Keep Your Gender Struggles Out of My Race Struggles

Monica Roberts has posted a rebuttal to an anti-transgender blog post by Bob Parks. The rebuttal is also in the comments for that post.

Bob Parks’ complaint is that “Transgenders are not like blacks,” or rather, that we’re appropriating black civil rights struggles to explain our own plight and justify why we need civil rights. Now, it is true that people inappropriately appeal to what black people have suffered as comparable to what they’re suffering, and this is not really a good way to make your point. It also ignores the intersections that trans people of color have to deal with both because of their gender and their race.

On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with drawing parallels, or learning from history. Bigoted speech about just about any minority parallels the speech about just about any other minority. The same tactics, the same silencing. Hate crimes happen the same way (even if for different motivations). The results of oppression are sometimes similar - lack of access to employment, housing, some protections. It’s possible to draw similarities between particular instances - such as same-sex marriage vs. anti-miscegenation laws - without claiming they’re identical.

What really disappoints me about Bob’s post is not that he is angry about racial struggles being appropriated for other causes. It’s how he goes on an extended tirade about how transgendered people are too weird to be acceptable, how trans women all dress like sluts, and how we don’t look right. In other words, he uses the language of bigotry to justify why he doesn’t want us to have our civil rights, and why he does not want us to even mention the black civil rights struggle in comparison to our own. He judges trans women by what he assumes we look and act like, and says this is a reason we don’t deserve civil rights.

Personally, I do not think it is cool to spread offensive stereotypes about a group of people and judge them as lacking based on those stereotypes. It does not matter whether those stereotypes are applied because you changed sex, because of who you love, because of the color of your skin, or because your body doesn’t fit into society’s norms.

Sex, Lies, Transmisogyny, and the Heteronormativity of BDSM, pt. 1

Going back to the “Questioning Transgender Politics” well, I find Sex, Lies, and Feminism. This particular article is useful, because it shows one of the transmisogynistic “WBW policy” supporters comparing the inclusion of BDSM practitioners with the exclusion of trans women, allowing for some contrasting oppression . . . which turns out to be exactly the same.

First, I want to say that I’m not a supporter of MichFest, and I wish that anyone who is a trans woman or who considers herself an ally to trans women would stop going. I know that there was a boycott, and that it ended in 2005, but I am uncomfortable with the idea of allies who willingly give money to someone who makes it clear she does not see trans women as “real women.” I also feel that the policy sets an example that legitimizes the creation of DV and rape shelters, lesbian spaces, and other women’s spaces as “WBW-only,” or as I shall refer to it, “stop contaminating our womanly purity with your presence, you dirty trannie” policies, or “trans-exclusive” for short. The idea that all the women at MWMF bond primarily over having been raised as girls is suspicious, simply because that is the most convenient way to define trans women out of the festival. From talking to women who have attended the festival, they talk more generally of just being around women and not having to deal with the stuff women have to deal with every day, and that’s not dependent on growing up female.

Charlotte Croson starts with an argument depressingly familiar to those of us who have been watching the ENDA debacle:

The debate about sado-masochistic practice (S/M) at Festival has been a recurring issue. It has a new urgency in light of right wing attacks on Festival over the past year. These attacks are ostensibly aimed at sexual practices “harmful to children.” S/M sex has been - and is - displayed as exhibit number one. In truth the attacks are aimed at all women: the tactic being to make all lesbian sexuality no different from S/M, drawing no distinction between S/M and lesbian sex in any non-hierarchical form. For the Festival community, the attacks have again brought into sharp focus fundamental questions about women’s political and social community: who defines the interests of our community? Is it in our interests as women who love women to embrace, or at least leave unchallenged, S/M and Camp Trans/transgender politics? Independent of those attacks, what should we make of S/M and transgender politics(1): are they otherwise compatible with our community’s interests?

She talks about right wing attacks on the festival, and how they’re focusing on BDSM to represent lesbian sexuality. She then questions whether BDSM practice should be part of the community, whether they should be thrown under the bus because they serve as a weak point for the right wing to attack. She is discussing the supposed necessity of capitulating to hostile politics to increase lesbian acceptance. Or, as Alix Dobkin said in The Emperor’s New Gender, “isn’t being/creating our own individual version of a woman what lesbians have always been about?”

Okay, I couldn’t help myself. But seriously, should the lesbian community exclude those who make the easiest targets? Or should the lesbian community close ranks and protect all all lesbians? Believe me, I know which lesbian community I’d prefer to be in. However, this paragraph sets the tone for her essay: Lesbians are under siege!

Given that the women who engage in BDSM have been subjected to similar (but lesser) discrimination that trans women have, you’d think that maybe she’d talk about how trans women also give the lesbian community a bad name, somehow. This could not be further from the truth: She conflates Camp Trans with the right wing.

Defining our own interests is of paramount political importance for us, both as lesbians and as women. It is equally important that our community have safe space in which to engage in that process of definition. As if the right wing attacks weren’t enough of a challenge to that safe space, there is also Camp Trans - literally right across the road. From there Camp Trans activists, like the right wing activists, have attempted to define our interests as women as a function of how they define themselves. Perhaps more egregiously, Camp Trans also defines us as women in reference to how they define themselves as transgendered. In both cases, Festival space - safe space for women - has been disrupted by these external pressures.

I’m not sure what she means by “Camp Trans also defines us as women in reference to how they define themselves as transgendered,” but I have to assume this is based in the usual “What I believe about trans people is 1000% more valid than what they say about themselves” rhetoric that comes from radical feminists and “political lesbians.” Her linking of Camp Trans to the right wing is deliberate - she wants her readers to think of homophobes, misogynists, fundamentalist christians and their ilk when they think of trans women. She wants trans women defined as the outsider, the enemy, not someone who can (and does) share common cause with women and feminism, and many of whom are lesbians ourselves.

Her next paragraph makes it clear that she does not consider Camp Trans and the BDSM movement as having any stake in women’s interests, or rather that trying to define ourselves (in terms of our identity or our kinks) as being a part of women’s interests is unacceptable. She defines sexuality and gender identity as tools of male dominance, which then allows her to say that trans women and the lesbians who practice BDSM have a stake in male dominance. This is pretty convenient, as it allows her to shortcut any real analysis or need to understand either group.

Her next paragraph is ironically titled “Myth and Tactics.” This is appropriate, since it’s filled with myth about trans women and BDSM. She complains that there’s opposition to discussing these two groups in anything but positive terms. This is just a rephrase of the right wing’s political correctness argument, or “You won’t let me be mean to you!” This is ironic, because she’s trying to conflate trans women with the right wing, and using right wing tactics to do so - but then, bigoted language is never imaginative. It always takes the same forms. She earnestly writes that the only reason anyone might criticize negative views of trans women and BDSM is to silence any opposition. I mean, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with objecting to lies about who we are and what we do, right? We’re just being too mean to them for not allowing them to openly speak their hatred and disgust. Of course, this assumes we actually have the power to do so. Spend one hour reading the MWMF forum and you will see just how little cis women are silenced when they express their anti-trans or anti-BDSM bigotry. Of course, one of those is easier to find than the other, but both have a history.

And that’s really the core of it - we object to them being mean to us, and that’s bad, and our objections are somehow mean to them - meaning that we don’t have the right to be angry about being misrepresented, demonized, slandered, and libeled. We don’t have the right to stand up and demand that we be treated with respect. Claiming our rights - our human rights - to be treated with respect is a “silencing” tactic.

She spends the rest of the paragraph establishing her version of the BDSM and Camp Trans positions on separatism, lesbian separatism, etc, criticising the form that the arguments allegedly take, and dismissing the validity of those arguments - for example, she claims that Camp Trans activists accuse trans-exclusive policy supporters of gender essentialism and gender fascism. In doing so, she brings them into her article without any context, and presents them as if they are self-evidently spurious. Having once pointed out gender essentialism on the MWMF forum, I am compelled to point out that it was in response to another poster claiming that she felt “male energy” coming from a supposed trans woman who had entered the Festival. Personally, I believe that if you’re going to insist that gender is a social construct, that you shouldn’t be using language like “male energy” to describe anything. Male energy itself implies that there’s something innate and essential about being male, and also that that there probably is “female energy” - something innate and essential about being female. Of course, arguments against trans women being women are rooted in essentialism, which is why transmisogynistic feminists spend so much time defending their interpretation - they know they’re on shaky ground when they both claim that gender is a social construct and that it is impossible for someone to be born in one sex but be comfortable and happy in the other. In other words, the cis ladies doth protest too much, methinks.

She goes on to discuss “Minorities and Rights.” She writes:

In the last several years self-identified “sex-positive” and “gender-queer” activists have formed an alliance. The alliance is not all that surprising, given the correspondence of gender ideology between the two. Each group claims to be a minority within women’s community that is discriminated against by the larger body of women/lesbians. S/M practitioners place themselves as a “sexual minority” within the presumptively “normal” lesbian sexuality of Festival. Transgender activists claim they are “gender” minorities within the presumptively “gender normal” women who attend Festival. Collectively they argue that they are deprived of the “right” to practice their sexuality and gender and that the reason they are not welcome at Festival is their transgressive views about sexuality and gender.

She doesn’t want to admit or fails to realize that there’s so many reasons for minorities to form coalitions, not the least of which is common experiences. For example, when two groups that overlap (yes, some trans people are into BDSM, some are lesbians, etc) and have a common problem, it is beneficial to ally to deal with that problem. In this case, both groups are relentlessly mischaracterized, dehumanized, and discriminated against by certain factions in Feminism - like the more extreme radical feminists who believe that all porn is rape and trans women rape women’s bodies by taking hormones. No, it couldn’t be that we have bigots like Charlotte Croson breathing down all our necks, it has to be because we share some kind of mythical gender ideology.

I also like how she implies that BSDM practitioners and trans women aren’t minorities, all the while arguing that it is right and natural to discriminate against and exclude us from the rest of women’s culture. A dictionary I checked has this to say:

Main Entry: mi·nor·i·ty
1 a: the period before attainment of majority b: the state of being a legal minor
2: the smaller in number of two groups constituting a whole; specifically : a group having less than the number of votes necessary for control
3 a: a part of a population differing from others in some characteristics and often subjected to differential treatment b: a member of a minority group

I do believe that trans women and BDSM practitioners are outnumbered by cis women and women who do not practice BDSM in the lesbian community. I also believe, based on this article that both qualify as “a part of a population differing from others . . . and often subjected to differential treatment.” For example, having a policy that specifically exists to target trans women, or campaigning to exclude BDSM practitioners. Defining trans women and BDSM practitioners out of minority status is a rhetorical convenience for someone who is in the majority - is privileged - in both respects. It allows her to set the terms of her distaste while simultaneously claiming that this dispute is on even ground, rather than her trying to wield oppressive power against two groups whom she despises.

She goes on to say that “

The minority and rights-based rhetoric these movements employ is politically powerful. “The idea of sexual minorities has become a powerful one because ‘minorities’ can lay claim to ‘rights.’”

This reminds me of right wing rhetoric about how the homosexual agenda is about getting “special rights.” That is, a kind of rights that apparently the majority doesn’t get. The flaw in this argument is, of course, that the rights minorities seek are to put them on as close to equal footing with the majority as possible. ENDA, for example, doesn’t provide rights to GLBT people that straight people don’t get just because they’re straight - the right to not be fired over who you’re attracted to or your gender identity is something that’s automatic for heteronormative people (except when they present too far outside gender norms, like women not wearing makeup). So, the right to not be fired for not being heteronormative just extends that right to actually lose your job when you suck at it instead of because your boss doesn’t like who you prefer to fuck. Similarly, trans women aren’t seeking a special right in entering MWMF or other trans-exclusive spaces - we seek a right that cis women already receive automatically. As for BDSM, Trinity discusses whether BDSM is oppressed at Let Them Eat Pro-SM Feminist Safe Spaces.

She goes on to say that simply by virtue of being minorities, trans women and BDSM practitioners recast lesbian women who fit into neither group as fitting into patriarchal norms. In other words, her theory - as a feminist - is more important than our lived realities and experiences. And one thing I’ve learned from those feminists who hate us is that their theory must always trump the lives that appear to contradict it. She concludes that “rights rhetoric” is used to emotionally blackmail cis women into supporting these distasteful not-minority minorities, and that when they oppose us, they’re unfairly cast as oppressors.

This is one of the linchpins of bigoted feminism in general - the basic premise that women can never be the oppressor. That because women are oppressed by men, that it is impossible for women to oppress anyone else, that they don’t have the power. Earlier, she complains that pro-trans people and pro-BDSM people criticize Feminist arguments against both groups as “saying that women lack agency.” Of course, the idea that women can’t oppress is saying that - it’s saying that women are too weak to do anything. If you can’t oppress a group with less social capital than your own, what can you do? To be honest, the idea that these cis vanilla women are not oppressing BDSM practitioners or trans women is ludicrous, and smacks of newspeak. They’re trying to redefine the language - the meanings of the words used - to say that what they do is not oppression, while at the same time practicing oppression. They may as well place a sign reading “Freedom is Slavery” and “We have always been at war with Camp Transia” over the entrance gate to MWMF, given how thoroughly they practice this redefinition.

In her next paragraph, she claims that the implied gender and sexual normativity simply doesn’t exist in the lesbian community. Now, to be honest, this implication she’s drawing is based on her own prejudices and issues. She doesn’t realize that acknowledging that trans people and BDSM practitioners are distinct subgroups within the lesbian community does not force anyone to also assume that anyone who’s not trans is also not gender variant - I don’t believe most butch lesbians identify as gender variant so much as they enjoy taking on masculinity, but still see themselves as women. It does not assume that anyone who is not into BDSM is pure vanilla. There’s so many different ways for lesbians to have sex (this link includes NSFW Language) that it’s just plain ludicrous to believe that BDSM practitioners want to define a false dichotomy where you have them and you have lesbians who do it missionary style. But again, the truth here is inconvenient. In order to keep casting Camp Trans and BDSM as enemies, she has to keep piling specious claim upon specious claim, to show how our simple desire to be treated as equals means that we want to redefine and destroy lesbian culture.

She wants her readers to believe that granting that trans women and BDSM practitioners are a minority turns the rest of lesbian culture into one big homogenous block defined as oppressors. Now, I’m sympathetic. As a white person, in the past, I hated it when someone told me that I was racist or that all white people were racist. My conception of myself as a person was that I wasn’t prejudiced and I didn’t do these things. Of course, I was wrong, and I lost one of my best friends because I treated him like crap without really realizing it. I was practicing white supremacy around him, and it really hurt to admit that this was my doing. But the fact is, I had to come to terms with that, to own my own shit and realize that “Yes, I am carrying around internalized white privilege” and to question it and work on it. So I can understand not wanting to be labeled as an oppressor. Ms. Croson actually defines this label further: “. . . [BDSM practioners and trans people] create women solely as oppressors . . .” This is because it is not enough to say that we define women with an unwanted label, but that we erase everything else about these women and simply see them as oppressors. She uses this argument to justify the claim that we do not examine male dominance (although she believes both groups partake fully in male dominance) in relation to women, as well as the minority groups of women who are trans or into BDSM.

The problem with not allowing yourself to be defined as an oppressor is pretty simple: It excuses you from owning your shit. It’s like white people who claim to be “colorblind,” thus denying the reality of race relations and pretending they aren’t racist. It’s a luxury the privileged have - to ignore their own status as oppressors. The cis women who want trans-exclusive space have the luxury - with their cissexual privilege - of denying that there’s any oppression going on here, because it costs them absolutely nothing to do so. On the other hand, I can’t deny the oppression I experience, I can’t afford to. I can’t look at the MWMF trans-exclusive policy and how it’s echoed throughout lesbian and feminist culture, and say “Well, that has no effect on me” because it is aimed directly at me. I don’t have the luxury of believing cis women who not only say that they’re not transphobic, but deny transphobia even exists. Women who openly practice BDSM are in a similar position. They can be ostracized for their “patriarchal sex practices” and do not have the luxury of pretending that all of the lesbian community accepts them, or at least treats them fairly. Lesbians who don’t practice BDSM can believe that, because again it doesn’t cost them anything to deny their own agency and complicity in this oppression.

Next, Ms. Croson discusses “transgression.” One of the red herrings that comes up in discussions about trans people is that transphobic radical feminists will start attacking imaginary transgender political stances. One of those is the idea that trans people run around claiming to transgress gender, that we’re gender rebels out to smash the gender binary. They then criticize us for not actually doing this. It’s immaterial that we don’t run around claiming this, we’re judged for not doing so because, well, radical feminism would like to destroy the gender binary, and they see us as reinforcing it.

She talks about how it’s transgressive for women to choose our own sexuality, to choose sexual roles denied by patriarchal norms. And I do think that the willingness to accept yourself as anywhere on the queer spectrum is transgressive. Modern society hates gay men, hates lesbians, hates bisexuals, really truly for sure hates transgender and transsexual people. When someone who appears to be a man goes through all that effort to become a woman, society punishes us harshly - we lose friends, family, jobs. We sometimes get pushed to the point where we have to engage in survival sex work just to pay the bills and keep the hormones flowing. A trans person is more likely to be murdered than anyone else in America. This is because to society, we are transgressive. The fact that a trans man can grow a beard and be accepted as a man if his trans status isn’t known is just plain outside what many people are willing to accept as valid. But because most of us go from man to woman or woman to man, we’re accused of reinforcing the gender binary, of not transgressing the norms, etc. etc.

The other problem with this is that it conflates our desire to live our lives with political goals. Real lesbians do not declare themselves lesbian to transgress heteronormative society. Real lesbians declare themselves lesbians because we want to live our lives and not suppress who we are. This does affect our politics, but our politics do not drive this. People who practice BDSM do not practice BDSM as a political statement. They do this because that is the kind of sex they enjoy. We do not choose these things to transgress, but society punishes us for doing so because they are transgressions.

The criticism that our personal actions are not political enough, or are the wrong kind of politics, is just a way to demonize our politics. To claim that we’re invested in patriarchy, that we enforce heteronormativity. I do admit, saying that we reinforce patriarchy and heteronormativity simply by virtue of being different from that normative state and claiming minority status is one I don’t see often. “You’re so different you make us look normal!” Yeah, thank you Charlotte for telling us we’re freaks because we’re not like you.

I will continue discussion of this article in a second post.

ENDA Discussion

Terrance of The Republic of T has a couple of great posts about ENDA, which he’s also cross-posted to Pam’s House Blend. For that matter, Pam’s House Blend is filled to the brim with ENDA-related posts that are worth reading.

In Terrance’s first post, LGB-T = ENDA, pt. 1, he discusses his experiences with the kind of incrementalism used to justify the removal of gender protections. He says, about the statement, “the implication of gradualism is that some people will have to continue to endure injustice without remedy,”

Its one thing to be an incrementalist and at least be honest about that last sentence. It’s quite another to declare that it is the right thing to do to ask others to continue to suffer injustice without remedy is the right thing to do, that they ought to be glad to do it, and that they are wrong for objecting to it.

That’s what’s asked of of gay folks by progressives on the marriage issue. And now that’s what gay folks are asking of transgender folks on employment discrimination, which for some transgender people is literally a matter of life and death.

That’s it in a nutshell. GLB-rights activists (for they are surely not *T rights activists) who magnanimously sacrifice someone else’s chance at fairness or equality to get theirs first aren’t really making concessions - a true concession requires you to give up something that matters to you.

Terrance continues with LGB-T = ENDA, pt. 2. Here he nails down just what workplace discrimination against trans people means. Seriously, even in San Francisco where trans people have a large number of civil rights protections, you’re looking at something like 75% unemployment. Looking at numbers like that, it’s hard to see how anyone could argue that we don’t need our civil rights yet if it means everyone else waiting an extra year or two. Because, really, unlike John Aravosis’ belief that including T could set his civil rights back decades, we were really close to having enough votes to get a trans-inclusive ENDA passed in the House, and we don’t even know for sure if we didn’t have those votes. People have observed a few irregularities surrounding the alleged whip count.

Terrance mentions how getting employment can be a matter of life or death for trans people, and specifically mentions trans women who had been murdered by men who discovered their trans status, who were in sex work to support themselves because of the difficulty in finding employment. This is called “survival prostitution.” The four women he names are trans women of color, who not only had to deal with transmisogyny, but also racism and sexism. Since transphobia and transmisogyny barely register as unacceptable to many people, it’s also more acceptable to turn up the heat on the racism and sexism.

Terrance highlights that the lack of protection for transgender people really is a matter of life or death. To call us selfish, to tell us we’re holding the gay rights movement back because we are very clear on how badly we need those rights, demonstrates a profound lack of compassion. I would like to know how many trans women have to turn to prostitution to survive, have to live on the edge of homelessness, how many have to die before we’ve earned our place at the table. Is it because the trans people who suffer most - who die most often - are trans women of color? Why is this lack of protection acceptable to civil rights “activists” like Joe Solmonese? Why does John Aravosis constantly characterize our need for these protections as selfish and demanding?

LGB-T = ENDA, pt. 3 further condemns incrementalism as a political strategy, emphasizing the cost to those whose rights are sacrificed “for the greater good.”  As he states in these two paragraphs:

If Democrats and progressives are convinced that righting for legal marriage isn’t effective right now, then we need to find another way to protect our families right now, not ten or twenty or thirty years down the line. We need to do more than shake our heads and say it’s a shame that happens. If civil unions are the answer, then great. Let’s craft legislation, or pour resources into states where it’s achievable. But let’s do something besides “just wait.”

If we believe that employment discrimination transgender persons is wrong and shouldn’t happen, and an inclusive ENDA isn’t gongi to work right now, then we need to find another way to protect transgender persons right now, not ten or twenty or thirty years down the line. We need to do more than shake our heads and say it’s a shame that happens. Let’s start educating Congress on transgender issues now, get a panel of transgender persons who’ve experienced workplace discrimination in front of a committee hearing, or sitting down with key members of congress, or pour some resources into public education campaigns in key states or districts where legislators might be influenced. But let’s do something besides “just wait.”

I wish we had more voices like his.

His posts are also on Pam’s House Blend: LGB-T = ENDA, pt. 1 and LGB-T = ENDA, pt. 2.

On Pam’s House Blend, AHiddenSaint tells her personal story.

Autumn Sandeen discusses the dilemma for some representatives - whether it was worth voting against civil rights legislation in order to oppose the trans-exclusive ENDA.

Daimeon talks about picking up the pieces now that we’ve been thoroughly backstabbed and thrown under the bus.

Also, keep an eye on Donna’s ENDABlog as she posts post-mortem analysis. Donna Rose was on the HRC board until HRC voted to not oppose the trans-exclusive ENDA, at which point she resigned.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it

The title comes from Upton Sinclair.

To celebrate Wednesday’s development in Congress, I’ve decided to pick on John Aravosis, who tells us every chance he gets that he isn’t a transphobe, that he’s not a misogynist, that he’s not a homocentrist. He wrote this article for Salon to explain why trans people are recent additions to the gay rights movement, and perhaps shouldn’t be part now, that perhaps it was a bit rash to let us in.

His article has many of the hallmarks of a classic concern troll:

Gay activists and 220 national and local gay rights groups angrily demanded that gender identity be put back in the bill, guaranteeing its defeat for years to come.

Notice the implication that this action will have terrible consequences. Mr. Aravosis repeats this theme in the article’s discussion, inflating the time to potential decades. He’s basically panicmongering, claiming that trans people are an albatross around his community’s neck, dragging them all down and forever denying them civil rights.

He revises history and implies that trans people have so much power, that it’s dangerous to question our inclusion in the LGBT community:

I have a sense that over the past decade the trans revolution was imposed on the gay community from outside, or at least above, and thus it never stuck with a large number of gays who weren’t running national organizations, weren’t activists, or weren’t living in liberal gay enclaves like San Francisco and New York. Sure, many of the rest of us accepted de facto that transgendered people were members of the community, but only because our leaders kept telling us it was so. A lot of gays have been scratching their heads for 10 years trying to figure out what they have in common with transsexuals, or at the very least why transgendered people qualify as our siblings rather than our cousins. It’s a fair question, but one we know we dare not ask. It is simply not p.c. in the gay community to question how and why the T got added on to the LGB, let alone ask what I as a gay man have in common with a man who wants to cut off his penis, surgically construct a vagina, and become a woman. I’m not passing judgment, I respect transgendered people and sympathize with their cause, but I simply don’t get how I am just as closely related to a transsexual (who is often not gay) as I am to a lesbian (who is). Is it wrong for me to simply ask why?

Check out the little quote buried in the middle: “. . . ask what I as a gay man have in common with a man who wants to cut off his penis, surgically construct a vagina, and become a woman . . .” He defines trans people as, well, that. We’re reduced to our genitals and nothing more. Not only that, but we’re reduced to our genitals in a vulgar, base fashion, as he invokes a lurid castration image to emphasize his separation from trans people. Of course, John is lying. Trans people have been here from the beginning. We were pushed out of the movement in the early 70s, despite having kicked it off. It wasn’t just us - the gay rights movement felt it was necessary to push away those who were “too different” to increase chances of acceptance for those who looked and acted straight - like the Mattachine Society:

Unfortunately, the new leadership shared none of the vision or experience of the original founders. They drastically revised the goals of the organization, backtracking in every area. Instead of social change, they advocated accommodation. Instead of mobilizing gay people, they sought the support of professionals, who they believed held the key to reform. They stated, we do not advocate a homosexual culture or community, and we believe none exists. (Mattachine: Radical Roots of Gay Liberation).

John Aravosis, Barney Frank, and others like them have more in common with these socially conservative Mattachine gay men than much of the LGBT community. Unlike the Mattachines, John is willing to acknowledge that there’s a gay and lesbian community, writes off bisexuals as part-time gays, and wants to push trans people out altogether, but the sentiment is the same.

He goes on to write:

I wrote on my blog last week about this issue, and shared my doubts and concerns and questions. And I was eviscerated for it. While the majority of my readers either agreed with me, or found my questions provocative and relevant, a vocal minority labeled me a bigot, a transphobe, a rich, white boy living in a big city who didn’t care about anyone but himself, and worse. An old activist friend even told me that my words were prejudiced, wrong and embarrassingly uninformed, and that no one of any consequence shared my concerns, and if they did, they were bigots too.

He appeals to his readership’s agreement with him, dismisses those who call him on his bigotry as a “vocal minority,” implies that his old activist friend is overreacting, and goes on to say that it’s not safe to ask questions in the gay community about how transgender people fit in.

Of course, as we all know, bigoted people are the best witnesses to their own bigotry. You can totally trust them when they deny their bigotry.

He refers to this blog entry of his, and this response.

He ends the “Transgender Fiasco” blog entry with a sensationalist tone:

A STATE OF FEAR

People are simply afraid to ask any questions about this issue, and those unresolved conflicts are coming home to roost. I know I was afraid to write about this issue, and still am. I thought long and hard about even weighing in on this issue last week. Did I really want to have to deal with people screaming and calling me a bigot? And I’ve got gay journalist friends and gay political friends who have sent me private “atta boy”s supporting my public essays, while refusing to go public themselves.

There is a climate of fear and confusion and doubt about the transgender issue in the gay community. And no one wants to talk about it. And when you don’t talk about your small concerns, when you’re afraid to talk about them, when it’s not considered PC for you to talk about them, one day those small concerns turn into big problems and the revolution comes tumbling down.

I don’t know if he thinks there’s a trans mafia out there waiting to whack transphobes, but this just looks like the kind of fearmongering that bigots like to use to turn their audience against those they detest. He also appeals to the old fallacy of political correctness to imply that his ability to speak freely is somehow controlled - never mind that no one has stopped him from posting his transphobic and transmisogynistic commentary ever since he started whining about transgender inclusion in ENDA. He’s been criticized and called out for his bigotry, but I don’t believe he’s come to any real harm, beyond the social embarrassment of expressing obvious prejudice in public.

I admit, he’s typically much cannier about expressing it than the radical feminist stuff I’ve been looking at. He does, however, have his moments.

For example, this particular paragraph in the Salon article:

I support transgendered rights. But I’m not naive. If there are still lingering questions in the gay community about gender identity 10 years after our leaders embraced the T — and there are — then imagine how conflicted straight members of Congress are when asked to pass a civil rights bill for a woman who used to be a man. We’re not talking right and wrong here, we’re talking political reality. Our own community is still grappling with this issue. Yet we expect members of Congress, who took 30 years to embrace a gay ENDA, to welcome the T’s into the bill in only five months.

He supports transgender rights, but . . . Questioning Transgender claims the same thing before saying we flash our penises at cis women and might possibly start raping them, so that means absolutely nothing. But that’s not really the problem with this paragraph. He goes on to say that straight members of congress are too conflicted to pass a bill that includes gender protections, or rather “for a woman who used to be a man.” That is to say, John is saying (and this theme is repeated throughout his writing and Barney Frank’s own words on the issue) that a minority that suffers increased prejudice doesn’t really deserve to get their civil rights until they’re socially acceptable enough to get those rights. He’s not prejudiced against us or against us having these rights, but we just can’t have them until we’re not so freakish.

Here’s a bit from his “The White House will totally not veto ENDA” post:

PS As an aside, I’ve just learned that there’s at least one senior transgender leader in America who is married (and I’m sure other straight transgendered people are married). That’s nice, and I support their right to marry. But I do find it odd that the gay community is being asked (well, told) to put our employment rights on hold until the transgender community can get theirs, but the transgender community isn’t putting its marriage rights on hold until we get ours. Then again, I’d never ask them to put their rights on hold until I got mine.

Of course, he wrote an entire article in Salon, and articles on AmericaBlog to painstakingly explain why transgender rights need to be put on hold until he gets his rights. Check out the “half a loaf” comment at the end of the Salon article. Never mind that he’s mischaracterizing United ENDA’s position, which is that we need transgender rights along with everyone else’s, not that anyone should wait. This is just based on the fallacy that working toward transgender rights would delay ENDA’s passage by 10-15 years, that we “didn’t do any education,” (an excuse produced in the 11th hour, with no information on who needed to be educated), and that we’re too freakish to get those rights.

Where you can really see John cut loose is in the comments in his ENDA posts. He scornfully edits his commenter’s posts when they call him on his transphobia, practices fallacious reversals (I’m a transphobe? You’re a homophobe because you don’t want me to have rights!), says some pretty hateful things to trans people like telling them they’re “playing ’sick and twisted’ Barbie.”

John is cannier in how he communicates. He knows how to play the subtle game, and not say the things that make good bigoted soundbites. Also, AmericaBlog is just plain awful to navigate, complicating the ability to find those shots he takes at transgender people. His best shots are in the comments, where he doesn’t filter himself very well. The comments for each of the posts I’ve linked here, plus those in the Salon article and Susan Stryker’s response paint a pretty clear picture. He’s fond of transphobic variations of “Wite Magic Attax”, most especially fallacious flips, oversensitive, and drowning maestro, but I believe he manages to touch on all of them but the carom-scarom.

An example from the comments for Tammy Just Pulled Her Amendment (and John’s attitude toward the way the amendment was handled is either pure ignorance or considered politicking).

NOTE FROM JOHN: Funny how the same bill was fine for years, but now suddenly it’s really bad and really watered down. The only thing that’s changed is that a small group of PC activists has decided to kill our chance at getting some civil rights, so now suddenly ENDA must be poo-pooed. There hasn’t been one case of discrimination against gay people based on gender identity, not one that LAMBDA or anyone else can point to. NOT ONE. Yet now you’re hanging your “kill ENDA” hat on this bizarre notion that somehow we’re are really transgender and that’s how we’re all going to lose our jobs. As for fracturing communities, you’ve done a pretty good job of that all by yourself by trying to kill a civil rights bill that we’ve been trying to pass for 30 years.

Notice how he implies that everyone was fine with ENDA before T was added, never mind that trans people have been working for years to get T included - everyone was just happy. He also implies that it was a small group of “PC activists” that decided to “kill [his] chance at getting some civil rights.” 350+ LGBT organizations signed onto United ENDA, and they were supporting doing everything necessary to pass a complete ENDA. Unfortunately, Barney Frank chose to shoot it down rather than helping this coalition do what was needed to pass an inclusive ENDA, and Aravosis cheers him on because it supports his desire to kick transgender people out of GLBT activism entirely
.
Yes, John’s writing - in the Salon article especially - makes it clear that he doesn’t want us in his civil rights movement, and that’s why he supports the removal of gender protections from ENDA.

He’s also selective about how he addresses the gender protections, which are not specificed as transgender protections, but protects people from being fired for not fitting gender norms. This would include transgender people, but would also include people like Ann Hopkins and Darlene Jesperson, who were straight people who suffered discrimination for not being feminine enough on the job. If straight people can be fired for not being feminine enough, take it to federal appeals court and be turned down, then gay, lesbian and bisexual people are just as vulnerable to this loophole. Barney Frank and John Aravosis both tried to deflect this issue by insisting that no gay men or lesbians had been fired for this reason. To be honest, though, we don’t know. We only know that there’s only one case that’s ever come up. We don’t know how many gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight people who have been fired for not conforming enough who never tried to take it to court. I would guess that there’s been more than a few, and with the loophole in ENDA, anyone who wants to fire lesbian, gay, or bisexual employees will have a way around ENDA by labeling it a matter of not being masculine or feminine enough.

So, what are we to make of a man who obsesses on the fact that trans women surgically invert our penises, who does his best to distance trans people from him in every way, who constantly questions whether we even deserve to stand alongside LGB people, who consistently presents a version of gay rights activism in which transgender people only came to the party very recently and forced our way in, who implies that there’s some kind of transgender mafia waiting to come down on anyone who criticizes our inclusion? A man who indicates his contempt for bisexuals as “part-time gays?”

We’ve fought to carve a place in LGBT activism after we were forced out for over 20 years. While we can and should forge coalitions and build bridges to other activists - to people with disabilities and people of color - the fact is that as far as many straight white Americans are concerned, we’re not that different from gay and lesbian people, and our goals are not really all that different. Yes, we don’t gender conform, but neither do feminine gay men, butch lesbians and drag queens, and where we transgress gender by identifying outside male/female or moving from one to the other, they transgress gender by being attracted to and having relationships with people of the same sex. Also, a large number of trans people are gay, lesbian, and bisexual. We’re intertwined, and while we may not be much like John “Mattachine” Aravosis’ version of gay, we have a lot in common with large swaths of the gay and lesbian communities.

We’ve done the work, we’ve spent years engaged in activism, trying to educate, trying to forge our way to, well… an inclusive ENDA. Anyone who tells you different, who tells you we weren’t here at the beginning, that we don’t do the work, that we don’t try to educate, has his own motives for trying to alter history, or at least how we remember it.

Yeah, We’re Selfish

John Aravosis writes about how he believes that Bush’s veto of ENDA is not guaranteed. I think TransAdvocate covers most of the relevant information, but what stood out for me was the final paragraph:

PS As an aside, I’ve just learned that there’s at least one senior transgender leader in America who is married (and I’m sure other straight transgendered people are married). That’s nice, and I support their right to marry. But I do find it odd that the gay community is being asked (well, told) to put our employment rights on hold until the transgender community can get theirs, but the transgender community isn’t putting its marriage rights on hold until we get ours. Then again, I’d never ask them to put their rights on hold until I got mine.

First, I want to address the last sentence with John Aravosis’ own words:

I support transgendered rights. But I’m not naive. If there are still lingering questions in the gay community about gender identity 10 years after our leaders embraced the T — and there are — then imagine how conflicted straight members of Congress are when asked to pass a civil rights bill for a woman who used to be a man. We’re not talking right and wrong here, we’re talking political reality. Our own community is still grappling with this issue. Yet we expect members of Congress, who took 30 years to embrace a gay ENDA, to welcome the T’s into the bill in only five months.

He’s blogged extensively about asking us to put our rights on hold while he gets his. He makes it clear he’ll take a half-a-loaf as long as that half-a-loaf is all his.

As for his marriage comment - wow. Does he even read about this stuff? Does he realize that the marriage issue is a trans fight as well? Does he just assume that we all get surgery and go on our happy ways to heterosexual marriages?

Or does he just make blind rhetorical assertions to put us trannies back in our place?

Trans people do not have an uncomplicated right to marry. Aravosis does not acknowledge that many trans people cannot get surgery - they lack the funds or health problems preclude it. Many choose not to undergo it for personal reasons. We can only change our birth certificates in some states once we’ve had surgery, and at least one state won’t change the birth certificate if you receive surgery outside America. Also, John must be aware that many trans people are gay, lesbian, or bi, and even after we get surgery, we can’t marry who we want to because same-sex marriages are illegal.

But really, this paragraph is more about bashing trans people than anything else, and bashing doesn’t require factual information to justify it, at least not to those who engage in bashing.

Brain and Brain, What is Brain?

NexyJo points to an article about trans rights in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Specifically, right wing transphobic and homophobic groups fighting against a bill that would add gender identity to the county’s non-discrimination laws. And, of course, there’s the inane bathroom panic:

Michelle Turner, director of Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum (CRC), a parent’s group in Rockville, Md., said the bill would basically allow males to have open access to women’s restrooms.

“I am dumbfounded,” Turner told Cybercast News Service. “They are saying, ‘If you are a man but you feel like a woman, then even if you still have male genitalia, you would have access to restrooms and locker rooms and showers used by women and girls.”

Also, one opponent invokes our demographics, plus implies we’re insane:

Regina Griggs, executive director of PFOX, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, said she is shocked that Montgomery County is considering protected status for a very tiny portion of the population - one which suffers from a psychiatric disorder.

She goes on to demonstrate that she’s apparently a neurologist and a psychologist, as she describes in intimate detail the anatomy of the human brain and whether sane people can possibly be transsexual.

This article falls into the basic transphobic pattern: Trans women are discussed, trans men are ignored. Our gender is considered invalid (we’re described as males throughout the article, plus we’re described as mentally ill). Everyone’s an expert on who and what we really are (brains can’t be male or female, just genitals!).

The two organizations cited have their own vices, of course. The Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum homepage indicates that they’re in an apocalyptic battle to prevent their children from being exposed to sex education. PFOX is just inverted PFLAG. Their homepage says:

PFOX is not a therapeutic or counseling organization. PFOX supports families, advocates for the ex-gay community, and educates the public on sexual orientation. Each year thousands of men, women and teens with unwanted same-sex attractions make the personal decision to leave homosexuality. However, there are those who refuse to respect that decision. Consequently, formerly gay persons are reviled simply because they dare to exist! Without PFOX, ex-gays would have no voice in a hostile environment. PFOX families unconditionally love their children.  PFOX parents recognize our children for the wonderful young men and women they are.  PFOX families do not label children based on who they are attracted to –  feelings can and do change.  PFOX families allow for differences of opinion; we do not place requirements on our children nor do they place them on us.  That’s what unconditional love means — loving each other even when we do not agree.

It’s almost like satire.