Why Misgendering is Bad

[Note: This is a repost of a post by Char C. and not by me.  The author has granted repost permission and even asks for it to be reposted.]

As a trans person, one of the more difficult parts of being around those who are not trans is the danger of being misgendered- that is, being addressed with a pronoun (she/he/etc) which is incorrect. This happens to trans people with unfortunate regularity, and is an error committed almost exclusively by those who are aware of the trans status of the person being misgendered.

When someone is misgendered, I often get quite visibly angry. The thing is, I know that kind of strong reaction can take someone who has committed this offense off guard, especially if one has little experience with interacting with openly trans people. I can understand why someone who has made this mistake with a trans person might feel hurt and defensive in response to that person’s clear anger, when one is not sure why this is such a sensitive issue in the first place. So I was hoping to take just a moment to explain why we react this way.

People with trans history are not able to take their gender for granted, the way that people without that history do. We go through a long and really difficult process, almost all of which is invisible to anyone else. For example, I struggled with profound gender dysphoria for over a decade before deciding to take any steps to alleviate it. This struggle did not kill me, but it came close on countless occasions. At this point, I see my active transition process as the only alternative to suicide, a perspective shared by quite a few trans people.

We’re not ignorant of the consequences of being trans, after all. Our culture fears and hates us, openly and actively. It seems that every damn day I see another reporting of assault on a trans sibling of mine. We would not accept the clear day-to-day risks of living in such a trans-hostile environment if we were not convinced that the alternative to transition were worse. All of which is simply to illustrate the fact that gender is not something we take lightly, but is an aspect of our identity upon which we place great value and importance.

People who have misgendered anyone with trans history often take the defensive position that misgendering is not such a big deal. Often the argument is made that they, personally, would not take such offense if they had been misgendered. First, let me reiterate that gender is something people with no trans experience or history can take for granted. If you have never had to earn the right to be your gender from an unwelcoming physician, or fight for the right to exist as your gender while waiting for the bus or trying to use a public restroom, then you are probably a whole lot less invested in the way that people see you. Second, I have to disagree with the idea that trans people are the only people who are offended by misgendering. In my years in the service industry, I have seen firsthand countless reactions of people exploding in rage when offered an incorrect ma’am or sir. Gender is important to most people’s identity, regardless of trans history, and most find the egregious insult of misgendering pretty darn offensive.

Also important for myself and many like me is the question of sexual orientation. When my boyfriend or I have been misgendered, the message implied (despite any intent on the part of the person who misgendered us) is that he and I are engaged in a heterosexual relationship. The further implication is that we are playing the part of a queer couple, faux faggots, merrily appropriating the fashion of the gay community while actually living out a straight lifestyle.

The gaybashers on the street corners disagree. We are read as homos by people who don’t know us- a fact which highlights the interesting point that without exception, the people who misgender my boyfriend are those who know that he is trans. So we find ourselves stuck: attacked by homophobes for being gay, and snubbed by the gay community for being transgendered. Being misgendered brings up these frustrations and resentments, reminding us that it is impossible for us to leave our house without being scrutinized and attacked by both strangers and acquaintances. It may seem like a small Freudian slip in conversation to the person who misgenders us, but in fact it is a reminder that the rest of our lives will be spent under fire, as second class citizens.

The next time you are in conversation with a trans person and you misgender them, don’t try to brush it off as inconsequential or become defensive when your error is pointed out. Simply apologize honestly for your mistake, and try to be more aware of what is coming out of your mouth in the future.

-Char C.

(Please feel free to repost this.)

Gender and Feminism Conflict?

For once I'm going to kind of agree with those whacky transphobic feminists who claim they are radical feminists when they claim that feminism isn't about gender and that feminism is about sex.  Okay, I'm not really going to agree with them, but I hope that got your attention.  The point I am going to pick up on is the conflict that feminism seems to have with gender, which the transphobes do suggest.

Before I go further, it's perhaps helpful to give a quick idea of what I mean by "gender".  Here I mean it as that which exists in the social sphere and is usually regarded as arising from physical sex and reveals itself in varying ways in the personal and social.  Gender, as it relates to feminism, is the means by which women are defined as less than men in society, the means by which sexism operates.  Feminism has pointed out how gender is a social construct and done lots of analysis to investigate the many ways in which gender operates upon men and women as well as working to try to deal with ending sexism.  Gender has proved very fruitful for feminism.

The problem arises for feminism in that many, if not most, cis feminists seem to have decided that because they have learned so much about the way in which gender affects (cis) women and (cis) men that this means that feminism is the only, or at least the best, place that gender can be dealt with.  This has resulted in cis feminists deciding that they know best how trans people should deal with the role of gender in our lives and prescribing and proscribing what we should do.  It has almost always meant that they blame trans people for enforcing and upholding societal standards of gender while showing no awareness of their complicity in those standards (Hint: If you're telling trans people how to deal with gender, you're almost inevitably enforcing gender standards.), and, most egregiously, their drafting of trans people for the "end of gender"/gender revolution/whatever (On this last point, I would at the least suggest that revolutionaries who are drafted are not going to be committed to the revolution; just saying.).  That is to say, feminism seems to flounder in gender when it tries to expound upon an understanding of gender beyond that based in cis men and cis women.

So, long post short, we see that cis feminists haven shown a limited understanding of gender.  I'm almost willing to grant them expertise on gender and cis wo/men except they have often shown a lack of understanding that gender does not affect even all cis women the same way and have a nasty habit of totalitising their gender analysis based upon a certain type of cis white women in the developed world (ie, they're universalising their own experiences).  Now I'm not going to suggest that trans people have any sort of lock on gender (That would be making the same mistake that cis feminists made.) but we certainly do have a variety of gender understandings that is not found among cis feminists.  If cis feminists bother to listen they might learn something and might even gain new insights into the way in which gender works among cis people.

The Transphobe Who Can Ruin Your Day

Just when I was hoping that Julie Bindel had moved on from being actively transphobic, she's appeared in an, at-best, centre-right magazine called Standpoint (What the heck is a feminist, especially a self-proclaimed radical lesbian feminist, doing cosying up with the right?) with an article entitled "The Operation That Can Ruin Your Life".  Three guesses as to what operation she's referring to and the first two don't count.  I hate being a puppet dancing to strings being pulled by Ms Bindel, but I also can't let this sort of hate pass by uncommented.  I'll mostly be snarking, so fair warning.  I'm skipping large parts of the article because a full fisk would be interminably long.  It's also worth noting that in many ways this article is sort of her "greatest hits" on trans stuff in that she's stitched together material from previous articles she's written.  She even includes the quote about trans people and Grease that she later apologised for, showing just how insincere she can be when apologising.  That said, let's get to her article.

Almost immediately one has to wonder what world Ms Bindel lives in.  Referring to last year's Stonewall awards she says that "I, along with a police escort, walked past a huge demonstration of transsexuals and their supporters, shouting 'Bindel the Bigot'."  This should concern everyone.  In that I mean it should concern everyone that a protest of about 150 people is a huge demonstration in Bindel's eyes, that she remembers a chant that was not chanted, and that she also remembers having a police escort while others don't.  Of course since she also refers to the demonstrators as a "powerful lobby" who have been "hounding [her] for "five years", the real point here is to establish that: a) trans people are possibly dangerous, b) there are a lot of trans people, c) trans people are not activists trying to assert their rights (as feminists might be described) but are like industry lobbyists, and d) trans people are personally out to get her.  Notice how this is reinforced at the end of the same paragraph: "I now find that a number of organisations are too frightened to ask me to speak at public events for fear of protests by transsexual lobbyists."  Trans people are boogeypeople that scare people away from Bindel with their lobbying, ehr, protests.

"Feminists tend to be critical of traditional gender roles because they benefit men and oppress women."  Yes, yes, we do.  I couldn't agree with you more, Ms Bindel.  Glad we could find common ground.  Of course, then she completely rips that ground away by immediately following up by saying that "[t]ranssexualism, by its nature, promotes the idea that it is 'natural' for boys to play with guns and girls to play with Barbie dolls."  By talking about the "nature" of transsexualism (as though it somehow exists independent of actual transsexual people) and what is "natural", Bindel is trying to hit us over the head with the usual "You naive fools, you don't understand it's all socially constructed!" thing.  Just in case we were unclear on that she goes further with: "The idea that gender roles are biologically determined rather than socially constructed is the antithesis of feminism."  Again, I couldn't agree with her more since I am a feminist.  Gender roles are socially constructed.  How could they not be?  Of course the problem is that as a feminist and a transsexual woman, I see a difference between gender identity, gender expression, and gender roles.  For Bindel, like other radical feminists, gender identity, if it even exists, is the result of the imposition of gender roles as is gender expression.

Now, tell us how transsexual people came to be, Julie!  "Gender dysphoria (GD) was invented in the 1950s by reactionary male psychiatrists in an era when men were men and women were doormats."  Get that?  Transsexual people did not exist prior to the invention of the psychiatric definition of gender dysphoria.  Just like lesbians did not exist prior to Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886.  Gender dysphoria was also invented by reactionaries making transsexualism reactionary as well and unable to be changed by transsexual people from those roots.  Just like feminism can never change from its roots as a movement only concerned with the rights of some women.  Hmm, maybe she does have a point there, after all.  It's also vital that we remember that the psychiatrists were male because this also makes transsexuality, and thus transsexual people, forever the handmaiden of patriarchy, eternally opposed to feminism.  No transsexual person can really be a feminist (I'm a sparkly pink unicorn with a false consciousness).

"[Gender dysphoria] is a term used to describe someone who feels strongly that they should belong to the opposite sex and that they were born in the wrong body."  Yes, it does describe people who think that.  Of course, it also no longer exists as a diagnosis anymore, having been replaced quite some time ago by "gender identity disorder".  But if Bindel used the current term she couldn't as easily ignore the difference between gender roles and gender identity.  Also, a number of transsexual people disagree with the whole "born in the wrong body" thing.  My body is not the wrong body, it's my body.  What other body would I have been born in?  Also, I don't believe I should belong to the "opposite sex" as this implies that there are only two sexes, that these are natural and not somehow socially constructed, and that intersex people do not exist (or exist only as "mistakes" of one of the two sexes).  I do claim that I have issues with my body, but I have a hard time being able to articulate these issues in a way that is comprehensible to cissexual people, as it can not reach them unfiltered by societal and personal prejudices.

"[Gender dysphoria] has no proven genetic or physiological basis."  And your point is?  Neither does sexual orientation or bipolar disorder (Thank you, Arwyn!).  Does this mean that lesbianism doesn't exist?  Wait, I forgot, Bindel is a political lesbian who appropriated a lesbian identity as a result of her politics.  Actually, I suspect that Bindel's point is that this means transsexuality must be a mental (read: "not real") illness with all the bad connotations that being "crazy" carries with it.

"But no oppressed group ever insisted its emotional distress was the sole basis for the establishment of a right. Indeed, transsexuals, along with those seeking IVF and cosmetic surgery, are using the NHS for the pursuit of happiness not health."  Bindel makes a complete disability fail here.  People with mood disorders?  They need to stop being treated by the NHS, because they're only pursuing happiness not health.  Women who've been emotionally abused?  Not a health issue, because they're just pursuing happiness not health.  I could go on, but I think I've made the point.  The idea that happiness is somehow independent of health  is a privileged notion, expressed by those for whom happiness is not a health issue.  Honestly, I don't think transsexual people would be all that emotionally distressed if we didn't have to deal with a world where Bindel's views are the norm.  The emotional distress arises mainly from the rejection of our autonomy, the insistence that we are bad, that we are wrong, that we are the symptom/cause of societal problems, that we are to blame for the prejudices of others.  Speaking of autonomy, I base the establishment of a right to treatment not on emotional distress but on bodily autonomy, the same basis for the right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term or not.  My body, my choice.  But, of course, Bindel wants to portray transsexual people as emotionally disturbed, vain, and unnatural (don't think I missed the comparison to IVF and cosmetic surgery) just the same as has been done to women seeking the vote and queer people seeking the right to live openly.

Speaking of treatment, can you tell us about it, Julie?  "Treatment is brutal and the results far from perfect."  Wow, brutal.  Why exactly is it brutal?  Is it because it sometimes involves surgery?  Do they not use anaesthetic?  Or, is Julie just using inflammatory language?  I'm glad that Julie is there protecting transsexual people from the mistaken belief that we can evaluate for ourselves if surgical results are acceptable enough for us for those contemplating surgery.  But, no, surgery must be perfect.  BTW, what exactly does perfect mean and who decides what is perfect (if not Julie, since I'm sure she can't be called in for a consult for everyone considering surgery)?  We already ruled out transsexual people.  Maybe we should have a poll on the Daily Mail's website?  Also, I would say that hormone replacement therapy, which Bindel significantly fails to mention at all for transsexual women, is neither brutal nor far from perfect.  It hasn't hurt a bit and I'm fairly happy with my breasts (though not as happy as my fiancée is;  ahem).  Bindel's preoccupation with surgery is typical of cissexual fixation on "the surgery" (which usually only means surgery for trans women) as though it were the defining event in all transsexual people's existences (I'm certain she wouldn't bring up the removal of facial hair for transsexual women at all if she couldn't characterise it as painful).  She willfully ignores the fact that not all transsexual people undergo any surgery, since some never desire surgery, some decide that the results aren't acceptable for them, and some don't like the pain that any surgery involves (I was personally less-than-thrilled with the pain of recovering from my emergency appendectomy).

Since Bindel has made clear she is totally not transphobic, she'd never misgender someone, a transphobic act.  So this never appears anywhere in the article: "In other words, a pre-operative man could apply for a job in a women — only rape counselling service and, if refused on grounds of his sex, could take the employer to court on the grounds that 'he' is legally a 'she'."  Nope, that does not appear in the article at all.  Again, note the preoccupation with "the surgery".  After all, we all know that one of the requirements for counselling is that the counsellor expose her genitals to the person being counselled.  Oh, hang on, no, it's not.  And, it's not like such a trans woman would know anything about being raped because she might have been raped.  Oh, hang on again, a trans woman might well know.  So we're left with the simple transphobic assertion that trans women aren't women.  Because "woman" is socially constructed and absolutely based on the determination made about the woman's genitals at birth.  It's socially constructed on biological essentialism.  As we've already seen above, physical sex can not be socially constructed.  Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

Now we get to where Bindel clearly misrepresents a quote while failing to properly attribute it.  She introduces it with "A definition of transsexualism used by a number of transsexual rights organisations reads:"  which is then followed by a paragraph which I will reproduce in a moment.  I tracked down where the paragraph of quote came from since I'm always suspicious of direct quotes loosely attributed to unidentified organisations.  It turns out she copied it from Beyond the Binary: A Tool Kit for Gender Identity Activism in Schools which was put out in 2004 by the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, the Transgender Law Center, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (notice how only one of those is specifically a trans rights organisation and it's not exclusively for transsexual rights).  The paragraph Bindel quotes in her article comes from a section at the beginning entitled "What is Gender?".  Bindel quotes the paragraph thusly:

Students who are gender non-conforming are those whose gender expression (or outward appearance) does not follow traditional gender roles: "feminine boys," "masculine girls" and students who are androgynous, for example. It can also include students who look the way boys and girls are expected to look but participate in activities that are gender nonconforming, like a boy who does ballet. The term "transgender youth" can be used as an umbrella term for all students whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth and/or whose gender expression is non-stereotypical.

 She then uses it to say that "According to this definition, a girl who plays football is trans-sexual."  Harharhar.  Only Bindel is being intellectually dishonest.  She doesn't quote the whole paragraph which continues on to say:

Some transgender students transition or change from one gender to another. Transition often means changing the way you dress, selecting a new name, and sometimes getting help from a doctor to change your body.

But, wait, I thought this was a definition of transsexualism?  Why would they say that some transgender students transition since that's what transsexualism involves?  It's simple.  This is not a definition of transsexualism, it's an explanation of gender non-conformity and transgender (including transsexuality).  In a nifty sleight of hand, Bindel uses the explanation of gender non-conformity as though it's explaining transsexualism.  Which lets her make her snarky little comment, which isn't even that original (WARNING: link to trans hate site).  Of course, last I checked, football (that's soccer to North American-types) is played by girls and women.  World Cup?  Olympics?  Is any of this ringing any bells?  Maybe Julie could catch a match at the London Olympics in 2012?  Heck even when I was a child (centuries ago) girls played to a remarkable lack of comment.  Anyway, moving on from the fact that Ms Bindel seems to be completely clueless about girls' participation in sports, there's the far more important issue that she feels that twisting, warping, misrepresenting...  Heck, let's be honest.  The far more important issue is that she lies.  This was not simply misunderstanding.  She went to some effort to twist what was said to be able to use it to imply that transsexualism causes transsexual people to mistake one thing, lack of conformance to norms of gender expressions, for another, having a gender identity that conflicts with one's body.  We have a false consciousness.  Except, of course, we don't.  But Bindel is hardly one to let reality stop her from getting her way.

Of course Julia next trots out Claudia, the same woman who she's been using as an example of how damaging transsexual treatment is since 2003.  However, the problem with using Claudia as an example of trans regret is how Claudia ended up transitioning.  I'm not going to go into it here, but looking at the article Bindel originally wrote about Claudia in the Guardian, the facts are more complex than "Here's a trans woman who regretted her surgery."  In fact, Claudia's case reminds me of the sorts of situations whereby lesbians and gay men can end up married to someone of the "opposite" sex and with children before they come out.

Skipping a bit, Bindel again lays down the unalterable facts of biology for us.  "Medical science cannot turn a biological male into a biological female — it can only alter the appearance of body parts. A trans-sexual 'woman' will always be a biological male."  I could go into how even the most ardent of transphobes, Janice G Raymond, acknowledged that what defined male and female in a biological sense was a combination of chromosones, types of gonads, primary and secondary sexual characteristics, hormone levels, and so on (although she, like Germaine Greer and others ultimately fetishises chromosomes) and the fact that we've already covered the erasure of intersex people, but I'd rather just say, "So what?"  Even if we grant what she says is true, that there is some sort of absolute, non-arbitrary measure of biological sex, what does biological sex have to do with social gender?  By using the case of a trans woman rapist, Bindel implies rape is only by penis and no penis means no rape.  This erases the fact that some FAAB people rape (even though English law does not classify it as such) and shifts the blame from people to body parts.  More insultingly, it erases the fact that trans people are far more likely to be victims of rape (eg, when trans women are placed in men's prisons) than perpetrators.

Next, we move back to the "trans people are big meanies" line of argument with which Bindel started this article.  "There is a handful of radicals in the world today who have dared to challenge the diagnosis of transsexualism."  I agree.  That's why there have been so few people at things like protests of the APA's lack of reform of the diagnosis in the DSM.  But, of course, what Bindel really means by challenging the diagnosis, as she has already made clear above, is challenging the rights to autonomy of trans people.  Because if she was only challenging the diagnosis she would find that a lot of trans people would join her in doing so.  I would.  But in demanding that we submit to her ideas of what we should do with our bodies, she is not radical, nor is she challenging a diagnosis.  She then goes on with examples of what big meanies trans people are and frankly I'm bored with that sort of thing and won't address them (beyond saying that I do not endorse wishing a painful death or harm on anyone).

Now we come to the conclusion, where Julie shows her true opinion of trans people: we don't deserve to exist.  Or, as she puts it: "In a world where equality between men and women was reality, transsexualism would not exist."  To her, we're a symptom of social inequality between the sexes.  We lie when we talk about who we are not having to do with that (and, in fact, making it harder for getting people to understand who are because people assume it has to do with the fact that men are treated one way and women are treated another).  She has decided what the truth is, and we're not going to change her mind even if she has to lie to herself and others to insure that she doesn't.  Speaking of which: "Sex-change surgery is unnecessary mutilation."  She has not proven this because she can't prove this even as she can't prove trans people won't exist in a world of gender equality.  She can only assert it and ignore what trans people say about the matter, because, to her, we lack the knowledge of our own lives, our own bodies, society and so on to choose for ourselves.  We need her paternalistic concern, her protecting us from ourselves, to replace the paternalism of the current gatekeepers of psychiatrists and others.

Finally, there's this: "Using human rights laws to normalise trans-sexualism has resulted in a backward step in the feminist campaign for gender equality."  I keep seeing this assertion made by Bindel and others.  I'll be frank.  I don't see this.  When people assert this they never point to examples of how this is happening that don't involve the assumption that the advancement of trans rights is a defeat for gender equality, something I don't buy at all.  Only if one subscribes to the twisted fable of transsexuality that Bindel pretends is a reality does this make sense.  The reality where I transitioned to wear pretty dresses and make up and am demure when I stay at home and cook for a man.  The reality of a fantasy world.  Here in the real world, I wear jeans and t-shirts, no makeup, am not demure at all, am a university student, and am working on learning to cook for a woman.  Oh, yes, and I try to work towards actual gender equality.

Still, I'm sure all of this won't change Julie Bindel's views.  She lives in that elaborate constructed fantasy where there's a theory that explains why I'm trans (just like the psychiatrists have theories) and anything I have to say has no bearing on it.  Instead, I write this to point out that in pushing this malarky, Bindel argues not for a world of equality but for a world where she gets hers and others pay the price for it.  Her words also support treating trans people as incapable, incompetent, as less than others, as deserving the treatment we get.  In other words, she may not directly encourage harm to us, but she certainly gives intellectual cover to those who do.

Trans-Consumerism for Transsexual Women

I apologise if this post is somewhat disjointed and not fully fleshed out. I decided it was better to post what I had than to continue playing around with it and never post it.

Fall has arrived. I could really use some fall skirts and tops. I could also really use electrolysis. Welcome to the world of trans-consumerism for a femme transdyke.

I started thinking about this thanks to two recent posts Sublimefemme has made about queer, especially femme, consumerism in response to a current article in The Advocate titled "The Cost of Being Gay". Consumerism is hardly limited to queer culture in America. America relies on its cultures and communities being soaked in consumerism.

As I think Sublimefemme has covered consumerism for the queer femme rather well, I'm going to look at the consumerism facing the transwoman. One immediate point to make is that consumerism for transwomen is very much a class issue, moreso than usual consumerism because of the staggering costs involved in some choices. But, like all consumerism, none of the following choices must be chosen, but some bring comfort to me as a transwoman and some bring more correct gendering of me by others (at least, theoretically).

The cheapest consumer choices for a transwoman are beauty rituals such as shaving, tweezing, plucking, and so on. Slightly more expensive are clothes and makeup (though these can get hideously expensive, of course). All of this is in common with ciswomen and is about as accessible (with the possible exception of buying women's clothing the first time) with respect to class.

Next up the ladder is hormone therapy. This requires medical and usually psychological clearance and so is more than a bit of a step up. Then there's the cost of the hormones themselves. I can't imagine handling this part without health insurance and drug coverage which also cost. This is definitely where class starts to be a factor not only in the question of monetary resources but also in dealing with the psycho-medical establishment, since one normally needs to know how to go about getting a diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder, a reference to a physician/endocrinologist, and possibly even having to educate that person on what the appropriate course of treatment is.

Next we enter the world of what is commonly called cosmetic surgery. This includes procedures for electrolysis, facial feminisation, breast augmentation, orchiectomy, and vaginoplasty. One does not have to have any or all of these surgeries, but isn't that the point of consumerism? We don't have to have it, we're led to want it. However, these can cost tens of thousands of dollars as well as pain, time, and significant hurdles put in place by the medical industry.

Even if I were rich, I have issues. Let me start with my major issue: surgery. I've had emergency surgery twice in my life, and I can tell you I'm not a big fan of surgery. While I believe in bodily autonomy, my right to do to my own body what I want to improve it (if you will), I'm disturbed by the cosmetic medical industry and how it feeds off insecurities about looks and fitting in as a woman. I'm thinking here mostly about breast augmentation and facial feminisation. But one can certainly argue vaginoplasty falls into this category. In the otherwise despicable "The Transsexual Empire", Janice Raymond does an analysis of the traditional psycho-medical industry of sex-reassignment surgery (as it was then called) which is well worth reading. Unfortunately I can not currently locate my copy to quote from it.

Let me take breast augmentation as an example. It's apparently a common procedure for transwomen. I just had an argument over this procedure with a cisfriend of mine who wants breast augmentation for herself even as I think her breasts are beautiful the way they are. There's a tension between what we think of our own bodies and what society expects of our bodies. A common feminist tenet is that women's bodies are public property. I have to agree. For myself, that comes up as a question of what looks "normal" on my frame. "Normal" is not only a question of what is average but what is socially constructed as an appropriate size. And right now, apparently I have "man boobs" size. So, if it were just a question of conformity, I'd scrape up the cash and buy me some breasts. But, I do question social standards and consumerism.

So, what's a mindful gal to do? I don't know. I'd not be shy in telling you if I did. So, I encourage y'all to tell me what you think, what questions you have, and (if you're kind) critiquing my post.

Sarah Palin - Tranny?

I love politics enough such that I have majored in it. But I hadn't planned on blogging about Sarah Palin because so many other people are doing it so well with opinions that match mine. However, recently a column used transphobia to attack her. I just couldn't ignore that without calling it out.

Michael Seltzman wrote at the Huffington Post a column titled "Sarah Palin Naked" which starts off just as sexist and misogynistic as it sounds. In talking about wanting to have sex with Sarah Palin, because obviously that's an appropriate thing for political discourse, he offers the following:

My wife is cool with this if I promise to "first wipe off Palin's tranny makeup." I married well.

Haha. I'm laughing so hard. A real comedian there, his wife. Transphobia is so funny. Especially when it's also expressing lookism at the same time. Because I find it hard to believe that she's complimenting Palin on her gender presentation. Instead, it's fairly clear she expressing the stereotypical view that transwomen use makeup poorly. She's calling into question Palin's womanhood.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I despise the word "tranny". It has the same history as the despicable "shemale", coming to us from the porn industry to describe a fetishistic type of porn with transwomen. Just google "tranny" and you'll find that most results, other than sites of transfolk trying to reclaim the word, point to porn images of transwomen. When not using it for porn, straight cispeople use it in the same way they use "man in a dress", to discredit people. Not that I'm happy when queer cispeople use it either, but they generally don't seem to intend insult.

So, while I'm no fan of Sarah Palin, and certainly fear what would happen if she became Vice-President, I do have to protest the use of transphobia to assault her. Want to attack her? There are plenty of ways to legitimately do so, calling her out on her political policies and actions. But, knock off the transphobia and sexism. I don't want to have to defend people I don't like.