my impression was that the conversation on PHB was an intra-queer discussion, and therefore a perfectly appropriate space for gay men to voice their concerns as well.
I thought your post was more general in scope than the current CisFAIL at PHB. Possibly I was wrong.
Not all trans-people are "queer". When I hear het/les/gay/bi people use "queer" as a blanket term in ways which erase trans/intersex/third sex people then it sounds to me exactly like when white people start with the "we're all just human beings" erasure of difference in defence of one group's privilege. I'm sure you don't intend to do that and I'm sure your views are more complex than is encompassed in an lj post but the model you appear to be proposing still erases more than one group of disprivileged people and their concerns.
I'm a little confused on who your Us and Them are here.
Good. ;-)
It's one of the frustrations I have with the use of the term heterosexual privilege, because heterosexual privilege for men and women is very, very different
Which is why terms such as cisgendered privilege and cissexual privilege are important because a discussion of sexuality doesn't include all the intersecting aspects (and excludes asexual people).
it's among my concerns with a blanket term like cisgender, which reduces a realm of experiences of gender into one term--in the ways I have most seen the term be used.
No, your "amorphous blob" model forces the term to become a "stand alone" term and therefore denies both its etymological origins as part of a set of terms and its normative usage by the disprivileged people who use it to refer to themselves. Your privileged position in this discussion makes your attempt to redefine Other people's self-descriptions on your terms problematic.
It's my experience that disprivileged groups tend to use such terms in subtler ways because they/we are more aware of the subtleties of various situations, which is precisely why privileged people shouldn't be allowed to define terms for disprivileged people.
I think gender identity is problematic for more people than not in a variety of ways, and a term like cisgender helps pave that over instead of opening it out.
And that sentence translates in my head as a direct equivalent to: "I'm not whiiiiiite! I'm a human beeeeeeing!" Or, of you prefer: "I'm not whiiiiiite! I'm Iiiiiiriiiiiish!"
Re: I wasn't going to say this but I changed my mind....
I thought your post was more general in scope than the current CisFAIL at PHB. Possibly I was wrong.
Not all trans-people are "queer". When I hear het/les/gay/bi people use "queer" as a blanket term in ways which erase trans/intersex/third sex people then it sounds to me exactly like when white people start with the "we're all just human beings" erasure of difference in defence of one group's privilege. I'm sure you don't intend to do that and I'm sure your views are more complex than is encompassed in an lj post but the model you appear to be proposing still erases more than one group of disprivileged people and their concerns.
I'm a little confused on who your Us and Them are here.
Good. ;-)
It's one of the frustrations I have with the use of the term heterosexual privilege, because heterosexual privilege for men and women is very, very different
Which is why terms such as cisgendered privilege and cissexual privilege are important because a discussion of sexuality doesn't include all the intersecting aspects (and excludes asexual people).
it's among my concerns with a blanket term like cisgender, which reduces a realm of experiences of gender into one term--in the ways I have most seen the term be used.
No, your "amorphous blob" model forces the term to become a "stand alone" term and therefore denies both its etymological origins as part of a set of terms and its normative usage by the disprivileged people who use it to refer to themselves. Your privileged position in this discussion makes your attempt to redefine Other people's self-descriptions on your terms problematic.
It's my experience that disprivileged groups tend to use such terms in subtler ways because they/we are more aware of the subtleties of various situations, which is precisely why privileged people shouldn't be allowed to define terms for disprivileged people.
I think gender identity is problematic for more people than not in a variety of ways, and a term like cisgender helps pave that over instead of opening it out.
And that sentence translates in my head as a direct equivalent to: "I'm not whiiiiiite! I'm a human beeeeeeing!" Or, of you prefer: "I'm not whiiiiiite! I'm Iiiiiiriiiiiish!"