I completely missed that I didn't unscreen this--I'm so sorry! And I'm sorry for only getting back to you now.
I hear how you're using the idea of mitigation here. I think in the nexus of sexual orientation and gender identity, the slippage between these categories in the present moment makes the forms of oppression here more than mitigation--the categories are intertwined. You can theoretically separate them, but that is not how they are generally treated and regarded in practice in western culture.
On some level, I kind of expect them to have a better understanding of what trans people experience, but I've lost count of how many gay men (no matter how feminine) basically complain that trans women exist because they don't want to be confused with anyone who wants trans-related surgeries
Their reactions are insulting, and for the ones who do have access to institutional power, dangerous. Still our identities DO impinge on each other--as gay men could take insult with trans women who are angry at being viewed as gay men, and read homophobia in that response, and the way their identities have been discounted by people with power over them adds to the defensiveness of the response. We stand on each other's feet in the borderlands while sharing stand in's for parental figures who are looking for some way to discount our identities to shore up their senses of self, with effects from frustrating to fatal.
or how many butch lesbians who have said to me, "You think you have it bad? I get kicked out of bathrooms all the time!" and it's like, er, yeah...
I have about 3 very different ways (there are undoubtedly more I'm not imagining) I could read the frustration you're conveying with an "er, yeah" reaction to what those butch lesbians said, and I don't know which it is, but I want to get what you're saying, so would you mind explaining in which way you're frustrated with the response?
I do think one of the problems with the conversation is that it tends to focus on cisgender and transgender when the conversations themselves are about transsexual people who are on hormones and seek surgery.
I can see that. Then there are pain in the asses like me who don't make a distinction between sex and gender to add to the fun of trying to communicate on this.
Another problem with the conversations is that they focus on cisgender and transgender and completely ignore genderqueer and other gender identifications which may overlap with either or both, or with neither. I know some GP people identify as trans and some do not. Some say they have access to cisgender privilege and some do not, and I think the variety of experiences tends to get ignored.
Yes. And many genderqueer identities DO impinge on the essentialist understandings of self many trans and cis folk share, hence the discounting is often deliberate and needfully defensive. Not to make constructivist thinking synonymous with identifying as genderqueer. GP? (did you mean GQ?)
And, like you said, the ways that perceptions of feminine gay men (for example) affects their access to not just cisgender privilege but male privilege. And I think that complication and mitigation needs to be discussed as well as how cisgender, cissexual, heterosexual, and male privilege interact (and thus how transphobia, transsexualphobia, homophobia, and misogyny interact).
Absolutely. Because we're dealing with relational categories. And the ways in which concepts of race are gendered and sexualized mean it's necessary to do more thinking about how that axis works here, too.
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Date: 2009-07-21 06:37 pm (UTC)I hear how you're using the idea of mitigation here. I think in the nexus of sexual orientation and gender identity, the slippage between these categories in the present moment makes the forms of oppression here more than mitigation--the categories are intertwined. You can theoretically separate them, but that is not how they are generally treated and regarded in practice in western culture.
On some level, I kind of expect them to have a better understanding of what trans people experience, but I've lost count of how many gay men (no matter how feminine) basically complain that trans women exist because they don't want to be confused with anyone who wants trans-related surgeries
Their reactions are insulting, and for the ones who do have access to institutional power, dangerous. Still our identities DO impinge on each other--as gay men could take insult with trans women who are angry at being viewed as gay men, and read homophobia in that response, and the way their identities have been discounted by people with power over them adds to the defensiveness of the response. We stand on each other's feet in the borderlands while sharing stand in's for parental figures who are looking for some way to discount our identities to shore up their senses of self, with effects from frustrating to fatal.
or how many butch lesbians who have said to me, "You think you have it bad? I get kicked out of bathrooms all the time!" and it's like, er, yeah...
I have about 3 very different ways (there are undoubtedly more I'm not imagining) I could read the frustration you're conveying with an "er, yeah" reaction to what those butch lesbians said, and I don't know which it is, but I want to get what you're saying, so would you mind explaining in which way you're frustrated with the response?
I do think one of the problems with the conversation is that it tends to focus on cisgender and transgender when the conversations themselves are about transsexual people who are on hormones and seek surgery.
I can see that. Then there are pain in the asses like me who don't make a distinction between sex and gender to add to the fun of trying to communicate on this.
Another problem with the conversations is that they focus on cisgender and transgender and completely ignore genderqueer and other gender identifications which may overlap with either or both, or with neither. I know some GP people identify as trans and some do not. Some say they have access to cisgender privilege and some do not, and I think the variety of experiences tends to get ignored.
Yes. And many genderqueer identities DO impinge on the essentialist understandings of self many trans and cis folk share, hence the discounting is often deliberate and needfully defensive. Not to make constructivist thinking synonymous with identifying as genderqueer. GP? (did you mean GQ?)
And, like you said, the ways that perceptions of feminine gay men (for example) affects their access to not just cisgender privilege but male privilege. And I think that complication and mitigation needs to be discussed as well as how cisgender, cissexual, heterosexual, and male privilege interact (and thus how transphobia, transsexualphobia, homophobia, and misogyny interact).
Absolutely. Because we're dealing with relational categories. And the ways in which concepts of race are gendered and sexualized mean it's necessary to do more thinking about how that axis works here, too.