A Story of Coincidence and Chance

Listen, I know marriage is important, but it is not the only issue, here, okay? Because, per the studies even HRC cites, as a trans woman I have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered. 1 in 12. To put that in perspective, as a member of the general population I have an approximately 1 in 100 chance of dying in a car crash. I am almost ten times likelier to die of murder than a car crash! How many people do you know who've been in traffic accidents? How many of you know someone who's lost someone to a car wreck? Because they're extraordinarily common. And they're accidents. Murder is not. A population ten times likelier to be victim to violent crime as the general population, with a more than fifty percent sexual assault rate and a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, is not an accident. It is a pattern. It is an epidemic. It is an all-out war. And marriage won't protect us from that. Neither will cocktail-party fundraisers.

— "the quick and the dead"

In amongst the various news reports that "the transsexuality gene has been found," there's this blurb:

The scientists collected DNA samples from 112 male-to-female transsexuals and found that they were more likely to have a longer version of the AR gene than another group of 258 non-transsexual men.

The longer AR gene was found in 55.4 percent of people in the transsexual group and 47.6 percent of the non-transsexual men, they wrote in an article published in Biological Psychiatry. (link)

So, um, hmm. Really strong correlation, there.

Yeah, as a trans person, I'm required to spend at least 40 hours a year doing my trans community service killing as much culture as I can. To be honest, I don't view it as an obligation. To tell you the truth, I enjoy it. Perhaps more than I should.

If it helps at all, I've picked up a lot of good tips from watching episodes of Dexter, and I only kill culture that really deserves to die.

I've been pondering, over the last few days, a post on Body Impolitic. I think the shape of my ponder has looked something like this:

• I read the post;
• I have a gut reaction that kinda looks like disappointment and annoyance;
• I force my brain to more fully engage and say, "Wait a minute. What are they actually saying?";
• I read and re-read the post, parsing it more and more denotatively; and
• I have a lengthy ponder about why the original reaction happened.

( Read like a text )

Here's an idea: four or five self-identified transfolk get together on a panel. They've all read the same half-dozen books with some rilly good gender content (they'll chat well beforehand, and agree on some titles). And they analyze the content for what it says and doesn't say about gender, binary gender, and/or transness. Obviously, one of the books on the list would be that year's Tiptree winner.

Would you be on such a thing? charliegrrrl? jiawen? Maybe we could get Aaron (doesn't he have a livejournal?) or nadyalec (whom I saw only once, I fear).

I'm actually serious about trying to plan for it, now. I think I'm starting to believe that the best panels at WisCon are composed of people who've talked enough to know what each other is going to say.

The other trans woman on "Transsexualism as Trope" panel posted her assessment of the panel on her journal. Which, of course, fires a lot of thoughts in my brain that I want to respond to. I want to be clear that I'm not say, "no, no, no, Charlie has it all wrong!" But I do think that the points of disagreement are interesting sites of exploration.

( And then it all got very long after that... )

Y'know, if you've had a really deep ponder, and you've considered the question of trans experience from all possible angles, and rationally weighed all the implications before you've arrived at your considered opinion, and yet you're not trans and you've never known an actual trans person with whom you can have deep, heartfelt discussions... well... maybe there are elements of the experience you've overlooked. Just sayin'.