So, jiawen told me that I should read your journal, and I agree. :)
In response to ickies:
#1-Joking is a pretty standard response to discomfort. It's a way of trivializing the issues at hand, making oneself seem superior. I wasn't there, didn't hear the jokes, but it sounds like was a large degree of discomfort on the panel about holding cisgender fiction writers accountable to trans people and our concerns. (big surprise there--even a lot of transfolk balk at that)
#2-I think that the 'individual choices' vs 'societal choices' is pretty crucial to this question, but I analyze it slightly differently. I think it's better to view the body of fiction that we have now as a product of transphobia--in that writers either wholly omit transpeople, represent us in ways that have nothing to do with the experiences of contemporary &/or historical transfolk, or represent us & transness in general as evil. In that sense, it isn't the individual inclusion or exclusion that's the problem--the problem is the underlying mindset in which transpeople's real experiences aren't fully real enough (or known enough) to merit inclusion, or the opinions of transfolk about a portrayal aren't important enough to poll before writing, etc. One might express it slightly differently, too-that these folk who say "well, you write it" are really saying "including transfolk would be a nice favor for tansfolks" rather than understanding that cis writers and publishers are participating in a discourse which makes transpeople and their experiences less real and significant than those of cispeople, and that they are furthering that idea, the idea that we aren't worth imagining, by not imagining us or encouraging others to.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-29 11:18 pm (UTC)In response to ickies:
#1-Joking is a pretty standard response to discomfort. It's a way of trivializing the issues at hand, making oneself seem superior. I wasn't there, didn't hear the jokes, but it sounds like was a large degree of discomfort on the panel about holding cisgender fiction writers accountable to trans people and our concerns. (big surprise there--even a lot of transfolk balk at that)
#2-I think that the 'individual choices' vs 'societal choices' is pretty crucial to this question, but I analyze it slightly differently. I think it's better to view the body of fiction that we have now as a product of transphobia--in that writers either wholly omit transpeople, represent us in ways that have nothing to do with the experiences of contemporary &/or historical transfolk, or represent us & transness in general as evil. In that sense, it isn't the individual inclusion or exclusion that's the problem--the problem is the underlying mindset in which transpeople's real experiences aren't fully real enough (or known enough) to merit inclusion, or the opinions of transfolk about a portrayal aren't important enough to poll before writing, etc. One might express it slightly differently, too-that these folk who say "well, you write it" are really saying "including transfolk would be a nice favor for tansfolks" rather than understanding that cis writers and publishers are participating in a discourse which makes transpeople and their experiences less real and significant than those of cispeople, and that they are furthering that idea, the idea that we aren't worth imagining, by not imagining us or encouraging others to.