be and express ourselves and in time the culture will shift.

TCMV: Unlike other superheroes, the Genderbusters lack an archnemesis. Did you ever consider having a villain for them to thwart? Would you make the gender binary wear a cape?

SB: Great question! Yes, I considered having an archnemesis for the Genderbusters to fight, a personified version of the Binary like the Binary Police or a Binary Machine, but none of the ideas were working as well as a general sense of the Binary’s infiltration of society. I tried to work this idea subtly into the film through art direction in the wardrobe: Those within the confines of the binary wear drab, muted colors, the characters in need of the Genderbusters wear somewhat more colorful clothes, and the Genderbusters themselves wear ridiculously bright colorful costumes.

TCMV: Are there plans for a sequel or full-length feature? Can I be in it?

SB: While I think that Genderbusters has a lot of potential to be made into a series or a feature length film, I am letting it have its own life as a short project for now and focusing on getting it out there. Perhaps in the future I will revisit the concept and expand it, in which case I’ll contact you :), but that’s where things are at for now. More immediate is the need for real life Genderbusters and what we all can do to push the Gender Evolution Revolution forwards in our own lives. A couple of my friends were even talking about starting up a real group with direct actions!

TCMV: I can't get this image of Genderbuster flash mobs placing stickers on single gender bathrooms and wreaking chaos in the clothing departments of the local Macy's out of my head. I imagine this isn't what your friends were thinking of when they said "direct actions". But now that I've put this idea in our readers' heads, would you endorse this sort of behavior in achieving the Gender Evolution Revolution? For those who haven't seen Genderbusters, what can people do to push forward the Gender Evolution Revolution?

SB: Haha! Ok, no wrecking havoc per se, more like gender-neutral bathroom stickers, flyers for gender related rights, that kind of thing. In the film, there’s a Here’s Five Things You Can Do to Join the Gender Revolution section. Here are the suggestions: “Start a direct action group of gender revolutionaries in your area and lobby against transphobic legislation. Visit Camp Trans to protest the exclusion of trans women from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Make art- create alternatives to popular culture like zines and films that reflect who you are! Organize a trans march in your area- make it inclusive to all genders and allies.”

TCMV: I'd never be able to wipe the egg on my face if I didn't ask: do you have any advice to parlay to aspiring queer filmmakers looking to tackle similar projects? Is there anything they can learn from your experience or little-known resources you'd wish to point them towards?

SB: Here is some advice that I would give to aspiring queer filmmakers: (1) Express your unique self. We need so many more stories of queer/gender-variant folks out there! (2) Partner with friends/community resources. Start a film group where a bunch of friends get together at a coffee shop and workshop ideas and even potentially work on each other’s projects. In terms of monetary help, you could get financial contributions if you have a fiscal sponsor (an organization you partner with so that when people donate to your project is it tax deductable) so see what your local LGBT center is willing to do. (3) Use the internet to your advantage! Start a Facebook page for your film group, a website, there is so much networking that can be done online. (4) Take advantage of your local community college film classes, production, editing, theory, history, it’s all really important and idea-inspiring stuff! Plus the classes are inexpensive. (5) Watch as many queer and gender-bendy films you can get your hands on. Go to art events, film festivals, book readings, plays. Get out and support your community and not only will people support you back but you can find inspiration in their work and potential collaborators.

Please visit the Genderbusters website and the facebook group. There are DVDs and T-shirts for sale.

Andrea Dworkin & Queer Theory, Part I

2010-11-29T15:13:00.008-05:00
“The object is cultural transformation. The object is the development of a new kind of human being and a new kind of human community.” - Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (192)

About a decade ago, philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote a searing critique of Judith Butler, titled “The Professor of Parody,” in which she argued that Butler’s work barely brought anything new or interesting to the table. Butler – and by implication, the whole queer theoretical tradition – was simply rehashing in more abstruse form ideas about the social constructed-ness of gender that had been put forward centuries ago by Plato and John Stuart Mill. Feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, had already sufficiently updated these ideas for modern times, and queer theory more-or-less repeats their arguments with an added dose of philosophical window-dressing.

Having recently had the privilege to read some of Dworkin’s books, I think this point of view is partly right. Her early work – published in the aftermath of radical feminism’s 1970s zenith – did indeed prefigure many of queer theory’s insights in sharp and provocative ways. However, in the 1980s, her work took a turn in a different direction, positing a reading of gender and sexuality that reified the system of patriarchal oppression feminists have been struggling against, and therefore, (unintentionally) undermined the potential for transforming that system. In this context, queer theory can be read as an attempt to return feminism to its more radical, hopeful, and transformational incarnations. This essay will explore these themes by comparing two of Dworkin’s most well-known books, Woman Hating and Pornography: Men Possessing Women.

“Androgyny, Fucking, Community”

Woman Hating was Dworkin’s first published book, written during the apex of radical feminism in the early 1970s. Contemporary queer theorists often assume that Second Wave feminism (even in its most radical forms) was hopelessly essentialist, simplistic and trans/homophobic. Woman Hating destroys these assumptions; it is an astoundingly contemporary book that contains previews of many of the arguments queer theorists developed in the 1990s and 2000s.

Most feminists and queer theorists share a conception of gender as socially constructed, with the latter arguing – somewhat cautiously – that gendered behavior should not be taken to represent an internal essence of a person and the former positing more boldly that “‘man’ and ‘woman’ are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs” (Dworkin, Woman Hating, 174). These two positions are basically the same: they denaturalize gender and conceptualize it as the product of social forces.

Where feminism and queer theory are assumed to differ is in their respective analyses of physical sex. Feminists have entrenched a clear distinction between sex and gender, conceptualizing gender as a malleable product of culture and socialization and viewing sex as natural, material and unchangeable. Queer theorists have exploded this dichotomy, extending the denaturalization of gender to sex and arguing that ideas about the sexed body form the basis for patriarchal claims about gender. For instance, if a female’s body is defined in terms of the vagina, and the vagina is interpreted primarily as an incubator for human fetuses, it then follows that a woman’s fundamental role in life is reproduction. This is the ideational basis for sexist politics that assigns the vast majority of childcare obligations to women and confines them to home and hearth. Implicit in queer theory, therefore, are the notions that physical sex can be interpreted differently (e.g. – what if the clitoris was viewed as the defining aspect of the female?), that it is just as socially constructed as gender, and that dominant discourses about the body form the foundation for sexism and misogyny.

While this relationship between sex and gender sometimes went amiss in Second Wave feminism, Dworkin duly recognized it in Woman Hating. She emphasized that the way we conceive of physical sex has huge consequences for gender politics: “If there are two discrete biological sexes, then it is not hard to argue that there are two discrete modes of human behavior, sex-related, sex-determined. One might argue for a liberalization of sex-based roles, but one cannot justifiably argue for their total redefinition” (175). Here, foreshadowing queer theory, Dworkin realizes that as long as we remain anchored in the binary view of sex, the fundamental reorganization of gendered life will be impossible because two categories of people, based on two bodily archetypes, will always be conceived as somehow essentially different, with correspondingly diverging roles in life. “Sex...[is] found to have been gender all along” (Butler, Gender Trouble, 8).

But even more interesting than Dworkin’s cognizance of this problem is her solution. In a striking chapter, titled, “Androgyny, Fucking, Community,” she outlines “another ontology, one which discards the fiction that there are two polar distinct sexes” (175). For Dworkin, the problems of sexism and misogyny can only be fully resolved by ditching the two-sexed model on which modern society is built and replacing “the traditional biology of sex difference with the radical biology of sex similarity” – by this, she means not that “there is one sex, but that there are many” (175). This very same argument would be made almost two decades later by genderqueer activists, who fight patriarchy by living the dream of a multi-sexed existence, a world in which sex and gender do not divide neatly into two and only two categories, and in which a multiplicity of sexed and gendered categories can proliferate. In this sense, Dworkin is prophetic in Woman Hating, recognizing that the struggle to end patriarchy will require “the development of a new kind of human being and a new kind of human community,” founded on the basis of the assumption that everyone has androgynous potential and a mix of masculine and feminine energies (192). Today’s genderqueers and gender anarchists may very well be what she was envisioning.

Implicit in her vision is an attempt to broaden feminism’s appeal and universalize its message – another mainstay of queer theory. By challenging the idea that the subject of feminism should be “women,” Judith Butler called attention to what is lost by conceptualizing feminism exclusively in terms of winning rights for the female-bodied. Such a foundation may lead to essentialist and exclusionary definitions of what it means to be a woman, might encourage separatist agendas that reject any engagement with society, and could foster an “us-vs.-them” mentality in which feminism pits men against women without realizing the ways in which men can are oppressed by the gender system as well. In Woman Hating, Dworkin seems to be aware of these issues, and thus, lays out a feminist agenda that could potentially be applicable to all, that aims to end gender and sexual repression in general, at the same time as fighting specifically to end violence against women. For instance, prefiguring Julia Serano, Dworkin recognizes that misogynistic violence is not just aimed at people who are labeled “female” but also at anyone who is identified as “feminine,” regardless of their sex. On the basis of this assertion, she envisages a potentially productive alliance between feminists and gay men:

“The homosexual is the queer, asshole, cocksucker, faggot; the woman is the hole, hot wet fuck tube, hot slit or just plain ass. He thrives on pain and so does she… the parts they play in the sadomasochistic script are the same…[and] it is not hard to see that the struggle for gay male liberation and women’s liberation is a common struggle: both mean freedom from the stigma of being female… Women and homosexual males are united in their queerness, a union which is real and verifiable” (89-90).

Make no mistake, the feminism in Woman Hating is very much about ending oppression and violence against women (as the harrowing chapters on Chinese foot-binding and Euro-American witch hunting attest). But Dworkin realizes that feminism should not stop there, that it should outline an ambitious agenda for complete social transformation, and that it should seek to (re)construct the gendered order on the basis of androgyny instead of gender binarism. Sounding exactly like Kate Bornstein, Dworkin makes clear that “androgyny…may be the one road to freedom open to women, men, and that emerging majority, the rest of us” (154).

This is not to say that major differences do not exist between the approach outlined in this book and modern-day queer theory. For instance, Dworkin expresses enthusiastic support for incest, bestiality and sex with children, arguing that “the destruction of the incest taboo is essential to the development of cooperative human community based on the free-flow of natural androgynous energy” (189) and that “in androgynous community, human and other-animal relationships would become more explicitly erotic…” (188). She also develops her case for androgynous community and the potential for a multi-sexual society on the basis of scientific evidence about chromosomes, hormones, and intersexuality. Modern genderqueer theory tends to take a more phenomenological approach, focusing on individuals’ experience of being outside the gender binary, rather than seeking “objective” scientific proof that such an experience is biologically possible. Finally, Dworkin commits the cardinal sin of Second Wave feminism, stating that the “analysis in [Woman Hating] applies to the life situations of all women” (23). One wonders whether a book that starts with an analysis of Western fairy tales (Snow White, Cinderella etc…) and Western pornography would be relevant to women in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, who have never been exposed to these cultural productions? Since the 1970s, feminists have indeed become a lot more sensitive to the difficulties of speaking on behalf of “all women.”

But despite these and other differences, Woman Hating is – at its core – queer through and through. Dworkin’s approach to the relationship between sex and gender, her undermining of the sex/gender binary, her commitment to a liberating and socially transformative androgyny, and her attempts to universalize feminism’s appeal all sit very comfortably with the queer theoretical tradition. Isn’t it about time we recognized Andrea Dworkin as one of the mothers of queer theory?

Part II of this post, where I analyze Dworkin's later work, will be posted on Below the Belt in a fortnight. In the meantime, please feel free to start a discussion in the comment box below!

***For More Information***
While her books are, unfortunately, quite hard to find, there are plenty of websites where you can access Andrea Dworkin's work. For more on radical feminism, I recommend Alice Echols' Daring to be Bad, which also reveals further unacknowledged connections between radical feminism and queer theory. On queer theory, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble remains an excellent introduction. For a more contemporary discussion, check out the recently released Feminism is Queer by Mimi Marinucci.

On Activists and Allies

2010-11-24T14:01:00.005-05:00
There's a conversation that crops up regularly in social justice circles on the role of allies in how we build our movements. In a sense, they are necessary: our rights, like it or not, rely on others seeing us as deserving of them. At the same time, insincere allies co-opt struggles or force oppressed people to constantly explain themselves. Sometimes ally-free spaces are necessary for exploring the dark sides of our realities – the ones that are complicated and murky and don't fit well onto a PR brochure. And some argue, controversially, that ally-only spaces are needed (white anti-racist groups come to mind) for allies to work through their privilege without further burdening people of colour.

I come to activism with enormous privilege. In fact, the very fact that I can choose whether to be an activist or not is an expression of privilege. I often tell people that I'm an activist because I can't possibly imagine what else to do with this privilege than to try and share it. It's true; I deeply believe that it is my responsibility as a person with privilege – and as a decent human being – to oppose any affronts to the basic humanity and dignity of any person(s). I'm a white, USian, native-born, English-speaking, (upper) middle-class, highly educated, thin, currently non-disabled, apparently cis-gendered girl-shaped person who's often read as het. I grew up within a supportive family in an urban, literate, relatively progressive milieu. So I am politicized out of a sense of fairness, not the circumstances of my life.

This complicates my activism. In many of the struggles with which I am involved, I have hardly been oppressed. My knowledge of homophobia is passive, based more on life in an obnoxiously heteronormative society than on a daily fear of gay-bashing or losing my job. I can't remember ever having been the target of intentional homophobia (biphobia, yes. But even that I could probably count on one hand). Even as a feminist, where by virtue of my perceived gender I am undeniably in a disadvantaged position, my privilege in other areas allows me a certain buffer. I can, for the most part, choose with whom I associate, for example, and I'm less bound to a particular job or setting than many others. I have to deal with objectification and casual sexism and people disbelieving my abilities or wanting to fit me into prescribed gender roles all the time. But in a lot of ways, I still have it lucky.

As a feminine, female-bodied person, as a queer person, as a gender non-conformist, I have a genuine stake in the outcomes of certain trans, queer, and feminist struggles. But I can hardly pretend that having a claim to a certain label means my interests should be allowed to dominate that struggle. The best example for me is the immigrant rights movement. I am a second-generation immigrant, and an immigrant myself, which I suppose give me some legitimacy to talk about immigrant rights. But I'm the “good” kind of immigrant: legal, educated, linguistically and culturally assimilated, healthy, and so on. I have to come to the struggle as an ally to the folks for whom immigration is a true hardship. It is possible that making the system work for them will mean improvements for me, but that is not my primary goal. My immigrant identity is only a source of some empathy and 101-level knowledge, not a driving factor in my understanding of the movement's goals.

I want to suggest that we have to accept a blurring of the lines between allies and “genuine” oppressed folks. In fact, I think we need a new language that can talk about the important difference between the oppressions we face and the identities we hold. We've had some productive conversations in this space on queer heterosexuality. I'd argue that, in that case, claiming a queer identity (however justified) does not reduce one's straight privilege, just as a pre/non-op trans man's personal identification as male does not stop him from experiencing sexism based on society's perception of his presentation. In short, anti-oppression work is not the same as identity politics, and to conflate them is to obscure the effects of intersectionality and the extremely varied experiences and struggles that we each face.

Women’s Rights and the International Community: Promoting Power from Within

2010-11-17T13:52:00.001-05:00

The majority of academics and policy-makers, when they refer to peace, mean the absence of war, and in this, the absence of military conflict. Further, many argue that since the end of WWII, the world has seen a decrease in the number of armed conflicts. This is arguable in itself, since the number of civil conflicts, outside of rich nations, remains persistently high, but it can also be challenged on a different level. Across the globe, citizens are still fighting on a daily basis, including to feed themselves and their families, combat unemployment and lack of housing, as well as struggling with various forms of psychological and physical abuses. And women are often on the frontline of this different type, and yet no-less, if not more, harmful war.

Cambodian Women’s Rights Activist and Opposition Political Party Member, Moo Sokooa, summed up the situation in a recent article, “despite progress made by governments and NGOs the world over to raise public awareness and to change society’s attitude toward violence against women because of their gender, crimes committed against women and girls remain pervasive. […] statistics show a picture that should alarm us all […].” Now, we must ask ourselves the following question: how come, after 60 years of ever-growing international institutions, conventions, and legal frameworks, targeting injustices (including those faced by women specifically) are we observing persisting, and even increasing, inequalities and discrimination?

Despite progress made in the empowerment of women, and especially with the “global development effort” of the last decades, it remains limited. Women remain subject to male physical domination, lower education, and little access to political decision-making roles. And this situation exists in all countries around the world, from the economically poorest to the richest. There are multiple reasons for this phenomenon - still weak legal frameworks, poorly implemented policies – as well as other multiple layers and interconnections, which I do not pretend to include and explain altogether in this short essay. What I would like to focus on here, using my own perspective, including my short-term experience in one “developing” nation, Cambodia, is one crucial foundational issue: the social construction of sexual and gender roles, how they lead to discrimination against women, influence women themselves, and alter their sense of power over their own lives.

I take here one example, that of sexual violence against women in Cambodia. In this country, one out of four women lives with violence in the home or has witnessed gender-based violence of one form or another. Many have been, and continue to be, daily victims of incest, torture and gang rape. As reported by Adhoc, the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association and one of the leading NGOs in the country, in July, there were 201 rape cases identified during the first 5 months of 2009, out of which 134 cases (66%) concerned minors (under 18 years old). Moreover, out of these 134 cases, 28 involved girls under 10 (20.8%) and 106 involved victims aged from 10 to 17 years (79.2%). The actual number of these crimes is higher, as many cases are not voiced by the victims themselves or even reported by the local authorities, with agreements on compensation often reached between families of the victims and the perpetrators.

How come this is still happening when local authorities publicly claim their support for women’s rights, with the government having had a Women’s Affairs Ministry for more than 15 years, and with the international community supporting women’s empowerment for over two decades (I define “international community” here as involving all politicians who govern states, the international legal codes that they are supposed to abide by, as well as the network of international institutions and transnational NGOs)? I have only been working in Cambodia for 7 months, so I will not pretend to speak with absolute authority on the matter. Nonetheless, living and working abroad has made me realize how much in Cambodia, as in many countries around the world, discrimination inflicted on women and either directly or indirectly accepted by women themselves, remains fundamentally driven by socially-constructed gender roles, created in the past, perpetuated, and continuously re-created throughout our contemporary times. There remains a strong culture of fundamental disbelief and disregard towards women’s qualifications, expecting them to subordinate themselves to men. Both men and women will state the opposite: young girls are increasingly sent to school, and many women choose to work and become part of decision-making processes. Yet, young girls remain the first ones not to attend schools if the families are facing economic hardship, women are still seen as having to take care of the household chores whilst also remaining publicly silenced and heavily objectified and expecting to be “taken care of” by men. If they do enter the workforce, they are also directly or indirectly made to believe that they should not create strong “waves” in the public realm.

Further, this is a view which is transmitted to both men and women, through traditional family roles as well as via the media and pop culture coming from within and outside the country. Korean culture has been very popular amongst the younger generation for several years (after the Thai influence in the 1990s). I am astonished on a daily basis at the “inferior” and sexualized image of women, brandished as the “real feminine Asian women,” transmitted through Korean – as well as other Asian and “Western” - music, films, magazines, and fashion. The structure of society – as well as all the men, women and children in it – are profoundly influenced by this. In the example taken above of sexual abuses, there remains a strong sense of shame or fear of the power of the perpetrators and the authorities. Women often remain deeply socialized into not believing in their own sense of worth and in the power they have to bring about change for themselves, their families, and societies at large. Not only is this the case in the terrible situation of sexual abuse, but it is also true for all the domains which govern women’s, and all human beings’, lives: involvement in the private and public spheres, social, political, and economic life.

As a First Lady and as the only woman leading the team responsible for the drafting of the Universal Human Rights Declaration, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her biography: “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home […] they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he (sic) lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.” This statement underlines what is at the very heart of what social scientists, including feminists, have long recognized about human power and social change - that the process of empowerment stems from women’s consciousness of their individual worth and power to act together to bring change. Empowerment is not something that can be done “to” or “for” women. Empowerment is about women realizing the “power within” themselves and acting individually and together with other women to exercise “power from and with” each other, thereby gaining “power to” act as agents and fundamentally change the way conservative masculine-oriented societies function.

If this very recognition makes the role of any activists (including international human rights advocates) limited, it nonetheless does not render them absolutely irrelevant. Nevertheless, in this, we must seriously take into account the point made above; especially the extent to which the process of development, and women’s personal development specifically, takes a diversity of pathways, long-term and unpredictable ones. Development has been a major item on world leaders’ political agenda for nearly six decades now, yet there are still many fundamental needs that need to be met in terms of human development. Taking the example of Cambodia, the country suffered the combination of a civil war, a US-led coup and a genocide in one decade (the 1970s), followed by foreign invasion and control for the next decade, during the remaining of the Cold War (Vietnam invaded in 1979, ousted the Khmer Rouge from power and retained control of the country, with Soviet support, throughout the 1980s). This ended in the early 1990s when, after the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, Cambodia saw an outpouring of United Nations and wider civil society political, financial and technical support. This foreign support never stopped and has kept increasing ever since. Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city, is today the second-ranked city in the world in terms of number of NGOs, after Kigali in Rwanda. And yet, despite this incredible generosity and human rights consciousness, we still see today in Cambodia increasing human rights abuses including daily rapes, psychological violence, and the lack of freedom of speech. Here, we need to ask a crucial question: what can the international community do to help bring more fundamental change to this persistently depressing situation?

Many academics, including Andrea Cornwall, writing in Pathways of women's empowerment (July 2007), argue that, “the dominant thinking about women and development has become mired in a progressive-sounding orthodoxy that fails to engage with the realities of women’s experience and aspirations around the world.” If this is indeed “dominant thinking,” then in practice, it is increasingly resisted by an approach that wants and pushes to “engage with the realities of women’s experience and aspirations.” This more practical approach makes us refocus our attention on individuals’ own experiences and how everyone can assist others in pushing people along their own path of empowerment. Further, it calls for defining empowerment, as Naila Kabeer puts it, in Pathways of Women’s Empowerment (www.pathwaysofempowerment.org), as a “journey without maps”, and even a set of multiple journeys. Each “journey without maps” is to be one of self-discovery and expression, one on which horizons shift as the terrain changes. And it is indeed a horizon, in other terms, a long-term journey, with short and medium term impacts, but maybe not as concrete and predictable as we have maybe let ourselves believe too much until now. Further, it is a thinking which, when put into action, requires a combination of time, great skills and experience, as well as incredible commitment to women and their culture.

Yet here, one has to work within the institutional structure of today’s world: the demand for speed, visible results, and efficiency, as well as existing mainstream development agencies working with local authorities and elites, all holding their own political agendas. Fast-track and “cold” agency programs and government policies continue to be rolled out by “experts” over any terrain, with “power” thus turned from a structural relation into a transferable commodity, shifted away from the actual agents of change, and “choices” made less by determining and expressing the parameters of the possible than by selecting options made available by bureaucratically-led development intervention. I am certainly not making the point that this is the case everywhere and that individuals within these agencies are not doing all they can to serve the interests of the most discriminated. However, one main approach which has been taken in the last decades has some drawbacks which have gradually fixed the very limits of our “power to empower”. I take here two examples which I have encountered during my time here: microfinance projects and political quotas.

Firstly, in the last decade, “empowerment” has come to be increasingly linked to microfinance, economic projects that give women small loans and enlist them in small-scale business activities such as producing and selling traditional handicrafts or food products (see the following link, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfinance). I myself was all for microfinance when I first began reading about and studying it at University. After several months of working here I have come to realize that this approach, as any, cannot be an all-encompassing “tool” or “channel” for empowerment, and that it has its own limits regarding how much it can actually promote women’s “own chosen paths.” Whether small loans actually enhance women’s “agency” and “choices” depends as much on the terms of their contract (how the women actually chose to enter the activity, continued assistance and mentorship, dialogue etc…), as on what they decide to do with their money and experience gained in the short and long-terms. If involvement in business activities can be very relevant to women interested or skilled in such projects, it is not for all. Further, even for women desiring to enter business activities, we must keep in mind that financial independence is indeed central to attaining one’s personal objectives, but one’s personal objectives cannot be limited to financial independence. Strict focus on the “money” side of microfinance risks making us conflate self-empowerment with economic empowerment. Yet, while empowerment is about expressing the entirety of one’s potential, monetary security is a tool to attain this. Further, economic empowerment itself has impacts on family and social dynamics. Promoting women’s empowerment must take into account existing structures and relationships, as well as men and children’s rights. Finally, we must be careful that NGOs are not fixated as the sources of (economic) power and women as their unquestioning recipients. Women’s “liberation” from traditional gender roles would then actually just be turned into another form of “social imprisonment,” with their own strategies, objectives and visions (partly) silenced by organizations speaking “for them.”

This brings me to the second aspect I have been working on and researching: political involvement of women. In recent years, this has become a crucial item on political agendas of major institutions as well as governments. Until now, the emphasis has been on increasing numbers, quotas, and percentages of women in politics. However here, we must stop and ask whether demanding greater representation of women within flawed political structures is what will do the trick. In many countries, including in Cambodia, the numbers have increased, the percentages have been bumped up, and yet, discrimination persists, at all levels: women still do not speak out, voice their personal concerns and opinions too little, and avoid critically assessing existing conservative male-dominated policies and legislations. As Ana Alice Costa from the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment team in Brazil points out, making political institutions more responsive and accountable is about more than just getting larger numbers of women into politics. This is simply a first step towards addressing fundamental inequalities. The women now involved might still be voicing and reproducing the opinion of the strongest, sidelining the interests and rights of the poorest and most discriminated against in development of policies, and thereby reifying the very structures which perpetuate such inequalities, including those based on gender.

Power issues lie at the very heart of politics - its conduct and content. Therefore, we need to realize and bring attention to all political areas where sexual and gender-based power dynamics are very present. I come back here to my earlier example, with rape persisting as a tool of public male-domination, in times of armed conflicts especially. Today, we remain silenced and ignored by those for whom sexuality is a private matter, those for whom the only sexuality issues that matter are sexually transmitted infections and sexual violation, and those who advocate women’s empowerment at the same time as denying women the right to exercise choices over their own sexual, familial, and reproductive lives. Michel Foucault, in The History of Sexuality, would have argued that we must think about respecting the private realm, and not discursively “box” people by publicizing and “confessing” every aspect of sexuality. I would agree with his point. However, I would also argue that today, if we are truly committing ourselves to campaigning against and ending gender-based discrimination, we do need to embrace a public perspective on gender and sexuality, and one that promotes a wider and more inclusive approach; one that refuses to treat and socialize all women into weaker and silent individuals, to be protected by men; and which accepts all men’s and women’s sexualities.

After decades of nationaldand international public policies and strategies on the promotion and respect of human rights, our world has indeed made some great improvements, particularly in terms of women’s rights. Women are more visible than ever as they increasingly hold decision-making roles in the business, social, and political worlds. Yet, major improvements are still required, as we also realize that while women are increasingly visible in power relations, they might not yet actually be heard and listened to, or even themselves believe in their power to have a personal control over their private and public lives. Thus, the capacity of women to have an impact on power dynamics is actually reduced and even further institutionalized as weak. To consider this, and understand how to go forward from this realization, we must stop, discuss, and question, between “experts”, as well as with the people who are directly concerned. We must broaden our horizons and adopt a fundamentally new approach: long-term unpredictable journeys, that focus on collectively promoting gender equity and all individuals’ sense of worth and chosen paths, based on lived experiences, rather than academic and cultural stereotypes, multiple and layered visions and versions of empowerment, with the concept of power as a force for a fundamentally more just and equal world.

Fear Factor: Europe Bans the Burqa

2010-11-15T14:42:00.003-05:00
Herman Salton joins us from Open Democracy.

Face-covering prohibitions in Europe are typically passed on the basis of three arguments: security, women’s rights and secularism. Rational as they may seem, these arguments do not stand up to scrutiny.

Fear has become the defining trait of contemporary Europe. A savage financial crisis, a single currency in disarray, Greece’s economic turmoil and doubts about further EU integration are good reasons to worry about the future. Yet these are epiphenomena of more fundamental troubles, for Europe’s systemic fears involve nothing less than the extent of her territorial and cultural boundaries. To put it bluntly, an aged Europe feels under threat from a world she once dominated, but which she never properly understood. It is this post-colonial world that is coming back to haunt her. And it is wearing a burqa.

A full veil with a grill through which women can see, this garment was originally introduced by the Taliban and quickly came to be seen in Europe as a sign of oppression, sexual discrimination and religious fundamentalism. Outside of Afghanistan, however, the burqa remains very unusual. Slightly more common, but still rare, is the niqab, where only a slit is left for the eyes. The headscarf, or hijab - a form of headgear that leaves the face uncovered - is by far the most widespread of Europe’s “foreign-looking” female apparels. In theory, these garments are subject to different legal treatments in Europe, with the hijab usually tolerated and face coverings increasingly restricted. As the French case suggests, however, in practice the difference is minimal - and shrinking.

Burqa = backward

Let us consider the ‘burqa’ first. In Europe, this word no longer refers to Afghan apparel, but has become a scary catchall for every form of female face-covering thought to be rooted in the Muslim religion (the parliamentary debates of several European countries are instructive on the point). This, however, is doubly incorrect, for neither the Afghan burqa, nor the niqab, are usually worn by Muslims. They stem from cultural rather than religious practices, and there is no trace of them in the Koran.

And yet, in a curious post-colonial turn, Islam has somehow become synonymous with face-coverings. There is no doubt that they are increasingly hated by Europe’s politicians and their voters (who is influencing whom is hard to say). In Belgium, the Lower House passed a ‘burqa’ ban by 136 to 0 in April 2010, with usually-at-war Flemish and Walloon politicians rejoicing that the law restored “a pride in being Belgian” (60% of the population support the ban). In France, President Sarkozy stated that the ‘burqa’ is “a sign of submission which is unwelcome here” and, on 19 May 2010, vowed to outlaw it (57% of his fellow citizens agree, and the bill became law in September 2010). After making history for prohibiting the construction of new minarets - a move that was endorsed by 58% of the population - some of Switzerland’s cantons are considering a ‘burqa’ ban, and so is the Dutch government (with 66% support). In Spain, some city councils (such as Barcelona) have banned the wearing of face coverings, while Zapatero’s Education Minister supports a ban on Muslim headscarves at school. Although he eventually opposed a formal prohibition, Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt stated that “we don’t need to hide our faces in this way here” and indicated that he did not wish to see more women in ‘burqas’ (53% of Swedes would introduce a ban). Finally, in Denmark, a government spokesperson made it clear that “burqas and niqabs don’t belong in Danish society”, while in Italy, politicians are unearthing fascist-era legislation in order to fine the handful of women wearing face-coverings there.

Such prohibitions are typically passed on the basis of three arguments: security, women’s rights and secularism. After 9/11, security is an especially serious concern, and since face coverings hinder identification and have occasionally been used to commit crimes (such as bank robberies), banning them sounds reasonable to many. “It is not about introducing any form of discrimination”, the Belgian MP who instigated the burqa ban bill said, “it is aimed at forcing people to make themselves identifiable”. After all, several countries already have laws requiring visible faces in public, it is argued, so the ban has nothing to do with ‘burqas’ or indeed religion - as a Dutch government spokesman put it, “It’s a safety measure: you don’t see who’s in it”. Women’s rights are also routinely used to justify a prohibition of face veils: “Burqas are contrary to the ideals we have of women’s dignity”, Sarkozy stated, suggesting that they are demeaning regardless of the wearer’s beliefs. Austria’s women’s minister agrees - “I consider the burqa as a sign of the submission of women”, she declared - while a German minister defined it as “a full-body prison”. Last but not least, face coverings are said to clash with Europe’s hard-won division between church and state. Having spent centuries fighting each other on religious grounds, most Europeans do not want to go back to a time when God, rather than the State, made decisions about public space. “Other countries accept, without any problem or debate, visible religious signs in the public sphere”, one French MP stated, “but it is not our case. We claim this choice; better still, we are proud of it”. Faced with fundamentalist Islam, a strong political signal was needed, a Dutch MP agreed, to “give a political answer to a political problem”.

Rational as they may seem, these arguments do not stand up to scrutiny. Security is of course important, but face veils can hardly be regarded as a major threat. If there is a genuine belief that someone under a ‘burqa’ is a terrorist, police can invoke existing stop-and-search laws on grounds of reasonable suspicion, and Europe’s few veiled women can be asked to lift them in certain situations (e.g. before entering a bank). There is, after all, a reason why the existing laws requiring clear faces in public remain mostly unapplied: not only are they invasive, they are also virtually impossible to enforce - and so much so that the proposed bans on face-coverings contain a plethora of curious exceptions (for funeral veils, carnival masks, motorcycle helmets, etc). Moreover, numbers just do not support the view of the burqa as a security issue. In Belgium, this garment is worn by only about thirty women (out of a population of half a million, 3% of which is Muslim). In Switzerland, estimates mention a hundred women covering their faces in total:“If you have seen a burqa”, a local journalist commented, “chances are the wearer was a rich tourist”. In Denmark, the centre-right government abandoned plans to impose a ban after discovering that only three women in the entire country wear the burqa (around 200 wear niqabs). In Italy (population 56 million), there are only a few hundred face-covered women, while in France (population 60 million and home to Europe’s largest Muslim minority), TV crews were at pains to find women wearing burqas (there are about 2,000 niqabs). Despite the stereotyped view of ‘burqa’-covered terrorists, security threats involving this piece of clothing are rare and Europe’s current witch-hunting climate makes it an unlikely catalyst for crime.

Women’s rights are crucial and certain forms of veiling have historically been associated with misogyny (not only among Muslims but in most patriarchal societies). Sociological research, however, suggests that a growing number of women - especially young ones - do want to wear coverings for a variety of reasons: out of rebellion, as a statement of identity or modesty, for religious or traditional motives, and even as a fashion statement (the so-called ‘Chanel veils’). Should we really be restricting women who choose to wear veils as a way of punishing those who force women to wear them? And will the day ever come when women can simply wear what they want, without any patronizing intervention from overwhelmingly male legislators (or from their husbands)? It is of course encouraging to see so much interest in (and defence of) women’s rights among Europe’s male MPs. Centuries of barely-concealed misogyny, however, suggest some caution when assessing such passionate calls, not least because the most vocal supporters of the ‘burqa’ bans are often the most unlikely proponents of women’s rights: not the left-leaning ‘feminists’, say, but right-wing parties (such as the UKIP in the UK and the Northern League in Italy) that typically have little female representation except for the position of an equality spokesperson (one wonders why women should have a monopoly on this post, but I digress). So in Holland, for instance, hard-line immigration minister Rita Verdonk loudly invoked women’s rights to oppose the burqa, but her ministerial record suggests that she was motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice more than anything else. The same can be said for Italian equality minister Mara Carfagna, whose personal story is instructive of how women’s rights are easily trumpeted for political gains by unlikely defenders of female equality. A former show-girl, she is a junior member in the male-dominated government of Silvio Berlusconi, a serial womanizer known for his sexist slurs who has openly admitted choosing his female aides on the basis of their physical appearance (he also dismissed Zapatero’s government, which contained equal numbers of men and women, as “too pink”).

Last but not least, secularism is an especially rickety argument, for one only needs to look at the de-facto dominance of public space that religion exercises in places like Poland and Italy, to see that Europe is hardly consistent when it comes to the separation of church and state. Who can credibly argue that the ubiquitous presence of crucifixes in Italian classrooms is less of a threat to secularism than an individual’s attire? Moreover, such contradictions are by no means confined to traditionally Catholic countries. In Germany, certain states (such as Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg) prohibit Muslim teachers from wearing the headscarf, but allow others to wear Christian clothing (such as the nun’s habit). And even in supposedly hyper-secular France, strict laïcité is, like in most of Europe, à la carte: the majority of Catholic churches still belong to the French state and the French President is still chanoine honoraire (honorary clergyman) of the Lateran basilica in Rome (he is also the Prince of Andorra, a place where Catholicism is the official religion). More substantially, in some French regions Muslim girls are made to unveil before entering a classroom with a Christian crucifix. France happily allows exceptions to laïcité grounded on strong religious feelings in places like Alsace-Moselle for 2.5 million people (less than 5% of the population). But it does not cater for the needs of its 5 million-plus Muslim minority (10% of the same population).

From colonizer to colonized?

Rather than being founded on rational arguments, therefore, Europe’s prohibitionist drives against the ‘burqa’ seem to stem from irrational fears. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the continent’s obsession with face coverings has less to do with security, gender equality or secularism, than with the three highly inflammable ingredients of post-colonial powerlessness, prejudice and guilt. They fuel the perceived image of the ‘burqa’ as backward and threatening, offering centre-stage to a marginal issue which is nevertheless symbolic of more systemic problems afflicting the continent.

Europe’s perceived powerlessness is problematic because it follows several centuries of almost unlimited dominance. Having lost its worldwide military and political primacy, and having had to surrender territories and peoples in spades, the continent is deeply nervous about its future. Economically, it feels threatened from the East (by China and Japan) as well as from the West (by America), while the South is quickly picking up too. Demographically, Europe has obvious problems adjusting to new migratory trends which, unlike in the past, it can no longer properly control. Two reactions are possible here, one forward-looking (to accept change and adapt to it, while remaining faithful to one’s history and ideals) and the other defensive (to refuse change and even deny it is happening). The burqa bans suggest that Europe is choosing the latter, preferring to conservatively cling onto its (revered) past, rather than deal with the (uncertain) present and (scary) future. This is not unprecedented: national, ethnic and religious communities routinely resist change. The continent’s problem, and the source of most of its identity issues, is that neither Europe as a region, nor the various European states, have ever been (or can easily be constructed as being) homogeneous. Indeed, Europe has always been multi-cultural - one only needs to drive from Portugal to Poland to realize that the continent’s linguistic, religious, and ethnic variety could hardly be greater. Perhaps uniquely, Europe is also home to distinctive national cultures and identities, which is why it has been savaged by wars until the economic interdependence of the twentieth century rendered them counter-productive. So the idea of a ‘common past’ and ‘imagined European community’ allegedly under threat from burqa-wearing ‘immigrants’ is particularly shaky.

Unifying a continent through fear

Isn’t this precisely where the ‘unifying’ character of the ‘burqa’ comes in? In the same way that diverse political groups, both on the left and on the right, find a common cause at the national levels by attacking this garment, so heterogeneous and divided Europeans are constructing a sense of common identity by banning it. In this context, it does not matter that there are only a handful of ‘burqas’ in the whole of Europe - after all, there were only four minarets in Switzerland before the passage of the 2009 referendum, and little appetite for more. What matters is the perception of the ‘burqa’ as problematic and non-European, thus creating an impression that there is such a thing as authentic ‘Europeanness’. The process employed by several European countries is instructive of this, for the political and journalistic exploitation of a few minor cases has managed to convince public opinion that the continent is facing a ‘burqa’ emergency, when in fact statistics suggest that the number of women wearing it is negligible (and declining). This inconvenient circumstance has not been raised. Indeed, at no stage has there been any systematic examination of the numerical impact of the ‘burqa problem’ in Europe. Legislators, officials, government-appointed sages and journalists are not bothering with it. Why? Because Europe’s problem - and the reason behind the bans - has never been the ‘burqa’.

This brings us to the second contributing factor to Europe’s fears: the prejudices about the world it once dominated of Europe’s politicians. As Michael Pritchard reminds us, “Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed”, and there is no doubt that such negatives abound among European MPs. They invest first and foremost in the sign itself: “The burqa is an element of submission and alienation, even if it is not perceived as such by those who wear it”, one French MP patronizingly stated during the debates. His Swiss counterpart agreed—“[s]omebody who walks around in a full-body veil is either doing it as a provocation or as a way of saying ‘I refuse to live with you’” - while a Swedish Christian Democrat commented that “[t]he burqa is un-hygienic and disgusting”. Fear (of the sign) and ignorance (of the facts) did not spare a Swiss government spokesperson either: “There may soon be an uncontrollable profusion of burqas on Swiss streets”, he worried. As the convenient confounding of veils with Islam suggests, however, ignorant prejudice quickly extends to the religion that is (erroneously) associated with face-coverings: “Western civilization is far superior to Islam”, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi notably stated, while a French justice minister worried that “[w]hen there are more minarets than churches, then France will no longer be France”. His president agreed: “We need to create a culturally French Islam and we have a moral responsibility to uphold European values”, Sarkozy stated, adding that face-coverings are contrary to “our values as a civilization”. Considering these high-level comments, it is perhaps unsurprising that a British journalist who decided to wear a full veil for a day found herself at the receiving end of anti-Islamic and racial insults. There is no doubt that the ‘burqa’ bans are democratic - they are a democratic expression of racism and xenophobia.

Some veils are worse than others

Post-colonial guilt is the third contributing factor to Europe’s anxiety. Because most Europeans recognize the devastating effects of colonialism and the fact that it blatantly contradicted the Enlightenment principles that the continent helped generate, they also theoretically acknowledge the need for equal rights to all - including their ill-treated colonial subjects. But there is a difference between a philosophical commitment to equality, on the one hand, and the reluctance of European politicians (and their voters) to provide it. Such reluctance is especially strong when a former colonial master sees its subjects coming to shore and expecting to be treated as equals, since this can reinforce a sense of threatened identity.

Indeed, it is possible to argue that what makes Europe uncomfortable is not so much its multicultural character, but the breakdown of the social hierarchy that used to segregate ethnic minorities from ‘autochthonous’ Europeans. After all, when Queen Victoria objected to the “importation of Negro servants into these kingdoms”, she did so not because of their colour, but because “they cease to consider themselves as slaves”. And given that France began the conquest of Algeria by forcibly unveiling local women in public squares, is it any wonder that many French people who are disturbed by the sight of Muslim headscarves in France are at the same time perfectly comfortable with Catholic nuns’ veils? When two scantily-dressed women decided to protest the French ban by wearing niqabs and little else, they attracted the enthusiastic appreciation of the Parisian male population (the so-called Niqa-Bitch video is a popular YouTube hit).

The riddle for Europeans then becomes: how can we resist the process of social mobility for erstwhile colonial subjects, while at the same time retaining some pretence of equality? And here is the answer: by eliminating the most visible signs of ‘foreignness’ - ‘burqas’ and minarets, for instance - from the public space, claiming that they go against supposedly common European ‘values’ (such as security, women’s rights and secularism). Given that the Enlightenment makes it hard for Europe to get rid of ‘foreigners’ altogether, the continent instead bans their most conspicuous symbols in a drive towards assimilation. This supports a xenophobic conception of national belonging, yet one of a peculiar kind: post-colonial, and thus distinctively European. For if the Enlightenment originated in Europe, the latter was also the cradle of colonialism: and the colonial spirit is the legitimate child of the refusal of diversity. Unable to deal with the root causes of the ‘burqa’ issue - i.e. Europe’s reluctance to absorb immigrants - Europeans content themselves with attacking symbols. And since a ‘burqa’ scares more than a headscarf (unless you are French), it is the former that usually gets banned, for this garment ludicrously symbolizes the ‘colonial’ takeover of Europe by ‘foreigners’ and brings back uncomfortable memories and guilt complexes that are all mixed up with economic uncertainty, racism and xenophobia.

The result is a series of seemingly general laws that are nevertheless meant to hit one community only. Thus, none of the European bans directly mention the ‘burqa’ (targeting one specific group would be illegal) but generically refer to ‘face coverings’ instead. Since this would also outlaw items that Europeans like, however, explicit exemptions are inserted, with the result that carnival masks, motorcycle helmets, funeral coverings, wedding veils - anything, in sum, except for ‘burqas’ - are admitted. This logic was also used in 2004 in France: although the public and parliamentary debates leave absolutely no doubt that the anti-veil legislation targets the Muslim headscarf, months of verbal acrobatics among MPs produced a law that has a veneer of generality (it prohibits ‘conspicuously worn religious symbols at school’) while exempting those signs regarded as acceptable (such as tattoos, Christian crosses, piercing and non-religious symbols), so far disproportionately impacting on the law’s real target (the Muslim veil).

“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear”, Aung San Suu Kyi wrote. Unfortunately, there are worrying indicators that Europe is becoming prisoner to its own fears. The continent is going through a veritable identity crisis where the willingness to exclude the most visible manifestations of Islam reflects a desire for self-reassurance about its own image that is, however, trapped in a circularity.

The roots of Europe’s ‘burqa’ obsession do not lie with an unprecedented influx of ‘foreigners’ into an allegedly mono-cultural and monotheistic land, but with the continent’s inability to value and build on its own unique linguistic, cultural and religious diversity. As for women’s rights, regulating female clothing is an unwise ground for championing them. Indeed, prohibiting women from wearing something is no better than compelling them to do so. It puts supposedly liberal Europe on a par with the world’s most repressive regimes. If sexual equality is so crucial to Europe’s MPs, they should start with more pressing tasks, for instance, ensuring that there is an equal proportion of women in European parliaments. That would truly be a ground-breaking measure to take, and one which the opportunistic champions of women’s rights are unlikely to support.

About the Author
Herman Salton is the author of Veiled Threats? Islam, Headscarves and Religious Freedom in America and France. You can find more of Herman's articles via Google Scholar or his website. His upcoming book, Arctic Host, Icy Visit, is about the continuing persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual movement outside the borders of China, looking specifically at the case of Iceland.

When Socialism Met Queer Activism: A Love Story

2010-11-14T17:45:00.002-05:00

Thank you for meeting us this morning and remembering to wear pants, TCMV.

Oh, my pleasure.

Congratulations on being the new head editor of Below The Belt. We have high hopes for you.

Well you know what they say, approval from imaginary shadowy bureaucrats is half the battle.

Indeed. Now, before you take on your new role we have some questions for you, in case a "situation" arises. As editor, your deeds and actions may be subject to scrutiny, and we need to--

Okay, I think know what this is about, and I'd rather just come out and say it.

I'm a socialist.

And not the mostly harmless "I think medicine should be cheaper" type Faux News likes to parade on their news programs as the scourge of the Amurrrican standard of living. No, I'm the wrongbad kind of socialist. The kind that reads Marx and listens to Rage Against The Machine and swears she gets it, dude. I've protested, rallied, passed out literature to classmates. I even learned to play the musical saw as a "sign of solidarity for the fire-forged beauty of the working class soul" because that's what you do when you have a B.A. in Performance Art and have never worked manual labor for minimal pay in your entire adult life. I'm over-educated, out of touch, and insulated by the abundance of liberal-minded family, friends, and teachers. It's a shame capitalism doesn't actually work. My sheer existence proves a pretty solid case for socialism as a pastime for privileged white people.

Let's skip the foreplay and dive right into the awkward post-coital processing. I have tried to draw parallels between my socialist ideals and my queer identity. Do I really need to elaborate on how and why it's hard to find steady work as an out trans persyn? Can you go ahead and just connect the dots without me having to number them? It's hard being queer in a recession. Behind door number 1 is the hope that by merit of your skill and luck in finding liberal employers, you may one day climb up the ranks and will use your experience and influence to make the workplace a safer place for those like you. Behind door number 2 is admitting that the system is corrupt and will oppress minorities of any kind, and even if we do "integrate" they'll just find someone else to put out on the streets and play keep away with their medicine, and that we can either help overthrow the system or one day contribute to the oppression. Pay no attention to Door Number 3. Stephen Fry's in there with his head on his desk. I'm not letting him out until he's had time to think about what he's done.

So I got these views and a plethora of avenues to express/influence them. I'm the editor in chief of this blog and co-founder of TransFix. Just replace all our writers with ones recruited from socialist publications, use TransFix funds to establish a Marxist library, be home in time for Robot Chicken and finish this sentence uninterrup--

A WILD "ETHICS" APPEARS!

IT USES "CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE"!

IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE!

God damn it. I knew I should've gone with Yu-Gi-Oh.

As a community organizer and activist, I am beholden to those that contribute their time and money to my causes. This is why I am hesitant, might even go as far to say likely to reject, the option to be a non-profit. Many well-meaning grassroots campaigns end up spending their days laughing politely at the jokes of their benefactors and choking down the shitty food served at fundraiser dinners. As of now I am accountable only to the community, and so far I'm keeping up my end of the bargain. I'm hosting events, creating spaces, submitting material that is in line with this blog's mission statement.

If I take a hard line socialist stance on my activism and shape my efforts in such a way I risk a) potentially alienating people within the very community I sought out to help, b) garnering support from socialist organizations that are not tied to or affiliated with the queer community, thus putting me in the position of serving two masters when I'm submissive at most two, three days a month, c) attracting opposition from groups within the queer community with differing agendas who will actively counter my efforts which I don't have time for, and d) leaves me open to receive twice as much "benefit" (as everyone who actively campaigns for a cause that effects them sees to benefit from its success) from my efforts than others in my organization which, on a personal level, makes me very uncomfortable.

While it is hard (for me) to fathom and even harder to accept, for many LGBT people integration into the kyriarchy is not a sign of defeat but a goal. This, for me, explains the Human Rights Campaign, the gender essentialism espoused by trans folk of generations previous, and Will & Grace. I disagree with this agenda and will say so to its face any time I am not acting on behalf of Below The Belt or TransFix (for the record, I consider my written contributions separate from my duties as editor). While serving in the capacity of such and such for blah blah blah, I will treat the spaces within my sphere as neutral territory, as hallowed ground.

As far as the trans community is concerned, my only politics is to win.

I believe it's possible to be anti-capitalist as a function to the causes I participate in. I do not ever intend to "profit" from my work, and if I ever receive compensation for my time and effort I will be ever so transparent about how much I received, what it was for and prove, if necessary, that I could not afford to pay bills, get around, etc without it. Any and all funds I raise will go towards the cause, and I'll back that shit up with receipts. If the big four-day camp TransFix is holding in the summer of 2011 can't be done at no cost to the attendees, I will bust my ass to make the admission equal to or less than the fare you spend for public transit. I will not accept money for any content published on this blog or any other blog within the queer blogosphere that I contribute to. If I'm caught cheating on my taxes, I promise it will be for trying to write a $2.50 metal kazoo off as a "business expense".

But is it really possible to have an anti-capitalist ethic, to implement it as a means of running an organization, without endorsing certain political tenets? I have no fucking idea. Personally, I believe so, but I also believe in chupacabras, the faked deaths of Elvis and Andy Kaufman, and I'm in a better mood when I have lots of soy in my diet. I'm not necessarily inclined to trust my own judgment on this. Feedback is most appreciated.

Whew. That felt good to get out. Okay. Next question.

Actually, we were just going to ask you if you had an e-mail address people could use to contact you about becoming a contributor or to voice comments/concerns with any of the content expressed on this blog.

Oh. Yeah. theycallmevroom@gmail.com

Thank you. Actually, I think that's all we needed to know.

I also got Ravenclaw in a "Which Hogwarts House Are You?" quiz, in case that's helpful.

You know people are still reading this, right?

Of course they are. They're waiting for my signature snappy comedic ending.

Well, I'm going to leave , thank you for meeting with me--

That's what she said! Booya! See you next time!

Out with the old, in with the new

2010-11-13T14:29:00.006-05:00
So it's been a pretty incredible four years managing BTB, and it's time I step down. I remember quite clearly starting the forum with queeriously and a band of other friends -- outlawed, manontheside, residentgringa. I wanted to start BTB because I had moved away from a community where I could talk about topics like those we address in this forum. Little did I know that BTB would connect me with many other people from quite literally around the world that shared that same desire for a connection centered around dialogue. I really couldn't be happier with how BTB has turned out.

BTB is being left in extremely capable hands. TheyCallMeVroom has contributed and managed BTB for some time, and has some really amazing ideas of how to make BTB more dynamic and interactive. I'm so excited to see how BTB develops in the coming years.

Even though I'm retiring, I may still contribute from time to time...and I'll certainly be reading the forum. Catch you on the flip side.

Sincerely,
Matt/toughstuff

Women have no rights when it comes to sex? Who the hell told you that?

2010-11-09T22:17:00.002-05:00
Let’s set the scene: my friend is studying abroad in Germany, and felt like going out to a few bars because she was living in a cramped apartment and just needed to get out. She was accompanied by a guy she didn’t particularly care for, but hey, it’s better than going out alone, right?

Maybe not.

She got tired so they decided to walk back home a little early, and somehow the topic of sex came up. Well, he brought it up.

Since this event was a situation that was regarding male/female relationships, I’ll continue along that line, but it definitely can apply to queer relationships as well. But for the sake of continuity, I will use an apparently heterosexual example.

Time for inserting misogynistic remarks! WOOO! Aren’t you excited?

Well, first thing he told her was that “sex is always about the man.”

Ummm. What the fuck. Sex is supposed to be consensual, right? RIGHT? I mean, if you’re only having sex to please one person, isn’t that a little...bad? Sex is about sharing intimacy. That’s right, SHARING. Yeah I used that word! Yeah I used caps lock! It needs to be big and obvious, because, you know, it’s true. Very, very true. You are forewarned that there may be more usage of the caps lock key of doom. For serious.

Well, as I was saying, sex should be consensual. If it’s “all about the man,” it seems a little like rape to me. As he was describing it, in his tone, IT SEEMS A HELL OF A LOT LIKE DATE RAPE. You feelin’ me? You feelin’ the caps lock? Well you better be, because this whole thing makes me pissed as hell. And you should feel the same way.

Second thing he told her was that he “would never give a woman oral sex, because that means she’s in control.” He also implied that women should give men oral sex, because, you know, it’s their fucking DUTY.

DUTY??? You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. No one needs to do anything they don’t want to do. If he doesn’t want to go down on a girl, he doesn’t need to. Maybe he doesn’t like doing it. Maybe he’s a little squicked by being that close to a woman’s vagina. Or maybe some other completely legitimate reason. Really any reason is legitimate, EXCEPT HIS. Maybe you don’t like giving women oral but you love it yourself. That’s cool. That’s completely fine. And if your partner likes to and wants to give you head, right on. It’s totally awesome for you. BUT YOU SHOULD NEVER EXPECT IT JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE A MAN AND THEREFORE YOU “MUST ALWAYS BE IN CONTROL.”

Feelin’ that caps lock? I am.

Again, this does not just apply to men. This applies to any relationship of any kind where one partner flat out expects the other partner to do anything and everything they ask, because they are somehow “superior” and therefore deserve it. (Just making sure you all remember.)

Oh wait, he said more...good lord I wish he would have learned to shut the fuck up by now. But apparently not...

To put it simply, he added in some last words before they got back to the apartment and she could escape his unbelievable misoginy. They were, and I’m paraphrasing, “Men should get to sleep with whoever they want. It’s an obvious thing. But no woman should do that. I want to sleep with virgins, not sluts.”

OOOOH...could this get any more fucked up? Probably, but this was the end of the line. FINALLY. She got home and didn’t need to listen to any more of this. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to comment on it. How are you possibly supposed to sleep with so many women when you only want to sleep virgin women, or at least women with enough discretion to not be considered a “slut”? I’m sure no woman meeting your expecations would sleep with a overwhelmingly sexist guy like YOU.

So sum this up...too give a little tl;dr...PEOPLE WHO EXPECT OTHER PEOPLE TO PERFORM SEX ACTS ON THEM ARE TOTAL FUCKHEADS. Yeah, I said “fuckheads.” IN CAPS LOCK.

Sex should be consensual. Sex should be reciprocal (as in you should talk with and agree with your partner about what you will and will not do together). And sex should should not carry a double standard between partners. If any of these things aren’t going down, you really shouldn’t be having sex with each other in the first place.

PERIOD.

Kirk out.

The Biology of Sexuality - A Contradiction in Terms?

2010-11-01T18:53:00.006-04:00
A few weeks ago, I attended a talk by Simon LeVay, a neuroscientist famous for his championing of the idea that sexual orientation is determined by biological factors. He discussed his latest book, Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: the Science of Sexual Orientation, which reviews over 600 scientific studies that have been undertaken on the question of sexual orientation over the last two decades.

According to LeVay, these studies lead unambiguously to one conclusion: pre-phenomenological biological factors (such as genes, hormones, and brain structure) lead to different levels feminization or masculinization of the brain, which determine whether one is homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. Unsurprisingly, gay and bisexual men are reported to have more feminine brain structures than straight men, while lesbian and bisexual women are alleged to be more masculine in that respect than heterosexual women.

Although LeVay provides a mass of evidence in support of this argument, I remain skeptical about theories purporting to explain human sexuality in biological terms.

Firstly, the studies that LeVay cites have focused on explaining sexual attraction to a particular gender – however, there is surely more to human sexuality than that! What about explaining attraction to specific body parts, forms of clothing or sexual practices – such as armpit fetishes, leather worship and BDSM? Most of the recent scientific studies completely ignore these kinds of phenomena, erasing from view diverse areas of human sexuality that are defined by more than just gender. Indeed, communities of desire have already been formed whose ideas about what is “sexy” supercede man-ness or woman-ness. Until biological studies provide explanations for the full diversity of human sexuality – for fetishes, kinks, and other all-too-common oddities – they will be inadequate.

Secondly, not only is there an empirical problem with this kind of research – it also ends up reinforcing the notion that what really matters in your sex life are your partner’s genitals. This obsession with which gender one is drawn to is a unique consequence of the homophobic society we live in. With attraction to men or women regarded as the most salient aspect of sexuality, the upholding of heterosexuality as an ideal (with homosexuality as a tolerable-but-stigmatized minority alternative) is greatly facilitated. If sexual and gender discourses in society prioritized other values, such as the maximization of pleasure or the development of deeper intra-communal connections, the classification of people according to which gender they are attracted to would diminish in importance. Therefore, biological studies of sexual orientation end up unwittingly supporting the heteronormative imperative to declare one’s desires in gendered terms.

Finally, the political implications of biological studies of sexuality are troubling. Bolstered by these scientific investigations, mainstream gay and lesbian movements in the West have based their arguments for sexual minority rights on the notion that homosexuality is an essentially un-chosen characteristic, akin to eye color. But this is a fundamentally conservative argument. To what extent can we really be positive about (homo)sexuality if we constantly insist on seeing it as un-chosen? I find it hard to believe that the stigma on homosexuality can be fully removed if the condition for legitimating it – legally, socially, and politically – is claiming that one has no agency in being gay. This implies that it would be profoundly wrong to choose to be homosexual, which in turn, suggests that there is something not quite right with homosexuality itself. Thus, the “no-choice” argument ends up maintaining a significant level of disgrace about homosexuality. It enables tolerance, on the basis of sympathy for a queer’s inadvertent lot in life, but it does not engender full-scale acceptance of homosexuality as a life-style that is positive in itself and even worth encouraging. In fact, it gives solace to those who would like homosexuality to remain a pitiable minority phenomenon, confined to the people whose brains have been “wrongly” masculinized or feminized. The revolution remains incomplete…

So if purely biological explanations of sexuality are deficient, for both empirical and political reasons, what are some alternative ways that sexuality could be conceptualized? How can we expose the profound influence of coercive societal pressures (patriarchy, heteronormativity, forced coupling/monogamy, capitalism etc…) on our sexual development, while also recognizing that there is a deeply personal, almost unconscious, aspect to our sexualities that is robustly resistant to social molding? How can we open possibilities for political agendas which have sexual freedom, the undoing of patriarchy, and the total de-stigmatization of sexual minorities as their goals, while remaining faithful to empirical evidence and people’s lived experiences?

The biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling provides an interesting alternative. In her book, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, she outlines a Systems Theory of human sexual development, which obliterates the distinction between the physical organism (our skin and bones, blood, tissue, hormones and genes) and its environment. According to Fausto-Sterling, our brain structures are fundamentally plastic: the newborn human being is by no means a “finished product,” and whatever bio-structural tendencies exist at that point, they are bound to be deeply affected by the social environment we live in – by its abuse of females and the feminine, by its homophobia, by the imperative to classify oneself as a man or a woman, by its obsession with monogamy and coupling, and by its fetishizing of money and profit. In fact, these social forces will undoubtably impact the way our brains work. It is therefore difficult – if not impossible – to tell what kind of human sexuality would be created if these social forces were removed. Perhaps we could evolve into a non-monogamous, non-patriarchal, multi-gendered, and polysexual species?

Similar possibilities can be found in Sigmund Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Put simply, his model of human sexual development posits that everyone is born with “polymorphously perverse” sexual drives, which means that humans could be attracted to virtually anything, so long as it provides a level of somatic pleasure and erotic excitement. As children, for example, we live a “polymorphously perverse” existence, finding pleasure in potentially everything from breastfeeding to cutting our toenails. The role of our families – and the society of which they are a part – is to channel these sexual drives into a “heterosexual” and procreative direction, by intervening and negatively sanctioning instances of “perverse” sexuality. By the time we reach adulthood, many but not all of us will have been “appropriately” molded. Admittedly, Freud’s approach can be used for reactionary purposes: it could lead to increased tightening of familial and social control, with the goal of wiping out “perverse” sexuality. Or it could be used to raise consciousness about reclaiming the polymorphous sexual drive and undoing the processes that have molded people into a patriarchal, heteronormative, monogamous and two-gendered species. The choice is ours…

To conclude, the kinds of biological studies cited and promoted by Simon LeVay have three major flaws: (1) they ignore important aspects of human sexuality that are not necessarily gendered (fetishes, kinks etc…); (2) they reinforce the heteronormative view that the gender one is attracted to is the most salient aspect of sexuality, which greatly facilitates the promotion of heterosexuality as an ideal; and (3) they serve as the grounds for justifying homosexuality on a conservative basis, by portraying it as a minority alternative that people have no choice or control over, a phenomenon that can therefore never spread wider in society.

But perhaps more importantly, the idea that our sexualities are determined by pre-phenomenological biological processes significantly circumscribes the possibilities for any kind of fundamental change in the gender and sexual system. If we are homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual before we even know it, how is it possible to critique the obsession with the gender one is attracted to, or the gendered structure of sexual relations in society? How can we question the drive for coupling and monogamy – if we continue to believe that we are pre-programmed for it? And how can we criticize the distribution of gendered roles in society, if women’s and men’s biological differences on matters such as spatial skill, linguistic competence, and leadership ability are presumed? Fausto-Sterling and Freud offer alternative conceptualizations of sexuality that enable some of these questions to be answered, and it is my hope that the researchers and activists of the future will take their lead.

***For More Information***

If you would like to find out more about Simon LeVay's work and the biology of sexual orientation, sex, and gender, his website provides many useful resources. For a powerful critique of the biological approach to sexual orientation, see Janet Halley's article, "Sexual Orientation and the Politics of Biology: A Critique of the Argument from Immutability." Anne Fausto-Sterling has attempted (with much success, in my opinion) to combine biological and sociological research. You can explore her many articles and books via her personal website. Sigmund Freud has engendered much controversy among feminists and LGBT activists - you will find that this Wikipedia page provides a good introduction to his work. Finally, for more on conservative arguments for LGBT rights, please see this previous Below the Belt post.

Near-Sighted and Looking Back

2010-10-29T01:03:00.009-04:00

I get very emotional when I feel like I cannot change something I feel needs to be changed.

Consequently, I have been a bit off the grid lately, moping, reformulating, and reflecting on personal issues which probably have nothing to do with tearing down gender norms, uniting marginalized groups, or getting people to go to schools and say "stop f*cking harassing and attacking our LGBTQ youth" instead of saying “don't bully.”

But these things do keep spinning around me as news from the outside world, mixed in with a whirlwind of ignorant depoliticizing rhetoric from sources that should know better. And I've been sucked into institutional frameworks that constantly say “it IS better” because it usually is when you are near-sighted and look only directly backward.

I was going to write a post about the differences between progressive movements in larger cities and smaller places like where I live. Because I think it is interesting, and there are many pros and cons each way; I will not be one of those people who perpetuates the myth that every non-metropolitan area is socially backward. I will also not be one of those people who looks at the fact that gays and lesbians can get married in Iowa and say that makes Iowa a particularly progressive state. Social Progress does not come one issue at a time, or at least not successfully. We have a political system where compromises are made all the time to get things done, so in cases like the health care bill, progress gets compromised right into oblivion. But I digress.

Rather than do a whole post on all the differences between movements in larger areas vs smaller areas, I'll limit it to one or two. One of the most significant differences is that in smaller areas, because they are often less integrated into the larger movements, there are often interesting and new forms of resistance and organizing that are a result of local culture. Because of their smaller size, it is often easier to make big waves as well. In short, smaller areas have the opportunity to become very unique spaces for movements, while in larger areas, unique movements often must form either in conjunction with or even in opposition to whatever large-scale movement may be going on there.

Of course that's no guarantee that one WILL end up with one of those uniquely forward thinking communities or movements in a small place. And when one doesn't, it is often really difficult getting many people to understand why it is important to have a more nuanced perspective on social and economic issues than they already do. When people become trailblazers based on relatively moderate ideals, when they make progress with these rather moderate ideas, it is exceedingly difficult to show people that this isn't enough, save for the people who directly experience the shortcomings of such a moderate movement and/or understand the source of those shortcomings.

Instead, the once trailblazing movement becomes an institutional roadblock, co-opted by people who were not really all that different from the accepted norm and who are quite satisfied to see that they have been incorporated into the mainstream. I realize, by this point, this is no longer a situation which qualifies as a difference between larger and smaller areas, save for the fact that larger areas have enough people and resources for movements to split, and smaller areas don't.

What a lonely progressive might often hear is: "We are already diverse. We already have anti-bullying policies in place. We let people be who they want to be, we just don't have any of those people here. You are just being oppositional. You just want to be radical. You are trying to make an issue where there isn't one." Meanwhile we're ripe to be another headline in the national news.

But we must remember: if one voice raises an issue, there is an issue.

You're a girl! Deal with it, and start acting like one!

2010-10-25T20:03:00.003-04:00

“I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but you’re a girl. You have two X chromosomes and you have lady parts. Stop thinking and acting like a boy! It’s not like you need to be a boy to do the things you want in life!”

Ummm...WHAT?

It’s true you can live a fulfilling life as a woman. But yeah, you can also live a fulfilling life as a man. Or any gender you identify as. And I don’t want someone determining my gender based on what parts I’ve got. Not only is it none of their business what junk I’ve have under my clothes, but why do they even care?

They care because they don’t like change. You were born with a certain set of things that made other people define who you were before you had any say about it. The second you exit your mother’s womb the doctor exclaims, “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!” And you’re stuck with that until you say different. But even when you say, “Hey...you know what you’ve been saying all my life...about how my gender matches my sex...well, I hate to break it to you, but you’re wrong. And it’s always been this way.” “Oh, this is just a phase. You’re a girl! You’re just going thorough a confusing time in your life, you’ll straighten out. It’s not important, there’s nothing wrong with being a girl! You’re just a tomboy! Some guys like that! Stop acting like you need to be a boy to be happy!”

No. You’re just not getting it.

It’s not a phase. And it is important. And, well, I’M the one who knows what my gender is, whether I be a male or something different. And I didn’t just decide. THIS IS HOW IT IS AND THIS IS QUITE LIKELY HOW IT ALWAYS WILL BE.

This is how I grew up. This is how a lot of trans people have grown up. “You’re not a boy! Stop saying that!” or “You’re not a girl! Stop saying that!” When I was little I told everyone I was a boy. And sometimes they believed me. When you’re wearing unisex clothing and have short hair, it isn’t that difficult to believe assume I’m being honest. Why would I lie, right? Well, I wasn’t lying, not exactly, but they didn’t know and they didn’t care that they didn’t know and everything was just fine and dandy.

But when you get older...

You get breasts. Or facial hair. And no matter what you do or wear, it’s hard to hide, especially if you develop early and develop fast. How the hell are you going to hide these things that are so suddenly happening to your body against your will? These changes only solidify the concrete decisions other people have made about your gender. You can no longer tell someone you are your proper gender and have them believe you unconditionally. But please tell me, why should other people be deciding, and telling me, who I am?

To make this long story short, people want you to be simple for them. They want to just automatically see you and say, “That’s a boy!” or “That’s a girl!” People don’t want you to correct them. They would rather think that you’re just being confused and emotional and therefore having temporary identity issues. You know, the kind you get when you go to college and are having a hard time deciding on your major. “Oh don’t worry baby, there’s nothing wrong with being a philosophy major! But I don’t think you’re the type who would do well in math. It’s just not who you are. You can be happy in life without being a math major.”

That example is very similar to the one I gave about gender, right? But it’s not the same thing. AT ALL. College is something you go through. It’s when you decide what you want to do, maybe for the rest of your working life, maybe not. Careers can be transient. But identities...your identity is who you are. YOU can’t change that.

So please, stop. telling. me. who. I. am.

Kirk out.

Pink and Green II

2010-10-24T21:08:00.008-04:00

I didn't plan for my last post on environmentalism and queer or feminist movements to have a sequel, but I've surprised myself by having a heck of a lot to say on the subject, so here's a second helping! In my last post, I focused quite a bit on what was wrong, in queer or feminist terms, with the mainstream Western environmental movement. This month I want to talk more about why environmental issues matter to queer and feminist activism.

Let me qualify this post by saying that I come to environmental activism from the point of view of a natural areas user, a conservation volunteer/amateur naturalist, and someone with a professional interest in sustainability. I haven't read up on ecofeminism and deep ecology, and I'm certain that some of the ideas I've cleverly come up with have been formulated and explored much better elsewhere. But this is kind of a unique forum, too, and so I hope that I can bring something new and useful to the table.

For me, the big connection between the environment and queer/feminist issues is bodily autonomy. I believe that all people have a right to decide what enters their body. Pollution contravenes that right. As silverscreened pointed out earlier this month, hormonal birth control is potent stuff – something that definitely warrants informed consent. But our waterways – and by extension our drinking water – are filling up with birth control and estrogen-like chemicals. In many countries, poor women and their children are disproportionately likely to suffer from respiratory infections and even die from the terrible indoor air quality caused by their coal and wood-fired cooking stoves. I talked a little bit about the idea of environmental justice in my last post. The fact is that the people who suffer the most from pollution, who will be the worst affected by “natural” disasters or climate change, are people who have no other choice: poor people, marginalized people, queer and trans and female-bodied people.

It should not be a privilege to be able to live in a neighbourhood where every child isn't suffering from asthma due to coal-fired power plants. There should be no question of whether your drinking water is messing with your hormones. Your gender, sexual orientation, immigration status or, well, anything else, shouldn't force you to take a job that's toxic or dangerous because you know you won't find anything else. But we all know these things happen all the time.

Environmental activism is, at its heart, about the preservation of our common goods: clean air, clean water, natural resources. And common goods are only common when we agree on our shared entitlement to them. We can argue for equal personhood or the right to self-determination of our genders and identities, but those concepts are pretty empty if some of us are excluded from having the basic building blocks to start with. Capitalism (particularly neoliberalism) would have us believe that self-determination is based on exploiting our resources (and our fellow humans). Frak that, I say. The radical first step in caring for ourselves and for each other is caring for our environment.

We can, and should, set limits on how much we use up or destroy resources that are finite, shared, sacred. We can, and should, insist on the fact that as humans we are all have the right to a basic level of decency that includes not being actively harmed by our environment. We can, and should, fight back hard against the notion that if something's important enough, the market will take care of it. We cannot continue to scrabble along in a rat race where the players are entitled to anything they can lay our hands on, and if that hurts someone else, well, they should have scrabbled harder. As queer people and as feminists we know, to mix my metaphors, that the deck in that game is stacked. If we're not fighting to change the rules of the game, we're fighting the wrong fight.

You find a condom with +5 protection against Chlamydia.

2010-10-17T13:31:00.005-04:00

I love topical writing, but it's such a drag, skimming through the rss feeds to find a news item I feel adequately informed on to pontificate. If only there was some sort of contraption available for three easy payments of $29.99 that would let me talk about current events with grace and panache. Until then, I have to pick on issues my own size, or rather, the size of my knowledge (for an extra 5 bucks, get the premium version of this article, with all the inappropriate dick jokes included). The voice in my head that tells me to take a bath with my toaster says I should stay 100 feet away from critiquing the “It Gets Better” project and a recent visit by door to door Mormons who, after learning I was trans, refused to give me a copy of their pamphlet and then came by a few days later to ask me what I thought of said pamphlet has left me with the nagging doubt that perhaps I don't know the enemy well enough to be calling air strikes. Yes, despite my radical politics and polyamorous background, I believe we need to win the fight for marriage equality. Now before we make any rash decisions, keep this in mind: if you remove me from your friends list I'm not going to bring my ice cream cone cupcakes to your vegetarian potluck slash spoken word concert. Think of the children, dammit.

But hold on, what do we have here? “Porn Actor Tests Positive For HIV, Adult Film Companies Halt Production”. Well hello there. What's a gorgeous story about the importance of using protection doing in a low brow feed like this? Finally, a news item in my league. Yes, I'm about to lecture you on why you should always use protection. We're going there. Write your mamas and tell 'em you love 'em, cuz not all of you will be coming back.

When asked what “queer sex” or “feminist sex” is to me, I take a moment to giggle at someone saying“sex” out loud and then I respond with this: the most proud, most feminist, most sex and gender positive thing you can do in the bedroom is to respect both your and your partner's bodies. Loving and taking care of your body in a time of bigotry and prejudice is the hardest you could fuck the heteronormative operating system without needing batteries. I know you know this. We both went to that queer spoken word thing and heard that one girl's poem and gripped each other's hands. Don't tell me you've changed so much already.

Why are we still able to engage in unprotected sexual activity with the AIDS epidemic, television shows about teen pregnancy and that one time our friend showed us their genitals and asked “does this look infected to you” in the back of our minds? Is it abstinence only sex education? The difficulty for the impoverished in affording protection or acquiring at no cost? Media? Christine O'Donnell? Good news, wafflers. The answer is all of the above (and then some). But in the spirit of “picking on targets our own size” I will be focusing on media, namely the adult film industry. You will note that I use the term “media”, as in “means of communication” and not “the media”, a term that is often confused for “the press” which is often used as a strawman by politicians and political figures, giving impressionable viewers the idea that its a sentient being walking around, ordering bagels and shit. I feel with my education and work in media (see also: made a film I let nobody watch, recorded a demo I let nobody hear, and maintain a blog with a readership of about 20) I think I can last long enough in the ring with media to make it look real. Still, don't try this at home. I went to art school.

Before the bell sounds let me go on the record as saying it is not my place to tell the porn industry what it can not and should not do, so I won't. I did not spend a day in the principle's office for putting up fake student government election campaign posters so I could denounce free speech when I ceased to be “threatening”. I'm only connecting the dots. Someone else can color it in.

Also, while I unwaveringly advocate the use of gloves and condoms (the latter of which I've required the two times in my life I've performed fellatio because I don't care for the tate and was only doing it to be generous), I'm not married to the idea of dental dams. I feel it defeats the purpose of oral sex, which is to be wet an warm and kind of messy. Still, I only perform cunnilingus on partners whose medical history is readily known to me. It also helps if I genuinely love them, because then it makes any complication that would arise a little easier to swallow. And I'm getting waaaaay to personal. So let's get back to the porn industry.

The use of barriers is relatively uncommon in porn, when you into account porn aimed at heterosexuals (which includes the long french manicured pseudo lesbian porn that drives much of the industry). The reason for this, those of you keeping score at home, is that condoms impede sales. At least that was the explanation given by the porn industry in 2004 after a brief “okay guys we need to start using condoms for real this time” phase following the last HIV industry scare. Some say it breaks up the scene. To this I shrug indifferently and say “find a way to work the condom into it”. I mean shit, she has no idea where that pizza delivery guy/cable repair man/singing telegram has been. An extra shot of her looking around the room, finding a way to pay for services rendered. She sees the condom on the coffee table. Bam. Done. An extra what, two seconds? And think of the comedic opportunity available here. I think mandatory condom use would be worth it if at least one porn does the aforementioned pizza delivery guy scene but instead of packets of parmesan cheese and red peppers the pizza comes with condoms. I may need to make that porn. Just for that one two-second gag. Operation Make Mom Love Me Less is a go.Others arguments for keeping barriers out include: it makes the sex seem less intimate, latex gloves look weird when it's not a “nurse” scene, and REAL MEN JUST WANNA BUST A NUT IN THEIR WOMAN. I fear I can't take the time to dissect all of these points. I need to keep those ideas a secret in case someone goes and steals my condoms on the pizza idea and I'm suddenly minus a film project.

Instead I will present my two arguments for how the lax attitude on barriers in heterosexual porn can affect the queer community:

1) The foods do touch. Straight actors do gay/bisexual porn and vice versa. This probably does not need to be expanded on.
2) Setting an unrealistic standard for healthy sex practices that could be misread by impressionable youth.

Oh my. It appears I've pokevolved into Tipper Gore. Shoot me.

Oh. You're pro gun control too?

Well then, I'll continue.

Porn will be emulated. I would argue that's the point. You see people being pleasured or acting in a way that stimulates pleasure in the viewer, it makes you want to be pleasured, even if by your own doing. Regardless as to why it will be imitated or if it's supposed to be, it will. The monkey see monkey do ethic of humanity conquers all. 30 seconds of youtube videos of people copying what they see on tv shows like Jackass, Mythbusters, and WWE should confirm my point. And if timed improperly, could cost you your job.

Not all queer youth start out watching queer porn. Straight porn is much more readily available and in many cases more acceptable to be caught looking at. These unfortunate first impressions, when compounded with subpar sex education and a lack of available safe sex materials, suck. I attended high school with the highest teen pregnancy rate in the state. If my straight classmates weren't using condoms, I think it's fair to assume the queer weren't either. We can do the dinosaur and argue whether or not it's okay for teens to be having sex. The fact is they are, and will continue to. The same cannot be said about the dinosaur.

Am I suggesting that the porn industry is responsible for viewers acting out what they see, and they should enforce the use of barriers to slowly train their audiences to emulate that? That's a negatory. I'm not taking sides on the issue. Just calling like I sees it. Or trying to, at least. I have neither the journalistic background or time in the day to edit my language to make it more objective.
Shit, I don't even watch straight porn anymore.

But I do attend leather fairs and Pride events, and it does grate on me when I see a bareback DVD vendor sharing the same space as AIDS outreach or safer sex programs. At Up Your Alley earlier this year, there was a bareback DVD booth right next to the Stop Aids Project. Doesn't the money I donate at the gate go towards affording you an extra pair of eyes to look at that and go “Um, no”? I should be at the very very back of the “queue to tell you your kink is not okay”, but selling depictions of how infections are spread at the same event where non profit organizations are asking for support in fighting the spread of those very same infections is in such bad taste, is so “bad” ironic, that if you focused that energy and shot it out of a laser gun at a random hipster they'd cancel each other out and you'd be left with the guy who plays PC in the “I'm a Mac, I'm a PC” commercials, sipping on a lambic and listening to James Taylor.

Consider this, for a second: WE'RE TALKING ABOUT DISEASES THAT FUCKING KILL PEOPLE.

I understand that these fairs need to make money by renting out space to vendors, and that some just see community events as a place to peddle their shit. But damn son, there is a plethora of more responsible ways to make money off of queers. Like a zombie themed burlesque show!

A part of me that doesn't get out much fears that in some way, like the butterfly flooding the city with a flap of its wing, the standards of the straight porn industry are leaving indents on the queer community, and that heteronormative attitudes on barriers and safe sex can contribute to irresponsibility on our end. And that this laissez-faire standard of condoms in the straight and gay bareback porn industries will trigger an outbreak, an infestation that sweeps the nation.

We didn't do so well the first time. I'm betting we won't live through the sequel. You think our advanced medicine and technology will save us, but they still haven't perfected the formula for the pill that stops us from turning into damn damn dirty apes, harassing those suspected of infection, publishing lies in the press (in 1988 Cosmopolitan said that heterosexuals were not at risk for HIV because it couldn't be spread in the missionary position), and disowning loved ones infected or at risk of exposure. If half a million people really did attend the Rally to Restore Honor, then we're all about one broken condom away from Quest For Fire.

TLDR; Ooga booga, wear a condom and gloves or everyone you know will die.

So what can you do? Well, you can “write” the straight porn studios and insist they start making condoms mandatory, like most gay porn. If I was programmed to wink when I said “write” to imply “persuade with various mixed media campaigns and old fashioned boycotting”, I would have back there. You can get involved in or donate to various organizations to advocate safer sex and or provide safer sex materials to people. If you're one of those “direct action” types, you can buy a box of condoms and give them to friends or leave them on a bowl in your living room as party favors.

Or don't. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe an outbreak in the straight porn industry doesn't affect the queer community. Maybe nobody gets the wrong idea from seeing a bareback DVD booth at Pride. Having a regular op/ed column on the internets doesn't mean you have any more idea of how the world works than another person. I'm just as surprised as you that I'm doing this. I always thought I'd go into antiques.

If you take nothing else from this article, have this: underneath your fingernails is one of the hardest places on your body to sterilize. Even if you meticulously scrape them clean after putting your hand inside somebody, you can still harbor pathogens. And good luck getting a manicure with an infected finger. Spoiler alert: When I say “good luck” I really mean “don't try”.

Say it with me now.

No glove, no love.

The demise of the patriarchy hangs in the balance.

ETA: Oh, it turns out the actor in question starred in both gay and straight porn.

I WIN AGAIN!

Birth Control: Messing With Women's Minds. Literally.

2010-10-11T22:48:00.002-04:00

I was on hormonal birth control for seven years. This is not rare or unique, many women go on it and are on it for much longer. We're taught that it's totally and completely normally to take synthetic hormones for years and years and years. Because it beats making sure the guy wears a condom, right??

Well no, because (honestly no surprise to me), birth control pills are shown to alter women's brains.

What. The. Fuck.

Before I even thought to research it (and honestly, I still never have), I knew birth control changed things. I had the normal sex drive of a 20-year-old straight college female, and almost instantly after going on the pill, that sex drive plummeted. Did I question if I should be on the pill or not? Of course not! I didn’t want to get pregnant! The risk of getting pregnant seems to trump pretty much everything else in a straight college female’s mind.

But did I even research being on the pill? And the side effects? No, of course not. EVERYONE was on the pill. So it can’t be bad, right? Besides the pill of the 2000s is so much better than the pill of the past – lower doses of hormones. So why fret? Just keep taking it.

So I dealt with the lack of a sex drive, and my now-husband dealt with it. I also realized that ever since I went on the pill, my moods levels off. I no longer had lows, but I also no longer had highs. One of my friends pointed out I seemed (much more) jaded. Did I question taking the pill? No, of course not. Hey, it was nice not to get the blues every now and then. Even if it meant a small fraction of excitement over stuff that would normally excite me.

After a few years, I started asking my gynecologists about going off hormonal birth control (by this point I was on the ring) and trying something non-hormonal, because of my lack of sex drive. I was given these options:

1. Condoms. Not so good because they make my husband go soft, and he can’t really fake it like I can. [Sigh.]
2. Diaphragm. Apparently so few women go on these that my gyno commented “wow I haven’t fit someone for one in awhile!” I immediately changed my mind on being fitted for one.

Also my gyno reminded me that the both options had higher failure rates than hormonal birth control. So that scared me into sticking with the hormones.

But I still hated it. I hated the lack of sex drive, and not really feeling life myself. I hated knowing that it had been years since I actually felt like my self. And I hate that our culture just pumps young women full of synthetic hormones without really questioning the effects, or if the effects are worth it. Sure beats being pregnant, huh?!?! So don't complain! It's so convenient and easy!! Just a little pill! Perfectly harmless ...

Eventually I discovered the fertility awareness method. The ultimate method for a woman to be in control of her body; it can be used to avoid pregnancy and also improve your chances of getting pregnant when the time comes. But despite the high success rates, most women probably have no idea what it is (I’m guessing they would think it’s the rhythm method - which is the act of abstaining during fertile times). No gyno I’ve ever talked to has suggested it as an option.

And why is that? Is it because it requires much more action by the women, and we’ve seen how well some women do taking the pill every day, so imagine how they’ll do with a method that requires a bit more attention! Ha ha ... those airheads.

However, when it comes to reproductive rights, it’s all about choice. And how can a woman make the right choice for her when she isn’t even told all of her options? We’re told our options for avoiding pregnancy are condoms, hormones, or abstinence. The diaphragm is archaic and inconvenient, based on the way it was sold to me by my gyno. Pulling out is too risky and doesn’t give women control over their own bodies (they have to trust their partner will pull out in time). Spermacide is only sold as a supplement to another, more trusted form of birth control. And the rhythm method is only for the crazy religious. I didn’t learn about the fertility awareness method until a rather enlightened friend of mine talked about it on her blog.

In the meantime, widely used hormonal birth control may be altering our minds. I totally and completely believe that it is. Yet will hormonal birth control go away anytime soon? Doubtful. I posted a link to that story on my Facebook page, and the only comment I got was how funny some of the article’s comments are. Not, “holy shit that’s fucking scary why are they still shoving it down our throats and peddling it like candy??”

Although I’m surprised I haven’t seen the religious right jumping on this story as proof that birth control is evil. Or maybe I just do a really good job of avoiding their filth on the internet.

In the meantime, I will continue the fertility awareness method (supplemented by spermacide of course!). And one day when I have daughters, there is no way in hell I’m letting them go on birth control. Although maybe, just maybe, our society will be enlightened enough that we won’t be shoving hormones down the throats of teenagers because it’s too hard to teach high schoolers about condom use.

Does It Really Get Better?: A Conscientious Critique

2010-10-02T11:38:00.020-04:00

Dan Savage recently launched the It Gets Better Project, a youtube testimonial campaign designed to remind queer teens that it gets better after high school. Savage and those joining the project attempt to address the uptick or at least an alarming concentration of teen suicides over their actual or perceived sexuality by reminding queer youth that high school ends and the bullying stops; you'll move to an urban gay enclave, meet the man of your dreams, and have a wonderful, sparkly, magical life. Maybe even get married, because, you know that's what all the other gays are doing.

I want to get one thing clear right out of the bat:

I think that the It Gets Better Project at its core is a good idea. Queer teens need to hear from their peers and their forebears that there is indeed hope. That life is indeed worthwhile and that high school is not, in fact, the end of the world.

What I question is this seeming meta-narrative that many in the gay mainstream are pushing: Get out of high school; Flee your biggoted small town and move to an urban gay enclave; Join the gay community as a card carrying member of the League of Fashionable Culture Generators; Enlightened, accepting queers versus Ignorant, biggoted straights; Urban versus Rural; Us versus Them.

It's this kind of self-congratulatory back-patting that the gay community is so want to do that I question: the notion that the gay community has it all figured out; that gay folk are so morally, culturally, and politically superior to the backwater, cousin-marrying, neanderthals of small town America; that once you leave high school and become a full member of the gay community, you will be accepted with open arms and you too will get to go out dancing every night and gossip about your latest fling over mimosas at Sunday brunch.

I fear that the way in which people are presenting the gay narrative to these impressionable teens is this sense that their lives will inevitably improve. That's just not true. They can get better, definitely. But we have to be real and transparent about the gay community and its problems.

It sure is easy for Dan Savage to talk about how wonderful his life turned out, because hey... it kind of did. Lucrative book and advice column deals under his belt, a legion of faithful fans, and a wicked hot husband, to boot. Am I criticizing Dan for his charmed life? Absolutely not. Congratulations are in order. He achieved the highly unlikely. I'm genuinely really, really happy for him. He deserves it. We all deserve a great life.

But the fact of the matter is that not everyone gets it. Yes, that's right... even if you're gay and have endured all kinds of unspeakable wrongs, the magical vending machine in the sky called karma doesn't actually keep a running balance of good things owed to you. You have to fight for it. Things don't always work out. They can, but you have to fight for it. You have to know what you want and be willing to fight tooth and nail for it.

For example, I had a typically unfortunate gay experience growing up. I was teased through middle and high school for being gay. I angsted over the conflict between my faith and my sexuality. I was terrified of what my conservative Christian family would do if they discovered my queerness. I suppressed my sexuality, my emotions, my struggles. I contemplated suicide, or rather I contemplated the possibility of never being born (because suicide was a sin... see how screwed up I was?). And part of what brought me out of my self-imposed death spiral and helped me come out was, in fact, Dan Savage and his advice columns. Or at least him and the promise of urban gay nirvana I was promised through shows like Will & Grace, Queer as Folk, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

I kept telling myself that mantra which Dan is now preaching: It Gets Better. It Gets Better. Did it get better? Yes and no. My college experience was actually probably worse than high school, at least on the homophobia front. In high school I only got the teasing, name calling, and rumors behind my back; but college brought me in intimate familiarity with harassment, threats to life, physical violence, same-sex rape and institutional dispassion for my situation.

And so I reasoned that of course college didn't bring the gay nirvana I was promised. I went to a small liberal arts college in the South. What could I expect? So my spare time and summers were spent interning at queer organizations, becoming deeply involved in queer politics at school, etc. I majored in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, I interned with the Human Rights Campaign-- I was building my life towards that gay promise... but only to find that the gay community is not perfect and has its own problems.

The gay community's problems surrounding race and gender became abundantly evident to me as queer men of color, especially feminine queer men of color get pushed to the fringes of gay life. I was shocked by the openly racist comments that were slung by gay activists against the African American community over a perceived bias which allegedly led to the passage of Proposition 8 (this has been disproved, just for the record). Even today, in the aftermath of Tyler Clementi's tragic death, I have been shocked by anti-Asian and anti-South-Asian comments and insinuations on how Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei's Asian background could have contributed to the tragic circumstances. I've documented on Bilerico my very personal struggle with the gay community, its sexual racism, and its effects both personally and sociologically.

The gay promise failed me. I went from being ostracized by my straight classmates in high school to being ostracized by many white gay men in an urban gay enclave.

Cry me a river, Amy Tan.

And what has given me hope? I came to find a queer Asian community service organization that allowed me to find a safe space to commune with, network, befriend, and organize with other queer Asian men. It has become clear to me that the gay promise which Dan Savage espouses only applies to some people. And that if it doesn't apply to you, you have to make your own space.

So what are the takeaways from all this?

Yes, the It Gets Better Project is a great thing. We need to be reaching out to queer youth to instill in them a sense of hope and knowledge that "there is a place for us," to quote Dan Savage's West Side Story reference. But we also have to be aware and critical of the very real problems and deficiencies the current gay community has in its inability to make that gay promise accessible to everyone who falls under the rainbow banner.

So does it get better?

It can.

Big Boys Will Be Little Girls: Why Growing Up Is Getting Old

2010-09-30T19:19:00.009-04:00

Hark! The trauma phone rings! Triggers must be afoot!
Talk to me, Mayor. What!? THE NEFARIOUS PROFESSOR MEMORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD HAS ESCAPED!?
Say no more. I'm on it.

Suit up, BelowTheBelt. Back in time we go.

Enter 1990, stage right. I am 4, maybe 5 years old, surveying my kingdom of hot wheels, action figures and rocks laid about the living room of our cramped Air Force-issued house awaiting my command to unleash maximum playtime. My brother Jason is in his play pen, chewing on a stuffed cat. His training is almost complete. In time he will make an excellent second in command. The big shiny white thing in the sky begins its ascent. Soon it will be bathtime. We must strike soo—what's this? A tiny man in one of those green and browny suits my dad wears all the time. He's holding a gun, I think they call it. Oh, the gun comes out of his hand. How intriguing. How did you get here? It is of no conseqence. Are you prepared to have your head and body smashed with a rock? Fantastic. Welcome aboard.

These memories are from before I learned how to properly subtitle them, so for argument's sake let's say we're now in 1991, though we might in fact still be in 1990. Santa Claus has visited our school to inquire as to any requests we may have for gifts and the like. After ensuring that we are on a secure line and my information cannot be intercepted by that meanie stupidhead Trey who keeps hitting me with his backpack, I relate to the old man my predicament: I want paint, or more LEGOs, perhaps some paper dolls, piano, oh or one of those lunchboxes with the rainbows and hearts on it, much better than this G.I. Joe lunchbox I have. Whatever you do, wise old wizard, please don't ask my parents what I want. They'll tell you I want more of those men with guns and it's all lies. They're useless! They don't actually do anything.

On Christmas Day I am brought before the firing squad of army men, tanks and miniature jet planes. My father stops recording. “You're enthusiasm's killing me”. Action. Cut. Smile more. Be happy. Action. Rinse and repeat for years and years and years. When I'm 20 and successfully convince my college professors that I'm suffering from narcilepsy (known amongst truth tellers as “a habit of recreationally using prescription painkillers and listening to Frou Frou) and need more time to turn in my assignments, I will look back on those Christmases with my father and do something like but not necessarily smile. But at this very moment I wish he was dead, that I was dead, and the ice cream man didn't constantly run out of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ice cream bars I like so much. I spend years 6 thru 10 with a closet full of toys I never play with. I never realized they were meant to be instructional. When I was 16 my father told me all my life he was grooming me to join the military, to die for my country, and that if I didn't enlist after I got out of high school he'd kick me out of the house. The only reason I was able to stay at home while attending college is because the war in Iraq called and was like "hey man, you should come out to the middle east for a two year solo stint, dude, this place is rockin!" By the time he returned to the States for good I was already in college and couldn't back out of the loans I had signed up for. That reminds me. I should check my mail today. And then pretend I haven't. In years.

Present day-ish. My girlfriend and I are browsing a local old-fashioned toy store. I recognize nothing (metaphorically speaking, of course, I'm 25, I know what a fucking top is) on the shelves, except for some tiny statuettes of zoo animals. I remember those, I think. I am wrought with the urge, a giddy compulsion, to buy something, anything, from the store and run as fast as I can back home to see what it does and make it do it again and again. My future self, the one writing this article right now, will wonder if playing with gender-neutral toys and eating from a hello kitty lunchbox will actually soothe the pain of my forced masculization or if it will only agitate my memories, forcing me to relive even more of them and heighten my feelings of self-loathing. Who discovers they like coloring and playing with LEGOs when they're 25? Isn't the point of all this therapy and shit to help me pokevolve into a functioning adult? What does it all mean, computer?

In normal circumstances, I would simply handwave this, say “fuck it, it's future me's problem” and stride out the door with slingshot or dominoes in hand to the tune of “Crocodile Rock” by Elton John. (Un)fortunately, depending on whether you ask my emotions or my wallet, I'm not sure I'm ready to bring my girlfriend along for the safari to recapture my youthful spirit. Instead I go home, cry, watch an episode of Rocko's Modern Life and try folding a few paper toys from cubeecraft.com, but it's just not the same.

Helping me set realistic goals for myself and gently nudging me to make good on my commitments is one thing. Watching me process my childhood and gender identity while I play with toys or build a sandcastle is a unicorn of a different color. I'm not wholly convinced I'm ready to involve a partner in that sort of incidental therapy.

Pay no attention to the Nintendo 64 and Super Nintendo that I have acquired and set up in my bed room for her and I to play in private standing behind the curtain. You're confused, and thirsty. Once you have some kool-aid you'll see that it's just another cynical attempt to reject mainstream consumerism by embracing outdated and obsolete technology to impress my friends and partner and not immersing myself in an activity that I enjoy and find solace in because it is something I enjoy, and is not a byproduct from a learned behavior from my childhood or a reaction to a learned behavior from my childhood. My girlfriend will tell you I get giddy and bounce my legs and rub my feet and cheer when I play, but that's only a loving torment intended to provide me with a healthy level of humility appropriate for a woman my age. That rumor about me outright refusing to buy or accept donations of military-inspired or certain sports games is a lie intended to sell more newspapers. I'm glad you gave me a chance to clear my name. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a super honest truth tellers support group to attend.

Circa right now. September 30, 2010. I turned 25 a few days ago. Every year since I came out, someone somewhere has asked me if it's my real birthday or the day I began transitioning. A “tranniversary” as some would call it. While initially dismayed by such an invasive and invalidating question, I've warmed up to the absurdity of it, of being able to say that I'm 3, and that the last 22 years were of a buggier, earlier version of myself. If there is not a pill or therapy that will alleviate this weight of my “past life”, then maybe starting over will. Being denied employment because my presentation doesn't match my documentation and seeing myself portrayed in the media as a deceptive sexual trickster goddess is the fresh start I need to wash away the “be ridiculed as a child for wanting to do traditionally 'girl' things” blues. Coming out was the greatest day of my life. It brought me closer to my family and friends, helped the world make more sense, made shopping for myself easier. I want to remember and celebrate its anniversary for the rest of my life. Happy Opposite Day.

It is now the future. Enough people have misinterpreted Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that such a procedure is now available to the public. Down with toy tanks and having to sit through Full Metal Jacket when I was 6 and constantly being denied activities and hobbies because I "wouldn't need that shit when I joined the military", up with never squicking at the sight of a G.I. Joe ever again.

I am manically jotting down a verbal patchwork of anecdotes and memories of my father and being raised a boy, the good and the bad. I don't trust myself. I might succumb to bliss and have it all deleted from my brain. It will not occur to me, the beauty in enduring such experiences and still retaining my humanity, my love, my joie de vivre. Though I may indulge my cynicism and say that my family taught me there's no such thing as “unconditional love” and being raised the wrong gender taught me how everyone wants you to play a certain part or character in their own little life's puppet show and those are important lessons to remember especially if and when I ever become successful in whatever it is I end up doing, I will likely neglect to realize that most if not everyone is hung up on their memories, and it doesn't make me defective, but a well rounded bag of mostly water just like everyone else. Forsaking my memories of being a boy will not make me more of a woman. Only herbal essences can do that. These are important facts, the stuff that epiphanies are made of. Too bad once I'm whitewashed I'll forget I wrote those memories down in the first place and will probably delete them to make more room for downloaded sound files of popular songs done in Mario Paint. And the guy who did this “We Didn't Start The Fire” DIDN'T EVEN GET THE DAMN MELODY RIGHT.

That is not the future I want for myself or whoever the hell would come out of that mindwiper procedure in my body. Too bad this time machine is only a narrative device and not a way to like, solve my problems. Even if I could see how this plays out, I'd just change it anyway because I'M NOT AN AUTOMATON I HAVE FREE WILL YOU DAMN DIRTY APES.

In situations like this the correct answer is always the most difficult, potentially vulnerable option which unfotunately isn't “create dinosaur in a lab and train it to be ridden”. Pointing how and why you you cut yourself doesn't automatically patch it up. You still have to put the band-aid on yourself. I will have to consider the possibility that feeding my inner child after midnight will not make her a gremlin. That doesn't mean I have to like it. I probably will, but I don't have to.

So maybe I get some LEGOs or build some models or some other alternative option that I will not upon pain of death say out loud in the public forum. Maybe I feel like I've made amends with myself, can forgive my younger self and my parents for the misgivings of my childhood and move on with my life. And maybe being okay with myself and providing adequate self-care makes me realize the good I bring to my relationships and I can correct the thinking error of telling myself nobody will be effected if I commit self-harm to myself and I accept that I'm of value to others. The mere thought of that makes me uncomfortable. That probably means I should do it. Goddammit. Otherwise, I'm out a few bucks and maybe a few years of my life after they send me to Azkaban for casting a curse on whoever tells my friends they saw me playing with lincoln logs.

I present to you a deal, Professor. I will grant you your freedom from the repression box if you accompany me on a dangerous voyage of self-discovery that may or may not feature a montage of us learning to overcome our differences and work together to brave the elements and survive in the wild. And then we can fight a robot or something.

Why yes, I do believe we can get the rights for “Closer To The Heart" by Rush.

What? You're Bisexual? Why don't you just pick one already?

2010-09-27T10:30:00.002-04:00

"Why don't you just pick guys or chicks and stick with one or the other?"

Who gets this? You? Well, a lot of people do. Pansexual people would get this question, too, if anyone knew what the hell "pansexual" meant. I'll bet since I'm pan I'm even MORE "OMGTRENDY" than all the bisexual chicks and dudes and non-binary people out there. I'm fightin' The Man. I'm a loner Dotty, a rebel.

Well, the whole "WHY DON'T YOU JUST BE NORMAL AND BE STRAIGHT? OR AT THE VERY LEAST GAY!" question is pretty classic. What is normal? I don't know. I don't think anyone does. But I don't think it's terribly abnormal to be indifferent as to the regard to the gender of the person you are attracted to. I think that's actually a good thing. Not being picky, just because of arbitrary standards of conduct, you know. You don't need to be just straight or gay, people. You can be somewhere in-between. And it doesn't need to be the exact center or anything. There are words like "homo-flexible" and "hetero-flexible" for a reason. The Kinsey Scale can be helpful if you absolutely NEED something to define your sexual preference, but I tend to see it as a spectrum and not as concrete as five numbers. I actually think it's ridiculous to define something as complex as sexuality with numbers. Maybe if you used a negative infinity to infinity scale. But that would be impossible to define, completely negating the so-called "usefullness" of a numerical scale. And I doubt there has ever been a person who has never had at least a fleeting thought sometime in their life of doing something with someone of the same gender, even if they're totes straight. I mean, minds wander, right? Maybe the thing is as simple as just kissing someone out of extreme affection. Something more than a bro hug. Not like there's anything wrong with keeping it to a bro hug.

There's nothing wrong with not liking the idea of being with someone of the same gender. My boyfriend is quite squicked (I think I may have made up a word...) about it, even though he's dating me, and I'm definitely not the opposite gender of him. He regards me as a separate entity (not like a ghost or something...a gender-neutral HUMAN entity...because remember, pansexual genderqueer kids ARE people) and therefore my gender status is not relevant to his unwaverable heterosexuality. At least not in his mind.

Basically, there's no problem with what mixtures of people you are attracted to. It doesn't matter if you're pansexual and potentially attracted to any gender or you're asexual and are not sexually attracted to anyone (or very rarely are). There's also really no problem with polyamory (concurrent relationships with multiple people), either. I guess people might just think that we outside the "completely" homosexual and "completely" heterosexual groups are weird, but in actuality there's absolutely nothing weird about us. We're just people a little deviated from the norm, but we are definitely not deviants...and we don't need to choose a side.

Kirk out.

My Generation takes diversity only so far

2010-09-27T00:01:00.000-04:00

Last week, ABC aired the pilot episode of a new series, My Generation. The show is a mockumentary about the class of 2000. Cameras follow a group of nine classmates, catching up with them 10 years after graduation, and splicing in “flashbacks” from their senior year.

The mockumentary style feels pretty inauthentic, the characters are mostly predictable stereotypes, and the relationships that have occurred between them are contrived for “interesting” storytelling.

What struck me as most lacking was their sexuality. All characters appear to be straight. Granted, we’re only one episode in, but based on the relationships that have occurred between the characters, past and present, all of them are straight. Only one character has not had a relationship with one of the other eight, although a comment made by his character about a female classmate makes it pretty clear he’s straight (or at least straight-acting).

I’m not sure exactly whose generation this is. I haven’t looked into it, but I doubt any of the writers graduated from high school in or around the year 2000. The creators of the show made an attempt at diversity (there is at least one of each when it comes to commonly seen minorities on primetime: black, Asian and Hispanic) but fell short of including sexual diversity. Perhaps that will come out in a later episode. If it does, that is also pretty inauthentic. These people are 28-years-old. They grew up in a time of Ellen, Will & Grace, Rupaul, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It would be odd for someone of that generation to have made it that long without coming out of the closet. So I’m going to take a tiny leap and assume they are all straight.

Which is odd for my generation. I’d like to think my high school was relatively average. I had quite a few classmates who were out (at least to their friends) in high school or who have come out (or come further out) in the years since graduating. Gays being out of the closet from teenagers to adults wasn’t shocking for our generation. Maybe I’m giving us too much credit, and I’m not going to pretend like it was perfect, because I know it wasn’t. But it wasn’t hidden. And for a show to obviously go through the effort of attempting “diversity” it missed the mark.

But I’ll tune in for a few weeks at least, to see what the series holds. I am curious to see how mainstream media portrays “my” generation. And who knows maybe we’ll find out that hold out character (the one that hasn’t had a relationship with a classmate) was merely straight-acting in his comment.

I purposely didn’t mention the characters names because the show goes so far to stereotype them that after watching the one-hour pilot, you barely remember that they actually have names.

Housekeeping, 9.26.10

2010-09-26T16:02:00.003-04:00

+ news +
So what now with Don't Ask?,
NAACP tries to address LGBT issues,
and Bush's daughter at an anti-Prop 8 event for the week.

Sincerely,
ts

The REALLY Not-so-Empty Nest: Managing Gay Identity as an Adult Child at Home

2010-09-24T00:01:00.001-04:00

A recent Brookings Institute report indicates that, in 2007, one out of every four men aged 25, in the United States, lived at home with their parents. That number is astonishing (and doubled from 1980, when the figure was 1 out of every 8) given that these numbers were crunched in 2007 (read: the recession hadn’t even started yet) and speaks to a population that has, in American culture, had more expectation to strike out and make it on their own as they passed into adulthood. For men to be living with parents, coexistence is no doubt a harrowing experience.

Now imagine how being 25, gay, and at home can put a crimp into your social scenario.

If the above figure is correct, and there’s reason to believe it is, that means, by statistical extrapolation, that a significant number of 25 year old gay men are still enjoying the benefits of Mom and Dad. Because we don’t have a hard number of how many men are gay in our society, it’d be difficult to come up with an acceptable figure. If we go with the conservative 6% figure, that would probably suggest that about 15% of 25 year-old gay men are living at home (once one considers co-factors that would inhibit gays from living at home as adults).

Sociologists like me remark in amazement about the development of the gay ‘coming out’ process, and how subsequent generations are going through periods of self discovery at much younger ages than their predecessors. Although there are no real hard numbers, anecdotal evidence easily supports the notion that the median coming out age for most out gay Gen Yers is younger than their Xer counterparts (who were, themselves, younger than Baby Boomers when they came out). As such, a bevy of boys coming out of the closet at, say, 15 isn’t as shocking or rare as it once was. Thus, you have, psychologically speaking, a population that has a better chance of being comfortable “in their skin” by the time they make it to their mid 20’s. Strong, well adjusted, and determined.

Well, yes, but they are still a part of Generation Y, a generation that is intent on taking its time to get to what insurance companies call “life events” (e.g. buying a house, getting married, having kids). The average female will now be in her late 20’s before marriage, and possibly early 30’s before children enter into the equation. That means, as a generation, the Yers are more likely to sit and ponder opportunities, and enjoy the creature comforts of home, compared to Gen X and the Baby Boomers (who were, statistically speaking, beating the door down to get out of the house).

Yet “being gay at your parents' home” presents some challenges in the new millennium that preceding generations didn’t have to overcome. For example, it goes without saying that the center of gay society for the Boomers and most of Gen X was the bar or club, because traditionally, that was the meeting place. However, it is easy to find evidence to support the idea that the center of gay society for Generation Y is the internet, as many social interactions that previously occurred only (or mostly) at the bar now are web-based. Trolling Manhunt on a random Friday night in your apartment is one thing; making sure the volume is turned down and your door is locked so Mom doesn’t walk in with those freshly baked cookies is another matter entirely.

In short, there’s a measure of negotiation that must occur if one wishes to be active in the gay community (however you define active) and an adult child living at home. There’d seem to be more bias regarding dating possibilities (a 25 year old straight guy living at home is, to some straight women, amusing; a 25 year old gay guy living at home is, to some gay men, a pariah), encounters (not like you’re going back to “your place”), and privacy (“what’s this thing that looks like a flashlight?”) that heterosexuals either bypass or minimize (thanks to our old friend, heteronormativity).

While the numbers of mid-twenty something men at home are shocking, consider that (a) Canada has worse numbers; it’s been speculated that 38% of their 20 something male population live at home and (b) these numbers are from 2007; the recession probably accounts for a (conservative) 3-5% increase in these numbers, since we have evidence of adult children moving back in with their parents due to financial distress.

As such, adult gay men living at home might represent a nominal, rocky, or awkward scenario, but as time progresses, it may be something we see more commonly.

Open Thread: Academia and Resisting Oppression

2010-09-19T00:03:00.011-04:00

So, it's September (well, nearly October, really), which means back to school for many of us. There's this stereotype (not entirely unfounded) of academic institutions as bastions of liberalism. And definitely, an institution where there are a bunch of people immersed in studying the world's problems and their solutions, with relatively flexible schedules and a mandate to engage with the communities around them – well, that's a pretty good recipe for a place that's going to foster all sorts of activism. But academia is also a site of oppression for many people, including those who work or study in the academy, those who are studied by it, and those who are excluded from it altogether.

I know I'm not the only person on this blog who is a student, researcher, instructor, or otherwise involved in a university setting, so I wanted to open up a discussion: What are your experiences with oppression in academia, or of academia as a place for activism and anti-oppression work, or both?.(This question is open to anyone, whether you are, have been, or will be involved with academia in any way, shape, or form, or if you want to offer an outsider's perspective.)

To start us off, here are a few thoughts:
Last week I attended an awesome, sex-positive, gender-inclusive, feminist workshop on sexual assault recently. The facilitator was from the student volunteer-run sexual assault center on campus, which is also the only sexual assault center in the city to offer its services to people of all genders, and not just cis women. They are open to anyone in the city, student or not, and in addition to providing a help-line/support groups/assistance with filing complaints/what have you, they also do outreach in high schools. In short, they're pretty freakin' awesome, and I'm going to assume that their existence is made a whole lot easier by the fact that they're in a university setting.

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Another thought. This semester, I'm taking a class across town at another university. It's a pretty amazing class, looking at international institutions (the UN, the World Bank, etc.) from a subaltern perspective, but that's not really my point. What surprised me was that when I got the syllabus, it had an official-looking statement on it about the right of students to vote on the course requirements. Sure enough, after the professor had spent some time explaining the syllabus and making sure all our questions were answered, he left the room and we students were left to discuss the syllabus and vote on it, including any proposed amendments. The professor and an elected representative then signed the agreed-upon syllabus as a binding contract, which we will all abide by – or face disciplinary proceedings.

This is apparently a university-wide policy. How awesome is that?

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And of course, the current climate of neoliberal budget cuts and “austerity measures” tend to be bad news for public funding for education. At the same time, the skyrocketing cost of many private institutions has created a sense that higher education should be costly. Which is exactly why the administrators at my university are lobbying hard to raise tuition. Although our fees are actually quite high compared to other institutions in Montreal, the province as a whole has some of the lowest fees in the country – and by extension in North America. Apparently, that means that our fees ought to be raised to meet the national average. (Although if we meet the current national average, that'll just push the average up, which I guess means we'll have to hike tuition again, amiright?)

Academia likes to think of itself as a meritocracy, but there are serious consequences to these sorts of decisions. Among other things, high tuition costs disproportionately favor students who can rely on financial support from their families (i.e. leaving out many queer and trans folks, children of single parents, people of color, poor and working class people, first generation university students, children of undocumented immigrants, etc.) I think we all agree that not having the opportunity for higher education is one way in which systemic oppression is reproduced: access to education – and the associated status, connections, and experience – is a prerequisite for most well-paying or powerful positions. But here's another thing: being excluded from academia means being excluded from the mainstream creation of knowledge; perpetually being the studied, not the studier. This does not, generally speaking, lead to peace, love, and mutual understanding for all involved.

In related news, I just found out that the Chicago City Colleges — whose open-door policy allowed me to take classes there before I was ready to attend a 4-year university — are now restricting admissions. Again, budget cuts are the alleged reason. Why is it that budget cuts always seem to hit those who were struggling most already? Wait, don't answer that.

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No discussion of tuition hikes in North America would be complete without referencing the struggles of students in the University of California system, and the March 4th day of action that grew out of them.

And finally, I want to link to two compelling posts I came across in the past few weeks that contributed to my thinking on this issue. Read them!
Carrie Cutler/mouthyb, Guest Post: Standing in the Crossroads. An eloquent, honest post about the author's personal experience of classism, sexism, and harassment as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico.

Kay Ulanday Barrett/brownroundboi, [15+ things I wish i knew in college] broke-ass qtpoc from an immigrant household (the REMIX). Pretty self-explanatory, really. Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet/spoken word artist/educator with roots in my hometown of Chicago. (I wish I could say I knew hir, but I'm not that cool. Yet.)
Go ahead and post your thoughts, experiences, struggles, and questions below.

Dances with Progress

2010-09-17T13:24:00.007-04:00

History is pretty awesome. Because when you are in tune with it, it gives you something to build off of, and then you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you are passionate about something. LGBT movements sort of recognize this, and have celebrations that honor things like the Stonewall Riots, but guess what... they often neglect to look back any further than that.

Forget the homophile activism that took place in the decade prior, and further, forget that while Stonewall gained national prominence, US history is ripe with different forms of resistance against gender and sexuality norms. Forget the gays in the holocaust, forget the myriad of non-European cultures that prior to falling victim to Imperialism had much better social systems for acknowledging the wide array of human gender and sexual and behavior.

I bring up all these things to oppose the sovereignty of one simple idea, an idea that I think drives a lot of Moderates in the US, which is that time will bring progress. This idea is often conflated with the notion that progress takes time (which, while technically true, is woefully overemphasized and used as a reason to make progress take way more time than it actually needs to). Even in the rather shallow collective memory of the US, one can see evidence that progress and time are not marching together; the very active 60s and 70s have left us with a watered down memory of MLK Jr. and a frighteningly pervasive discourse that reduces much of the radical activity of the time to unnecessary violence. We constantly fight waves of anti-muslim sentiment. If progress and time correlate at all, it is certainly one of the more tenuous journeys that can be imagined.

There are lenses through which a correlation can be seen; legally recognized gay marriage rights in the US for example have been moving fairly steadily forward in recent times, with backlashes being mostly immediate rather than a product of backward marching social thought. But even things like this can be contrasted to assaults on affirmative action and the prevalence of post-racial, post-sexist discourses. The most mainstream view of US history will focus on the strides that have been made, ignore deviations to this storyline, and with the aid of the wow factor of obvious technological differences, make the heroic claim that the US is a better nation today than it was when we separated from England.

And in reality, time can only bring progress if our collective memory deepens and provides more universal exposure to the full mosaic of historical struggle and social thought.

This post was prompted by my recent reading of a 20 year old article published in a local LGBT publication that asked the question “why is the gay deaf population leaving the area?” I never knew that my area had one, and upon further investigation, there were lots of things we used to have. It saddened me, because though my area is half in Iowa, so the Quad Cities has access to legal marriage equality, there are definitely things in our past that I would trade it in for.

Live Action Role Modeling

2010-09-16T15:28:00.005-04:00

Rewind. Last weekend. I'm lying in bed with my partner, idly stroking her hair and trying to sumo wrestle a piece of dinner from between my teeth. I can feel it working it's way up my throat. A word, or perhaps several fixed together like a Voltron of impulsive vulnerability, fighting it's way out of me with a reckless devil may care attitude to shatter my house of glass and give away my trade secrets. It will burst through my corporeal form, tearing my spine out with it and leaving me a helpless heap of mostly water on the floor to shiver and writhe. Just like last time. And the time before that. I have foreseen this, yet I am unable to divert from the course. Like a Nordic god slated to die in the Ragnarok, so too must my ego be sacrificed for the greater good. It has to be. I have to believe that this is for the better, that this constant wretching and purging of what optimists would call “my soul” has somehow been arranged for my betterment.

Oh god here it comes. You can see it. Look at how I close my eyes real tight and take a deep breath, as if opening them again will magically awaken me from this dream and copy/paste me back into reality, where I am an open book who doesn't soil “cuddle time” with vulgar soul-bearing (and can walk through walls). That smile means I'm preparing myself for her response. I'm practicing my "laugh at myself because I'm silly" face. I pull her tight and exhale right into her hair. Sometimes that shit's so hot and sludgy with aroma that when it comes back to your eyes you tear up a little. And lo, here cometh the money shot:

"I look up to you because you're the woman I wanted to grow up to be when I was a little boy."

Now. Wasn't. That. Special.

Fast forward to yesterday. The support group facilitator is popping off that good shit about attachment theory. Scanning memory banks for memories of my parents that won't trigger a system error. File not found. Rewind to Tuesday. In one day I've booked a fundraiser event for my budding nonprofit and been nominated to be lead game designer for the game some friends and I are making called Across The Zooniverse. Alone in my kitchen at 1030pm, I cry because I realize that I would have given anything at that moment for someone to pat me on the head, tell me they're proud of me and maybe give me a cookie or an ice cream sandwich. Sometimes I think I should change my screen name to FirstWorldProblemChild.

But hark, I am jerked to the present by the facilitator's inquiry on how I'm handling the loss of my individual therapist, whose internship with the clinic I'm treated at ended a couple of months ago. My tears follow me to the present and I begin leaking all over the place. It dawns on me that of all the things I miss about individual therapy, the absence of validation cuts me the deepest. Like a trained circus animal I would grin when she told me she was proud of me. The same grin I give my partner when she does the same. I guess what I really meant when I said "someone" was my partner, my ex-therapist, or perhaps a version of either from the future, a time where people relax from the hours of watching robots do all the damn labor by using time travel to give people they know morale boosts. I wonder if hearing my mother tell me she's proud of me would elicit the same reaction. I don't think so. I love my mom. Totes for reals. But for 22 years my mother loved and cared for someone I did not want to be. I know she loves me, but I am unsure if she sees me. Have all those years being her "firstborn son" built a wall between us, the cracks of which she must peek through to see the "real" me? And how thin or thick is that wall to begin with? How much distance did my assigned gender put between us from the beginning?

Being MAAB, society deemed that I should take my cues about growing up to be a well-rounded human being from my father. In his defense my dad did his very best to teach me how to be a man and point me in the direction of other men who could help keep me on the path. Veterans, politicians, sports stars. As I developed into more of an art/music type, he tried to reconcile his expectations for me. I could be a country music singer, or a filmmaker of patriotic war movies. When book suggestions and father/son bonding over a baseball game failed, he would bring out the big guns: shoving, name calling, trying to embarrass me in front of my friends. The sort of stuff you see "token angry drunken dad" do in the movies and roll your eyes. It would be very easy for me to twist all this into abuse and gender coercion, but the fact is my father did the best he could with the tools he had. There simply was not enough force, pressure, and emasculating language in the world that could sway me to "man up".

Calling me a sissy, a cocksucker, a faggot does not demean me. It demeans you for having to resort to such dirty tactics and losing anyway. I can say this shit to him now because I've had the time to think of a witty retort. The same hindsight allows me to interpret my refusal to adopt male role models as a child as a symptom of my gender dysphoria and not necessarily because "people suck, they let you down, and the only solace is that one day they'll die". Thank you for sharing that with us, seventeen year old me.

When I was younger, when asked who my heroes were, I would say "Optimus Prime" or "Green Arrow". I reasoned that Optimus Prime, unlike my father or teachers, never lied to me. From the beginning, I knew he was a fabrication intended to sell toys and commercial time and theater tickets, and that I sought to emulate his "honest to a fault" quality. The truth is Green Arrow was guarding my front door as I read Virginia Woolf and Wonder Woman and listened to riot grrl punk and watched Power Puff Girls and all sorts of shit that I'm embarrassed to admit I did in "secret".

At the time I thought I was indulging my "inner girl". I had no idea that the inner girl would grow and assimilate my corporeal form. When I was a "heterosexual cis man" my knowledge of trans women consisted of Christine Jorgensen, Calpernia Adams, a subplot of Nip/Tuck and Hedwig. It never occurred to me you could be trans and still be diy, counterculture, ready for action. When I first transitioned, I read books on how to cross dress and tried to develop a taste for expensive handbags and develop a "girl walk". When I think of how much time and money I could have saved if I had listened to myself the first time, much shit is lost. None of these compacts match my paint-covered chucks. I'll never get asked to the ball.

I value my partner's opinion in part because embodies what "being a woman" meant for me at a time when I was convinced I could never attain it. She identifies as femme and likes to bake and wear fabulous dresses. She also plays rugby, wears torn jeans to social functions, is well read on all sorts obscure curiosity and minutiae, more than holds her own in a discussion on feminist politic and kicked my ass at ping pong on our fourth date. I'm not so proud that I won't admit that I've begun to emulate her in benign, nonthreatening ways. I've begun baking from scratch and not using a mix, reading recreation-ally, knitting, and actually exercising. No more "oh boy I have a letter to mail I might get to walk some today". Her approval is important to me not only as my partner but also as someone whose grasp of reality and identity I trust. Do not mistake trust for security. I am absolutely terrified at how much her opinion means to me. There are no free warm fuzzies in this town, mac. That's the thing with approval and validation; it can be lost or taken away. How will I take it if I ever feel like I disappoint her? I've always taken it as a given that my family thought low of me and my path in life, which was okay at the time because I didn't want to be like any of them. Disapproval from someone I admire and strive to emulate, someone who I want to be like if/when I ever recovery from or learn to manage my mental illness...that is as unfamiliar-ly terrifying as ketchup on tacos. I'm far from eager to try either.

My girlfriend is also my role model. You may not think this is healthy. You may also have a great relationship with your parents, not require weekly therapy to help you deal with your emotions, and understand that Spongebob Squarepants is just a cartoon and not a useful tool for teaching diversity and tolerance to children AKA "not necessarily representative of my experience or my target audience's experience". I ain't writing this shit for you. I gave all my fucks to Save The Rhinos, I don't have one to give about what you think. I'm too concerned about how my girlfriend is going to take having an article examining our relationship. All I can do is keep calm, carry on, and make the most of it. I can think of worse ways to process these feelings than asking someone to play with my hair and say nice things about me. I won't say what they are, lest you get any ideas and end up on 4Chan's hit list for drowning a puppy on youtube and I learn about this when I find your entry on EncyclopediaDramatica. I fear I've already said too much.

Fast forward to today. What I had intended to take 45 minutes has taken a few hours to write. I turn 25 next week. I'm scared. You can tell because I bite down on the inside of my mouth until it leaves permanent grooves on the flesh. I can't tell if I'm going forwards or backwards. It like I haven't passed Go and collected my 200 dollars since transitioning and moving out to California. Feel. That's a word I never used with any sort of regularity until I went to therapy. My mother is sending my musical saw in the mail. I want to get very good at it and play it in front of my girlfriend. I almost de-tagged myself from a picture my cousin posted of me from when I was 5, or maybe 6. Much to my surprise I refrained. It's who I was, but not who I am. Maybe when I'm 30 I'll feel like a completed work and not like a painfully tedious restoration. Maybe then I won't need my partner to "re-parent" me. Maybe I will. No time for love, Doctor Jones. I'm gonna get me some fucking cake next week!

After writing"Bloody hell!" she cried. and Boys Are Plant Type, Girls Are Psychic Type I got muy feedback from people that suggested I was speaking about things that often went undiscussed in trans spaces. Is this one of them? Does there exist a phenomenon where lesbian, queer, or bi-identified trans women see their female-identified partners as stand-in parental figures or role models? Is this common enough in f/f relationships that there's a name for it I am not privy to? Am I just the first to show up, and should I go ahead and get us a table or do you want me to wait for you?

Perfect Match: Makeup and a genderful kid.

2010-09-13T13:53:00.009-04:00

If you ever come across me, I’ll give you a dollar if you know what the hell I was thinking when I woke up that morning. Well, I should up the ante, because it's really unlikely that you will. I’m kind of a genderfuck. Maybe. You could probably call me that. I bind everyday, but I’m obsessed with eye makeup, and wear that pretty much everyday, too...if I have time to put it on. I also keep my nails long…and my hair short. And I wear unisex or men's clothing. I want to pass for…I don’t know, something? A person? My goal is to keep you guessing. I’ve had people call me sir, "correct" themselves to ma’am, and then go back to sir. Usually they eventually apologize and try to pretend it never happened. I, for the most part, end up pleased. I get looks of disgust, or confusion, and then I get those looks of surprise when I see people that I haven’t seen in months (or years) who have noticed my chest has suddenly dropped a few cup sizes with no explanation. Some people are disappointed. They can deal.

Let’s talk about this makeup thing. I really like it. It’s pretty much face painting, except less…gross. I am not Insane Clown Posse. They’re not even a posse. You need at least two other people to have a posse. One is just a wing man. They apparently do not understand this. Or magnets.

Insane Clown Posse aside, eye makeup can be pretty fun. I have a plethora of colors, probably about 75 or so different pots or pans of that wonderful stuff. That's just the high quality stuff. I have a couple pans/quads of stuff you can buy at Target or whatever. Yeah, that's a lot. No, I am not a professional. Not yet. I have no real reason to have so many colors, but I do, and it's put me back about $1000. At least. It's accumulated over the years, but still. That's a lot of makeup. And I actually use most of it.

Like I said, I'm not a professional. But I like to think I'm pretty good. I have pretty decent brushes and my friends always want me to do their makeup. But without a certificate from a cosmetology school, I'm not going to get a job. But, pretty soon, I will be entering cosmetology school. As soon as I get my breast reduction. FO SHO. Are you excited for me? I am. I'll finally be able to do hair and makeup and nails for my friends' and relatives' (and other people's) weddings and make lots of money. And cut friends' and family's hair on a regular basis. Other people's hair, too. Money. Money for when I'm not going to school and am only working in the office twenty hours a week. Money when I get a night and weekend job at a salon. And I will, since I cut hair and do makeup pretty well without formal training so I can only get better, right?

Well, people usually assume I’m female once they see that I'm wearing makeup, but when I went on a visit to a the cosmetology school I'm probably going to go to, some weird stuff went down. I got major compliments on my eyeshadow from the director. We chatted a while, and then she said that I would make a good wedding makeup artist. She said that I would get a lot of clients and make a lot of money if I got a certificate from the school. She was very friendly, but when she talked to me about the school, she always corrected herself when she mentioned that the students were “girls,” “gals,” or "ladies," et cetera. She tried to make a point that there were male students as well, but it was awkward for her to say it. She said it like it was unusual and somehow difficult for her to mention it. Maybe it’s because she didn’t know how to gender me because of my blatantly obvious (and purposeful) mixed messages, and she was trying to be sensitive. She knew my birth name, but, well, seemed uneasy. Seriously though, I'm going to be the only non-"gal" at that school as far as I can see.

Similar things happen at the makeup stores. I like really nice makeup so I get my eyeshadow at M.A.C or Sephora. That's why I'm so broke from accumulating my vast collection. The clerks either stare at me like a freak and leave me alone, or they read me as a femme gay man, or as a woman who is presenting quite unusually, but who is strangely attractive in a "cute boy" kind of way. If they get past the "freak" impression they come up and tell me to work there. Whether they read me as a weird guy, a weird girl, or something else entirely, I've been asked many a time to work at the makeup stores by various employees. No one really knows what I'm going for presentation-wise, but usually they don't really give a shit. See, I’m confusing. On purpose. Oh, how insensitive and horrible and mean I am. But I doubt my antics truly harm anyone.
My being "insensitive and horrible and mean" gets me ID’d a lot, because I seriously do look like a boy wearing makeup. One time I was first in line for a show at First Avenue. Yeah, I go there all the time. Because I'm awesome. If you didn't already know, that's where "Purple Rain" was filmed. Yeah, with Prince. But that's kind of irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make. I just wanted to add it as a fun little side note. But yeah, before I could hand the bouncer my ID, he yelled to a guy inside, "Hey, can you get me a Sharpie out here?" I said, "Hey, well, I'm actually 21. See? So can I have a wristband now, so maybe I may consume some alcoholic beverages while inside your fine establishment?" Okay, I didn't say it like that. But I did put my ID in his hand and said, "Hey, I'm 21. You don't need to give me X's."

Seriously, people even ID me at the mall to check if I’m over sixteen. So obviously I don't look like a woman in her early-twenties (ewww I just called myself a woman), I look like a fifteen year old boy in makeup stuffing his C-cup sports bra. I sound like it, too. I have a deep-ish voice that cracks (and jumps an octave when I answer the phone at work…) and I tend to swear a lot. I’m so immature. A perk of looking like a teenage boy (well, I think it’s hilarious) is that my boyfriend, who is in his mid-twenties, looks like a cradle-robber.
Oh, look at the time on my pocket watch! I need to go rainbow up my eyelids and hit the road.

Kirk out.

Mad Women: Margaret "Peggy" Olson

2010-09-13T00:01:00.002-04:00

The naive Peggy Olson of season one

The second in a series of posts examining the women of the popular AMC drama Mad Men, from my feminist lens. Note: Some spoilers from season four and earlier seasons below.

The character of Peggy Olson on the AMC hit drama Mad Men is easily considered the “feminist” character of the show. In the beginning of the series, she’s 20 years old, single and determined to be successful at her job of secretary at Sterling Cooper. By season four, she’s moved up to copywriter, still single, and even more determined to be successful in her career. She’s very ambitious for a woman of her time – most women in the 1960s were focused on finding a husband, and if they did have jobs, they were jobs only women could do: secretary, nurse, teacher or saleswoman in retail settings that cater to women – department, jewelry or grocery store.

By season four, Peggy Olson doesn't take shit
from anyone, least of all douchey guys

Socially, Peggy is very progressive – she doesn’t save herself for marriage, she’s willing to experiment with pot. However, as seen in season four, her careers ambitions are getting in the way of her pursuit of husband and family. In episode 7, “The Suitcase,” she bails on dinner with her boyfriend on her birthday, her boyfriend subsequently dumps her. She seems initially more shocked than sad, and later more sad that she’s alone, not that she’s no longer with that specific boyfriend. In season three, Peggy has an affair with the older (divorced) Duck Phillips, although it’s not clear exactly how and why this relationship ends, when Duck comes back around, Peggy realizes what a pathetic drunk he is.

The definition of feminism, and what the feminist movement wants to achieve, is as varied as the women who have claimed to be feminists. Feminist scholar bell hooks defines feminism as the movement to end sexist oppression. Other largely agreed upon definitions of feminism include equality for women (although what exactly that means is debated) and the freedom of choice for women. It is easy to see that Peggy is a feminist character.

Through the series, Peggy has issue with sexist actions. Early in season one, she is disgusted by the way the men treat the women in the office. There is even a montage scene of the men in the office repeatedly checking her out, and her reaction of frustration and anger. She complains to office manager (and the office “sexpot”) Joan: “why it is that whenever a man takes you to lunch around here, you're the dessert?”

In season three, when Duck Phillips tries to recruit Peggy to work at his new firm, she goes to Don to ask for a raise, citing the newly passed Equal Pay Act. Don is distracted by other things at the office (which escape me) and turns down her request, even through she does better work than the male copywriters for less money. However, it is empowering to see her (short-lived) determination.

Also in season three, Peggy realizes that the advertising targeted to women is not actually appealing to women, and says as much to Don, who rejects her comments. When the proposed ad is shot down by the client, Peggy’s expression is one of small triumph. Even if the men don’t realize it, she knows that women don’t think just like men. As someone who currently works in public relations & marketing, Peggy has the potential to be a rich women in the future (of the timeline of Mad Men). Eventually the rest of marketing catches up to her and realizes that women don’t think like men, and can’t be marketing to the same way, and it’s important because women make the majority of the buying decisions. I digress.

In season four, Peggy is seen with more power at the office, but still the single gal without a husband. It seems to bother her not because she wants that status, but because like most people, she wants a partner, someone to love her, someone to come home to, and with which to raise a family. She quickly gets over being dumped by her boyfriend Mark when she realizes how little he actually knows her. She values having a partner who knows her, what makes her happy, and takes her wants into consideration.

It’ll be interesting to see the trajectory of Peggy, especially as the feminist movement heats up. While she be a leader of the movement? Will she join NOW? If Peggy does get married, will it be to a partner who understands her need for independence, and the satisfaction she gets from her career? Hopefully Matthew Weiner et al do “our” feminist Peggy right.

First post in this series: Man Women: Joan Harris née Holloway

Housekeeping, 9.12.10

2010-09-12T17:22:00.001-04:00

+ news +
Law professor on why bathrooms are a civil rights issue,
"Don't Ask" deemed unconstitutional,
and Duke College Republicans get bashed for hating on its own gays for the week.

Sincerely,
ts

Where did modern LGBT movements come from?

2010-09-10T03:22:00.010-04:00

It is often assumed that modern LGBT movements had their origins in the United States, in the second half of the 20th Century. One only needs to examine the iconography of queer communities around the world in order to understand how US-centric queer activism can be. For instance, most pride parades are held in the summer months, to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of June 1969. And the rainbow flag, which is slowly becoming an international symbol of queerness, was created by a Californian artist. A number of other mainstays of LGBT communities around the world also have their origins in the US: academic queer theory, genderqueer identity, RuPaul, Cher, etc.. Indeed, the United States serves as a reference point, a place of origin of sorts, for contemporary LGBT activism.

But this is a misconception. Over fifty years before the first large-scale queer organizing in the US, German sexual minorities were developing sophisticated movements of their own, which would have probably garnered significant political and cultural victories had it not been for the Nazi terror of the 1930s. This post will take a close look at these movements and examine the extent to which their internal debates mirror the controversies dominating modern queer activism.

The German Homosexual Movements of the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries: An Overview

The territory of present-day Germany went through enormous changes in the second half of the 19th Century. A series of nationalistic wars were used as a pretext for unifying 39 feudal principalities and statelets into a large German state by 1871. Industrialization and the domestic free trade system introduced by the Zollvereien (Tariff Union) swept away internal barriers and led to large-scale migration and urbanization. The increasing availability of work in city factories enabled more people to leave their families and villages, settling on their own in teeming urban metropolises. It is in this context, during the unification of Germany “by iron and blood,” that the first visible homosexual communities emerged. As historian James Steakley writes:

“Prior to the wave of urbanization, the vast majority of German homosexuals lived in peasant villages where it was impossible for them to imagine themselves as a minority, to recognize themselves as a group with shared interests. The eccentric bachelor or spinster…may have been the object of mild suspicion or concern to village neighbors, but they would not automatically associate such forms of deviance with the sin of Sodom…Urban homosexuals developed the ritualized forms of interaction which would facilitate mutual recognition, and effeminate behavior on the part of males first became a caste mark in the cities” (The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany, 15).

Nevertheless, while groups of homosexuals lurked in the shadows of German cities, no organizations existed to represent their interests and fight against the criminalization of their sexual practices.* For most of the 19th Century, activism on behalf of homosexuals was carried out by lone lawyers and doctors, many of whom did not know each other personally and could not form associations. The most prominent and pioneering activist during this period was Karl Heinrich-Ulrichs, a gay jurist from Hanover who developed elaborate theories about the origins of homosexuality. At the time he was writing, homosexuality was considered an acquired trait, a vice that one can fall into. Ulrichs, however, argued the exact opposite: that homosexuality was a congenital feature, akin to left-handedness, the outcome of feminizing or masculinizing influences in the early stages of fetal development. This developmental androgyny made all gays a sort of “Third Sex” by default. For Ulrichs, male homosexuals (whom he called, Urnings) were essentially women’s souls trapped in men’s bodies, while female homosexuals (termed, Urningins) were men’s spirits inhabiting women’s bodies.

Ulrichs read and wrote voraciously, but he was no solitary bookworm. He dared to publicly advocate for the partial decriminalization of sexual relations between people of the same sex in an extremely homophobic era. And he often used his theoretical work on the origins of homosexuality as the foundation for his legal arguments. On August 26, 1867, for example, Ulrichs gave a speech at the Congress of German Jurists, declaring that “extant laws were based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of homosexuality and had the effect of subjecting an innocent minority to untold persecutions” (Steakley, 5). Since people were born Urnings or Urningins, and did not have a choice in the matter, Ulrichs contended, legal discrimination against them was unjust. Nevertheless, his numerous efforts did not bring many immediate benefits. Ulrichs was “shouted down” by the Congress of German Jurists and he never managed to reach a wide audience with his books (5). “At the age of fifty-five, physically and spiritually drained, Ulrichs abandoned the cause of homosexual emancipation…[and left Germany], moving first to Naples and then, in 1883, to Aquila, an isolated town…where he lived his last years in poverty and exile” (22).

But in the longer-term, Ulrichs’ work was extremely significant for the German gay movement. Influential doctors, psychiatrists and lawyers, such as Richard von Kraft-Ebbing and Carl von Westphal, became familiar with his texts and used them to develop a more accepting medical approach to homosexual issues. Furthermore, his work had an impact on the words people used to talk about homosexuality. Whereas previously, censorious terms such as Sodomit, Paderast, Knabenschander (which means, “boy-ravisher”) were used by most people, Ulrichs’ more benign terminology (Urning, Dioning) became much more popular, at least until World War I (Steakley, 13-14).

Most importantly, however, Ulrichs laid at least part of the theoretical groundwork for the emergence of an organized gay movement in Germany. His ideas were resurrected by sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld who, together with Max Spohr and Erich Oberg, founded Germany’s first gay rights organization – the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitares Komitee) – on May 15, 1897. For the next three decades, the Committee was the most prominent sexual reform organization in the country, campaigning for the legalization of homosexual relations, writing petitions, co-opting members of parliament, outing politicians, developing educational pamphlets for the public, and fostering connections with the feminist movement and social democratic political parties. In the run-up to World War I, the Committee also began to establish an international network, opening up branches in Amsterdam (1911), London (1912) and Vienna (1914) (Steakley, 60).

But the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee did not have a monopoly. German sexual minorities joined other groups, some of which were markedly different from Hirschfeld’s organization. For instance, the Community of the Special (Gemeinschaft der Eigenen), founded on May 1, 1902 by Adolf Brand, Wilhelm Jansen and Benedict Friedlander, was primarily a cultural organization, whose members were drawn from the readership of Der Eigene, Germany’s first homosexual periodical. While the Community focused more on art, philosophy, literature and aesthetics, it was also a site of political commentary and debate. In fact, its members engaged in often fierce polemics with the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which caused major ideological rifts within the German homosexual movements of the 1910s.

According to Steakley, “World War I brought the efforts of the homosexual emancipation movement to an almost complete halt” (61). Nevertheless, in the heady aftermath of one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts, there was a veritable explosion of homosexual activism, art, and culture. 30 gay periodicals were published during the Weimar Republic** and Steakley estimates that, in 1923, at least 25 gay organizations were operating in Germany (60). But this eruption of community action did not bring about any concrete political changes. The focus of most of these gay groups was social rather than political. They were a means for German homosexuals to meet, have sex, and form relationships, but few engaged in campaigns for legal reform or broader social acceptance. While the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee remained in existence, its influence waned as a result of the party atmosphere fostered in gay communities during the 1920s. This was bolstered by a degree of official tolerance in big cities, some societal liberalism, and the relaxation of censorship regulations. For instance, trans citizens could be issued police certificates, allowing them to dress as their preferred gender in public, and lesbian bars were sometimes permitted to sell drugs (Steakley, 81).

But one organization did push for legal reform in the early 1920s. The German Friendship Association (Deutscher Freundschafts-Verband) was founded in the wake of World War I as a purely social organization – but ironically, it quickly engaged in active efforts to repeal homophobic laws, in cooperation with the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and some members of the Community of the Special. Indeed, the three organizations briefly formed an Action Committee (Aktionsausschuss), which attempted to develop a mass-based homosexual movement at the national level. Unfortunately, with the onset of hyperinflation in 1923 and the increasing disillusionment of the homosexual population with political struggle, the Action Committee soon became obsolete. In Steakley’s words, it became “far easier to luxuriate in the concrete utopia of the urban sub-culture than to struggle for an emancipation which was apparently only formal and legalistic” (81).

Notably, there was one more large-scale attempt at political change in the late 1920s: the formation of the Coalition for Reform of the Sexual Crimes Code (Kartell fur Reform der Sexualstrafrechts). This was an alliance of a variety of reformist organizations, only one of which (the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee) “was a homosexual group” (Steakley, 83). The group did have some success campaigning for the reform of the anti-sodomy law (Paragraph 175). And with the support of left-wing political parties, it even managed to get a Reichstag Committee to approve the legalization of homosexual relations in October of 1929 (84-5). However, the start of the Great Depression overshadowed all other policy issues and the Parliament did not end up discussing the issue in its Plenary sessions (85).

Overall, the relative liberalism of the 1920s provided a short-lived window of opportunity for German homosexual emancipation movements. But they failed to take advantage of it, and after the Nazis consolidated their stranglehold on power in the early 1930s, the gay subculture and gay organizations were driven underground and into exile. Hitler’s rule resulted in unparalleled levels of state brutality towards sexual minorities. Paragraph 175 was expanded to make “nine possible ‘acts’…punishable, including a kiss, an embrace, even homosexual fantasies” (Steakley, 110). And tens – perhaps hundreds – of thousands of homosexuals were exterminated in the concentration camps. The burst of a fiery queer culture and activism in early 20th Century was brutally extinguished in the space of only a few years by a regime bent on eliminating anyone who could not contribute to the progress of the Aryan race through reproduction.

German Homosexual Activism in the Early 20th Century: Three Approaches

Magnus Hirschfeld, the founder of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, once wrote: “homosexuals are in reality almost totally lacking in feelings of solidarity; in fact, it would be difficult to find another class of mankind which has proved so incapable of organizing to secure its basic legal and human rights” (Steakley, 82). While the sweeping nature of this statement betrays ignorance about divisions within other movements, Hirschfeld’s frustration is understandable. The various organizations within the German homosexual movement of the early 20th Century were bitterly divided. This section will describe some of these divisions, arguing that there were three distinct approaches to homosexual activism during this time

(i) The “Committee Approach”
The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was, without a doubt, the leading gay rights group in Germany (Steakley, 52-60). Using Ulrichs’ theories, the Committee based its arguments for emancipation on the notion that homosexuality is an essentially un-chosen characteristic, resulting from the feminization of male brains and the masculinization of female brains before birth. These prenatal processes were seen as leading to an androgyny of the soul in adult life. Hirschfeld couched explanations of this phenomenon in medical and scientific language and developed elaborate theories to explain the causes of homosexuality. If one is born gay, rather than choosing to be that way, what could possibly justify the penalization of same-sex relations? The Committee took this insight and used it as the basis for advocacy to reform Paragraph 175. The Committee’s main goals were legal and political change and its members spent a considerable amount of time lobbying the Reichstag and collecting signatures for numerous petitions. By 1914, the Committee had published over 100,000 propaganda materials and developed strong connections with the women’s movement and some members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

(ii) The “Community Approach”
This “Committee Approach” was markedly different from the strategy adopted by the Community of the Special. In fact, while their memberships overlapped, leaders of the two organizations often engaged in fierce polemics. In Steakley’s words, there was “a deep factionalization between the Committee and the Community” (60). For instance, the following was Benedict Friedlander’s take on the activist approach taken by Hirschfeld’s group:

“Taken by itself, the very fact that the general public never sees anyone but doctors in the movement’s leadership must further the erroneous notion that the movement is concerned with disease or at least some kind of sickness. Certainly sickness can be pitied, the sick can be treated “humanely,” and a ”cure” can even be attempted, but equality will never be accorded to those who are held to be physically inferior.” (Steakley, 48).

Members of the Community also resented Hirschfeld’s ignorance about bisexuality. In fact, Friedlander believed that bisexuality was a superior sexual orientation, calling those who had an exclusively heterosexual or homosexual orientation, Kummerlinge, which means “atrophied or puny beings” (46-7). And while the Committee took great pains to emphasize that it was not seeking to offend Christian morality,*** the Community sneered at modern society, advocated public nudity, and emphasized the superiority of men who have sex with men in style and taste (61). According to Steakley, the overall vibe of the Community was one of “elevated and aristocratic aestheticism” (50).

It may be tempting to view the “Community Approach” as a forbearer of modern queer theory, given its embrace of bisexuality, its trenchant critique of heteronormative society, and its resistance to medicalizing homosexuality. But the differences between the Community of the Special and today’s queer theorists are just as striking as the similarities. Firstly, the Community was an all-male chauvinist organization, in which the belief that women exist to have children and tend to the household was very popular (Steakley, 61). This is a far cry from today’s queer theorists, who engage extensively with feminist politics and reject all imposed gender norms.

Secondly, the Community shunned collaboration with other oppressed groups in society, aiming for a revival of Hellenic chivalry and the transformation of the German public sphere into a space where masculine homoeroticism would dominate (Steakley, 61). Again, as queerthestorm described in a recent post, queer theorists are – at least in principle – committed to struggling against all forms of oppression. Systems of racial, sexual, economic, political or gender stratification are all objects of sharp critique among queer theorists. They are also definitely not advocates for the masculinization of public space, preferring instead to debate how socially constructed spaces create or foreclose possibilities for non-heteronormative genders and sexualities to express themselves.

Finally, one of the Community’s most cherished causes was love between men and boys. Community members, believing that they were realizing the Hellenistic ideal, valued the nurturing of “bonds between men of unequal ages,” and called for “erotic,” but non-sexual pedophilic relationships between male family members (Steakley, 43). One of the sharpest disagreements between the Community and the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was actually over the latter’s desire to legalize homosexual relations, but only for those over the age of 16 (47-8). While modern queer theorists may question the arbitrary nature of ages of consent (who is to say whether someone is ready to have sex at 16 or 18?), they would certainly equate pedophilia with non-consensual sex.

Overall, while there are surface parallels, the Community of the Special had a profoundly sexist, elitist, and pedophilic agenda that, ultimately, has little to do with contemporary LGBT activism, especially queer theory. Similarly, it is tempting to the view the “Committee Agenda” as the forbearer of the U.S. gay conservatism of the 1990s. Both certainly use the notion that sexuality is essentially un-chosen as the basis for gay rights advocacy. They also share a focus on legal reform, instead of cultural/normative change and tend to fret considerably about not offending the heterosexual majority.

But the similarities end there. The Committee developed close links with the women’s movement and with social democratic politicians, while the modern gay right eschews alliances with most other anti-oppression movements and avoids any association with left-wing politics. Similarly, today’s gay conservatives tend to extol the virtues of conformity to gender norms – a sharp contrast to Hirschfeld’s idea that homosexuals constitute a sort of “Third Sex,” with women’s souls in male bodies and men’s souls in female bodies. In sum, the Committee’s involvement with progressive politics, and its championing of gender non-conformity, decisively separate it from the likes of Andrew Sullivan and Bruce Bawer.

(iii) The “Action Approach”
Was there an alternative to the “Committee” and “Community” Approaches in early 20th Century Germany? As mentioned earlier, for a brief period in the 1920s, German homosexual organizations united under the framework of a national Action Committee. This group did develop its own distinctive perspective on gay emancipation, which I will call, the “Action Approach.” Its main goal was to foster the development of a mass movement, countering the elitism of the Community and the technical-scientific isolation of the Committee. For instance, an Action Committee pamphlet from January 1921 stated:

“We no longer want only a few scientists struggling for your cause, we want to demonstrate our strength ourselves. Here we stand, demanding that which is our right—and who would dare to challenge us? For this reason, we must work steadily and everyone must take part in our work. No homosexual should be absent – rich or poor, worker or scholar, diplomat or businessman. We cannot deprive ourselves of any support. Therefore, join us, swell our ranks before it is too late.” (Steakley, 76)

It is notable that the “Action Approach” called for the uniting of homosexuals across divisions of class and occupation – a startling appeal in a society that had, until the 20th Century, been completely dominated by these categories. The Action Committee’s goal was basically to “swell the ranks” of those identifying as homosexual and use that power-in-numbers to struggle for social and political transformation. Furthermore, the “Action Approach” called for homosexuals to take up spontaneous activism on their own. In an implicit critique of the Committee’s dependence on social democratic politicians, and the Community’s isolation from society, its proponents argued as follows:

“Homosexuals, you know what the reasons and motives of your opponents amount to. You also know that your leaders and advocates have toiled untiringly for decades to banish prejudice, disseminate truth and win the rights due to you… But in the final analysis, you yourselves must win your rights. Justice for you will finally be the fruit of your efforts alone. The liberation of homosexuals can only be the work of homosexuals themselves” (Steakley, 76).

The “Action Approach” is actually quite similar to Harvey Milk’s successful organizing strategies in San Francisco (described in more detail in this previous post). But unfortunately for the German gay movement, this mass-based and national-level approach was unable to take hold. Hyperinflation, economic struggles, a degree of official tolerance, and the increasing appeal of a relaxed and decadent gay sub-culture in German cities, meant that the Action Committee’s calls fell on deaf ears. Had German gays been able to organize as a group and develop a numerical power base at the grassroots, they may have been able to achieve the legal victories that had eluded the activists of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and the Community of the Special for most of the early 20th Century. Indeed, the Weimar Republic was a window of opportunity, a relatively liberal interval between World War I and the Nazi terror, that German homosexual organizations basically failed to take full advantage of.

*Homosexual sex, classified under the rubric of “sodomy,” was a crime in Germany. In 1871, a penal code was enacted for the new German state, based on the Prussian legal tradition. Paragraph 175 made homosexual acts between men illegal and punishable with a prison term. In 1909, the law was extended to penalize sexual relations between women, but this was discarded in 1919. Paragraph 175 remained on the statute books for most of the 20th Century and it was only reformed to legalize some homosexual sex in 1969.

**Weimar Republic is a term used by historians to describe the political regime in Germany from 1919 until the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933. The Republic replaced an imperial regime with an often unstable parliamentary democracy.

***One Scientific-Humanitarian Committee pamphlet read: “We expressly emphasize that we do not contest the demands of Christian morality, whose ideals everyone should strive to fulfill…” (Steakley, 32)

***For More Information***
Most of the information for this post came from James Steakley’s 1975 book, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany. It is a short and interesting read, but may be difficult to find outside of libraries. For further information about Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, please view Hubert Kennedy’s website – here, you can find Kennedy’s biography of Ulrichs, downloadable for free in PDF format. To read more about queer theory, I would recommend Nikki Sullivan’s A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory and Annamarie Jagose’s Queer Theory: An Introduction.

Housekeeping, 9.5.10

2010-09-05T20:51:00.003-04:00

+ news +
Republicans are clamoring for gay support now,
The Oval Office get's rainbow-fied (design-wise),
and queer people in China exist! for the week.

Sincerely,
ts

Whiteness/Queerness Part 1

2010-09-03T04:28:00.007-04:00

As my posts address the nuances of building a progressive queer movement out of the many single-identity based movements that exist, it is certainly useful for me to define the way in which I use the word “queer.” I am not using it as a stand-in for LGBT, and I am not using it as an umbrella term. I am distinctly referencing Queer Theory, which "is basically a set of ideas based around the notion that sexual identities need not be fixed - and that gender identities are not necessarily fixed either (and don’t need to be)” (Koonan 3). Thus, when I refer to queer movements, I am referring not to the movements which seek equal marriage rights, but to the movements which question the legitimacy of gender as a tool for social organization." I am a white gay man who would love to see a progressive queer movement that looks a little less white.

I have heard plenty of explanations for the whiteness of the Queer movement, among them that people who struggle economically must spend more time making ends meet, rather than pondering the boundaries of social categories and because people of color are disproportionately poor, logically fewer will enter into Queer movements. From one angle, this explanation looks promising, as it acknowledges a social reality for people of color that dominant groups often try to warp. And it seems logical; if struggling for survival, reading Judith Butler's Gender Trouble would be significantly lower on my list of priorities. Further, because Queer Theory seems so rooted in academia, one might posit that it takes a certain amount of privilege even to be exposed to it (though this is a bit of a shaky position in the age of the internet).

This view pretends that the ideas encompassed in Queer theory can only be discovered or contemplated in spaces of academia, that ideas within Queer theory are not relevant to the lives of the working class, and that intellectual inquiry must take place instead of work and other life experience, rather than in conjunction with it.

To be sure, there are spaces for LGBT people of color, and within Black feminist frameworks lesbians play a prominent role. There are queer activists and theorists of color. But just as Obama becoming president of the United States did not signal the end of racism and racial inequality in the country, the existence of Queer people of color does not signify an arrival of the Queer movement to a healthy level of race-consciousness. There are undeniably some brilliant people of color doing the work to create a progressive, inclusive movement, but it doesn't work so well when those who experience intersecting oppressions embrace all marginalized groups while being overlooked, delegitimized and even shunned in return.

There are prominent folks trying to combat the whiteness of Queerness as well, just look at Judith Butler's rejection of the Berlin Pride award. This isn't enough. White queers need to be better than Democrats, and must do more than just pay lip service to the notion that racism exists within the community. Before a Queer movement can become truly inclusive, racial equality and equity must become core tenets, such that queerness cannot be understood in a supposed racial vacuum. White queers must see how their whiteness and queerness work together, just as Queer people of color see/experience how their identities work together. There is a great article by Diane Finnerty at University of Iowa that walks through common things that white LGBT people do or avoid in order to help the LGBT and Queer movements become less racist spaces.

None of these ideas are new. Despite its post-structuralist, all-encompassing flavor, Queerness has, and continues to fall far short of its potential, and in its brief history has held far too firmly to the dominant forces from which it emerged. In fact it is my belief that in order for a successful wide-scale progressive movement to take hold, Queerness will have to become but one frame in an intellectual pluralism that effectively gives voice to experiences of gender and sexuality in all different realms of life.

Additional Reading:
Coonan, Kris. Queer Theory Demystified

FAQHag Beach Party

2010-09-03T02:15:00.001-04:00

This morning county investigators came to my house to inform me my food stamps/general assistance case had been forwarded to the welfare department (not the “hey did that check arrive yet” kind, the “there is way too much feces smeared on this wall” kind of welfare). They observed my living conditions, ask me why I moved to California and where I'm getting rent money if I'm reporting no income, and if I had access to mental health resources. I answered the door in an undershirt, panties, and bruises (look, we've all done things you regret). On my laptop table there are bookmarks made of duct tape with various suicide prevention hotline numbers written in six colors of sharpie. Now I'm not saying I would have cleaned my room had I known they were coming, but I would have done a better job at hiding the week's worth of candy bars and bottled water I have stashed under my bed.

Missing: The will and focus to write a thoughtful, poignant article on how being in a same sex relationship both validates my gender identity and gives cause for the occasional body dysphoria. Goes by the name of “get over yourself”.

In lieu of actual content, I've decided to rehash an old idea from when I first started writing for BelowTheBelt: my personal FAQ list. A veritable sideshow of the disinformed. Pickled punks of embarassment and bearded ladies of frustration. A wholesome family venture.

Hopefully you all caught the animatronic boytaur at the front of the ride who read you the disclaimer about how this is not indicative of any other trans or queer person's experiences and that if you quote me on some debate in a message forum (and you end up losing anyway) I will come for you. Alright. Fantastic. Let's begin.

When did you know you were trans?

If your initial reaction to reading the above wasn't “ugh not this shit again” but instead a very enthusiastic “oh this gonna be a good story”, drop everything you're doing, change the channels on your TV until you come across a televangelist, new age healer or Food Network personality and do whatever they tell you for the rest of your life. Knowledge is not a fixed point in time. A moment of clarity does not undo years of grasping at straws, filling vaccuums and standing against the wall at parties wondering why you don't seem to fit into your own skin like everyone else. Trans folk are not ticking time bombs of epiphany. Who told you to ask me that question? Was it my nemesis, Miss Goes On Every Trans Comm Ever And Makes Comments About How People Who Come Out In Their 20's Or 30's Probably Aren't Really Trans Until She Gets Her Ass Fucking Banhammered? You tell her to show herself and we'll settle this like 12 year olds who've just discovered the internet. And that I want my CDs back.

What's your birth name?

This is never okay to ask a trans person. Ever. Even if you're sleeping with them. Many trans folk won't even share birth names with each other, and two or more exchange birth names, it is understood that you are never to reference their previous name. If you really want to know, you're gonna have to wait 'til I fall asleep on your dining room table and rummage through my wallet like the rest of my friends.

Like, what do you call your genitals and stuff?

In my experience there is no right answer to this question. If you're a trans woman, any attempt to use common vocabulary to describe/reference your genitals in polite company (i.e. people you aren't fucking at that exact moment) will illicit moans and groans from someone. Penis, cock, dick. The only boo-proof word I know of is stickpussy, but only a n00b would interpret the faces people make when they hear that word as “agreeable”. Personally, my least favorite is “clit” or “clittie” because I know from my participation in the BDSM scene that such language is used by those that fly the sissy/forced feminization kite, and though it remains unspoken, it is understood that there exists a particular tension between those two communities. Rumors that I used to post pictures of “sissies” accompanied with two-bit dime store snark to a fashion blog are unfortnately very true. Fuck, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, my junk. That's not what I call it. Actually I call it my “stick shift”, or the “factory installed equipment”. For some reason, nobody ever objects to me using these terms in discussion. I believe it's because people see that I'm personalizing my relationship with my body and not speaking for anyone else. Also, it's fucking hilarious.

You should totally see/watch/listen to this movie/song/television show.

Now that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I purposely avoid watching documentaries or documentary-like television shows about tofuspace trans celebrities because whenever I meet them in person I embarrass myself, like I did with Clair Farley from Red Without Blue, my favorite documentary of all time. You can read more about it here, but for those of you who don't trust that I wouldn't link you to a NSFW (fucking google it, Dad) site, here's the abridged, basic cable version of what happened: I meet a person who I admire greatly and “much shit is lost”. If I ever move to Seattle or Paris, maybe. If I run into Calpernia Adams at a farmer's market in Raleigh, NC and accidentally call her a nerf heder then you know, them's the breaks, but while I'm within BART distance of people who's disapproval of me could shatter my credibility in the scene, it might be better to play ignorant convincingly and not get caught up in the hype.

Furthermore, I think it's about time that the community dropped this whole “drive thru enrichment” model. You can't say that no language works for everyone but then say “but you all need to read this book, it will have an impact on you if you're down with the struggle and all that”. You're putting average writers on pedestals and cutting off the blood flow of new messages and media by superfluously denying them this communal importance. Everyone should see Southern Comfort because it is painfully beautiful cinema, not because it “explores transmasculinity”.The truth is the money you would put towards a new copy of Whipping Girl or My Husband Betty would probably be better spent attending a spoken word/open mic or buying ingredients to make a dish for a queer pot luck. Lending your friend an overhyped tijuana bible of literary wank is not a replacement for providing support or a safe space to fellow queers. And your dish better be vegetarian this time. That whole “haha make the lesbian eat sausage by mistake isn't that funny” was good like, once, maybe twice. But try that shit on me again and I'll drug you, dress you up in a Nappy Roots t-shirt and baggy jeans and throw you in front of a crowd of tea partiers.

Also, that wasn't even a question, dickhead.

Is it true that you're helping to organize a skillshare/camp/conference in NorCal in the summer of 2011?

Is it true that I told you to shut up about it until I had set details?

Katrina Anniversary: A Look at the Effects of Crisis on the Queer Population

2010-09-01T01:47:00.016-04:00

I won’t write too much this week because my writing juices are feeling a little low, but I did want to talk a bit about the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and its effects on the queer community.

Now a huge disclaimer here: I only lived in New Orleans for about two years and just moved away this summer, so please take a lot of what I describe of my own experience with a grain of salt.

Half of me is going through major NOLA withdrawal, and the other half is so happy to be missing hurricane season and the suffocating August heat. In those two years I met many fantastic queer women, however most of my relationships with them formed out of different activist circles and social justice networks – none of which circled around queer activism. Also, almost all of the queer women I met were young transplants like me, not originally from New Orleans. This could partly be because of the crowds I found myself in, or it could be that many queer women who were living in New Orleans pre-Katrina have not been able to return. (Note that much of what I’ll discuss here is about queer women. Queer men in New Orleans still seem to be flourishing and taking over every LGBTQ event in the city. Not that I don’t love me some queer men, but come on fellas, make room for the ladies. We’re queer too.)

In Charlotte D’Ooge’s 2008 report on “Queer Katrina: Gender and Sexual Orientation Matters in the Aftermath of the Disaster,” she describes that while many of the traditionally gay male sections of the city (the French Quarter for instance) hardly received any lasting damage from the storm and the flooding, traditionally lesbian and queer women’s sections of the city were badly flooded and led to many queer women needing to leave the city. Housing ownership became a huge issue for queer couples, because if one member of the couple passed away in the storm but the house was in their name, their living partner faced difficulties gaining access to their own home. This was also common in parts of the Black community, particularly in the lower 9th ward, where homes were passed down through the generations. However, the name on the deed may have been many years deceased. When these homes were then wrecked by the flooding, the homeowners had no proof that the home belonged to them and could not collect any insurance money.

Transgender women also faced huge amounts of discrimination in the aftermath of Katrina. D’Ooge recounts one story of a transwoman who was sent to jail (which at the time was probably the makeshift prison they made out of the Greyhound station where conditions and treatment were even more horrible than New Orleans' usual police standards) for showering in the women’s bathroom. The people who arrived in the Superdome, the Convention Center, and other relief sites around the city following the storm were assumed to be straight and cisgendered, so often necessary services and respectful treatment were not provided. Many of these factors may add to the decreased presence of queer women in New Orleans, especially those who were there pre-Katrina.

None of this information is terribly new, and there has been so much coverage about the Katrina anniversary that I cringe a little bit at the sight of it because I fear New Orleans continues to be reduced to a victimized city and all the other wonders of its culture are being passed over. But at least the incompetence and inequities of Katrina’s relief process are being highlighted again (at least in the alternative media and on Rachel Maddow; the mainstream media are still pretending that New Orleans is “recovered”, and I feel it’s important to think about how different populations are affected during crises. Blacks, Latinos, and many other people of color will have varying experiences because they may be treated differently by the people handing out the services. People living in poverty will always be hardest hit by disasters, and often they are the last to receive services, if they receive them at all. And queer populations, especially queer women and transfolk, will also be hard hit because the general population doesn’t consider the services needed and the sensitivity necessary when working with us.

Katrina is not a stand-alone event. It has happened again and will continue to do so, whether in the form of a hurricane, an earthquake, a bombing – name your poison. But if in the future we can try to make relief work more inclusive for everyone involved, maybe one person’s nightmare will become a little more bearable.

And just a little something to end on…

Some more links for Katrina Anniversary Media

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/38874511#38874511

http://femmepolitical.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/the-truths-of-katrina/ (long but comprehensive overview of New Orleans during Katrina and now)

http://www.truth-out.org/living-new-orleans-after-katrina62738

Man Women: Joan Harris née Holloway

2010-08-30T00:01:00.015-04:00

Promo image for season three

The first in a series of posts examining the women of the popular AMC drama Mad Men, from my feminist lens. Note: Mild spoilers from earlier seasons below!

Joan Harris, the office manager of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (and formerly the office manager of Sterling Cooper) is often described in terms of her looks: voluptuous, bombshell, curvy, sexy, etc. According to Wikipedia, the actress who plays her is 5’8” and 140 pounds – which I totally do not believe as a woman who is 5’7” (when I round up), although perhaps they add padding to her costume. Joan is played by Christina Hendricks, who was voted the “best looking woman in America” in a 2010 Esquire magazine poll of female readers.

During season one of Mad Men, Joan is living a carefree, single-gal-in-the-city lifestyle. You could consider her the early 1960s version of Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones. She lives with a female roommate, has a successful job (for a woman of the time), and makes no apologies for having an affair with her older, married boss – nor does she pressure him to leave his wife and ‘make an honest woman’ out of her. She’s assertive, smart, witty, confident and doesn’t try to act as if she needs a man. Joan quickly becomes a favorite character of fans.

Unfortunately, in season two, Joan gets engaged to a man who quickly became a villain to fans. Greg Harris seemed like a charming almost-doctor when his character is first introduced – but then he date rapes Joan … our Joan, as many fans feel connected to her in some way.

In season three, Greg, now her husband, is supposed to become a doctor. Joan even quits her job in anticipation for life as the doctor’s wife. Unfortunately, Greg fails to land a job as a doctor, and Joan’s embarrassment and sense of disappointment is obvious. In the finale of season three, Greg announces he has enlisted in the Army as a surgeon. It’s the end of 1963, and history gives Joan’s Number One Fans the hope that the villainous husband will meet his fate in Vietnam.

In season four, Joan is back to work as the office manager of the newly formed Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. This time around, she has her own office. She is waiting for word that Greg will ship out to Vietnam.

Joan is an interesting character. At first, she seems to be the poster child for sexy feminists. She doesn’t have a husband, and doesn’t seem to care. She has a good job. She sleeps with whoever she wants. She has a brain and isn’t afraid to use it. Personally, I was disappointed in seasons two and three when she seemed on the road to life as a stay-at-home-wife. Especially when it seemed like that’s what her character wanted. What would have been the point of introducing such a strong, independent female character just to “clip her wings” into stay-at-home-wifedom?

Regardless, the most noticeable thing about Joan, especially as a relief to 2000s audiences, is that she has a figure! A beautiful, curvy, voluptuous figure.

However … in much of the coverage of her character, it starts to feel like that’s ALL she is … a curvy figure. Fixating on one woman’s curves to such an extent is almost as bad as fixating on another woman’s perfect, slim, girlish shape. In the end, they are still just their bodies.

And apparently, even Christina’s voluptuous figure isn’t safe from airbrushing. Photos of her modeling for London Fog (one time client on Mad Men) reveal that she’s been airbrushed down a few curves. It’s interesting to compare the coverage from feminist (and female-authored) Jezebel.com with fashion bloggers (and gay males) Tom and Lorenzo at Project Rungay. Granted, Project Rungay is about fashion and style and not social commentary, which is Jezebel’s territory. However, they do point out that “it's always a good thing when a woman who isn't starving herself to death gets hired for this sort of thing.” Yes, yes it is. However, when the photos are edited to make her appear thinner, what’s the point?

Either way, the focus is still on her body. I honestly don’t know much about Christina Hendricks, but I’ve watched every single episode of Mad Men (minus last night’s, I don’t have cable so I usually don’t watch new episodes until the Monday or Tuesday after they air), some episodes two or three times, so I know a lot about the character of Joan Harris. And many other female television characters. It takes intent to write a funny, witty, smart, confident female character. It does make sense that a smart woman of her time (well, any time) would understand how to use her looks to get noticed and get ahead (the character of Bobbie Barrett did as well, if you’re a fan, you might remember her advice to Peggy Olsen on making it in a man’s world: “You can't be a man. Be a woman. It's powerful business when done correctly.”)

But is it feminist or anti-feminist for a woman to use her looks to get ahead? Clearly, as we can see in Mad Men, all woman of that era, both career women and housewives, knew the importance of their looks. Was it fair? Of course not. But it’s how they got ahead. For women who aspired to be stay-at-home mothers, they knew their husband wanted pretty, put-together and presentable wives to come home to and take out on the town. Heck, these women wore pearls and did their hair to go to the grocery store. Career women knew they had to look professional in the work place, but also attractive, if not also sexy. But not too sexy – remember when Jane showed too much cleavage? Or maybe she was just butting into Joan’s territory as the office sexpot. Regardless, anyone who has examined that era (even just by watching Mad Men) can clearly see the emphasis on women’s appearances.

But is that anti-feminist? I sometimes struggle with my daily application of make-up and heels for work. Why do I feel the need to do so? I think regardless of gender, appearances count. That opinion is probably largely affected by the fact that my full-time job is in the field of public relations. But appearance sends a message. Taking the time to look professional at work tells my colleagues that I take my job seriously. Wearing a sexy dress to go out with my husband tells him that I want to look good for him, and I’m sure he doesn’t mind being able to “show off” his sexy wife. Likewise for me; I appreciate when he takes the time to look nice.

Getting back to Joan. I wonder what the show would be like if she wasn’t the voluptuous character, but rather Peggy (the young, single, doing-a-man’s-job career woman) or Betty (the stay-at-home-mom) was. Would it have the same affect? Would it seem out of place? Does it work on Joan because her role at the office is one of authority and support – authority over the secretaries (women) but support of the partners (men)? She’s in the middle so you don’t suspect that her looks have gotten her too far, but you don’t feel bad about fixating on them because she’s not too important.

So, we can’t argue that looks mattered then, and they matter now, but is that bad? As long as the looks don’t overpower what’s really important – intelligence, personality, morals, drive, work ethic, etc? I feel that as long as looks support those things – draw you in to learn more – instead of overshadow or replace those things, they’re a good thing. So what do they do for Joan?

Housekeeping, 8.29.10

2010-08-29T00:01:00.000-04:00

+ news +
Drama re: former RNC chair's recent coming out party,
Blue Power Ranger --> Lavendar Power Ranger,
and MichFest and trans women's inclusion for the week.

Sincerely,
ts