On Gender Policing in Trans Communities: transitioning is not weakness

note: after writing this I realized that I was deeply inspired by and bascially restating a lot of what Julia Serano has to say about Gender Artifactualism in her book Excluded here's a crash course in that.


It's very common in transgender and nonbinary communities for folks to applaud each other for choosing not to medically transition or not to wear binders or heels or whatever else. Usually it's just the standard “Good job doing that soul searching.” and “I'm glad you found a choice best reflects you.” This sort of encouragement is wonderful. It's a big part of why trans people (and other marginalized individuals) seek community. It's tough for us as trans folks to find this sort of encouragement in the world at large. And it can feel especially tough for nonbinary trans folks who have ostensibly zero out role models in the greater public eye and must seek validation almost exclusively through community. There is excruciatingly small public awareness about what it means to be transgender and specifically nonbianry.* So the encouragement we give each other is necessary.

Unfortunately, sometimes the support sought or given becomes politicized in a way that's problematic or even exclusive. When such choices are described with the language like “fight against gendered expectations” it casts those who do choose to undergo more physical and medical changes as somehow “giving in” to society. It can also call into question the identity of the trans individual's nonbinary-ness, implying that there are rules and standards to being nonbinary that exclude folks who take HRT or get gender affirming surgery. Worst of all, it shoves a political value onto trans folks's personal care choices and tells them they are weak, shallow, or backward for adopting particular traits. We're already heavily and mercilessly politicized by the cis world. Can we not politicize each other this way?

My choice to refrain from chemically or medically altering my body to better express my gender doesn't make me morally superior to trans people that do choose to treat their dysphoria with medical and chemical procedures. Not taking HRT doesn't make me more stalwart than those who do. Not getting surgery doesn't mean I respect my body more. And I'd appreciate it if people (trans and nonbinary included) would stop telling me these actions means more than I say they do.

For myself and for other trans individuals, I view being transgender as a complex condition of life for which there are medical and non-medical treatments available. Deciding to take HRT and or have gender affirming surgery is no different than deciding to take anti-depressants or getting a mastectomy in the face of highly probable breast cancer. These are serious health choices, ones that aren't usually made in direct reaction to a discrete risk to one's immediate health or well being but made after careful consideration of lived experience and potential outcomes. These are decisions made in hopes of shifting the way someone balances the conditions of their life. It's a complicated self care process.

Let me break it down for you with a hypothetical:
Say your best friend has bipolar. If she decides to explore life without meds after years on Zyprexa you don't tell her that she's fighting the good fight against society's expectations of sanity and those evil drug companies. You say “that choice must have been a tough one.” and ask her what you can do to help accommodate this change in her life. If it doesn't work out for her and she chooses to go back on meds you wouldn't see her actions as “giving in” to Big Pharma. You don't assume her choice was about your politics or your identity. Because that would make you an egocentric jerk. Instead you recognize that her choice was about her own self care. You'd see it as her choice to manage the conditions of her life (regardless that her choice is different than the ones you make to manage the conditions of your own life).

The way we sort out and express our needs and desires is unique, part of what makes us individuals. And it should be respected. This is clear to me as a poet and a person with conflicting desires. Sometimes I hate that gender even exists, so yeah, I do sometimes dream about a world without it. But those dreams are mine, they aren't fit to be mapped onto the desires of other trans and nonbinary individuals or groups. My desires for a world without gender are not more politically pure or correct than the desire I to have a huge dick. My occasional desire for a less round body as well as those for a less gendered world do deserve to be expressed, but not at the expense of other's choices for expression and self care. These desires do not deserve to be seen as intrinsically appropriate for other trans and non-binary people. Like any member of a marginalized group, my desires and doubts aren't representative.

Being skeptical of medical transition steps is currently my personal choice. But it will never be a symbol for my politics. And as much I want to meet people whose experiences mirror my own,  I work not to project my personal skepticism of medical transition onto others. Because it's not my business to decide how others best manage their personal and unique experience of being transgender. It's not yours either.



*In popular culture there's been a fantastic surge in representation of binary trans folks  in the last 5-10 years (particularly for trans women). I have a suspicion that some of the exclusionary distancing language used by nonbinary folks comes from the pain of being erased or simply not recognized at all by the limited portrait of transgender lives currently seen in pop culture. I can see refusals to conform to those binary narratives as politically important to the nonbinary community, but I don't think they belongs in the language we use to support each other's self care choice. It certainly shouldn't come at the expense of others. There is not a scarcity of acceptance and recognition. We don't need to steal/win it away from our siblings.

Appropriation Is Erasure

Preface:

Alright, let's get this out of the way.  I am a white person about to write about race. And I am scared to do it. 

You're more than welcome to skip this preface and proceed onto what this post is really about. Trust me, my clumsy thoughts on racism and appropriation and art are much more interesting than my fears. But I must speak them.

I have been afraid of blogging about race in the past. I still am. The only other times I have written about race I've either used a disclaimer, or not addressed it directly while making note of implications I was skipping. The fear I experience is complex (like most human emotions) but mostly boils down to three basic thrusts. 

1. I don't want to further enforce oppressive structures, and/or harm those whose experiences/cultures I'm speaking about. 
2.  I am afraid of bumping up against the spots in my world view that've been made blind by my privilege. I am afraid to find in myself those deeply lodged flecks of violence and oppression I've yet to eradicate.
3. I am afraid to have this process laid bare in public, because I ultimately want to be thought of as a "good guy". But giving up being the "good guy" is part of challenging power structures that put me and people who look/act like me in power (and gives us the freedom to call ourselves "good guys" and be believed). So here goes.

Before you read any of the following please at least skim  DEFINITELY READ ALL OF Nicholas Powers's Why I Yelled at the Kara Walker Exhibit. In fact, if you only have time/energy to read one take on this topic make it his not mine.

I strode to the front, turned around and yelled at the crowd that when they objectify the sculpture’s sexual parts and pose in front of it like tourists they are recreating the very racism the art was supposed to critique. I yelled that this was our history and that many of us were angry and sad that it was a site of pornographic jokes.

Among the many thoughts and feelings I had after reading this, this is proof positive for me that more comprehensive interdisciplinary arts education is necessary. I want a clear connections drawn between art and social justice. There is such a fucking failure in our schools and at large to connect past atrocities and suffering to current occurrences and artistic trends.

Unfortunately Powers's experience is only a glaring example of how the centering of white folk's contexts for experiencing erases the culture and history of others. I mean look at how "exotic" art (whether it be foreign, "urban", Native American, or otherwise "tribal"/"primitive") is presented in film/tv. They're used as props or background and all too often end up as the butt of some throwaway joke. Those jokes as well as those photos people were taking of the Kara Walker exhibit are as naked a portrait of appropriation as I can imagine.

The very reason that experiencing art itself can be transformative at all this that it asks us to consider and in theory inhabit contexts other than our own. But so many white and otherwise privileged people have been insulated from this process. So much so that when they encounter anything that seems outside of their experience/history they assume that it must only exist for their entertainment. The viscous cycle of erasure and appropriation is fed by this consistent failure to connect with the cultural contexts of those either deemed "other" or simply not spoken about at all.

In one of the presentations at my residency last month someone said "people who have suffered are smarter". That phrase clicked with me then but I think only now am I understanding why. People who suffer and are made "other",  are forced to, and for their own survival, become adept at understanding contexts and experiences other than their own. This was the "smart"ness referred to.*

The mechanism of appropriation laid bare at the Kara Walker exhibit, is the process of reducing the art of "the other" to the frivolous, exotic, and/or racy/trendy (and usually profiting from that redefinition). And I am ashamed. But more important I'm livid.

Livid that the insular straight-up dumb assumption, that "if [x piece of art/culture] is not about me/my experience then it must not be that important (to anyone)." is part of my culture as an american and as a white person. The comfort of that privilege is NOT making us smarter, or better people. It only makes us more comfortable (at the expense, erasure, and discomfort of others).

*After drafting this I was informed that this context switching "smartness" is known as "outsider-within" perspective in feminist stand point theory. Source

The importance of radical non-presence in maintaining intersectional integrity

Note: This is an idea I am still very much mulling over and would LOVE to hear any feedback folks have about privilege, oppression, & intersectionality as it relates to presence/non-presence.

As a teenager, before I explored myself sexually, before I maturbated, before I began writing about my fantasies, & before I began to interrogate my own desires, I accepted the romantic paths society laid out for me. More simply put: I identified as straight until I was 23. Fortunately during my sexual oblivion I gravitated toward the queer youth space in my hometown. I attended weekly meetings and identified myself as a straight ally. My very best friend had come out to me in middle school and I wanted to be the best ally I could.

These meetings provided vital challenges to the way I conceptualized my world. I encountered and began to process the reality of trans and genderqueer folk for the first time. One of our regular leaders spoke with raw vulnerability about living with and contracting HIV. I was blown away. I value what I learned there more than I can say.

A year into my attendance of these meetings a decision was made that the meeting space would available to LGBTQ -identified individuals only. I considered saying I was queer or questioning, but back then straight still felt most comfortable. Conflict & anger burbled in my belly and often escaped my mouth in the shape of resentment as I spoke about the group’s decision. “It’s mean and discriminatory and I feel like I’m being unfairly excluded”.

After listening to my complaints, calmly and at length, my best friend opened his mouth haltingly but without apology. "Sometimes, it's just better to be around people who've had the same experiences you do."

Those simple words clicked instantly. I understood the reason my experience of straightness was excluded from a queer youth space. I didn’t have words for it then but it didn’t matter. I understood. I understood that spaces can be more deeply healing and illuminating when the people in that space have a shared experience & history with specific tools of oppression (in this case trans- & homophobia). At 17 I’d never had someone hate or question me for being queer. More importantly, I hadn't had it happen to me on a repeated, systematic basis. My friend was telling me that the most valuable support I could give him was my non-presence as a person full of a lived history of straightness.

The exclusion of my straight 17 year old self from my hometown's queer youth space facilitated deeper, unquestioned explorations of internalized and subconscious trans- & homophobia. The lessons I’d have learned by continuing to share that space would have no doubt been valuable. But my experiences of straightness took up space in that room. I required time and information to connect deeply to others’ experiences of homophobia and transphobia. I wanted to be included in explorations of those tools of oppression. But it wasn’t the job of those suffering from trans- & homophobia to educate me about that experience. It is never the obligation of the oppressed to educate others about the deep level of systematic oppression they experience. This is especially true if they are present to explore that oppression for themselves.