against victim-blaming and rape culture: #standwithlanden at unc

Earlier this week the Onion rather notoriously tweeted a reference to a nine-year old girl as the c-word.  While they did at least delete the tweet and apologize, I do think that cultural mindset of devaluing women’s bodies reflects on two of the big stories of the last couple of days, in which such devaluation translated into actual victim-blaming and dismissing rape charges against women.

Yesterday it was revealed that a unit of the Met (UK Metropolitan Police Service of the Greater London area) set up specifically to investigate rape and sexual assault cases had actively discouraged women from reporting rape.  They did so by haranguing women in the preliminary  stages of investigation, tending to disbelieve their stories and attempting to convince victims to retract their claims of rape and sexual assault.  Hence numerous rape allegations were dismissed under circumstances that an independent commission referred to as “clearly inappropriate.”  It turns out that a primary motivation for such dismissal of serious criminal claims was to improve that police unit’s statistics for investigations leading to prosecution in order to claim (quite superficially) greater success to the public.

In the most shocking case, the police unit dismissed a woman’s claim that she was raped by her husband who had made further threats of violence; that man eventually killed their two children with a knife as an act of aggression against her.  The police recorded the original rape as “consensual sex” and never even conducted an interview with the man in question.  (Source: London Evening Standard).

Stand With Landen

Yesterday I came across another story involving dismissal of rape allegations that has recently gotten a fair amount of attention (although not nearly as much as it should have).  This one struck a bit of an internal chord with me because it occurred on the campus of my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (I did undergrad there).

The backdrop for this shares disturbingly similar overtones with the previous story:

a look at hollywood from oklahoma: misogyny on display at the oscars and beyond

I didn’t watch the Oscars– because I don’t care– but reports making the rounds on the web seem to be largely pointing to Seth MacFarlane’s hosting as something of a dud, with the performance of the now infamous “We saw your boobs” song having set the tone for the evening.  This was particularly embarrassing as several of the movies he gleefully referenced in his schoolboy-inspired number actually featured the actress in question portraying a character who is raped.  (After watching a video of the performance, I’m left questioning in my mind whether MacFarlane actually comes out of such a movie chuckling to himself, “tee hee I saw her boobs!”?)

And while MacFarlane gets a chuckle out of them, the Oklahoma Senate is considering a move to push greater social control of women’s bodies by passing an opt-out for employers who oppose including women’s healthcare needs in company insurance plans mandated under Obamacare.  The measure, which would grant employers the option to not cover women’s access to contraceptives or birth control, was recently passed unanimously through a Senate committee and now heads for a vote in the full Senate.

The sexism inherent in these attempts to interfere in cis women’s (and some trans men’s) healthcare needs is highlighted by the utterly ridiculous comments from Dr. Dominic Pedulla, the Oklahoma City cardiologist who requested the measure in the first place:

Pedulla says he is morally against contraception and abortion. He said he had to give up his small group health plan because the only plans available in the state required coverage for contraception and sterilization. He and his family were on the plan and had to find more expensive insurance elsewhere.

“Every small group plan forces you to choose those options,” Pedulla said.

Women are worse off with contraception because it suppresses and disables who they are, Pedulla said.

“Part of their identity is the potential to be a mother,” Pedulla said. “They are being asked to suppress and radically contradict part of their own identity, and if that wasn’t bad enough, they are being asked to poison their bodies.”

Studies show that women using contraceptives consider pregnancy more unwanted than wanted, he said.

The idea that women have some inherent drive to birth children as their fundamental identity would be almost laughably stupid… if it weren’t the fact that it has actually resulted in a measure that may soon become law in Oklahoma.  In the real world of course this isn’t about a woman’s identity, it is about her ability to make her decisions about her own body and it is about her ability to control her own economic future.

The fact that Pedulla argues “women using contraceptives consider pregnancy more unwanted than wanted” (um, duh) as some claim that women have given up their ‘inherent identity’ does however make him something of an hilariously unintelligent spokesperson for the right-wing anti-woman movement.

Maybe we can get this guy to do the Oscars next year?

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As a follow-up comment, there is of course another key political backdrop to all of this, which is the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) whose reauthorization was stalled by the GOP during last year’s election cycle.  Sadly, even without the political backdrop, the GOP still seems incapable of unambiguously committing itself to standing against domestic abuse and other violence commonly experienced by vulnerable women throughout the U.S.  While the Senate has stepped up and passed an expanded version of the bill that includes protections for both trans women specifically as well as all undocumented women and women living on Native American reservations, the GOP-controlled House has put forward its own version of the bill that rips out those desperately-needed protections.  Obviously, we all need to pressure Congress to reauthorize VAWA, with a bill closely modeled on the Senate version.

guatemalan trans woman activist fernanda milan granted asylum in denmark

Earlier today, it was announced that trans rights activist Fernanda Milan has been granted asylum in Denmark.

Fernanda Milan

Readers may remember that Guatemalan born Fernanda fled her country years ago, for fear she was in danger in the wake of increasing intimidation from police and others opposed to her activism on behalf of trans people like herself.  She fled to Denmark, however her situation remained dire as she was denied trans medical care and later gang-raped by a group of men inside a Red Cross camp for asylum seekers.

However, in September of last year there was a global outpouring of support for her when her case for asylum in Denmark was initially rejected.  In part as a result of that wave of support, Fernanda’s deportation was temporarily halted, and today we have learned that she is the first trans person to be granted asylum in Denmark!

a trans feminist condemnation of rape comments directed at suzanne moore

I do realize this post might seem a tad ironic in light of the events of the last few weeks (aka Lobstergate)… but it isn’t. Not even a little.

Last Wednesday, Suzanne Moore published a piece in the Guardian on the education policies of the UK’s ruling Tory party, specifically focusing on a controversial series of reforms presently being pushed (quite aggressively) by UK education secretary Michael Gove. Those reforms consist in part of a new exam system as well as the development of so-called “free schools.”

I’m not so familiar with the details of the UK system, but in the US we have a perhaps similar move to charter schools that are more independent of the traditional public school system. These schools have yielded mixed results, at best. While not all charter schools are run for profit, this transition can be viewed as part of a larger (and very questionable) move towards privatization of the education system in the U.S. It’s also no coincidence that the state with the greatest number of charter schools is Louisiana, as rightwing ideologues used the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to push through new policies that would have been strongly opposed under ordinary circumstances.

In a blog piece at the Telegraph, British journalist Toby Young responded with a critique of Moore’s Guardian article. While I’m pretty certain that Young’s critique is wrong (see a deconstruction of his argument based on actual data here), that is not the primary focus of the present blog piece.

The primary point here is that Young’s colleague, climate change skeptic James Delingpole, wrote a tweet in support of Toby Young that alluded to Young having metaphorically raped Suzanne Moore. While Delingpole has since deleted his tweet, it was quoted by Moore herself:

trans woman representation in media: IKEA’s thai language anti-trans ad continues a tradition

A Thai trans rights group, Thai Transgender Alliance, has recently stated its objections in an open letter about a Thai-language advertisement from the Swedish furniture manufacturer IKEA.

The ad, seen below, features a thai trans woman who is talking with a man (a date or her boyfriend, by all appearances) in an IKEA store. When the woman notices an item on sale, she suddenly exclaims “Hooo… sale” in a deeper voice, intended to reveal her status as trans. The man responds by giving her a bizarre look, then at the end of the commercial he literally runs the other way while she is picking up furniture to buy (the fact that she picks up three presumably heavy boxes also seems to be an attempt to suggest, “she’s really a man!”). The title of the video, translated as “Forgot to Deceive,” implies that she is intended to represent a “disguised man,” falling squarely into the classic deceitful trans woman trope.

In their open letter, Thai Transgender Alliance stated that

The MTF transgender/transwomen character is openly mocked as being “deceitful” … The transgender content of the advertisement is negative and stereotypical in nature, perpetuating misunderstanding transgenderism as human sexuality for “deceitful and deviant lifestyle”.

This plays into the disclosure myth that has been used to victim-blame trans women who have been the targets of abuse and violence from cis men.

The ad was played on Bangkok’s sky train system for about two weeks at the beginning of the year.

However, this is not the first time trans-misogyny has appeared in an IKEA ad. The following was an ad that ran in France back in 2006. It shows a woman putting on make-up, apparently preparing for an evening out. As the woman heads out the door, she hits her crotch on a table, obviously causing her a great deal of pain.

free speech vs. actual content: a challenge to julie burchill

                                                                           and your speech is a thunderous noise
                                                                           and my ears are catching a dreadful static

                                                                           --norma jean, high noise, low output

Many years ago, I remember my father once told me a story about a child he knew (neighbor’s kid or something like that). He once heard this child use some swear word or other, and so he gave them a lecture that they should never say such things.

Some time later, when he was working out in the woods behind our house, he found an old board on which someone had scribbled out in crayon all the words that my father had told them never to say. When he asked why they had (obviously) written these words out on the board, the child replied, “Well you told me I wasn’t supposed to say them, so I had to write them down!”

It’s a pretty adorable thing for a kid to do… the key word here of course is “kid.”

This of course brings us to the topic at hand: the ongoing kerfuffle over Julie Burchill’s recent column in the UK Observer. The piece was Burchill’s attempt to defend her friend and fellow columnist Suzanne Moore who had been criticized as a result of a series of events. First Moore made an odd, underhanded reference to Brazilian trans women, followed by comments about trans women “lopping off” their genitalia when she was approached about the issue (in a reasonable, polite manner) on twitter.

It’s ironic that many of Moore’s defenders have stubbornly complained that trans women who reacted to her comments (regarding our “mutilated” bodies and such) are being “politically correct” and over-sensitive, considering that the opening paragraph of Moore’s original article that set this situation off was a complaint about the phrase “Calm down, dear,” spoken by the UK Prime Minister David Cameron to Labour MP Angela Eagle during a Parliamentary session.

Of course, Moore is absolutely correct in her response to Cameron’s words: his comment was clearly patronizing and misogynistic. It’s just bizarre that Moore’s defenders accept that “calm down, dear,” deserves strong public condemnation, but somehow they expect that her talk of mutilated trans bodies and such should pass without a forthright rebuke (to say nothing of Burchill’s later use of slurs “trannies” and “she males” and such).

That having been said, I want to say one thing very clearly: as a trans woman, I absolutely condemn the decision by the Observer to “de-publish” Julie Burchill’s article.

refusing the call: a trans woman rejects internecine war cry from anti-woman faux feminists

Over the past couple of days, we have seen a bit of an internet temper tantrum coming primarily from some in Britain, centering on some voices in the British commentariat, who are very upset about the fact that trans activists and allies have critiqued an unfortunate line in an article and rather blatantly transphobic comments on twitter by journalist Suzanne Moore (see for example my own previous comment about the issue here). Moore initially made an awkward, de-gendering reference to “Brazilian transsexuals” in her NewStatesman piece, followed by a blatantly transphobic tirade on twitter when gently approached about that odd line in the original article.

Let’s say something off the bat to put all of this in some context. The news media (as well as most every other media, in fact) has a long history of writing about trans people, and trans women in particular, in ways that are extremely sensationalistic, exploitative and ultimately damaging to our lives and livelihoods. These types of media tropes about trans women, habitually dehumanizing and de-gendering us through words, serve to stigmatize our bodies and our lives and therefore promote the discrimination, marginalization and violence that the vast majority of us have experienced quite commonly. I myself have experienced some measure of all of these, however trans women living at the intersections of racial oppression, poverty, and others tend to experience these even more dramatically than someone like myself with white privilege.

For examples of this type of media reporting in the U.S., consider a local TV report covering the murder of Coko Williams in a Detroit neighborhood back in April 2012. Coko had her throat slashed and was shot, yet the news story said little about the loss of human life, instead airing grievances of a neighborhood man who complained of street crime and finding trash on his lawn. When the loss of human life was alluded to towards the end of the interview, Coko’s name was never used and she was inappropriately referred to with male pronouns; further, another resident basically said she had the murder coming because she was trans. Finally, even when a queer website covered the murder, the picture included with the story featured a picture of trash from the first interviewee’s lawn rather than a picture of the woman who had been murdered.

Then there was the New York Times coverage of the passing of Lorena Escalera who died in a fire last May. The NYT story focused on details of her sex life and reported what amounted to rumors about surgery a neighbor believed she might have had. Of course, the NYT (or any reputable news source) would never report such sensationalized details after the passing of a cis woman (or probably anyone else, for that matter).

Meanwhile, as detailed by Trans Media Watch in its submission to the Leveson inquiry, elements of the British Press have shaped exploitative and damaging reporting about trans people almost to a twisted art form; this includes outing trans people regardless of any dangers they might face and publishing exploitative pieces about a trans child whose life and images were put on display in a sensationalized manner that invited public ridicule and abuse.

Then of course there are the endless array of plot lines of movies and shows such as CSI in which trans people, and trans women in particular, are presented as freaks or psychotic individuals, not to mention the sitcoms on which trans women are commonly presented as nothing more than a joke.

It is of course within this wider context of sensationalistic media coverage that most any comments about trans people in the press will be received. Therefore it is in this context that such comments must be viewed, including the line from Suzanne Moore’s original article:

“We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual.”

As myself and many of my fellow trans activists have pointed out over the last few days, this final phrase is odd and alienating. As I pointed out earlier, it represents body-policing, and it’s anti-feminist. Although she has objected strenuously to this characterization of her words, the comments that Moore made on twitter when approached about the issue clearly revealed a much deeper prejudice about trans women and trans women’s bodies.

seeing only the red you want to see: suzanne moore’s bullheaded trans-misogyny

Note: An earlier version of the title of this article included the word “blind.” Someone pointed out to me that this usage was ableist, so I have changed it. Apologies for my mistake. –Savannah

Earlier this week, British journalist Suzanne Moore wrote a piece in the New Statesman titled “Seeing Red: the Power of Female Anger.” In the overarching theme of the article, Moore has a strong point to make: that women’s anger can be a powerful force for justice against male social dominance and patriarchy’s control over women’s lives and women’s bodies. It critiques soft-bellied mainstream liberal forces, for example, for attempting to cozy up to patriarchy regarding rape allegations against Julian Assange (see, for example, Naomi Wolf’s comments on the issue on Democracy Now).

That having been said, there are other feminist writers who have written similar critiques, and written them better. Moore hints at her position of privileged ignorance when she speaks up for Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman without any mention of Caitlin’s unapologetic racism (given what is revealed below, I also question whether Moore has any business discussing women’s rights in the context of the Arab Spring– personally I would rather hear from an Arab woman who was actually, you know, there).

Things take a more blatant turn for the worse however when Moore makes the following comment:

“The cliché is that female anger is always turned inwards rather than outwards into despair. We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual.”

Note first of all that Moore does not refer to “a Brazilian trans woman” (or even “a Brazilian transsexual woman”), she refers to “a transsexual” in an odd way that hints of a suggested non-gendered individual. This might seem like a subtle point, however I can assure the reader that most trans women (who get this kind of crap all the time) will pick up on it immediately. When we see this kind of thing, we get that it hints at a deeper transphobic mentality. In the present case, this deeper mentality was confirmed rather swiftly after an ally questioned Moore about this on twitter; Moore responded with a pretty epic trans-misogynistic twitter rant (epic, although sadly familiar).

For example, when a cis woman ally questions her on transphobia, Moore responds:

sexual and gender diversity in physics

Note: This is an archival post of my recent article at Prettyqueer.

After graduating from the University of Texas in 2007, I entered one of the most complex periods of my life. Since childhood I had consistently felt more like a woman than a man, but growing up in a small town in rural North Carolina I had always been terrified to express this to anyone. By the time I entered college (still in North Carolina), I had some rough idea that maybe there was something I could do about the situation, but I told myself that obtaining my Ph.D. and getting a start on my career in physics should be my first priority.

However, deep inside what I really feared was that nobody would ever take me seriously as a trans woman in physics. I didn’t know any trans women in my own life— much less trans women successful in science— to whom I could look up as mentors. Not to mention that I had few reliable sources of information about my own situation in general terms; in fact, I wasn’t even familiar with phrases like “gender identity” or “trans woman” at the time I made that decision.

Luckily, by the time I received my Ph.D. in Texas I had done a lot to educate myself. I still wasn’t sure how transition would impact my career, but I came to a point where I couldn’t put off dealing with it any further. Hence I started coming out to friends and colleagues while working on the physical aspects of transition (e.g., hormone replacement therapy).

Somewhat to my own surprise, my experiences from this were mostly positive. Broadly speaking, I think physicists are a bit more open than we usually get credit for, and almost certainly the general societal progress that occurred on this issue in the ten years that I delayed my transition benefited my situation (although it wasn’t an easy decision).

However, not everything worked out quite so well. Discussing the issue with my family was more difficult. In February 2008, I was offered a one-year postdoctoral research position in Paris, which I accepted. Before I left for Paris, I journeyed home from my place in Texas to my parents’ house in North Carolina; real problems developed on this journey and during the short time I spent at home before departing for France.

fetishizing visibility: when trans activism values “being seen” over being liberated

Earlier this month, the Advocate published a piece from long-time trans activist Riki Wilchins titled “Transgender Dinosaurs and the Rise of the Genderqueers.” While Riki has a long history of trans activism, this piece has not been received very well by more than a few in the trans communities. Jake Pyne quickly put together a strong critique of Riki’s Advocate piece that appears at prettyqueer. I wrote part of my own response as a comment on Jake’s piece, but I decided after the fact to extrapolate my thoughts a bit and post them here.

In her recent piece, Riki Wilchins speaks of a first meeting with a young, beautiful trans girl of 13 years who will have the opportunity to obtain androgen blockers to delay the onset of puberty, which will give her a better opportunity to make decisions about her medical future when she is ready down the road. Riki comments that since her transition so far has been supported so well, she didn’t recognize this girl as the person she had intended to meet (she assumed that the young lady must have been cis).

It’s probably understandable that Riki might have expected to meet someone that she more immediately recognizes as trans, however from this point Riki proceeds to make a bizarre assertion: it’s not simply that she failed to recognize the young woman as transgender, it’s that the woman in question simply isn’t transgender at all. Indeed, she explicitly states this claim.

Further, Riki quickly tangles up this question she has created about the young trans woman’s identity with her own narrative as a lifelong trans activist. She states: