WisCon: No Elves or Dwarves for Me

I didn't attend the Elves and Dwarves panel, but everything I've heard about it is that this is this year's big problem panel needing discussion throughout the blogosphere, and that next year's WisCon will have a big session in response to it.

Personally, I think it's a Good Thing when this attention happens.

WisCon: Just Loving Your Body and Seeing the World Through Trans-Colored Glasses

Recently, I made passing reference to a comment that got me thinking about the problematic nature of plastic surgery and how that conversation is a bit weird for someone like me who has had a fair amount of work under the hood.

I feel like I've had a few similar moments where I'm hearing conversations and I'm like, "hmm... wait. This sounds a bit different to my trans ears". One was in the "Fat is not the Enemy" panel today. There was good discussion about the importance of learning to love our fat bodies. porcinea told some really good anecdotes about her own headspace realignment from one where fat shame was normal to where she felt genuine fat joy.

And the conversation seemed to generalize a bit to acknowledging that there's often a lot social pressure for women to hate their bodies and that learning to love the bodies we have is such an important feminist action. But obviously I can't hear that without thinking about the many, many conversations I've had where people seemed to be telling me that my trans identity seemed to be an example where I couldn't Learn to Love the Body I Had with a dollop of You're Too Invested In The Social Construction of Gender. (That latter argument goes, "if our society wasn't so uptight about the social role of women and the social role of men, then trans people wouldn't feel any need to change their bodies because they could do the stuff they want to do regardless of what their body looked like." This often reminds me of Ayn Rand logic.)

Even when I do have these "Now, just hold on" moments, I find myself wondering when it's fruitful to just blog about them or if it's a good idea to bring them up in the panel. Despite having these "Now just hold on" moments, I think WisCon "gets" trans issues. I think that the majority of people who attend WisCon, even if they're not fluent with trans issues, get the whole "questioning gender" concept. And, as this year's Elves and Dwarfs panel reminds us yet again, it's not true that the majority of people who attend WisCon get issues like racism. I mean, they get it at the level of "racism is bad, don't be racist." But. I hope you know what I mean.

Anyway, I don't feel as compelled to take space in non-trans panels to talk about a trans spin on the panel topic when it's clear that we need so much more space for dealing with race issues (there are probably other issues that need space at WisCon, but it's so clear that race needs so much more discussion and treatment). I want to be clear that I still think that WisCon is the best con evah (partially because there are so many people who recognize the deficiencies and jump up to do the work to improve them), but it'd be wrong to gloss over these unhappy-making elements of the con.

WisCon: People Full of Awesome

So, it was like 3:00 in the morning, and lcohen and boxofdelights were talking about the "Male Feminists: You Don't Get a Cookie" panel*, and boxofdelights recounted an excellent response to a male ally who sounded as if he was in a tizzy because "all" he could do was listen to his (female) partner talk about bad stuff going on in her life and his natural inclination to become a white knight just wasn't sated by that. Anyway, this is me hoping that boxofdelights will blog about her response, 'cause I really liked it.

* I had meant to go to this panel, but I napped a bit longer than I had intended.

WisCon: Dissecting Privilege

I've just seen a panel on privilege. Here's the blurb:

Few words are more likely to provoke a rapid, vehement response than 'privilege,' whether it's agreement with, an accusation, or a fervent denial. What made this 9-letter word a 4-letter word? From its beginnings as 'private law' to the current bugaboo, panelists will discuss what privilege does and doesn't mean, determine how we can get past fighting about the word itself, explore the situations and structures that lie behind it and reflect on the implications for societal change.

It was a good panel; I think the conversation was pretty good, and highlighted a number of really interesting elements of the topic. It wasn't one of those "lightening bolt" panels, where you walk out and go "wow. just wow." But it was a good panel. The panelists understood the topic, were able to talk about it effectively, and were open to hearing what each other had to say.

After the panel, I found myself pondering a particular set of conversations toward the end of the panel. Some audience conversation had devolved into angry complaining about imperialist activities in places like Afghanistan. "We need to really be aware of the patronizing way we go in to 'help' places like Afghanistan, but what that seems to mean is invading and imposing our cultural values on them." Someone else joined this line of complaint. "We need to talk to the communities in question to find out what they want in the way of help."

This is true stuff. I'm not refuting it. But I did have a memory flash to sitting in the town hall in Mol Sen Nikola on the northern coast of Haiti. We'd arrived with the delegation and were listening to input from the people in the town about issues. We'd set it up that we were going to listen to their concerns and take those concerns to the government officials that we'd meet in Pòtoprenz. And I remember the moment that someone said, "y'know, we get a lot of groups come in here. They rent their SUVs and they drive around from town to town and hold meetings like this and write their reports. And then we never see them again. So, you're the latest group. Are we ever going to see you guys again after this?" Somebody else followed up and said, "It's all well and good that you're here taking notes and all. But what are you going to do?"

For me, that was a very potent moment. Me, I thought I'd been doing a really good thing. I was visiting. Learning about the issues directly from the people. I was going to go back to Toronto and I was going to convey what I saw to other people. I thought I was doing a Good Thing. But I felt really shamed by how little I feared that would mean to the person saying, "yeah, but what are you going to do?"

And all that came to mind as I was listening to this particular point of discussion in the Privilege panel. And it shook me out of the happy feelings of liberal intelligentsia. And I thought: these people aren't talking about lived experience. They're talking about something that they read on a blog or in an interesting article, and they got really riled up about it. And that's not wrong, per se. But it did give me pause.

Earlier in the panel, there was another comment that similarly gave me pause. One woman commented that she felt that she was better for having listened to non-American news on the radio. "I have a better idea of things like living off a dollar a day," she said.

Me, I thought, I read a lot about Haiti, and I learned about poverty and about what it means to live on a dollar a day. And then I went to Haiti, and discovered that what I thought I knew was nothing compared to the actual seeing of it.

What am I saying? I'm not saying, "Look, I've been to Haiti and I get more Liberal points." I'm not saying that any speaker was wrong or deluding themselves. But I am saying that for much of the panel, I was seduced by the feeling that we were all self-actualizing about privilege. That it was easy and straight-forward to just talk it through and we'd become more aware. I'm still trying to fully put my head around the whole of the reaction that I was having, but at the moment I had those flashes to Haiti I stopped believing that we really got it.

I'm not entirely sure that I'm making any sense.