Word has quickly spread on the web in the last couple of days that Rachel Ivey, a member of the Deep Green Resistance environmentalist movement that holds openly transphobic views as “core” principles, is putting together a tour consisting of a few relatively high profile speaking events in June and July.  This speaking tour supposedly includes events at City College of NYC as well as the University of Toronto.

You can see the webpage for Rachel Ivey’s online fundraiser for her speaking tour here, along with several planned dates and speaking venues.  This includes her planned July 4 speaking engagement at the University of Toronto.  The page also mentions that further events will be listed in Ontario.

From there, I’m guessing that it’s not a coincidence that this date occurs right before the radical feminist RadFem Rise Up conference, which is scheduled for Toronto on July 5-7.  My guess is that Ms. Ivey will be be speaking at the conference as well.

One point however is that the venue for the ‘Rise Up’ conference is being kept secret, at least for now. That is clearly because anti-trans radfem activists have found it increasingly difficult in recent years to find institutions and organizations that are willing to host them and promote their views on account of their bigoted views regarding trans individuals.

Indeed, one of Ms. Ivey’s scheduled speaking events on her fundraiser page has already been cancelled by Bluestockings Bookstore, the venue that had been scheduled to host her second speaking event in NYC.  Bluestockings cited DGR’s “blatantly transphobic rhetoric” as the reason for the cancellation.

As a trans woman who has strong ties to Toronto, however, I will say that I don’t necessarily think that calling for these events to be canceled is the best course of action.   Don’t get me wrong: I’m not calling for meaningless ‘dialogue’ with someone who quite openly (and proudly) expresses transphobia as some ‘radical’ principle, but what I am talking about is what is the most effective response.  And I tend to consider that question not only from a trans perspective but also as a feminist.  It could be that going to the event and challenging the speaker’s views in front of an audience would be a better way to go.

In that scenario, it’s not about changing the speaker’s mind, but it’s about providing a counterpoint for those that might be undecided in the audience.

If anyone has the time or patience to listen, there is a video that DGR produced in which Rachel Ivey details her sentiments that she rejects trans people’s identities, that she rejects trans people’s struggles against coercive gender norms, and that she refuses to acknowledge that cis privilege exists.  She states that she is unwilling to listen to contrary views on these issues.  The arguments that she makes in the video are based on standard anti-trans strains of radical feminist ideology.  The statements she makes are not that sophisticated, and while all of these issues around gender contain subtleties, I think someone who is reasonably educated on trans issues could hear her out and easily challenge her during a Q&A session.

For example, she claims that cis privilege does not exist on the basis that, as she was assigned female at birth, she has faced gendered oppression as a woman her entire life.  Of course, that’s true that she has faced gendered oppression her entire life living as a woman in a patriarchal society, it’s just that acknowledging cis privilege is largely a separate issue from the start.

Obviously, for me as a white trans woman to acknowledge that I have white privilege does nothing to obscure the oppression that I have faced as a woman, such as street harassment, or the oppressions that I have faced specifically as a trans woman (e.g. street harassment taking the form of an outright death threat).  And, after all, trans women are a tiny fraction of the overall population who are extremely vulnerable to gendered and sexual violence.

Further, acknowledging that gendered oppression takes on specific dynamics for trans women does not erase the gendered oppression that cis women face.  More generally, acknowledging that patriarchy’s assigned binary gender roles are coercive and damaging to many trans people does nothing to erase the fact that one of those gender roles is widely privileged over the other.

Ms. Ivey also makes a lot of frankly bizarre-sounding analogies between race and gender, and she also quotes her DGR colleague Lierre Keith making similar statements.  Of course such analogies are useful in certain circumstances, but when taken too far they tend to quickly get stuck in problematic terrain.

It’s also worth pointing out that around the [13:35 min] mark in her video, Ms. Ivey claims “I do want to be really clear here that I don’t really care how somebody dresses.  I don’t really care how they cut their hair or whether they wear make-up.  Personally, I don’t really… it doesn’t really affect me, I don’t really think it’s political.”  (She goes on to say she has a problem when such is postulated as an act of political resistance, which in all fairness probably is a bit overdone).

However, she later reads a quote from Lierre Keith as follows:

“…how about this. I am really Native American. How do I know? I’ve always felt a special connection to animals, and started building tee pees in the backyard as soon as I was old enough. I insisted on wearing moccasins to school even though the other kids made fun of me and my parents punished me for it. I read everything I could on native people, started going to pow wows and sweat lodges as soon as I was old enough, and I knew that was the real me. And if you bio-Indians don’t accept us trans-Indians, then you are just as genocidal and oppressive as the Europeans.”

Ms. Ivey proceeds to supplement this with similar analogies, claiming that being a trans woman has equal validity as being “trans black,” stating that one would then supposedly wear clothing associated with African American cultures.

Okay, first of all it must be acknowledged that the sentiment expressed in these comments clearly contradicts the previous statement that Ms. Ivey doesn’t care what somebody wears.  If a white person with no meaningful connection to Native American culture wearing moccasins (clearly inappropriate) is analogous to someone born with a penis wearing woman-typical clothing, then that clearly insinuates that that behavior should be considered inappropriate.  So I think Ms. Ivey is being at best a bit disingenuous here.

Of course the reality is that these things are not analogous because cultural specificities have to do with a group of people forming, over time, a local context and traditions.  There is innumerable evidence that undermining such cultural specificities (through colonization, globalization, etc.) leads to mass-scale human suffering, and is in fact virtually always a component of genocide.

Neither woman-typical nor man-typical clothing resides in the same realm as such local cultural specificities.  A person with a penis wearing woman-typical clothing does nothing to undermine “woman culture” nor vice-versa.  For example, when women began wearing trousers more commonly in the latter half of the 20th century, they did not do so as a result of male cultural coercion or colonization.  Instead they did it out of a component of liberation: it’s called, given your local context, wear whatever the hell you want.  Likewise, if men in North America began wearing skirts en masse in the near future, this would not represent a colonization of “woman culture.”  In fact, it’s difficult to believe that such a shift would even be all that important.

In fact, if we carry the analogy to completion, we find that the analogy is actually not even consistent with the internal logic of the anti-trans elements of radfem ideology.  Because the argument that is virtually always given is that for someone born with a penis to wear a skirt is problematic because it supposedly reifies patriarchal gender norms.  (This claim is not true, but we’ll get back to that point in just a moment.)

However, if some ignorant white person were to go around wearing a traditional Native headdress, no one (not even transphobic radfems!) would condemn their actions on the basis that by dressing in such a manner they were supposedly “reifying problematic cultural norms.”  Such a claim would probably be just as offensive as the original cultural appropriation itself.

Regarding the claim itself (that trans people wearing clothes they feel most comfortable with supposedly reifies patriarchal gender norms), I would simply ask that the people who profess this idea please offer some concrete, non-ideological verification of this claim.  Seriously, what does this even mean?  Do these particular radical feminists believe, for example, that when an ordinance is passed providing people with social protections based on gender identity and gender expression, that young girls in the affected area are more likely to be coerced into traditional female social roles as a result of this?  When trans people are accepted in society, does it become suddenly more difficult to step outside the boundaries of the traditional gender binary roles?

I’ve heard this claim about reifying patriarchy over and over ad nauseum in various articles from a radical feminist perspective, but I’ve never once heard even a single example of how accepting trans people’s identities supposedly resulted in narrower gender roles for others.

It’s when I hear these claims repeated over and over without any evidence that I suspect that many of these arguments, when it comes down to it, have less to do with the professed ideology, and more to do with the fact that trans lives and trans identities simply offend that individual’s sensibilities.

Moving on, around the [29:13] mark, Ms. Ivey states her belief that trans women who might have some form of male privilege earlier in life, carry that privilege with them no matter what for the rest of their lives.  This is a point where Ms. Ivey’s statements cross from ideological nonsense into deeply offensive and damaging.  Now I do not deny for a moment that I myself did in many ways have access to male privilege growing up; I was encouraged in school particularly and that probably played a role in my endeavors in science.

However, these days when I’m walking home at night and I get abuse and sexual innuendo hurled at me by strange men, having it ring in my ears that I supposedly have access to male privilege to just snap my fingers and escape that moment is cruelly ironic.  I don’t have access to male privilege on the streets.  I don’t have access to male privilege in the workplace, where I have previously faced harassment.  I do have a history of male privilege and I would never deny that, but attempting to erase my very real present from that picture does nothing to benefit any of us involved in this conversation.

I think this gets at one of the main problems that this type of ideology feeds: somehow anti-trans radical feminists seem to be incapable of acknowledging the violence and discrimination that trans people, and particularly trans women of color, face on a constant basis.  I think it’s very difficult to have a productive discussion on those terms, because honestly it feels like my humanity is being questioned when simply acknowledging my very real history of oppression is somehow equated with solidifying patriarchy’s grasp.

And you know, in a patriarchal world, the fact that it is most certainly trans women who face much of the blunt oppression in the trans community is not exactly a random coincidence.  Rather than denying trans women’s struggles, one would think that this fact would be a point for women to come together and push back against the oppression facing all women, cis and trans alike.

However, to make a blunt statement, at a certain point I have to think that Ivey’s claim that she and her colleagues are working to eliminate gender from society entirely is not all that serious in the first place.  After all, despite the fact that she repeatedly dismisses Judith Butler’s gender theories as “liberal feminism,” I can’t help but notice that she herself perfectly well fits within Butler’s concept of gender performativity: Rachel Ivey is immediately recognizable as a woman according to her gender presentation and mannerisms.

And what exactly are Ivey and the rest of DGR doing to supposedly eliminate gender from society?   I notice immediately, for example, that these individuals use gendered pronouns pretty much in the manner that the rest of society does.  The use of gendered pronouns of course play a role in socialization from the earliest stages of human development.  If Ms. Ivey and the rest of DGR really seek to dismantle the concept of gender entirely (or at least lessen its imprint on society), why don’t they at least take the simplest imaginable step by eliminating gender pronouns in their language?

Of course, I doubt DGR would ever take such a simple step, because it’s always much easier selectively criticizing the gender expressions of a tiny portion of the population, just as much of patriarchal society already does.

One is almost tempted to question if they even authentically believe their own ideology.

Her ordeal grew steadily worse when jail personnel realized she had a penis, as she was subsequently moved throughout the jail system over the next few days. She spent two days in a holding cell, during which jail personnel were reportedly rude to her, calling her “a thing.” She was then moved to a cell in the men’s section of the prison. During this time, del Valle reports that men in the surrounding cells “were banging on walls, calling [her] names,” and that she was afraid for her life.

Chief Deputy Roy Harris claims that since the other cells were locked, del Valle was not in any danger. Of course, this argument completely ignores the obvious emotional and psychological trauma that a woman would likely experience from being locked up with nearby men hurling abuse at her. While the information we have available to us from the single news story on the incident isn’t very detailed, it’s not hard to imagine such abuse might well have continued throughout the day and into the night.

On the fourth day, Harris claims that del Valle was placed in an isolation cell. While perhaps solitary confinement might be viewed as a temporary improvement over having abuse hurled at a woman held in a men’s prison facility, this points to a much larger problem that trans women face when pushed into the prison system. Many trans women who are incarcerated in the United States are forced into long-term solitary confinement by a prison system that either doesn’t care or just doesn’t know what else to do with women whose bodies don’t conform to society’s cissexist norms.

The fact is however, that long-term solitary confinement is incredibly psychologically damaging and cruel.

Fortunately, Ashley del Valle has at least now exited the prison system and has been able to speak out publicly about her ordeal. However, her case points to several issues. First, her case calls attention to the contradictions that trans women are forced to negotiate in a trans-misogynistic society: she was arrested for allegedly showing her breasts, then placed in prison with a group of men who themselves almost certainly never would have been arrested for exposing their chest in public. Secondly, this itself draws attention to one of society’s many misogynistic double standards: no big deal for men to appear topless in public, but the same behavior from women is viewed as criminal.

To place this more fully in the larger context, one should also note that the violence and unjust incarceration experienced so often by trans women in general are social cruelties disproportionately inflicted on trans women of color and trans women sex workers. As an example of the former, consider the case of CeCe McDonald, an African American trans woman who was incarcerated in Minnesota after killing one of her white-supremacist attackers in self-defense, and who was later herself held in long-term solitary confinement.

Last Monday, March 25, about three hundred people gathered outside of the offices of the Daily Mail in Kensington, London to hold a vigil in honor of Lucy Meadows, a British school teacher who was found dead at her home about a week earlier. The vigil was held at the Daily Mail headquarters in silent protest of how the UK tabloid (and other elements of the British press) had strewn details of a small-town teacher’s personal life across national headlines – likely playing a role in her apparent suicide. Many of those same members of the press hardly flinched as they continued disrespecting Meadows, even in reporting her death.

On December 19, 2012, the story appeared in the local Accrington Observer that Lucy Meadows, who had formerly lived as a man, would be returning to her teaching duties at St. Mary Magdalen’s School after Christmas break now living as a woman. The story incorrectly gendered Meadows as male throughout and featured a scowling picture of Wayne Cowie, a parent of one Meadow’s pupils, holding a copy of a letter to parents informing them of Meadows gender transition. Mr. Cowie was quoted speaking about his son, “He has had this teacher for three years. All of a sudden [she] is going to be coming to school after Christmas as a woman.” He added, “They are too young to be dealing with that.”

I would argue that children are perfectly capable of dealing with the issue of gender transition; my experience is that beyond perhaps vague curiosity, they usually don’t care very much (if at all). This naturally leads us to a more immediate question: why would anyone, unless perhaps they are directly connected to the school, care about this story? I have difficulty seeing how this story is worthy of any news coverage, even at the local level.

Of course, the press has every right to ask questions when it has some kind of (even broadly-defined) relation to the public interest. Usually that would mean asking questions of public figures or focusing on issues that affect a significant number of people. Lucy Meadows is not a public figure and her gender transition had a direct impact on very few people.

The manner in which the press was obviously bottom-feeding to dig up dirt in this case was a bit unreal. For example, quoting anonymous sources is usually something that is done when there is no other way to move forward on an important story. The present story has virtually no journalistic importance whatsoever, and yet the Daily Mail and others relied on such sources for comment when they piled on shortly after the local story broke. In their significantly more aggressive piece, the Daily Mail featured not only more creative comments from Mr. Cowie, but anonymous comments from other parents, including one who was quoted as saying:

“At first we thought [she] was just borrowing [her] wife’s headbands to hold [her] hair back,”

And another:

“This is totally inappropriate… Any teacher who is going to change gender should also change schools.”

They also trolled Facebook for personal photos and badgered individuals involved in the story for information. The original Daily Mail story included four photos of Meadows before her transition; three of these were taken from her wedding three years previous and two of them featured her recently-divorced wife. Apparently these pictures were lifted directly from the Facebook page of one of Meadows family members in clear breach of both Britain’s Press Complaints Commission (PCC) Code of Practice and common decency.

It’s this kind of treatment that pushes us to ask what, exactly, constitutes harassment. A day after professional diver Tom Daley and his partner suffered a disappointing loss for Britain at the 2012 London Games last year, a 17 year-old boy was arrested for sending Daley a tirade of harassing messages on twitter. To use another example, late last year Gregory Alan Elliot was arrested for months of alleged twitter harassment of a feminist activist in Toronto. He is alleged to have disrupted much of her campaigning activities online; the sheer volume of the messages resulted in police involvement. What is it that differentiates these cases from how the press treated Lucy? While the former are unquestionably inappropriate (and illegal), the latter is considered… quality journalism?

The media’s intrusion into Meadows’s life wasn’t limited to the Internet; in December when the story broke, the press camped out both outside the school and outside her home. In an email to a friend, Meadows complained the lengths she had to take in order to avoid being photographed by the press. She used a backdoor to avoid them in front of her house, left for work early and stayed at the school until late. She also said that, “many parents have been quite annoyed with the press, too, especially those that were trying to give positive comments but were turned away,” and even more damningly, “I know the press offered parents money if they could get a picture of me.”

While these actions point to a manufactured hunger for these stories among the press corps, the media attempt to paint themselves as asking “essential” questions that we’ve all heard before: how will this affect children. This tired narrative that uses rhetorical questions of “what’s best for the children involved” as a way to deflect criticism of transphobia, homophobia or any other number of social prejudices is pushed on full volume in a second column that appeared in the Daily Mail a day after the first. This column, written by well-known tabloid trash shock jock Richard Littlejohn, expresses blasé rhetorical support for trans people and goes on to ask if “anyone stopped for a moment to think of the devastating effect all this is having on those who really matter? Children as young as seven aren’t equipped to compute this kind of information.”

Many people have responded to Lucy’s death by demanding that Richard Littlejohn being fired (including myself), and there is even a petition to this effect out there with over 200,000 signatures. However, having some time to reflect on the situation and read over some opinions that have questioned this demand, I’ve decided that calling for Littlejohn to be fired might feel good but it may actually be overlooking the bigger picture: after all it was the supposed “news” press that hounded Meadows outside her school and her home. If they had never done that, Littlejohn would have never had the opportunity to pile on top of it all in his commentary piece.

The harder truth is that this thing started at the local news level, with a story by Stuart Pike in the Accrington Observer and spread outwards from there. The problem is with the media itself, not one figurehead who happens to pretty openly despise lots of vulnerable people. And it’s very clear that the British media itself has refined this type of public abuse of trans people to almost the level of a twisted art form (see here for details on how the British press and others actually open up trans children’s lives for public abuse; also see here).

It’s not necessarily clear what role her ordeal with the press played in Lucy’s decision to end her life; perhaps some clues to her state of mind at that time may emerge in the future, or perhaps they will not. However, it is clear that these types of stories focusing on the private details of trans people’s lives and bodies serve absolutely no public interest. They only serve to provide trash tabloids, and even supposedly reputable newspapers, massive page hits and advertising revenue. The hounding of Lucy Meadows and other trans people by the press should be viewed for what it is: self-interest and ruthless sensationalism; in short, it is journalistic sadism.

In looking back at the unraveling of the story, we note that the Headteacher of the school stated that Meadows had the full support of the school staff. Meadows was also quoted as saying that her decision had been a difficult one to make; she further requested that her privacy be respected. If only that simple, reasonable request could have been respected from the start.

This article also appeared at Huffington Post and Everyday Feminism.

Recently, I went on a dinner date with a cis woman that ended a bit awkwardly. Some of the conversation we shared was nice, we talked about film (fyi – an easy topic to hold my interest, ladies!), our common roots back in the States, and her background in performance art. At one point she shared with me her frustrations over a performance meant to showcase artists from our region in the U.S. The thing is, whoever put together this particular exhibition had invited a number of men from her theatre program to participate — meanwhile she and several of the other women who graduated from the program found out about the event later when one of the guys posted it on facebook.

It’s pretty easy to feel anger over such blatant sexism, and it immediately reminded me of some of my own experiences of feeling ignored at times in my own workplace. But then she said something that struck a really odd chord:

“Yeah, it’s supposed to represent artists from the South, but it turns out it’s just a total sausage fest.”

Okay, we all get the basic intended meaning here. But is she really implying that the men who were invited to exhibit their work were asked to do so on the basis of their genitalia? I have to say that, since my transition, being a woman with a penis never got me special treatment in the academic world. And given that she was aware of my body configuration I have to think that is a strange comment to make to me on a date.

Sadly, the situation only further deteriorated with the appearance of the word “ladyboy,” and the fact that somehow the subject kept getting changed when I tried to discuss these things. After the point that she referred to me as a “trans woman” as opposed to a “woman woman,” I found it difficult to bring myself to even say much for the last few minutes of our little disaster date.

Okay ladies, let’s stop right here and get our game together. One point is that this isn’t just a matter of grossing out a trans woman over dinner; it’s also a matter of a cis woman making herself look like kind of an ass. And beyond that, this kind of ignorant cissexism just gets in the way of us getting closer and having fun together.

Now, if your response is to start worrying over having to figure out all this ‘complicated trans stuff,’ then I would emphasize a lot of this boils down to respecting us as women just as much as you would want to be respected yourself. And the fact is that trans women are a component of queer women’s communities, so a lack of respect amongst us just means more devaluing of women, when society dishes out plenty of that for all of us already.

Not to mention that this results in some probably well-intentioned cis women missing out on connecting with lots of beautiful, amazing trans women. So with that in mind, I have put together some suggestions for cis women on thinking through some basic trans issues, including ideas on approaching trans women in a romantic or intimate context. And I want to be clear that working through this stuff applies the same in the context of a casual hookup as it does a romantic date.

I also want to be clear that the following represents only my own perspectives; I don’t speak for all trans women. Most importantly, whether you agree with every single point or not, the main thing is if you just think through some of these issues a bit you’ll probably be in a better place to come off as a well-intentioned friend rather than a jerk who doesn’t know any better. And you’ll be in a better place to have more fun.

Community Inclusion

In the last few years this situation has improved in some respects at least in some parts of the U.S. and Canada. But the fact is that there are still parties held in some places in which admittance is “women OR trans” only, meaning in this case that one should be either woman or trans, but not both. But even at parties, clubs or women’s spaces where we are included, many trans women have at times expressed feeling more tolerated than accepted.

As a further point, our inclusion in much of queer women’s culture is still nominal at best. As a nearby example, I’ve gotten some laughs out of some of the serial lesbian content on the sidebar here at Autostraddle, but I’m still waiting for a woman like me to show up on screen and join in the fun. Also, it’s rather cliché at this point that mainstream lesbian-oriented content tends to show more interest in trans men’s stories (who are, after all, not women) than ours (The L Word being the most obvious example).

Look, I get that it takes some time to work some of these things out, but part of my point is just that making it clear you believe trans women should be included is a good step towards developing meaningful friendship with us. On the contrary, referring to a bunch of dudes as a “sausage fest” might not be such a cool/sexy/romantic thing to do (regardless of anyone’s actual genital status… after all, some men have a vagina).

Recognize Our Perspectives

I realize there are a wide variety of trans narratives out there, and maybe it could seem like a lot to work through. But the basic script isn’t that difficult: respect our identities and our bodily autonomy, and when you’re not sure, find a gentle way to ask that doesn’t put anybody on the spot. (And if it’s just not your business to know something in the first place, then don’t ask.)

Another good idea is to understand that many trans people (including a number of trans-feminists) have come up with language to describe the cissexist world they see around them, and to challenge society to do better. Please respect our way of describing the world.

Sadly, a small group of aggressive anti-trans activists have gone far out of their way to introduce a lot of confusion about words like “cis,” claiming that it has some type of anti-woman meaning. This is completely false (and it makes no sense considering the word describes cis men just as it does cis women).

The word “cis” means “not trans” and it has no other meaning in this context. The point of using the word is to acknowledge that trans identities are equally valid and that cis privilege exists in our world and should be challenged.

It also conveniently provides you with the opportunity to refer to a “cis woman” instead of a “woman woman” and avoid wrecking our hang out session.

Please adopt this language, even when trans people are not around.

Cut Out Trans-misogynistic Language

This should go without saying, but referring to trans women as “trannies” or “shemales” is not only ignorant, it’s adopting language that is associated with social stigmatization and even violence against trans women. And having one of those words appear in the middle of our dinner-date is, um, anti-climatic in just about every sense of the word.

And from a trans feminist perspective, I would emphasize that what underlies trans-misogyny is nothing more than misogyny itself. Remember ladies; you can’t buy into hateful language specifically directed against trans women without chipping in on hatred against women in general.

Dating Us On The Side

There are lots of wonderful, workable approaches to relationships out there, and different things work for different people. One of the awesome things about the queer women’s communities is that I think we tend to be much more open about possibilities for intimate relationships. Some women are poly, some are looking for an exclusive partnership, and there’s everything in between. Personally, I don’t even know if I have a strong preference; I think I’m more open to just working out the dynamics between individuals when the time comes.

I happen to have had a couple of awesome relationships with cis women who were already in long-term, (explicitly) non-monogamous relationships. That said, I can’t help but notice there seems to be a pattern in which I am invited to be someone’s “thing on the side.” While I can’t know for a fact if this is because I’m trans, I have heard other trans women relate similar things. In principle, I have no problem entering into such relationships with someone I trust and with whom I feel genuinely close. I’m just saying I know I’m not the only trans woman who feels a bit frustrated when this kind of thing seems to be on constant replay.

Fetishizing Trans Women

Again I’d like to think this goes without saying, but sadly I see it happen plenty. Look, I get that drawing the boundary between healthy, affectionate sexual curiosity and fetishization might not always be an exact science (and it might be a little different with different women). Personally I think I’m pretty relaxed and I can work with you as long as it doesn’t all reduce down to one thing (*cough*). However, if you’re on a date with a trans woman and your thoughts about her body are constantly distracting you from the conversation, just stop yourself and think: what if I was interacting with a guy and he kept having these kinds of thoughts about my body instead of listening to what I was saying? Would I feel comfortable around him?

Don’t reduce us to our genitals (1)

Obviously this follows pretty strongly from the don’t-fetishize-us thing. A big part of this is what should be a pretty obvious hard rule: don’t put us on the spot with questions about our genitals.

Personally, I happen to be pretty open about this stuff (you might even notice a subtle dick joke appears in the previous sentence), but even if you know something about my body from reading one of my articles, that doesn’t make it cool to randomly bring my junk into the conversation if you meet me in real life.

Just the same, if you meet a trans woman who is a sex worker or if you’ve seen pornography in which a trans woman appears, that doesn’t give you some special right to ask her questions about her body anymore than it would if you met a cis woman who was involved in sex work.

Don’t reduce us to our genitals (2)

Then there is the other side of the coin: some cis women might have an issue or feel uncertain about hooking up with a woman who has different genitalia than her own. First of all, you should never feel pressured to do anything you don’t want to do or that you’re even unsure about. If you aren’t comfortable or you just aren’t into it, say no.

That having been said, if genitalia is the one and only reason for not being into someone, I do think it is worth thinking through that. Responding to one of the claims that some have made, I would emphatically state that nobody’s physical body is a representation of patriarchy. Such a statement is not only somewhat cruel to inflict on someone who herself is oppressed by patriarchy, it is also pretty defeatist from a feminist perspective (if we were really to buy into the idea that penises are the source of patriarchy, rather than socially constructed male privilege, aren’t we pretty much saying that patriarchy is a permanent fixture of human society? Eek).

Talk With Us

Beyond all these more detailed considerations, another key point is simply communication. Of course there are a myriad of situations that could arise that I’ve never even thought of, but if two people really care about developing a positive friendship or intimate relationship (whether for one evening or a committed partnership) then they will be willing to sit down together and talk through these things.

I have written previously about some of the alienation I have experienced as a trans woman dating in the queer women’s community. Now, I want to emphasize here again that no one is obligated to touch a woman’s penis if they aren’t into that. However it’s also important to emphasize:

• Not every trans woman has a penis.
• No general means exist to distinguish trans women from cis women.

As it is therefore very possible that one could be attracted to any trans woman– or have sex with a post-op trans woman– and never even be aware she wasn’t cis, the implications of these two points together are that statements such as “I am attracted to cis women but not trans women” simply do not make sense and are rooted in social prejudice.  (Again, that does not mean one is obligated to touch a trans woman’s penis if one prefers not to do so, it just means that that particular type of statement is non-sensical.)

(As a side comment, before moving on let me briefly address something that appears in the previous piece that I linked above. My article from about a year ago contains a reference to the concept of the so-called “cotton ceiling,” which deserves a brief comment here. While several trans woman-hating “radical feminists” have intentionally misconstrued this concept in rather bizarre ways, there are also a few trans people who have made statements in relation to this idea that I think are problematic. Hence, after having some time to reflect on the previous debates about this I have come to the conclusion that the “cotton ceiling” should be considered an unhelpful concept for this type of discussion and should be set aside by trans activists moving forward.)

Hooking Up

Awesome! Glad we made it this far. I would say, “now comes the fun part,” but actually the whole process of getting to know one another should be fun. And the fact is that respecting your potential partner and vice versa is really sexy, and it’s actually not that hard… err, difficult, to do.

At this point, again, the key is communication. There are trans women who like being touched in certain places or in certain ways, but not in others, just as a similar statement applies for many cis women. Those boundaries must be respected throughout by everyone involved. The key is to keep the channels of communication open throughout, and to rely on active consent as the model for sexual intimacy at every moment.

Underlining all of this of course is the opportunity for new experiences of friendship, solidarity and more.

Again I emphasize, please comment on the original article at Autostraddle if you would like to argue with me over anything I’ve written here. Also, see my follow-up comments here.

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A tragic story emerged today from Accrington, a small town in Lancanshire, England. This week, grade school pupils from St. Mary Magdalen’s Church of England Primary School were informed that their teacher Lucy Meadows had died.

As heartbreaking as that must be for the children, the fact that their teacher was almost certainly bullied to suicide by the British Press will probably only make things more difficult.

The background to the story is that Meadows, a trans woman, had previously been living and teaching as a man. Her students had been informed that following winter break, she would be returning to teach as a woman.

From my own experience, I can say this really isn’t that big of a deal. Children are smart, they’re adaptable, and they can work these things out.

Unfortunately, adults can sometimes be more complicated.

Of course, we all know from the recent Leveson inquiry as well as the Julie Burchill ordeal, the British Press has seemingly raised hateful transphobic and transmisogynistic journalism almost to the level of a twisted art form.

The comments from Richard Littlejohn in a Daily Mail column from Dec. 20, 2012 are a perfect example of this sick obsession that more than a few in the British Press seem to have with trans people.

For some inexplicable reason, Littlejohn seems to have believed that the gender transition of a small-town teacher in England should be UK National News headlines. So he gathered a few quotes from parents (probably taken at least somewhat out of context), prying into the business of some small town he’s likely never even visited before, just to shove this young woman’s personal life into the spotlight and ridicule her with public abuse.

And abuse he gave, including the fact that he consistently misguiders Meadows, refers to her by her previous male-typical name, and includes private photos– including a shot from her wedding for good measure.

Littlejohn begins the article stating he has no problems with NHS funding for gender confirmation surgery, apparently attempting to suggest he has no problem with trans people. He goes on to make the problems he has very clear; for a rough jist of the article (archived above):

Schoolteacher [birth name deleted], 32, says he always knew he was born into the wrong sex. Yet he married and fathered a child, now aged three. It was only fairly recently that he decided to go public with his inner turmoil.

The first indications came when he began growing his cropped hair and dyeing it purple. He started turning up for class wearing pink nail varnish and sparkly headbands.

His pupils at St Mary Magdalen’s Church of England Primary School in Accrington, Lancs, couldn’t help noticing. A crayon drawing of Mr Upton by a Year 6 pupil on the school’s website shows him with long hair swept back over his shoulders.

…

This week, the school’s 169 pupils, aged between seven and 11, were informed class-by-class that from now on, ‘Sir’ would be ‘Miss’.

…

So that’s all right, then. From now on, kiddies, Mr Upton will be known as Miss Lucy Meadows.

What are you staring at, Johnny? Move along, nothing to see here. Get on with your spelling test. Today’s word is ‘transitioning’.

But the real kicker of course comes from the following entirely ironic and hypocritical statements:

But has anyone stopped for a moment to think of the devastating effect all this is having on those who really matter? Children as young as seven aren’t equipped to compute this kind of information.

…

Why should they be forced to deal with the news that a male teacher they have always known as Mr Upton will henceforth be a woman called Miss Meadows?

So there you have it folks, Richard Littlejohn doesn’t have any problem with trans people… he’s just worried about the children.

Of course, what about the challenges of a young child who has to go through the experience of seeing a teacher that they admire being dragged through the mud in the National press? What about the moment when they learn that their teacher won’t be coming in to lead class after all, as she has likely committed suicide as a result of that experience? (The fact that the original article attacking Lucy Meadows has now been scrubbed from the Daily Mail site speaks volumes).

Of course it’s all about the children, right Richard Littlejohn? If that’s the case, then let’s see you do the best, most responsible thing for them that you could possibly do: publicly apologize and resign from your column at the Daily Mail immediately.

As Annika recently decided to focus on other aspects of her life– writing her farewell piece for Autostraddle as she rode off into the sunset– I was a little saddened to think that we wouldn’t have new articles for her to look forward to in the future. But I admit I was also intrigued when AS linked to one of my pieces in their call for submissions for the Trans*Scribe theme issue, featuring trans women telling their stories from their own perspectives in their own words.

The piece that I chose to submit for Trans*Scribe was kind of a belated follow-up to my previous article on dating as a trans woman in the queer women’s communities, which was originally published at Prettyqueer, focusing on my feelings of distance and sometimes alienation dating as a trans woman. Primarily, I viewed that article as a call for dialogue between cis women and trans women on trans woman inclusion in the queer women’s communities (not that my piece is the first article along those lines, far from it). However, while that piece focused a bit more on an argument for trans woman inclusion, the recent piece at Autostraddle was a bit more focused towards women who might already be dating trans women or explicitly open to that possibility (of course, some trans women aren’t really separable in any obvious way from the larger cis woman population in the first place, and then a number of these questions are somewhat of a moot point anyways).

The follow-up piece has been something I’ve been planning to do for a while, in part because I wanted to clarify and refine a few points from the earlier article. That includes the statement I made in the more recent piece about the so-called “Cotton Ceiling” that had originally proposed in the context of the No More Apologies conference back in January 2012. The comment in the recent piece, basically stepping back from that particular framing of the issue, is something I had been planning on writing about for quite a while (unfortunately, I’m not always the fastest writer; luckily the Autostraddle window provided me with the right opportunity to put together a lot of these thoughts that I had had in mind for a while).

The discussion about why the Cotton Ceiling isn’t the best way to frame the issue is something that I plan to return to and make a more detailed comment about at some point in the future. For now, however, I will just point to this particular important comment that was left on the Autostraddle article.

I have to say I totally did not see the overwhelming response the more recent article has received coming at all; the comment thread has blown up in a way that I just never expected. By and large those comments have been supportive, expressing that they gained insight into trans women’s issues and perspectives. However, there has also been significant pushback from a number of (I’ll be generous and say) trans-critical women (and a couple of men as well).

I wanted to take the opportunity to clarify a few points here that keep recurring on the comment thread. First of all, it’s unfortunate that some people seem to be almost deliberately misunderstanding the article in several respects. As stated above, while I am speaking to some issues that affect queer women’s communities as a whole, the article is obviously largely directed towards cis women (although possibly trans women as well, in fact) who may be interested in or open to the possibility of dating trans women. It isn’t some kind of argument that every cis woman should feel obligated to jump into bed with a non-op trans woman, it’s more about having a conversation over how cis women and trans women who are interested in each other might approach intimacy, respect and openness with one another.

And as I stated in the article as well as about a zillion times in the comment thread, no one is obligated to touch a woman’s penis if they are not comfortable with that.

Another claim that has repeatedly come up as well is that no one is discussing cis men’s relations with trans women, or their need to accept the possibility that they might end up dating or flirting with a woman with a penis. Of course, that’s absolutely false as it is among one of the main topics of discussion among trans feminists. I would draw attention first of all to the following piece that I wrote on that exact subject “on the disclosure myth and the cissexist imagination,” which I consider to be the most important thing I’ve written. (I’ll try to dig up some further examples later, for now I’ll also point to this piece from Erica and I written in response to the same events as the first piece). Basically the point of this article is to present trans disclosure itself as a social construct and to challenge the victim-blaming narratives that that construct often engenders towards trans women who have faced violence from cis men in relation to sexual intimacy.

I got into a discussion with one lesbian cis woman “Amy” on the comment thread over this subject. I noticed that she kept insisting that she could simultaneously condemn a trans woman who does not reveal her genital status to someone with whom she is intimate while at the same time condemning some cis man that attacks her on that basis (or claims that as an excuse for violence, given that some cis men who have claimed this as a justification for violence almost certainly knew that their intimate partner was a trans woman all along anyways).

But here’s the thing: as I stated to her in the comment thread, the actual occurrence of non-op or pre-op trans women who do not reveal their genital status to an intimate partner isn’t necessarily all that common in the first place. Meanwhile, the occurrence of violence against trans women in intimate settings is sadly fairly common.

It’s a bit like the wider discussion around rape: yes, it is true that quite infrequently a woman might report a false rape accusation. However, it is much more common that a woman is too scared of being victim-blamed and ostracized for her to come forward about being raped. Hence the constant obsession with the small number of false rape allegations tends to distort the entire conversation and create an air of doubt around many actual rape victims.

I believe that a similar statement holds regarding trans women disclosure, in which the constant obsession with the idea of a trans woman who does not disclose her genital status to a potential partner is used to distract from a much-needed conversation about the more serious issue of violence against trans women.

Note: Those who wish to argue with me about these points, please feel free to comment on the original Autostraddle article, as I feel I don’t really have the energy for moderating the comments myself at this point (also more people can participate in the discussion there).

However, I stated there that I could probably go along with some of the intended humor in those ads, if they didn’t just so neatly boil down to classic anti-trans woman tropes. In that vein, I was somewhat intrigued when I saw the following skit from last week’s Saturday Night Live, featuring Justin Timberlake.

Briefly recounting for anyone who might not be able to view the video, it’s basically a film preview style parody of dime-a-dozen romantic comedies in which Timberlake’s character falls in love with a non-op or pre-op trans woman (Melanie, in the stereotyped role of “an adorable brunette”). Throughout most of the 1:45 minute preview, Timberlake’s character dramatizes an internal struggle with the idea of dating a woman with a penis, while his friend at work (in the role of “a confused black friend”) comments repeated variations on, “Wait, what, she’s got a d***?” to constant laugh track response. The character intimating the Melanie’s father, in a stylized version of Eugene Levy, states, “Well sweetheart, if he can’t accept all of you, he doesn’t deserve any of you.”

Halfway through the preview, Timberlake’s character shows up outside the woman’s apartment screaming, “Melanie, I don’t care! Come on! let me in.” The title of the film, “She’s got a D!%k,” is announced right at the end, followed by the “confused black friend” character finally commenting, “can I see it?”

That looks kinda fun

Okay, first of all, the repeated laugh track harping in response to bleeped out variations of “she has a dick” from the Confused Black Friend (CBF) character is aggravating from the start and doesn’t let up even at the very end. And I emphasize, it’s the laugh track in particular that makes this so annoying. I mean, yes, women with penises exist, some people will chuckle, but for how long could that alone really be funny?

And for some reason they couldn’t come up with anything more clever than “She’s got a d!%k” for the title. I mean, I’m sure if I spent half an hour on it I could come up with something with a more clever play on words than just putting ‘dick’ in huge, *-ed out letters on the screen. (“A Hard Road to the Heart”? Maybe just “Every Rose”? I spent like two minutes to come up with those two).

But okay, it’s my job to critique, and I have to acknowledge that ultimately the humor doesn’t just completely center on the fact that there is a woman with a penis on the screen. That’s *most* of the humor, for sure, but there’s other dynamics involved (mainly making fun of romance comedy tropes and characters themselves, regardless of who has what genitalia).

Like I mentioned, putting “She’s got a D!%k” as the title in huge letters takes away from that a lot cause it centers things on her body in kind of a cheap way again, but overall I think this sketch could be viewed as a step towards laughing about gender in a context that does involve a trans woman character, but tries to make the joke a little bit more sophisticated than just chuckling over her body.

And of course, it’s key that the sketch ultimately contains a theme of acceptance, as Timberlake’s character gets past his hesitations and learns to embrace Melanie in her entirety (also I have to admit, they pulled off the playful, flirty scenes and the make-out scenes pretty well, that part felt kinda believable for a moment).

However in the end, the moment that shifted me towards going along with the sketch more so than against it, the moment that I really laughed out loud, was right at the end when the CBF character said, changed his demeanor a bit and uttered, “Can I see it?”

She is cute

I like that line cause I think it arguably exposes those previous obsessions, “SHE’S GOTTA WHAT?” as having possibly been fetishistic in the first place. Now I want to emphasize that I am not saying that fetishizing trans women is a good thing (obviously, that’s awful). What I am trying to say is that given how common those kind of responses are in real life, I think SNL is offering a bit of social commentary with that line, in which a possible ulterior motive is suggested. In fact, I think there’s an element of subtle truth in that line.

[Edit: However, let me emphasize that what the CBF character is doing here, asking permission to see his friend's girlfriend's genitalia is in fact totally misogynistic and creepy. However, it just felt to me in the end that the joke was on his character rather than on the trans woman character. Others might disagree though, of course.]

So, overall, I think if I had to rate this sketch, I would put it at something like the C+/B- border. The laugh track (which really narrowly focuses the humor on her body) and the title tend to drag it down to the C+ arena, while the final line of the preview offers a moment of redemption in my view.

So I’m not saying it was actually good. It wasn’t. Just saying, I guess it could have been significantly worse?

They were so close *sigh*

Notably, perhaps, the previous visit was before transition; in fact, it was during my time in Japan in 2006 that I finally decided that I could no longer put off dealing with my feelings about my gender. When I returned to the U.S., shortly afterwards I began coming out to friends and family and, not long after that, took the first steps of physical transition.

Now I’m glad to be back in this country, feeling like I’ve moved forward in so many ways and I’m in a much better place with myself. Not that I didn’t enjoy my time in the country the first time around, but sometimes it’s difficult to engage when you feel like you’re holding back such an integral part of who you are. And in fact, I remember having fun during my first extended stay in Japan, but I remember feeling a lot of loneliness as well.

So far has been pretty good. I’ve started working with my new research group here (I’ve known my advisor for years and he has always been really supportive of me) and I’ve got a lot of interesting new physics problems in mind that I’m looking forward to working through. I’ve felt especially productive since I arrived.

Foreign language has always been difficult for me, but I’ve taken a short class and studied some on my own since I arrived so hopefully I can gradually improve a bit. I’ve always thought that the writing system is very beautiful, so that is one fun motivation… although there is a lot to learn!

The Japanese writing system is fairly complex, being divided into three main scripts, which are called kanji, hiragana and katakana (though arguably romaji based on the Latin alphabet represents a fourth).  The kanji script consists of borrowed Chinese logographic characters, although of course there have been some modifications. The interesting thing is that China’s influence on the Japanese writing system is largely  an historical accident. In fact, China’s complex symbols are perhaps somewhat of an awkward fit for the  more polysyllabic Japanese language. Hence the Japanese devised the other two alphabets, hiragana and katakana, as simplified extractions of the original Chinese symbols. (Hiragana is then used for native Japanese words while katakana is primarily used for non-Chinese foreign loan words, or for emphasis.)

Meanwhile, I’m also look forward to learning more about Japanese culture and politics. I have no idea if I would be able to get involved with trans politics in any meaningful fashion here in Japan or not, but I am certainly hoping at some point I can meet some trans women in the city and get to know the local situation better. I did come across this unfortunate story recently, according to which a Japanese trans man was not allowed to register himself as the father of the child his wife (a cis woman) recently had via insemination, which is clearly a case of discrimination given that sterile cis men are often allowed to register themselves as the father under similar circumstances.

As for my time in Japan so far, I feel that I’ve settled in nicely and I’ve enjoyed seeing a bit of the city so far. One thing I enjoy about my office is that I have a nice view from an the upper floor of my building. Here is a picture of the sun setting on the city that I took from the balcony. You can see Mount Fuji quite prominently as the sun is setting almost right behind it:

Sun setting behind Mount Fuji

On the other hand, it took me a while getting used to the earthquakes (being on the upper floor in a tall building means that our office will feel the quake more strongly than someone standing at ground level). About once a week we get a small tremor that is noticeable from our building, and it took me a while to adjust just to those. I remember that for the first couple of weeks while I was adjusting to all of this, I started to imagine the ground was shaking even when it wasn’t. Then in early December we had an actual small earthquake. It was still only a level 3, which isn’t all that strong really, but I admit it’s pretty disorientating to feel the entire building shaking around like that!

One fun thing out of this however would be the earthquake drill we had at my dorm, which was part of a larger safety education demonstration that was put on for us by the local fire department. The highlight of this demonstration was unquestionably the aqua green earthquake truck they brought in to teach us about earthquake safety. This was kinda like a trailer-truck where one side of the trailer slides up to reveal a facsimile of a small kitchen with a table in the middle. The trailer itself is set up so that it can be shaken around by a small engine, in order to simulate the vibrational forces of an earthquake (it can simulate a magnitude 2 up to magnitude 7). The idea is for participants in the demonstration (two or three people maybe) to practice ducking under the small table for safety during the simulated earthquake. In practice, it was pretty wild being on this truck while it shook around, and everyone laughed and had a lot of fun participating in the demonstration

Earthquake truck

Earthquake truck in action (demonstrating magnitude 6 quake).

So far I feel like I pretty lucky to be able to live and feel supported here in Japan. In December I had the opportunity to visit Kyoto for a physics conference, which was held at the Yukawa Institute at Kyoto University. While I was there I had a lot of delicious Japanese food, including my first time having the Fugu fish, which was prepared in a variety of ways: raw, bbqed, then boiled (I admit, the whole time I was eating the fugu I couldn’t get the voices of Charlie the Unicorn’s friends out of my head). I also got to visit Nijo Castle, which is where the shogun stayed during visits to Kyoto in the Edo period of Japanese history.

The artwork and metalwork inside the castle were really beautiful. It was also interesting to see the wall murals showing tigers and leopards, seeing as how these animals are not indigenous to Japan. In fact, it turns out that these paintings were based on hides that had been imported from abroad (hence the artists must be forgiven for a lack of accuracy in the faces of these animals!). Another highlight were the “Nightingale” floors, which are designed to squeak as someone walks along the corridors. These were intended as a security measure to make sure that no one could sneak through the castle undetected.

Pictures were not allowed in the interior of the castle, but here are a couple I took from the outside:

Nijo Castle in Kyoto

Then a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to view a performance of “Rose of Versailles” by one of the Takarazuka Revue troupes. Takarazuka is an all-female opera style; it’s definitely camp to the extreme and it kind of turns on its own internal logic. There was a lecture at my University about it before the showing and the arguments were made that on the one hand it is somewhat subverting of traditional gender roles but that in other ways it somewhat reinforces them.

We were way at the back of the theatre and it was a bit difficult for me to follow up until closer to the end of the performance (even without understanding Japanese, the outbreak of the French Revolution and the tragic love story are pretty easy to recognize!). Overall I was glad to take in the performance, but without speaking much Japanese it’s hard to make any kind of detailed analysis about the gender presentations.

Rose de Versailles poster

Takarazuka Revue – opening curtain

And a couple other pictures that I like… the backdrop for my desk in the office, including reminders of some of the people I miss back in Toronto:

And a picture of snow in Tokyo from back in December:

Tokyo snowing

In the latter case, society is attempting to teach a young woman to believe, “you are inherently to be devalued as a human being because of your genitalia, and your body has only sexual value. We have set your lot in life before you, and you are always to be victimized.”

Meanwhile, in the former case a young woman is also cruelly being taught, “You are inherently an aggressor because of your genitalia. Because of your body configuration itself, you can’t help yourself but subjugate someone or make them feel uncomfortable.”

One is teaching patriarchy from a victim-coercive perspective, the other teaches patriarchy from an oppressor-coercive perspective. They are two sides of the same coin, a misogynistic narrative that ultimately teaches us to reduce human beings to their body parts one way or the other.

See here for another compelling perspective from a different angle.

Update: See here for another great perspective that also focuses on the implicit sexualizing of children in the arguments against forcing this young woman out of the girl’s bathroom.

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Follow-up comment: I should have made acknowledgment in my comments above that there were very apparent racialized dynamics involved in how Hollywood and the media interacted with the nine-year old girl mentioned above at the Oscars.  It is difficult to imagine that such a horrific comment would ever be made about a nine-year old white girl, and I have no doubt that racism played a role, even if race was not explicitly mentioned in the Onion’s tweet itself.  (The tweet was almost certainly made in the context of or in response to the racialized interactions that others were already having with this young lady in the media).

Thanks to those who have pointed this oversight out to me (in the comments section below and elsewhere), as I should have included a comment to this effect from the beginning.

VAWA was allowed to expire during last year’s election cycle as a result of GOP foot dragging, although many expected that would end in the aftermath of the election (especially one in which Republicans performed particularly poorly with women voters).  However, the foot dragging continued, even after the Senate recently passed a fully inclusive version of VAWA.  For a moment, it looked like the GOP might attempt to pass a much more narrow version of the bill, which would have almost certainly lead to difficulties in passing the bill at all.  Luckily, women’s groups across the country stood their ground, the Senate stood with them, and finally today the GOP accepted reality: all women deserve support and the resources to combat pervasive misogynistic violence throughout the country.

See here to learn more about and sign a petition in support of an ongoing campaign by women anti-violence activists at the University of North Carolina.