Thought for the Day

[bcholmes]

Never having passed as female as I’d grown older I’d finally given up trying. Besides, it seemed somehow counter-revolutionary, as the new transgender politics is increasingly built around exactly the kind prominent social visibility and defiant non-passing that my doctors at the Cleveland Clinic assured me would signal the failure of my gender transition surgery.

In fact, my political identity for 30 years has been built on the foundation of my being visibly transgender, from the day I donned a Transsexual Menace NYC t-shirt and flew to the Brandon Teena murder trial in Falls City, Nebraska.

[...]

With adolescents increasingly taking androgen blockers with the support of a generation of more protective, nurturing parents, public transsexuality is fading out. And I don’t mean only that in a generation or two we may become invisible in the public space. I mean rather that in 10 years, the entire experience we understand today as constituting transgender—along with the political advocacy, support groups, literature, theory and books that have come to define it since transgender burst from its closet in the early 1990s to become part of the LGB-and-now-T movement — all that may be vanishing right in front of us. In 50 years it might be as if we never existed. Our memories, our accomplishments, our political movement, will all seem to only be historic. Feeling transgender will not so much become more acceptable, as gayness is now doing, but logically impossible.

In other words, I may be a gender dinosaur.

– Riki Wilchins, “Transgender Dinosaurs and the Rise of the Genderqueers” The Advocate

I think Wilchins is raising some interesting points, but I think that her conception of ‘we’ is a bit narrow: she’s talking about an American (and perhaps as broad as North American and European) middle- and upper-class.

Mirrored from Under the Beret.

Comments

[tim]

A lot of trans people have been criticizing Wilchins's article, particular the way she objectifies and dehumanizes younger transitioners.

These articles are a start: http://www.prettyqueer.com/2012/12/07/you-are-who-i-am/ and http://leftytgirl.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/fetishizing-visibility-when-trans-activism-values-being-seen-over-being-liberated/ and there are others.

Suffice it to say, she doesn't speak for me and she doesn't speak for a lot of other trans people. I'm not "not trans" just because most people assume I'm cis. That's letting cis people decide who I am.

[rosefox]

That's letting cis people decide who I am.

I think that's the heart of it. She's conflating "feeling transgender" with being identified/labeled by [cis] others as transgender.

[bcholmes]

Hm. I'm trying to construct my response carefully, because I don't want to give the impression that my support of hir essay is greater than it is. But I nonetheless feel that some of the pushback in those responses reads, to my eyes, off the mark, and I'd be really interested in talking about that if you have the time and inclination.

I think that one of the things that I call to mind on reading Wilchins' article is this: there was a panel I attended at WisCon in (I think) 2000 on LGBT representation in sf/f. On this panel, one of the panelists made the comment that one of the challenges of writing about LGBT people in a future setting is that we generally want to imagine that a future society will have resolved many of the things that define the LGBT struggle. But, the panelist said, if you're not writing about the struggle, can you really be said to be writing about us?

Now, there's a sense in which that question is obviously essentialist and flawed, but I do think that it's asking something meaningful. It is clearly possible to be trans in a world in which there is no struggle, but I think it will be hard to see myself in such a world.

(On a related note, I've made the argument at WisCon that sf stories that have fantastic representations of gender aren't necessarily the same as representing trans-ness. I think it's important that Varley's gender-swapping characters don't have to really come out or suffer rejection. I think Tip from the Marvelous Land of Oz or Le Guin's Gethenians aren't really trans.)

Anyway, I raise this line of discussion because it informs the filter through which I see Wilchins' article. To me, the core of what zie's saying is "I've just suddenly come to realize that I'm seeing the beginning of a trans experience that exists without the kind of struggle that I've always considered to be a defining element of the trans experience; I can suddenly see that my kind of activism might soon be a relic of a bygone era."

Now, for my part, I think that's an interesting thing to write about. Speaking for myself, I think it's a sign of real progress in a movement when the next generation can't relate to the types of battles the previous generation engaged in -- that says to me that the issue is evolving and that's a good thing. But even still, the idea of an emerging trans experience that does not include the same degree of struggle gives me pause.

The "You are who I Am" piece broaches this aspect of the article, saying that "Riki tells us that the trans movement is changing beneath our feet – that we will not recognize it in 10 years time. Of course, for as long as the trans movement has existed, this has been the case." I don't disagree with those words, but I nonetheless feel like a) Riki's talking about something that feels like a bigger type of change, and b) it's still valid thing to write and reflect upon.

Now, I think that Wilchins is muddying hir own argument by using a very idiosyncratic definition of "transgender" in the piece -- aligning that term, specifically, with the current shape of trans politics. And I think that hir discussion of passing/appearance/etc in the article are also muddying her point. I think I understand why zie is talking about that, given that zie's been one of the activists that I feel have been most involved in raising awareness about aesthetic oppression in trans communities.

Having said that, I feel like the "Fetishizing Visibility" piece is putting words in Wilchins' mouth, and I'm not sure I'm able to easily grok your conclusion about Riki's article seeming to let cis people decide who you are. Are you willing to say more about that?

[tim]

With all due respect, leftytgirl is somebody I respect, and I don't think I can have a reasonable discussion that starts with "putting words in Wilchins' mouth" rather than "huh, she must have had some lived experience that I haven't had." Sorry.

[bcholmes]

Fair enough. I apologize for that.

[rosefox]

She's missing people like me who are visibly gender-transgressive without being visibly trans. The number of people who check "other" and are willing to put that on display is getting bigger every day.

Also, it's nice that a handful of (mostly white, mostly middle- and upper-class, mostly well-off) parents are being written up in magazines and newspapers and blogs (mostly read by the same demographic) for being more protective and nurturing, but a whole lot of homeless trans* kids are compelling evidence that such loving parenting is not yet the norm.

Also also, burst from the closet in the 1990s? Did the 70s and 80s just... not happen? I need to go watch Paris Is Burning again, and maybe some footage from Stonewall.

[bcholmes]

She's missing people like me who are visibly gender-transgressive without being visibly trans. The number of people who check "other" and are willing to put that on display is getting bigger every day.

Fair point.

Also, it's nice that a handful of (mostly white, mostly middle- and upper-class, mostly well-off) parents are being written up...

Yeah, I think that that's her article's greatest weakness.

Also also, burst from the closet in the 1990s? Did the 70s and 80s just... not happen?

Hm. I don't think that sie's saying that the 70s and 80s didn't exist. It does feel to me that the 90s were an important decade for visibility of trans issues. I perceive it as the decade in which, for example, books like Gender Outlaw were published and available in mainstream book stores.

Maybe I only feel that way because it was also the decade of my coming out. <shrug>