On matters of passing

[rm]

I've never been to Wiscon, because it never, ever fits into my schedule. But I go to cons, and, because of the HP fandom, I go to cons that are almost exclusively women. Women who are, among other things, sometimes fat and queer and living with a disability.

Here's the thing, and it's not a thing I've ever been comfortable with: I pass. I have a profound amount of privilege for what I am. I'm thin, my disability is invisible, my appearance is white, and it is very very easy for me not to appear queer or genderqueer, whether I mean this to be the case or not.

It is strange to be both lucky and ashamed of that luck. It is strange to be a chameleon who never got a choice in the matter of all her choice. Looking at me there's so little about me that you would necessarily know. Even my age. I'll probably be able to pass for a socially acceptable 25 for a long time yet.

The thing is, I've never meant to keep these secrets or dodge bullets like the great Something Awful debacle of this year's Wiscon. But what happens to me in person and what happens to me online are often two different things.

Because here I talk about what you can't see, and that makes it not just true for you as well as me, but it also paints a bullseye. For those of you newer to the friendlist, one of the reason so many people are banned from this journal is related to an Internet drama from a couple of years ago, which brought all sorts of creeps to this journal "accusing" me of transexuality.

I have a lot of trans and intersexed friends and even if I didn't, for me to answer judgmental questions about my own biological gender implies that the act of judgment is somehow acceptable and that other people have a right to demand to know what's in my or anyone else's pants. Wrong. I refused to answer, and things that were already unpleasant in the threads got worse. And I took out my big bad ban stick.

Yeah, you can throw rocks in my virtual living room, but I can also throw you out the door. Deal with it.

I am sick to fucking death of dyke or lesbian or man being a way to call women ugly. I am sick to death of bitch and girl and pussy to call down the spectre of cowardice on men. And I am sick unto fucking death of transfolk being treated as if they are somehow unreal, temporary of spirit or the last of the circus sideshow.

Our world is filled with the tyrranies of the flesh. And the discussion of that extends well into the online sphere. Because of what I do and who I am, I deal with this day in and day out. In France, an agent told me, I would actually be beautiful. Lose five pounds. Get stronger. Practice more. A man would be taller. Laughter and a remark on the size of my shoulders. Sir at the bank because I refuse to lower my eyes when I make a request.

My flesh was made for our little binary world more than most people's. But I wasn't. And I try not to hide behind what I have. But sometimes it is so unavoidable that all I can do is be a supporter in what is actually, also my own battle. Because it doesn't show. Because I could have more secrets than I do.

This is one of the more moving responses to what happened at Wiscon. I practically stood up and cheered at the office.

Call me a man. Call me a woman. I don't care. But you damn well better make it a compliment or at least mere observation. Because otherwise, you're wasting your breath. I'm not going to be anything other than what I am no matter what you say. And I'm not going to be quiet. And no matter who you target or why, I am not going to relax into this life of passing.

It needs to be said. And it needs to be said not just because of Wiscon or my fannish life or the vitriol of the LJ Advisory Board election, but because you have more freedom than you think you do. Every single one of you.

Of us.

Don't let anyone EVER tell you otherwise.

Even yourself.

Comments

Issues, Issues

[keith418.livejournal.com]

I live in the Bay Area, and these kinds of rants sometimes seem so strange to me until I realize you're still living in New York. I grew up in New York and despite the city, and Stonewall, and the Village, it's a zone I still see as very, very homophobic and sexist. Therefore, these posts always seem like a time warp thing to me.

If you lived in an area that had a giant population of not only "out" people, but - like in Oakland - families of gays and lesbian couples with kids (my boss is gay and he and and his partner have a 6 year old daughter who goes to our nearby school), you might see much of this differently. I keep wondering why you don't want to live in a friendlier environment. The sort of attitude you are railing against here is one of the reasons I hate the East Coast in general. Sometimes I think that it's almost like you're living in the South and complaining that people are racist.

I'm also curious as to why you don't explore the origins of this kind of sexism and homophobia more. If people change their attitudes, what makes them change? What conditions are there to cause the stuff you don't like and what conditions are there, or need to be there, to create the changes you want to see? One of the biggest differences I see on the West Coast is that we just don't care so much about ethnic and religious differences (race is still there). On the East Coast, people really CARE about being Irish, or Italian, or Puerto Rican, or whatever their ethnic background is. On the West Coast (for example), I meet people of Italian descent all the time (met one last night), who never feel the need to emphasize it the way Italians in New York did when I was a kid. Do people's class, ethnicity, and religious backgrounds add to, or subtract to the conditions that create these problems? Are they, on the other hand, also a factor when people change?

Ultimately, I can't help wondering what things would be like for you if you didn't have these battles to fight. What new issues would engage you and how would you change? Once the fight for respect and basic equality is over, what then? Do you endlessly seek to magnify smaller problems into greater significance - pursuing them with the same vehemence? Or do you return to question your own other assumptions?

Re: Issues, Issues

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Okay, I normally don't get into flaps anywhere, and certainly not on other folk's journals, but the sheer audacity & blinding privilege of your comment has filled me with so much rage, I was impelled to post.

Sometimes I think that it's almost like you're living in the South and complaining that people are racist.

Are you serious??? There are so many things wrong with this analogy, I don't even know where to start. It's perfectly acceptable to be enraged about people being racist, you know, anywhere. It is not our responsibility to move out of places that have bigotry and prejudice - a) because that's everywhere, and b) because it's our responsibility as thinking members of society to fight and speak out against these things wherever we are. People sometimes leave places because they don't like or can't deal with a certain environment; no one ought to judge that personal choice, but conversely, how dare anyone judge a decision that involves staying and fighting and speaking up for what one believes is right?

Ultimately, I can't help wondering what things would be like for you if you didn't have these battles to fight. What new issues would engage you and how would you change? Once the fight for respect and basic equality is over, what then? Do you endlessly seek to magnify smaller problems into greater significance - pursuing them with the same vehemence?

The fight for respect and basic equality is nowhere near over, and it amazes me that anyone could speak as if it is either already accomplished, or so close to finished that people should start examining social problems for the next great issue to come upon us. This fight, regardless what someone who "lives in the Bay Area" might think is not even close to finished - your comment, as engulfed with privilege as it is, goes pretty far to making my point.

Your questions, for example: "Do you endlessly seek to magnify smaller problems into greater significance - pursuing them with the same vehemence?" are so patronizing! How do you figure that these are "smaller problems" - have you ever been on the short end of the sexism stick? Do you know what it's like to be a person of color in the white-centric world? Do you know what it's like to walk through the world as a queer person in a monosexual world? And just for the record, it wasn't really all that different in essence in San Francisco than it was in Rome than it was in New York than than it was in Atlanta.

BTW the West Coast can be unbelievable racist and anti-semitic and sexist in ways that just wouldn't fly on the East Coast. Geography doesn't determine these issues - just the manner in which they present themselves.

...

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Well, the question still comes back to the origins of the problems. What makes people exhibit these kinds of attitudes? I am surprised that rm isn't more interested in looking at the relationship between her own values and those of the people around she has a problem with. There is a reason, surely, why a city like Oakland has the highest number of gays and lesbians with families of any city in America, but what is it? Is it because people here are less bound by the kinds of vestigial values systems that perpetuate certain "traditional" sex roles? if that's the case, then what's the "downside"? Is there one?

Sure, the fight isn't over, but what would happen were it to be? Or what would happen if you found yourself in an environment in which these imbalances didn't exist? Are the people that we look down on for being sexist and homophobic themselves expressing an anger at "privilege"? How could that be the case and what forces might contribute to them feeling the need to channel their unhappiness, or rage, or sense of inadequacy, in this kind of manner?

These questions, to me, are far more interesting than "Sexist people and homophobes suck!" We know they suck. But what lies beyond that judgment and what does it really imply?

Re: ...

[gement.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you are having a very different conversation than the one rm started. I disagree with your characterization of what she said, and I think you're missing the point.

I also think you're doing so politely. Thank you! (I'm always happy to discuss things with people who are polite.)

The point, as I read it, wasn't "Sexist people and homophobes suck!" It was "I feel pressure living in the world as it is. I feel pressure because I am a member of groups I see mistreated. I feel that things will not change unless members of those groups stand proudly. I have to go out of my way to stand proudly and be counted because I am not obviously a group member. This is awkward and causes a lot of confusing emotions."

While the question of why people treat these groups badly is an interesting one, it's completely off-sides to rm's internal conflict.

We could have a conversation about the ghettoization of minorities (which, when they organize, can turn into empowered communities like the SF area). We could have a conversation about the relative merits of standing up and protesting or moving to a more hospitable culture. We could have a conversation about the history of bigotry, cultural norms, cognitive dissonance, gender expectations, so on and so forth.

We could have a conversation about the concept, explored in some science fiction, of removing the circuit responsible for bigotry from people's mental wiring. Bigotry of one kind or another has been with us since there were people. It's fear of the Other, and there are good historical survival reasons to be suspicious of the Other. But we could talk about the ramifications if it Just Went Away. That might be an interesting conversation, though not one that will be applicable in our lifetimes, if ever.

None of these were the conversation RM was starting, which was about personal conflict and activism by showing one's identity in one person's life.

Re: ...

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying all that so succinctly, intelligently and dispassionately.

In my response to keith418, I was just responding to the tone and content of his comment, without addressing the issue that the comment seemed to almost entirely miss the point of rm's original post - and thus the conversation went even further in the "new" direction.

...

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Well, again, I wonder what would happen if she was living in an area in which had more people were all together standing proudly, or were simply accepted as normal so that their need to stand proudly against a common foe, or disrespect, had diminished to the point that other issues had arrived. There, are, after all, plenty of gay and lesbian people to who these are not the same kinds of issues they are to rm and I am interested in why they no longer seem so pressing to some of the ones I know when compared to her. Are they ignoring the daily homophobia all around them? Or are they not getting the same sort of abuse she is for some other reason? Are they simply choosing to focus on other areas? What might prompt that decision?

Re: ...

[gement.livejournal.com]

I am going to make a guess here, based on what you have said. I may be wrong. I am guessing that you identify as at least 95% straight male, with no gender identity issues.

The reason I guess this is that, even in the Bay area, bad things happen to gay people sometimes. Custody fights. Random violence. Very pointed looks if they stray outside queer zones holding hands. Many people have decided to take a deep breath and live obviously as themselves every minute anyway. That doesn't mean it's easy for them.

On top of that, people who are genderqueer still face significant suspicion, bias, and ignorance even in the gay community. They don't get mentioned in the history books. There was a lesbian hero of the Stonewall era who came out as trans later and was promptly dropped from the historical accounting. (I'd give you a reference, but I need to dig up his name again.)

I'm glad to hear that you have friends who don't seem to worry about these things. I wonder if you have talked directly with them on the subject, though.

I don't have patience with martyrs. I don't have patience with people who want monetary reparations from the descendants of their oppressors 100 years down the line. I don't have patience with people who can't talk about anything but their cause.

But some of us are living with these conflicts, and these fears, every day. The impression I get from your words is that you think this isn't a big deal, and if it's a big deal where she is, she should just move. I live in Seattle, one of the most trans-friendly cities in the country. Trust me, I live with this every day, and there's nowhere for me to move.

Some Nuance Please

[keith418.livejournal.com]

It's really easy to play this game with "noble victims" and "evil oppressors." If that's the only game you see here, or the only scenario, then that's one thing. And, yes, people in the Bay Area suffer from all kinds of injustices and problems. It'
s not Shangri-la 24-7.

But even my gay and lesbian friends do not insist on this kind of unrelentingly narrow description of their situation. Instead, they open up the discussion on to a more nuanced level. They look at other things and other problems - and they can see some contradictions and inconsistencies on their own "side" too. When you move beyond establishing the simple moral right and wrong issues, what do you get? After all, many people cite the way the bigoted Christian Right needs to draw very strict and unambiguous moral lines all the time as one of their big problems. Do the people on our side need to do the same thing and what does it say about us if we do? Do we need to "right" in the same way they do - and for the same reasons?

Re: Some Nuance Please

[gement.livejournal.com]

I am sorry that you are reading me and RM as playing absolutes or giving this issue an "unrelentingly narrow description." That is not my perception.

I need to stop responding here now. It has been interesting talking with you.

Re: Issues, Issues

[idunn.livejournal.com]

Hello, friend, you spoke my mind and raised a number of good points, particularly on the stereotype about isms existing in contained boxes. I'm from north Jersey, which is a melting pot of colors, religions, sexualities and income. We're a short train hop from Manhattan. Are we perhaps more open-minded than a small Southern town of predominantly white Christians? We've certainly had more exposure to people of all backgrounds. But while my family may be more tolerant of black people, they've still told their daughters to not bring one home. This may not be as inflammatory or obvious as when friends of mine visit Georgia and can't get service in restaurants or gas stations because of their skin color, but it's still racist crap. It may just take on a more subtle tone.

Or not, such as in the last ten years when "driving while black" became a topic of conversation in New Jersey.

I agree with you, discrimination and hatred know no geopolitical boundaries. Perhaps the forms vary, but it'd be wishful thinking to imagine it's gone, or that if one doesn't like it, they need to move.

Re: Issues, Issues

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I think people are really invested in hierarchy and power, and that's not going away. That doesn't mean we shouldn't self-analyse in an effort to overcome it. The project might ultimately be doomed to failure, but trying to address it is, in my opinion, the measure of the best and only success.

Re: Issues, Issues

[magnetgirl.livejournal.com]

Dude, I love you, I really do, but I just can't.

I'm sick to death of straw man internet arguments, and this whole thing is so trollish it KILLS me. I started typing a long response, and then realized it would fall on selective listening ears, and deleted it.

Thanks for fighting the good fight and defending our city. South my ASS.

P.S. saw a black guy in his 20's with a boondocks shirt on and a triangle rainbow armband on the 1 uptown the other day. It made me smile lots :)

Re: Issues, Issues

[idunn.livejournal.com]

I'm also curious as to why you don't explore the origins of this kind of sexism and homophobia more. If people change their attitudes, what makes them change? ect.

This isn't rm's cross to bear but that of the people who can't break out of sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or racist mindsets (and I don't know if rm has any of these issues to deal with, herself, but that's her own business). It isn't until people who engage in this behavior self-analyze can any change hope to be accomplished, not the people on the receiving end of bias. I don't know if you intended this, but your reply comes off as rather condescending and places responsibility in the wrong court here.

Crosses To Bear

[keith418.livejournal.com]

I don't think exploring the origins of these kinds of attitudes are necessarily "onerous crosses to bear." For example, Bob Dylan wrote a song about the death of Medgar Evers and his assassin which tried to do this very thing. How might this same kind of approach be applied to the people who are still sexist, homophobic, and racist?

Part of the problem with the reviling of racism - in some contexts - is that it ignored the fact that many of the most racist thugs were, in fact, poor whites. These same poor whites - today - are bitter about the "privileged" liberal elites on the coasts - you know, the kind who can fly off to Europe to fence, and who went to private schools in Manhattan (no names!), and who look down on them for being sexist, racist, and homophobic. How much of the struggle, then, is really a kind of disguised class struggle? I do not think such questions are anyone's "cross to bear" and are, instead, vital to solving the problems we face when it comes to fighting sexism, racism, and homophobia.

Re: Crosses To Bear

[idunn.livejournal.com]

I compared it to a cross to bear because we have a post about someone's day to day existence living in a world where her sex and sexuality make her an outsider and how uncomfortable that can be, and your response redirected the conversation and asked, well, if she's so unhappy, duh, move to a utopia that doesn't exist. You also insinuated that she's making a mountain out of a molehill, as if her experience is invalid or that the discriminatory thinking this entry talks about isn't real. And of course there is a serious class issue in this country, but that doesn't excuse its homophobia and sexism - are we supposed to empathize with people who engage in this behavior? Your response was totally condescending and blows off the entire point of this post.

Rivers To Cross

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Plenty of people move away from crappy communities where they suffer from overt oppression to less oppressive places. I left the East Coast and once I spent just a little time in California, I became determined to never return. When I go back to visit - my trips back are infrequent - I marvel at how little has changed. But, yes, while the West Coast is far from perfect, my city is a lot more friendly and supportive to gay people and their families than what I used to see in New York. Therefore, I have to wonder what people suffering in less supportive areas would make of life in a more supportive area - were they to choose to leave.

But gaining some distance on this has made me think about why people behave this way and why each group tends to claim the "victim" status - the people opposing gay marriage play themselves as victims too, don't they? What is it about our culture - in general - that awards points to the group who can most successfully mount the "I'm the biggest victim" campaign. When both competing groups use the banner of victimhood, then it behooves us to question why this is still such a sought-after designation, doesn't it?

A gay New Yorker friend of mine noted:

"rm seems more like a lesbian in Austin than she does one in NYC - where lesbians I know have kids, own condos, and even have roles in the city council. I mean, the probable next mayor of NYC is a lesbian. She is married. She owns a place in the Village. Doesn't this all sound like the 1980s? At least in NYC?"

Re: Rivers To Cross

[rm.livejournal.com]

Okay, I have completely lost my patience here.

My post was not about Oppression I Have Experienced. It was about the nature of identity and the importance of speaking up when you see people behaving poorly, even if one has the luxury of avoiding that inconvenience.

Your insistence on misreading my post either to swerve the conversation to address a tangential issue of greater interest to you or to cast me in a role that you find more comfortable or useful offends me.

You and I both have privilege, largely, but not entirely of different sorts. We are both elitists in many senses and proud of it. We are both unapologetic in those regards. And those are all reasons you've remained on my friendslist so long.

But here you are using your privilege to attempt to establish a hierarchy with me me for no reason I can ascertain. As intellectual discourse the discussion is lacking because the entire thread depends on a series of misreadings by you that have been repeatedly pointed out.

Your remarks here have been courteous, as others pointed out, but they still reek of the privilege you are incapable of fathoming not everyone has the luxury to share.

I am not put upon, weak or victimized, despite your attempts to argue for that very notion here and elsewhere. Nor do I feel a burden to speak up for those I consider part of my tribe. It's a pleasure. Just as it is for you a pleasure to play Devil's Advocate.

Your seeming inability, here and in past threads on issues both similar and not, to accept that not everyone is wired like you is a real weakness in your not inconsiderable rhetorical abilities.

I'm not interested in your paternalism on this subject anymore than I've been interested in it as regards your perceptions of the role of pop culture in my life.

You do not know my Will better than I know it myself. So stop acting like you do.

Whoa...

[keith418.livejournal.com]

I think sexism and homophobia are bad. I also think the people behaving this way are stupid. If we both agree on that, then don't we want to look at why these problems persist in being problems?

If you're "sick to death" of being yelled at in the street, then aren't curious as to the make-up, character, background, etc. of the people thinking this kind of thing is okay? What makes them different from the people who DON'T think it's okay? I'm appalled by that crap too. It's why I like the West Coast better where, I think, this stuff happens less (it still happens). The mayor in SF is psyched to begin marrying gay people again. Doesn't that indicate a better climate? But as appalled as I am, I have to wonder about the people who aren't appalled, or who are still pulling this kind of crap.

Re: Whoa...

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

If you're "sick to death" of being yelled at in the street, then aren't curious as to the make-up, character, background, etc. of the people thinking this kind of thing is okay? What makes them different from the people who DON'T think it's okay?

As someone who have lived in the Bay Area for the past 19 years (and in Oakland, specifically since 1990), I can tell you how much crap I get walking down the street and having people calling me out for whatever reason, especially when it comes down to how they don't think I look like women are supposed to look.

Does it make me angry? Yes, but more than that, it gets tiring. That kind of asshattery intrudes upon my day which I don't take kindly to. Why should I waste my time figuring out what makes folks like that tick? And I used to. Used to try and figure out just what it was that made someone be up in a stranger's face with their opinion about who they thought they were. Not any more.

As far as the West Coast being the bastion of tolerance and understanding? Um, not so much. I grew up back east (New Jersey) and I found people there to be a lot more honest and forthright in their opinions. I'd rather than than the much vaunted (but frequently vapid) nods to tolerance that you get in the Bay Area.

...

[keith418.livejournal.com]

I think this is like complaining about the symptoms rather than being invested in looking at what's behind them - like the disease.

Re: ...

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing:

If you want to educate or find out what's going on with people like that, go right ahead. In fact, if you consider yourself an ally of those who've been in the crosshairs, that's what you're supposed to do.

Asking those of us who've been targets (notice I'm not saying victims) of the asshattery to be the ones to plumb the psyches of those who've been up in our faces? That's pretty much asking people to stick their heads back in the lion's mouth, and for what? I'm not entirely sure why you're waiting around for the kumbiyah moment.

Why you see people laying out what happens to them as a complaint, I have no idea. If anything, it's an accounting, a reminder that crap like this does not happen in a vacuum to one person.

?

[keith418.livejournal.com]

This seems to me like what people say when they are intent on not asking themselves difficult questions. If we resent, say, Christian fundamentalists and bigots for "demonizing the other" then aren't we beholden to NOT do the same thing? If we ask our opponents to start to question their own narratives and values, then aren't we behold to question our own narratives and our own values?

Re: ?

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

I'm trying very hard to not knock my head on the desk as I write this answer because I'm wondering if you actually get what I'm trying to tell you.

I think what's not gelling for you is that I've already thought about what might be going on with someone. The questioning, the difficult questions - been there, have cataloged the responses. I've just reached the point where, when it comes to my appearance, that person is not worth my time and energy to engage.

(FWIW, people who identify as fundamentalist Christians are approachable when you know the language and have some idea of where they're coming from on matters of scripture and interpretation. On some levels, it's easier for me to engage them than some parts of the religious left - of which I am a part)

Re: Rivers To Cross

[idunn.livejournal.com]

Thank you for articulating so well what I couldn't.

Hey now!

[lilchiva.livejournal.com]

I take exception to that. Lesbians in Austin and Dallas have kids, own condos, and even have roles in the city council too.