Tag: gender

News out of West Virginia is that the State Senate passed a bill adding protection for sexual orientation (and age) to its anti-discrimination law.  While I applaud that, I also understand that it is not sufficient to protect the people most likely to be discriminated against.  And I don’t just mean transfolk.  I mean gays and lesbians…and even straight people…who do not perform their gender role to the liking of those who would discriminate.

A lot of folks just don’t get that.  A lot of people believe that transpeople are just out to get what they can for themselves and do not comprehend that in working for protections based on gender identity, we are concerned about you…and you…and you, too.

What people seem not to be able to accept is that we all have gender identities…every single one of us.

As usual as Friday approaches, I start panicking because I haven’t a clue what to write about.  That especially happens around midterm as we crawl towards Spring Break.  On more week before refreshing can commence.

It is often the case, however, that events provide an idea.  This one crystalized with plf515‘s morning offering, WGLB presents: Stereotype.

In my mind I teamed this together with several other recent events, listed after the fold, and the idea of writing about teaching against stereotypes arose.  I’m hoping to generate some helpers, both in the here and now and to pick up the burden after I die.

Stereotypes are ubiquitous.  I battle them consistently.  All my political battles, not just for GLBT rights, but also for Native American rights, against the English-only doofi, for the poor and downtrodden, against racism and religious and ethnic discrimination, for the equality of women, against bullying…and so many, many more, all have at their root the battle against stereotypes.

Be aware that if you choose this path, you will be called sanctimonious, self-absorbed, self-important, thin-skinned fascist against freedom of speech.

If that’s the price to be paid, so be it.

I’ve made no secret lately that I was going to appear in Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, as Woman #1 (Calpernia Addams) in the…well it is not exactly a monologue, but rather a chorus…They Beat the Girl Out of My Boy…Or So They Tried.

The two-night run at Bloomfield College’s Van Fossan Theater is now over and I am exhausted and have a splitting headache from interacting with the stage lights.  I’m tired and I’m cranky.

Word on the street was that the event was not to be missed.  But then again, each night only had about 120-140 in the audience.

Part of the proceeds went to help combat the systematic maltreatment of women (and men) in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the quest for blood coltan, in what has become known as The Playstation War.  The remainder went to the The Safe House Shelter for battered women, which is affiliated with Clara Maass Hospital.

Affiliated with our production was a teach-in on the DRC and a Clotheline Project in March.

And one more presentation, which is the main purpose of this essay, against the backdrop of these other educational efforts.

Debbie and I were informed about a week ago that our doctor was changing locations, leaving the Family Health Center in Montclair for another practice a half hour away.  We are left with the decision of whether to follow her or keep going to the Family Health Center.

For me, that’s not as straightforward a decision as it would be for most people.

Treatment by medical personnel, doctors, nurses and office staff can be a critical issue or transfolk.

Of course, I can only speak for myself and my experience should not be deemed universal.  That could be the point…or at least one of them.

Sometimes it all seems futile.  I teach and teach and teach, wondering if one day, even some day soon, I will get the opportunity to talk about the things which really matter, about the way the world is and how to make it better for some of us who could use the improvement.

Then I run into someone who puts me back to square one, wondering if anything I have taught has survived…or how many other people are out there who feel the same way as the culprit.

So what do I do?  Go back to the beginning and start anew?  Maybe with some variation on the theme?  

What else is there?

She arose silently from her bed and walked to the bathroom.  She stopped to stare at herself in the mirror.

Sh was old.  Sometimes she wondered how that had happen, but she had been aware that she was not aging all that gracefully for quite a few years.  Daily stress can do that to a person.

So can 44 years of being on testosterone.

Now, even 17 years later, the effects of that were still there in the face that looked back..  Nothing was going to undo that…except maybe thousands of dollars of facial reconstruction.  That was money she would never have.  So she made do with the rationalization that she hadn’t wanted to stop recognizing herself anyway.

And nothing was going to change the fact that she was 6’4″ tall.

First they came for the K word.  But I didn’t mind.  The few people I knew who were Jewish were nice enough and knew their place in the world and they didn’t bother me, so I didn’t need to bother them.

Then they came for the N word.  Again, my humor didn’t include blackface and anyway I thought jokes based on the stereotyping of black people were vulgar.

When they came for the C word, I got pissed.  And then someone told me it wasn’t just the C-word, that there were other words that women objected to just as much.    

My whole comedy game relied on me calling people c**ts and b**ches and pu**ies.

It seems to happen periodically, but with unfixed period.  Sometimes my thoughts are in too much of a jumble to make much sense out of them.  I took a look through the past year’s columns and discovered at least three occasions in which this happened in 2008.  Each time I still managed to cobble something together anyway:

March 28:  Thought Salad

May 2:  Mixed Veggies

Sep 5:  Stone Soup

Hence, I guess, the name of this edition.  Hopefully there is some of the meat required as part of that hobo dish.

The ingredients:  identity, privilege, memories, creativity, pain.  Not necessarily in that order…and sometimes in combination.

The pope has spoken.

Who am I to disagree?

Being one of those who are determined to be as dangerous as global warming, who the hell am I to disagree?

So many things I could be writing about…but the entire week has seemed to conspire to draw me back into discussions I’d rather walk away from.  But I don’t, I guess because I hope that maybe one or two people out there might learn something.  I largely come away with a feeling of disappointment, but that disappointment would be directed at myself if I didn’t at least make the effort.

So I guess I’ll spill it all here and try to knit together a point out of the whole.

In Feminisms the other night, there was a discussion about women choosing to have labioplasties.  The column lambasted the women who would make such a choice as being tools of the patriarchy, I guess, or victims of it, and went on to deplore the procedure as abetting the practice of female genital mutilation.

I was astounded.  I mean, what kind of hypocrite would I have to be to speak against women choosing to have a procedure performed which I have undergone myself?

I started out hoping to write about scarcity.  Specifically I was hoping to write about the scarcity of fairness and equality that to many people think exists, as if we can’t be fair to everyone and that it is necessary that some people have to have inferior rights in order for others to feel superior.

I wanted to write about just why that must be so…because I don’t think it does.

But I can’t get this exchange out of my head:

I’m a transwoman.

I have a rather large adams apple.  Am I not a woman in your opinion?

nope.

That was from a woman who thinks she’s more deserving of respect than I am, simply because she was born female.

And this came from a gay guy:

I got it

Code Pink has trannie members too so it’s not all women.

And people recced that comment.  I can only assume that’s because they agreed.

So I’m stuck writing something probably only for myself and a very small audience:  those who I believe could benefit from reading it will not.  Or maybe I should put that this way:  those whose reading it would benefit transfolk are unlikely to read it.  That is pretty much the nature of intentional ignorance.