Questioning Transphobia

Well, her post was new eight days ago. I’m late, mea culpa. I linked her previous posts here

Africa, my Africa! Where are the people of the LGBTIQ of African origin be that Africans in Africa or those in the Diaspora? Wherever you are, this clarion call is what has led me to create the trans-group known as, “Transafro,” which can be found on Facebook. Although the continent of Africa seems caught up in a “conditioned consumerist mindset” there is more to the continent than this narrow extrapolation of the rich and diverse continent. One of the daily attacks on African transpeople is the regular attempts by our own kin to erase our experience out of hand. Instead of trying to understand us as part of the diversity of African life, they wantonly exclude us.

Why? If some comments I received off the back of Trans-homosexuality are anything to go by, then I’d say because lots of Africans do not know much about human sexuality beyond their own experience which is often hetero-normative in form. What about us? I remember telling an acquaintance that I am a translesbian once and she mouthed the insult, man! I still find this laughable even today. If you think that a transperson that has transitioned from being male to female is a man any more than one that transitions from being female to male is still a woman? You will be appallingly wrong. The correct specifications are: Mtf=woman and Ftm=man; it is time to rethink the delusion of conditioned usages of language. Although this is not an academic thesis it is helpful to contemplate the impact of this kind of language from the simple standpoint of existential expression/narrative and how we are all affected by its use.

With apologies to Cedar for forgetting to link these,

Cedar writes about forming coalitions around combating oppressive tactics as opposed to focusing on specific identities:

But why do we need to found anti-oppression groups on the basis of identity at all? If we were to look at oppressive tactics rather than oppressive targets, we’d see a very different, connected picture. If, for example, we took control of the body as our example of an oppressive tactic, we’d immediately see the connections between fat phobic harassment and medical incitement to anorexia, prison medical experiments, the incarceration epidemic/prison-industrial complex, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, abortion/reproductive rights, the Standards of Care for trans medical treatment and medically-based criteria for identification, gender coercion, rape & rape culture, forced institutionalization & sterilization, male circumcision, intersex genital mutilation & coercive gender assignment, denial of legal/economic/sexual agency to children, kinkphobia, sex-negativism in general, the marketing of control of women’s bodies through BDSM products like The Toy, etc etc. It leads us right into coalition building, because if we really are to attack all forms of public control of the body, we *cannot* be a single-identity group, and all those involved have very good incentive to deal with their racism/transphobia/misogyny/etc.

Cedar also has a criticism up about the format of privilege checklists, as well as the draft of an open letter to LGBT organizations:

I am quite moved to see the recent upswell of support among LGBT orgs for trans inclusion in ENDA and Hate Crimes bills….

As important as all these are, there are huge gaps in the legal documents/resources/information available to trans people, which make your websites of considerably less use to trans people than we should be able to expect from community organizations. Here are some of the most pressing.

…

1)A by-state listing of procedures for name change, Drivers’ License gender change, and birth certificate gender change, as well as links to any relevant forms. A discussion of complications…

4)A document describing trans people’s rights under sexual harassment law and law banning the creation of a hostile work environment. Do trans people have the right to contest intentional and/or repeated misuse of pronouns? …What statements/questions about a trans person’s body count as sexual harassment–and what are “curiosity”? …Documents to provide to employers explaining said rights

5)Police, criminal law, & arrests
5.1)State prison policies re: gender. What are your rights for prison placement, what are your rights if those get violated, and what level of accountability to guards/police have for the consequences of placement? What are your rights vs sexual harassment/humiliation by guards/police?
5.2)What to do if you get arrested. Trans specific info, or just at all. Please.
5.3)Police brutality law, by state. State organizations against police brutality.
5.4)List of potential legal contacts to ensure safe treatment in prison.
5.5)Prostitution/sex work law, by state. …What are trans people’s rights against gender profiling by police? Link to law code.
5.6)What to do if you’ve been attacked by police for being trans/24-hr hotline.
5.7)Work to reform/abolish prison system

…

I want to make this a real open letter, with real signatures, and really send it to the organizations we know and love feel ambivalent about. Do you have things to add or change, or other edits?

(Note, most of this was actually written almost a year ago, so it was actually before (and I think was partial inspiration for) this post (similar and also worth reading) but I never got a big circulation for it or edits/signatures.)

Mia Nikasimo, an African trans lesbian, is guest-blogging at Black Looks. In her first post, she writes:

My name is Mia Nikasimo. As a volunteer for Changing Attitudes at the Lambeth Conference I found myself in an opportune position to reflect from a translesbian (i.e. a transsexual woman who identifies as a lesbian not to be confused with above or beyond “lesbians,” or a transgender man) standpoint on the Anglican Communion and attempts to exclude the LGBTI.

I have purposely mentioned my trans status here because “transgender” as an umbrella term (for transsexual female, male, sister, brother, mothers, fathers any of the following might choose to cross dress, are intersexed, queer, kings, drag queens and more) can easily loose ones identity in the mix and because I can only share this reflection as a translesbian in the full awareness that some, like my LGBTI African brothers, sisters cannot. As the founder of an online support group call Transafro I aim to give voice to our various narratives Anglicans or otherwise, to promote, empower and raise consciousness in Africa, the Diaspora and allies.

Transgender, contrary to what is often believed to be the case, is not about sexual orientation. Rather it is about gender identity which, for instance, in the case of transsexuals (i.e. female or male), sexual orientation is something that gradually happens as birth sexuality goes through a sort of transformation and so on and so forth. Even some transsexual people do not fully understand this so I am not surprised that most members of the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community do not understand the “T” or transgender enough to change their attitudes towards us never mind the wider Anglican Communion of Bishops which is why education, dialogue and reflection is important.

The consensus will always be that: WE DO EXIST, WE ARE TRANSGENDER AND WE ARE PROUD!!!

Read the entire post,

She has other posts up as well. Make Amends Now or Fail:

When the acronym LGBTI hit the headlines the first thing a friend’s sister said was, “I don’t give a toss about all that Lesbian, gay, transgender, transsexual stuff if you ask me. We are all human, all that is about identity”. I wasn’t asking her but she said it, anyway. When I told the friend’s aunt that with a traumatised life like hers that it did not befit her to talk about other people’s identities in such adverse terms, she admitted. “I do not know anything about it!” Talking about something you do not understand to those that shared your transphobia is overt participation in a hate crime. But what happens when members of the LGBTI themselves engage in internalised homophobia or transphobia?

Events are often used to propagate some of these subtle criminal acts as I have found of late but when an online magazine known as Topix asked the question, “are gay men and lesbians transphobic?” finding that the answer is a simple, “YES!” was a gut wrenching turn of circumstance. Is this what mainstreaming the LGBTI does to gay men in particular and lesbians in general at the expense of everyone else? When the gay community bind together in homosexist indulgence in the very abuses we are still exposed to?

What Cost Reproduction?:

Transpeople and the question of procreation or reproduction depending on what side of the fence one finds oneself was a mute point but when it finally found voice in Thomas Beatie’s experience I felt for the much unsung persons in Africa or even in the Diaspora. Although I felt like cheering, HURRAH but the words got stuck deep down in my throat. It is anyone’s guess why transwomen cannot rejoice in the same way the Beaties of the world can.

As I thought about reproduction, I felt a sudden lurch. I discovered how difficult things could get with floating questions such as: Do you have children? or Are you going to have kids? as someone asked me at the transgender evening at the Lambeth Conference; in this life, nothing gets easier or so it seems at the moment.

Apart from the paranoid reaction of the hetero-normative system that seems maddened at every opportunity there is no reason why transpeople cannot have children or for now be efficient wet nurses. Or is there? If there is then the paranoia claim has not been settled yet. On the other hand try again in one hundred and fifty years in the future, Africa might have joined the club of progress and proudly so.

Trans-Homosexuality:

The funniest things happen when you out yourself as a translesbian (i.e. a transsexual woman identified woman; a lesbian.) I, for one, am an African translesbian and I have a beautiful girlfriend who is virtually more African (if I may use this as an honorific) than I am and she’s a lesbian as far as being a lesbianism goes. Although all this is happening in Europe as I speak; African LGBTI is condemned to the underground while the “religiously righteous” seems to prefer repression to sex, sexuality and gender identity truths. Yes the strangest things still happen in the twenty first century. In Africa, for instance, as a translesbian, I will be so far underground the light of day will only emerge as a virtual spectre and how sad is that? All these stem from the deluded assumption that transphobia or homophobia is of African origin. Nothing can be further from the truth, according to Dr. Sylvia Tamale, the moral order (as applied in Ugandan Law) in its ascribed hatred and fear of transgender and gay people exposes its own selfishness. [1]

h/t Jess McCabe at The F Word