Call for Submissions – ‘Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation’
Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman are co-editing a new book, “Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation“, which aims to:
[...] collect and contextualize the work of this generation’s most forward-thinking trans/genderqueer voices—new voices from the stage, on the streets, in the workplace, in the bedroom, and on the pages and websites of the world’s most respected mainstream news sources.
Kate and Bear have issued a call for submissions from “non-normatively gendered/sexed voices” but add that they will “include all the good stuff we can, regardless of current identifiers of the author“.
The deadline is September 1, and payment will be $50 and two copies of the book on publication by Seal Press later next year.
The full text of the call for submissions may be found over at Bear’s LJ – link here.
I was quite interested to hear of this anthology, but Bear’s response to the misgivings about “tranny” was … less than satisfying.
adam
June 9, 2009 at 5:50 am
I expect to see a lot of that.
Considering that “tranny” can be unpleasant and triggering for a lot of trans people, I really don’t think it helps to throw the word out there like this. I mean, there’s no solidarity on reclaiming, and presenting it in such a way that implies the trans community likes to use it is bothering me.
Lisa Harney
June 9, 2009 at 5:57 am
i’m not interested.
i’m not a gender outlaw, i’m a woman trying to live my life in some semblance of peace and safety. the bornstein/bergman/feinstein crowd can keep their pedestals / self-exotification / third-gendering for themselves. i want no part of it.
also – seal press? nope, done with them.
GallingGalla
June 9, 2009 at 6:14 am
I’m actually thinking about submitting something. I doubt it will make the cut nor be particularly on topic, but i think it would be cathartic to write it.
D:
jayinchicago
June 9, 2009 at 6:53 am
Just yesterday I wrote in my journal about that call to submissions and how I had issues not just with the usage of “trannie”, but especially with the way the poster dismissed any concerns about it. We don’t want to play victi– I mean live in the past! And hey, after I made you feel uncomfortable, would you like to write about that? For the book I’m promoting! With that term you feel is hurtful! — I found that response to be impudent and selfish.
Also, seconding GallingGalla — my life is not some exciting experiment where I get to have fun with subverting the gender binary. I had enough difficulties with coming out to some friends when they kept blathering on about
1. how they have third genders in [insert far-away country here] although we were currently sitting in an urban café in Germany
2. how everybody is a little androgynous, although I had just told them that I’m not a ‘masculine woman’, I’m a guy
3. how it’s cool that I make people realize that gender is fluid, which of course brightened my life considerably, knowing that the upside to transphobia is being exoticized.
… I guess I’m not the target group. Or not forward-thinking enough.
Dingsi
June 9, 2009 at 9:37 am
I’m very interested in submitting something. What exactly are they looking for? I think I can write about my genderqueer/trans polyamorous triad.
Dani
June 9, 2009 at 10:05 am
I mean, there’s no solidarity on reclaiming, and presenting it in such a way that implies the trans community likes to use it is bothering me.
And this really crystallized itself in Bear’s response – he has no interest in engaging in a serious discussion about the term, only in having the other side hop up and justify their objections to it, and all the while Bear and Bornstein profit from the discussion (via submissions) with minimum effort.
averydame
June 9, 2009 at 10:27 am
I’m just.. so exhausted with this.
You tell them that it has as much to do with misogyny and male dominance as transphobia..
and end up getting shouted down by a bunch of males/people perceived as male in the world.
Sophia K
June 9, 2009 at 12:59 pm
GallingGalla –
– yeah they should fuck off wrt the word “tranny”, yeah seal press is a racist stew that shows no signs of getting better! also your words got close to being a generalization about 3rd-gender people, that we’re ALL trying to be special outlaws who think we’re enlightened above men and women. And that sort of brought me to a point that ultimately says what could be wrong with this anthology itself.
GQ people are ignorant when they privilege nonbinary identities over binary ones, but so is it ignorant also to dismiss the nonbinary as on “pedestals” as though we aren’t looking out for our own peace & as though our nonmale/nonfemale genders are just mutable masks worn for political reasons, rather than being basic to us and often fixed. & As a matter of fact, that assumption is one part of what’s problematic with these approaches from THESE authors (Bear & Bornstein etc), viewing gender as always fluid, as always a changing sort of toy (which it can be but often isn’t), & saying that you’re unenlightened if you’re NOT interested in the sparklier more performative side of gender.
Mostly it is best to give up the idea that gender is “always” anything. I am working on it and it continues difficult. But I wish in the trans communities there was some medium between “GQs are faking it” and “binary genders are faking it.” Nobody is false, each of us is as real as any other, we should not dismantle male or female but rather allow other options to be built into society.
Apologies for poor English. :)
marshaias
June 9, 2009 at 2:25 pm
marshaias, i am not critiquing genderqueer people for their identities.
i am critiquing bornstein and bergman for privileging one means of identifying over another, and for demanding that we people who clearly identify as (trans) male or female, third-gender ourselves and celebrate our freakiness and be the court jesters, which puts us in the position of othering ourselves and doing the cis world’s work for them.
i am not a court jester. i am not here to “help” the cis world educate themselves on gender. i am here to live my life without getting turned down for jobs because of gender no-match, without getting assaulted, without getting spit on and beaten.
i am not questioning your identity or bornstein’s or bergman’s. now please stop questioning mine.
GallingGalla
June 9, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Nobody should be forced into the freak role or the educator or indeed any role & nobody’s identity should be questioned. But I would rather that cisgender transsexual people would, instead of talking about “third genders” as though they’re inherently negative (and discuss GQ people as though we aren’t “searching for peace and safety” or “here to live [our] life” the same way you are), talk about FORCED third genders as negative.
Forced third-gendering is wrong full stop.
– Forced anything-related-to-gender needs to stop this instant, and the onus is on cis people to take that action and educate THEMSELVES.
But there is also this dichotomy of “male/female are real genders” vs. “GQ is a political/farcical/ideological gender that was made up to prove a bunch of academic points.” The gq are not jesters either, that is the problem with the proposal of this book. (this is not what you said, obviously, & NOT a direct response to yours. it’s just what your point made me think of. Subversivism and binary-centrism are both deeply fucked, it’s depressing that people will react with hints of one when faced with the other.)
Bear & Bornstein ARE wrong, indubitably & utterly, if they deny anybody the RIGHT to be respected & safe & liberated in her REAL gender. including male or female.
marshaias
June 9, 2009 at 4:48 pm
In addition to the awesome comments above, I just want to add…
$50 and two copies of the book?!? I made almost that much money getting published in college press, and I went to a state school. They’re not just washing over any objections to their politics, their exploiting those objections as well.
Ceridwen
June 9, 2009 at 6:22 pm
You know what? While it’s not as bad as trans male apporpriation of the term, male-assigned trans people like Kate Bornstein defending its use is transmisogynistic as far as I’m concerned. If you are not a woman, how do you really understand the impact of a slur that, for trans women, means that you aren’t a REAL woman?
Sophia K
June 10, 2009 at 6:34 am
sophia k – YES.
GallingGalla
June 10, 2009 at 7:40 am
How the hell is it transmisogynistic for someone who was male assigned at birth, (I’m pretty sure still does, or at least has in the past) identifies as femme, usually uses female pronouns, and in general moves through the world as a woman, to use the word tranny? Kate’s reaction to the tranny = not real woman thing has pretty much been to say so what, no one’s a “real” man or woman, and there’s no such thing as a “real man” or “real woman.” You can disagree with that, but to say her gender theory and personal opinion on how gender works render her unqualified to comment on trans women’s issues when that’s a part of her identity too? Ridiculous. The fact that someone reacts to something differently than you do does not entitle you to erase them.
anacas
June 10, 2009 at 10:18 am
yeah, no thanks.
I’d really like to see some academic work getting published that promotes actual trans solidarity; binary-IDed and non-binary-IDed trans people working together towards justice for all trans folk.
instead, after how many years, this court jester shit is still getting the megaphone. ugh.
Rebecca
June 10, 2009 at 11:30 am
“saying that you’re unenlightened if you’re NOT interested in the sparklier more performative side of gender.”
This sort of crystallised (part of) a vague discomfort i had with the whole “gender outlaw” thing. I mean, on one level i love the concept – “gender outlaw” is something i’d love to proudly call myself, and i passionately want to smash the binary (with the proviso that people whose identities currently fit into the binary, would still have their identities accepted and respected in my version of a binary-free society)… but i have no interest in “performing gender” at all – no part of my identity would have anything at all to do with gender if i didn’t live in a society where the gender binary is continuously, unrelentingly shoved down our throats. (In fact, i don’t think i would ever even have thought about the concept of gender if it wasn’t so ubiquitous in our society and so at odds with my own sense of self.)
Also… am i not a “gender outlaw” because the only kind of clothes i feel physically comfortable wearing [due to autistic sensory issues] also just happen to be clothes that i pass as cisgendered in? There’s an unexamined disablism (not to mention classism, due to the – non-trivial for many – cost of clothes and accessories) in a performativity-based concept of “gender outlaw”-ness…
shiva
June 10, 2009 at 11:56 am
I have to agree with Ceridwen.
Honestly, even Lester Bangs paid better than this.
DaisyDeadhead
June 10, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Sorry, my italics died. The first paragraph in my last post was Ceridwen’s.
DaisyDeadhead
June 10, 2009 at 2:11 pm
A-n-d… fixed!
Helen the editing faerie
:)
Helen G
June 10, 2009 at 2:16 pm
[...] cross posted from Questioning Transphobia [...]
call for submissions: gender outlaws « Raven’s Eye
June 10, 2009 at 3:28 pm
If i could write i’d write something about this. but i wouldn’t give it to them.
lynn
June 10, 2009 at 4:30 pm
And it wouldn’t be about being an “outlaw”
lynn
June 10, 2009 at 4:32 pm