Link time! Sex, Lies, Transmisogyny, and the Heteronormativity of BDSM, pt. 1
An amazing post rebutting a "radical feminist" "analysis" of the supposed politics behind SM and transgenderism, and how they supposedly intersect. I excerpt my favorite bits, but the whole thing is excellent.
This is one of the linchpins of bigoted feminism in general - the basic premise that women can never be the oppressor. That because women are oppressed by men, that it is impossible for women to oppress anyone else, that they don’t have the power. Earlier, she complains that pro-trans people and pro-BDSM people criticize Feminist arguments against both groups as “saying that women lack agency.” Of course, the idea that women can’t oppress is saying that - it’s saying that women are too weak to do anything. If you can’t oppress a group with less social capital than your own, what can you do? To be honest, the idea that these cis vanilla women are not oppressing BDSM practitioners or trans women is ludicrous, and smacks of newspeak. They’re trying to redefine the language - the meanings of the words used - to say that what they do is not oppression, while at the same time practicing oppression. They may as well place a sign reading “Freedom is Slavery” and “We have always been at war with Camp Transia” over the entrance gate to MWMF, given how thoroughly they practice this redefinition.
....The problem with not allowing yourself to be defined as an oppressor is pretty simple: It excuses you from owning your shit. It’s like white people who claim to be “colorblind,” thus denying the reality of race relations and pretending they aren’t racist. It’s a luxury the privileged have - to ignore their own status as oppressors. The cis women who want trans-exclusive space have the luxury - with their cissexual privilege - of denying that there’s any oppression going on here, because it costs them absolutely nothing to do so. On the other hand, I can’t deny the oppression I experience, I can’t afford to. I can’t look at the MWMF trans-exclusive policy and how it’s echoed throughout lesbian and feminist culture, and say “Well, that has no effect on me” because it is aimed directly at me. I don’t have the luxury of believing cis women who not only say that they’re not transphobic, but deny transphobia even exists. Women who openly practice BDSM are in a similar position. They can be ostracized for their “patriarchal sex practices” and do not have the luxury of pretending that all of the lesbian community accepts them, or at least treats them fairly. Lesbians who don’t practice BDSM can believe that, because again it doesn’t cost them anything to deny their own agency and complicity in this oppression.
Next, Ms. Croson discusses “transgression.” One of the red herrings that comes up in discussions about trans people is that transphobic radical feminists will start attacking imaginary transgender political stances. One of those is the idea that trans people run around claiming to transgress gender, that we’re gender rebels out to smash the gender binary. They then criticize us for not actually doing this. It’s immaterial that we don’t run around claiming this, we’re judged for not doing so because, well, radical feminism would like to destroy the gender binary, and they see us as reinforcing it.
She talks about how it’s transgressive for women to choose our own sexuality, to choose sexual roles denied by patriarchal norms. And I do think that the willingness to accept yourself as anywhere on the queer spectrum is transgressive. Modern society hates gay men, hates lesbians, hates bisexuals, really truly for sure hates transgender and transsexual people. When someone who appears to be a man goes through all that effort to become a woman, society punishes us harshly - we lose friends, family, jobs. We sometimes get pushed to the point where we have to engage in survival sex work just to pay the bills and keep the hormones flowing. A trans person is more likely to be murdered than anyone else in America. This is because to society, we are transgressive. The fact that a trans man can grow a beard and be accepted as a man if his trans status isn’t known is just plain outside what many people are willing to accept as valid. But because most of us go from man to woman or woman to man, we’re accused of reinforcing the gender binary, of not transgressing the norms, etc. etc.
The other problem with this is that it conflates our desire to live our lives with political goals. Real lesbians do not declare themselves lesbian to transgress heteronormative society. Real lesbians declare themselves lesbians because we want to live our lives and not suppress who we are. This does affect our politics, but our politics do not drive this. People who practice BDSM do not practice BDSM as a political statement. They do this because that is the kind of sex they enjoy. We do not choose these things to transgress, but society punishes us for doing so because they are transgressions.
I am in lust with Lisa's brain.
Especially the points about transgression. I definitely think people have a tendency to look at people who transgress and assume the thrill of defiance is the whole reason why. And for some people I'm sure it is... but for a lot of people, getting a little thrill out of transgression is a meager positive compensation for living the lives we have to live to be ourselves.
30 comments:
Oh, yeah, definitely. When someone loudly asks "Is that a he or a she?" I don't think "Wow, I just transgressed and fucked his world over!" I think "Are there any witnesses here just in case he decides I have to die to prove he's straight?"
yeah, which I think is some of what I was saying about butches somewhere else, where the thrill for the femme would be being with this person who had a female body once you "unwrapped" her, where the butch would have much more important things to worry about.
Transgression is often sexy when it's not you doing it, I think I mean.
Or it can, I guess, be sexy to you too, but it's a lot more things than that, too.
Yeah, transgression can be sexy, which is why I crush really hard on drag kings, and I like seeing certain masculine mannerisms in women.
I also like really femme women, although that's not quite so transgressive (I mean, beyond teenagers saying "You're way too old to wear that. What are you, thirty?").
But we're still nowhere near political statements. :)
Where is everyone else? I find the lack of comments from anyone but you and me quite disheartening.
I guess my comment is just that this post is fucking fantastic.
My comment: excellent stuff!
I'm going to show this to my TS friend who is now a week away from the big operation, she'll definitely understand what it's about and appreciate it, I think we even had a conversation about these points one time.
(oh yeah, and she happens to be BDSM as well)
In some ways, it would be a lot easier if it were all some big political statement: that way you could feel good about being a "martyr for the cause". But I don't think a black guy being beaten up by cops (or anyone esle for that matter) because he's black, feels like a martyr for any cause. Likewise, a BDSMer or trans person who loses their job or family or whatever, doesn't feel like a martyr for any cause.
And now I have to write part 2, which will be more BDSM stuff.
Maybe I can refer to that article by Janice Raymond whining that lesbians spend too much time engaged in patriarchal sex instead of political lesbian sex. It's directly related to the article I'm criticizing, as it serves as the entire basis for the idea that lesbians shouldn't do some kinds of sex, because men do those.
Where is everyone else? I find the lack of comments from anyone but you and me quite disheartening.
Really cool post, that goes both for liza and trin, also.
Gah data bases exam (dies)
So yeah, that's why I'm not around.
Especially the points about transgression. I definitely think people have a tendency to look at people who transgress and assume the thrill of defiance is the whole reason why.
I think people have a tendency to "put themselves in another's shoes" rather than "putting themselves in another's mind." They don't so much ask themselves, "Why would s/he want to do that?" so much as "Why would I want to do that?"
That leaves them really confused when they're confronted with someone who has very different motivations from them. One example is with submissives - some people will ask themselves why they'd want to do that, and they'll come away with an utterly wrong answer because putting yourself in someone else's shoes isn't always enough; people do have non-superficial internal differences and can feel completely different to you in the same situation. Realising that I was a submissive was one of the things that crystallised in my mind that yes, people really are different inside in meaningful ways.
I think that some of the radfem confusion with transpeople is the same deal. They'll ask themselves, "Why on earth would you do that?" and come away with something like, "because I think society would be more comfortable with my profession/interests/manner as the other sex," or, "to transgress the gender binary," both of which are about as far away from the truth as you can get for most(?) transpeople.
I'm noticing that many of the radfems in question seem to be coming from a relatively privileged background, and I'd hazard a guess that they've generally not had any experiences in their life that made them realise that people are actually, really, truly different to them.
I think people have a tendency to "put themselves in another's shoes" rather than "putting themselves in another's mind."
Can I steal that for my own use?
I'm noticing that many of the radfems in question seem to be coming from a relatively privileged background, and I'd hazard a guess that they've generally not had any experiences in their life that made them realise that people are actually, really, truly different to them.
There's a white middle-class streak running through radical feminism that's wide enough to build a superhighway on. All of their discussions of women's oppression and what women can do are based on the idea that the worst oppression is men against women. They also sometimes seem to believe that different oppressions are separable - that a black lesbian has three separate oppressions - being black, being a woman, and being a lesbian - and if something happens, it's just because of one, not a combination of two or three.
Part 2 here.
"One example is with submissives - some people will ask themselves why they'd want to do that, and they'll come away with an utterly wrong answer because putting yourself in someone else's shoes isn't always enough; people do have non-superficial internal differences and can feel completely different to you in the same situation."
Yes, yes, yes. When I first realized I was dominant I really had trouble with the idea that I wanted a submissive partner, precisely because I had no earthly idea *why* someone would be submissive. Submitting is not something I like doing.
The best I could come up with to understand submission was thinking about what horrible situation would *force me to it*. Which of course led me to worry that no one would be happy submitting, despite this deep desire for someone who would.
It broke my brain until I realized, hey: I want my complement. I don't understand my complement fully, because s/he's NOT LIKE me. Once I realized that I could listen to people actually talking about what submission was about to them and the angst level went down overnight.
"When I first realized I was dominant I really had trouble with the idea that I wanted a submissive partner, precisely because I had no earthly idea *why* someone would be submissive."
Hah. I still sometimes have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that someone could get off on dominating me -- sort of a feeling that they're doing all the work, directing everything, creating all these intense sensations for me, and here I am doing nothing in return. :)
Can I steal that for my own use?
Of course. :)
Yes, yes, yes. When I first realized I was dominant I really had trouble with the idea that I wanted a submissive partner, precisely because I had no earthly idea *why* someone would be submissive. Submitting is not something I like doing.
My submissiveness was what really made the point to me. The basic idea of trans*ism - I'd say, that gender identity is distinct from sex - isn't that hard to grasp (at least, if you actually listen to trans people describing it) and easy if you're trans yourself. Even non-trans people have a gender identity.
Describing dominance/submissiveness always struck me as like describing colour, though. The idea that most people not just didn't get it because they'd never had a reason to see it before, but that they didn't get it because they didn't feel anything like it at all? That was a big revelation for me, since my background was pretty privileged and I never really grasped that "everyone is different" was quite as major as it really is.
Also... Lisa, I love your blog. It's all sorts of amazing. :)
"I still sometimes have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that someone could get off on dominating me -- sort of a feeling that they're doing all the work, directing everything, creating all these intense sensations for me, and here I am doing nothing in return. :)"
But the thing is*, we're putting you exactly where we want you. ;)
*unless you're telling us what to do, ***which is perfectly legitimate if consensual***, but I don't call that submitting
"Even non-trans people have a gender identity."
Y'know, I've been pondering this for a while, and, well: is "what the fuck is this? I guess you people saying I'm a girl/boy makes sense. If you say so." an identity, or a lack thereof?
Because I've known a lot of people for whom gender was one big mystery, so... what does it mean to not know? Is that its own identity?
Ok first of all, Trin, some of us have lives outside the interwebs :D Work has eaten all my time, plus has sent me to the wilds of the north, so unfortunately I was not able to check in lately. Which is too bad because Lisa's post(s) was(were) awesome, and I also am feeling strange desires for her gooey brainmeats -- purely in the intellectual sense of course!
Ok, secondly, Trinity said:
"Y'know, I've been pondering this for a while, and, well: is "what the fuck is this? I guess you people saying I'm a girl/boy makes sense. If you say so." an identity, or a lack thereof?"
I've heard/read a lot of discussion about this, and about what gender identity means to cisgendered people. IMO/IME it seems like it's just..varied. Sadly people don't come in like two or three flavors that we can easily explain. For some cisgendered people, their birth gender is a big part of who they are, and for some it isn't.
I don't know for sure, but just as a WAG, I bet that having a strong connection to your birth gender is part of a big grouping of other traits -- things in your upbringing and culture, chance encounteres when you're young, hormones in the womb, who knows.
I personally feel connected to being a woman but not as though it is a big part of who I am. I can easily imagine waking up male tomorrow, and not feeling a huge sense of loss. Other people I've talked to in the webs have the exact opposite -- they would feel as though they had lost a large part of who they were should they wake up the opposite gender the next day.
Which all seems to suggest that everyone is different, for what reasons we may never know.
PS WRT what Lisa said (maybe in the OP) about losing friends and family I just want to say my heart goes out to you. Am dealing with some unbelievably stupid family shit right now, and it's just stunning what people will do to people they supposedly care about. Sigh.
"I think people have a tendency to "put themselves in another's shoes" rather than "putting themselves in another's mind." "
YES am SO stealing that.
Yeah, same, ethyl... actually my personal feeling is that if I woke up tomorrow in a male body I'd go gaily fucking a lot because NO MORE STRAP FUMBLING OMG, and work out like mad because muscles would appear so much more easily and it would make me giddy and THEN maybe feel odd.
Except probably not more odd than I feel in *this* body, which is often too feminine for me anyway.
I guess I feel like neither fit, and don't have much trouble with pronouns because, well, I've gotta be something, and "ze" doesn't sound entirely human, so "she" it is. I guess.
So yeah. A lot of the stuff that suggests we each have identity A or identity B and that's that, I can see why people might not understand.
What I do have a problem with, though, is someone saying "Look, this is my identity! It's not just some passing whim, look, see, here's my story!" and people responding to that with "A and B *aren't* identities."
Which is what the anti-trans people want to say: that there's no such thing as gender identity at all, when they actually very clearly have one and surprise surprise, they have the one that means their gender will not be questioned, will not need proving, etc.
I think that gender identity for people is like water for fish. You probably don't notice it's even there until you're not in it anymore.
I also think it's impossible to separate into only two groups - those who are cisgender and 100% comfortable with their identity + birth sex, and those who are transgender and 100% want to change their sex to match their identity. There's a lot of shadings and combinations and absences that range from being both man and woman, to being neither, to feeling male but comfortable with a female body or feeling female but comfortable with a male body to other permutations that I don't really have words for.
When I started having submissive fantasies, I never really questioned why anyone would want to dominate, but I did wonder why I wanted to submit, except that the idea was so hot I didn't wonder as deeply as I might...but I'd already been through figuring out I was trans and what I had to do about that, and I'd already admitted that I could be attracted to women (although I identified as bi, rather than lesbian), so at that point it may simply have been easier to accept.
But I also hear a lot of stories where people are trying to figure out why this is what they want, feel guilty/ashamed, are made to feel guilty/ashamed, etc. And I'll admit that as much as I felt that I accepted this stuff for myself, I only told a few people, and I never really trusted anyone I was in a relationship with to tell them...so I did feel shame, even if I didn't try to censor my own fantasies.
ethylbenzene, I did lose all of my friends and pretty much all of my not-immediate family when I transitioned, but I was actually pretty well off. Some trans people get thrown out into the street when they come out, or worse - one friend of mine was forcibly institutionalized after her family discovered she'd started hormones, and she ended up undergoing ECT.
My point in mentioning it wasn't really to describe my own situation, but to point out that this isn't a walk in the park, it's not a superficial whim, it's not something people do because they have a hard time negotiating gender nonconformity, and the social and career costs of doing it are often very high.
Lisa -- sounds like we're actually agreeing -- except you're much better at articulating what you mean. Of course...
I think the fish-water idea holds a lot of, um....water... In that yeah, a lot of people never think about this because they don't have to. It never comes up.
But that sort of discounts the people, the cisgendered, privileged people, who HAVE thought about it at length, and who do/don't feel a very strong attatchment to the parts they were born with. I don't think you meant to discount anyone, but it could come across that way, and did a little bit to me... Except bear in mind, I'm freaking exhausted so maybe am not thinking clearly!....
Gods, though, family. Ugh. You grow up your whole life hearing "oh I'll love you no matter what, even if you break my vase or whatever" and that SO turns out not to be true. I hope you didn't take my statement as condescending, I was just trying to say, yeah, there's lots of asshats out there who'll claim to love you unconditionally but then turn out to be, well...asshats...
Not condescending at all!
Also,
But that sort of discounts the people, the cisgendered, privileged people, who HAVE thought about it at length, and who do/don't feel a very strong attatchment to the parts they were born with. I don't think you meant to discount anyone, but it could come across that way, and did a little bit to me... Except bear in mind, I'm freaking exhausted so maybe am not thinking clearly!....
I really tried to say the opposite:
I think that gender identity for people is like water for fish. You probably don't notice it's even there until you're not in it anymore.
I'm not trying to strictly say cisgender vs. transgender here, just that if people never really have reason to question their sex or gender, the whole thins is invisible to them.
I also think it's impossible to separate into only two groups - those who are cisgender and 100% comfortable with their identity + birth sex, and those who are transgender and 100% want to change their sex to match their identity. There's a lot of shadings and combinations and absences that range from being both man and woman, to being neither, to feeling male but comfortable with a female body or feeling female but comfortable with a male body to other permutations that I don't really have words for.
I'm not trying to explicitly identify everyone here as transgender or not cisgender, I'm trying to put some distance between my first statement about fish and water and the possible interpretation that cis people never think about gender.
Sorry about unclarity.
Anyway, yeah, family often puts conditions on that familial love.
"I think that gender identity for people is like water for fish. You probably don't notice it's even there until you're not in it anymore."
Yeah. As a kid I actually *fought* for "she". I think that's a lesson I learned early and often: there's something kinda funny about you, and *we don't know where to put you*, and we're going to tell you what to do so you can be more easily put."
I couldn't have my cake and eat it too: be "she" and look and act the way I looked and acted. I had to pick one, and I wanted both.
It was when I got older that I really started to feel *more* confused: what are men? what are women? I'd really like my body to be more like theirs. Am I enough like women? If I'm not, does that make me a "different sort" of woman, or what? What is all this?
Nowadays I'm not so sure that my fighting for "she" was really so much about being sure of gender as it was knowing I was deemed a freak and knowing I was being told to change, and not liking the idea that I had to to be respected. I don't know, though.
I just remember wincing at "sonny," really. :)
Lisa -- yeah, I suspected we were in agreement, so no worries. All clear now at least.
It's just that a lot of times us "priveleged" folks get told we couldn't possibly ever even think about certain things, which can be exclusionary, especially since some of us really do make an effort to think about stuff that other people who are in our same sitaution maybe don't.
Ok, work has officially eaten my brain, and I can't even tell if that made sense. Gr.
It all comes down to, why do people have to be so .... human?
It is exclusionary, but a lot of the time it's also unfortunately true - not always, thankfully.
I mean, I see a lot of writing by people who have thought about gender, but who came to conclusions that are frankly alien to my life and experiences. I won't hesitate to say that they're probably not even thinking about gender, just their own prejudices.
On the other hand, I can't deny that people do think about this stuff without trying to make people like me about them.
Trinity,
I wonder how much gender uncertainty (I don't mean transsexual stuff) comes from gender policing.
Lisa:
I'm really not sure.
"I mean, I see a lot of writing by people who have thought about gender, but who came to conclusions that are frankly alien to my life and experiences."
Yeah, but just 'cause you don't get where they're coming from doesn't make them ~wrong,~ or somehow ~invalid.~
" I won't hesitate to say that they're probably not even thinking about gender, just their own prejudices."
But you don't ~know~ that. I try to avoid that whole mindreading thing where I try to guess what someone's "really" thinking about or trying to say, since I get really bent out of shape when someone does that to me.
I'm sorry to still be digressing and pulling the discussion down this odd side-street, and I still don't disagree with anything said in the OP, but I just get a little wary when not only am I "privleged," but there's no way I could possibly understand what anyone else is going through. Sentiments like that make me feel like people are accusing me of lacking empathy, not to mention intelligence.
EB: I don't think you're understanding Lisa here, really.
Leave aside the word "privileged" for a second. Just forget about that word and people calling you that.
I think what Lisa is saying here is that the people who do theory about gender are often cissexual. Which means that in many cases, even if they do a lot of thinking about gender, they are likely not to have the experiences of:
1) the feeling of one's body and/or society's reaction to it not matching one's sense of self
2) living as a gender-nonconforming person; being a target of violence, mockery, degradation based on gender variance (this they might have, depending on who they are)
3) the physical experiences that go along with transitioning
4) the difficulties one faces outside of this -- legal hassles, lack of protections under the law of various kinds, etc.
*That's* what Lisa is saying, as far as I can tell. Not that someone who is cissexual can't have insights or do good theory, but rather that someone whose main (or perhaps only) investment in this stuff is intellectual may do violence to people's real lives on the ground just because she hasn't lived them.
To take an example that's maybe more familiar: I don't mind in any way vanilla people talking about, thinking about, or writing about BDSM. I don't think they're dumb. But I know right away who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't. And even the people who do are not directly dealing with things like the stigma... those are things they can talk about, intelligently even, but can't know because it's not aimed at them.
*That's* what Lisa is saying, as far as I can tell. Not that someone who is cissexual can't have insights or do good theory, but rather that someone whose main (or perhaps only) investment in this stuff is intellectual may do violence to people's real lives on the ground just because she hasn't lived them.
This is exactly what I'm saying. I am not at all saying that no one who is cissexual can have insights about gender - Trinity's had some good ones of her own, and others as well.
I am talking about how people like Janice Raymond and Germaine Greer write books describing transsexualism in terms derived almost entirely from their theorizing or studying material that those who agree with them have written, and use that to describe transsexualism and gender in terms that are not only alien and alienating to my experiences, but generally alien and alienating to most trans people's experiences.
It's not a matter of not getting where they're coming from. I am fully aware of where they're coming from, and what they're saying is both wrong and invalid about trans experiences in general. Since they would apply their theory to trans experiences in general as well as my life in specific, I feel completely within the realm of the reasonable to call them out on being wrong and invalid.
I'm not talking about every cissexual person who writes or theorizes about gender, either.
But you don't ~know~ that. I try to avoid that whole mindreading thing where I try to guess what someone's "really" thinking about or trying to say, since I get really bent out of shape when someone does that to me.
Oh, but I do know that. When I see Janice Raymond saying that transsexualism must be morally mandated out of existence, or I see Germaine Greer raging on about how trans women simply want to appropriate the trappings of womanhood without any of the drawbacks. When I see Catherine Crouch insisting that transsexualism simply cannot exist, and when I see Mary Daly comparing trans people to Frankenstein's Monster, I do not see people who have come to any kind of valid or correct interpretation of gender, since it denies my experiences and firmly places me under a definition of "subhuman."
When you read through page after page after page of hatred directed at you personally for existing, dressed up in fake theory and bald assertions that completely ignore any of the research done on the topic, you can't help but get the idea that they're not thinking about gender, but their own prejudices. Their ideas are used to marginalize, harm, unperson, and ungender trans people.
Their ideas about gender are not on an equal footing with mine or other trans people's. In the first place, they explicitly deny what we say about ourselves in favor of their own "theories." In the second place, their in a position of privilege to assert their narratives about trans people in actual publications that can be used as textbooks or even general feminist texts, where trans people are usually relegated to publishing romanticized autobiographies.
It's not about mind reading, it's about judging them by their deeds.
Also, I didn't say anywhere that there's no way you can possibly understand what anyone else is going through. There's a difference between those who study gender and take the reality of human gender into account, and those who study gender and deny anything about human gender that does not fit their theory.
I am sorry that you felt like I was including you in the latter group, I wasn't. I tried to be clear that I wasn't speaking universally, but making a point about the kind of things that do get published about trans people, and the kind of people who say those things.
Seriously, you have empathy and intelligence, and you're willing to account for the existence and validity of people like me; therefor, when I mention people who don't do these things, I'm not talking about you or people like you.
"EB: I don't think you're understanding Lisa here, really. "
Agreed! I think there was some conflation somewhere along the lines between "this particular line of thinking" or "these particular theorists" being Teh Bad, and "people in general."
Probably due to the nature of web communication in general, and my lately poor reading comprehension in particular. Work has been steadily eating away large chunks of my brain that I was using for other stuff :P
Anyway, my point was just that it's frustrating to get lumped into the group of Bad Theorists just because you happen to share a common trait with them.
"I am sorry that you felt like I was including you in the latter group, I wasn't. I tried to be clear that I wasn't speaking universally, but making a point about the kind of things that do get published about trans people, and the kind of people who say those things.
Seriously, you have empathy and intelligence, and you're willing to account for the existence and validity of people like me; therefor, when I mention people who don't do these things, I'm not talking about you or people like you."
Fair enough :) I actually stopped by to apologize for being so cranky in my earlier posts. I was just trying to explain my frustration with being lumped all the time, but I don't think I was communicating that clearly.
Hope everyone had an adequate Thanksgiving, and that your digestive systems have returned to normal. I know I ate WAY too much dairy, and have been paying for it all week!
Yeah, RS Goldtransgression can be sexy, which is why I crush really hard on drag kings, and I like seeing certain masculine mannerisms Cheap Guild wars 2 Goldin women.
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