The feminism/equality thread

[allegro]

I believe ETS was down when Stephen Ira wrote this piece; I think it's really interesting (I had to go look up a few of the terms).

What do you all think?

[botley]

I believe ETS was down when Stephen Ira wrote this piece; I think it's really interesting (I had to go look up a few of the terms).

What do you all think?

It starts with a slightly stuffy, overly academic way of looking at Chaz's quest to bring attention and understanding to the plight of trans people. Chaz used an example from "men" in the classic cis sense and Stephen took him literally to mean all self-identified men, trans and cis, which leads to a contradiction. I mean, score one point for academic rigor, but it only proves that most people don't yet have an everyday grasp of language that's evolved enough to really handle these distinctions in everyday discourse. Accommodating that by using a slightly fuzzy/un-evolved example just to make the point is different from being "prescriptivist" or exclusionary.

Like you, I had to look some definitions up as well. But that's because you and I are already sympathetic enough towards the issue and care enough to try and understand. You can't go on the national news and start throwing around all varieties of trans terminology before gaining the public's sympathy a little; this topic is confusing and not well covered by the media yet. The first step towards acceptance is getting people on a broad spectrum to accept that these issues exist and are a real problem, not forcing them to use the proper group-specific pronoun.

It's hard to grasp for people who can't even begin to imagine a non-binary gender system that someone could identify as neither a man or a woman, or both man and woman, or some fluid combination. Right now I can't even imagine how a reporter in the mainstream media who understands that and can write in such a way to communicate the heart of the piece could do it without alienating some non-binary identifiers. Did the ABC piece also incorporate misogynistic attitudes? Yes. Does that mean Chaz is misogynist? I don't know because I've never met him and have no idea if that's a true representation of his character. Was I shocked when I read Chaz's "birth defect" example? Yes, but well-meaning people make insensitive remarks like that all the time. Those were careless remarks and, rightly or wrongly, he's being brought down a peg for making them.

But I would have thought, in the wake of his "outing", that Ira would have more empathy for Chaz because they've both had what I can only imagine are harrowing confrontations with how the mass media machine works; maybe that Ira would cut Chaz some slack for the way his examples (while not academically correct and certainly incomplete) weren't meant to be true representations of everyone. Ira can't have it both ways: he doesn't want to have limiting terms and examples pushed on trans people as a whole, but he also feels comfortable labelling Chaz "a misogynist" for some remarks that whether Chaz wanted them in print or not are now somehow his defining moment as a spokesperson.

[orestes]

It starts with a slightly stuffy, overly academic way of looking at Chaz's quest to bring attention and understanding to the plight of trans people. Chaz used an example from "men" in the classic cis sense and Stephen took him literally to mean all self-identified men, trans and cis, which leads to a contradiction. I mean, score one point for academic rigor, but it only proves that most people don't yet have an everyday grasp of language that's evolved enough to really handle these distinctions in everyday discourse. Accommodating that by using a slightly fuzzy/un-evolved example just to make the point is different from being "prescriptivist" or exclusionary.

Like you, I had to look some definitions up as well. But that's because you and I are already sympathetic enough towards the issue and care enough to try and understand. You can't go on the national news and start throwing around all varieties of trans terminology before gaining the public's sympathy a little; this topic is confusing and not well covered by the media yet. The first step towards acceptance is getting people on a broad spectrum to accept that these issues exist and are a real problem, not forcing them to use the proper group-specific pronoun.

It's hard to grasp for people who can't even begin to imagine a non-binary gender system that someone could identify as neither a man or a woman, or both man and woman, or some fluid combination. Right now I can't even imagine how a reporter in the mainstream media who understands that and can write in such a way to communicate the heart of the piece could do it without alienating some non-binary identifiers. Did the ABC piece also incorporate misogynistic attitudes? Yes. Does that mean Chaz is misogynist? I don't know because I've never met him and have no idea if that's a true representation of his character. Was I shocked when I read Chaz's "birth defect" example? Yes, but well-meaning people make insensitive remarks like that all the time. Those were careless remarks and, rightly or wrongly, he's being brought down a peg for making them.

But I would have thought, in the wake of his "outing", that Ira would have more empathy for Chaz because they've both had what I can only imagine are harrowing confrontations with how the mass media machine works; maybe that Ira would cut Chaz some slack for the way his examples (while not academically correct and certainly incomplete) weren't meant to be true representations of everyone. Ira can't have it both ways: he doesn't want to have limiting terms and examples pushed on trans people as a whole, but he also feels comfortable labelling Chaz "a misogynist" for some remarks that whether Chaz wanted them in print or not are now somehow his defining moment as a spokesperson.

For the mainstream media, transgender and transsexuality is a gray area so when it is highlighted it is often with embarrassing results, as evidenced by this ABC segment.


Such insensitive and rude questions to ask.

Also, if I have to hear Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like a Lady" one more time, I'll puke.

[icklekitty]

I believe ETS was down when Stephen Ira wrote this piece; I think it's really interesting (I had to go look up a few of the terms).

What do you all think?

Given what the people above has said, he shouldn't be referring to himself as transgendered but transsexual if the physical components are this important for him (I think). Also:

“I think of it as hormones that, you know, went in the brain but not in the body, and that’s all being transgender is. It’s just that the sex of your body and the gender of the brain don’t match up.”

is just plain wrong on so many levels. Sex and gender aren't there to "match up". And I naturally have more testosterone in my body than oestrogen, but I have absolutely no desire to make my sex "match up" with that; quite the opposite. I am not trans anything.

I've got to admit that I also find women who talk for ages boring too. But it's the result of having more testosterone in your body?! I don't know if this also implies that all men who can tolerate a woman talking should get a hormone test and if there isn't enough testosterone "in his brain" be advised to have a sex change. The high sex drive thing I don't think can be true either - his girlfriend says the sex is more frequent. So his sex drive still matches hers. Ask any straight man out there whether it's his sex drive that dictates the sex life between him and his partner(!) Getting over the problems of hormone treatment and becoming comfortable with your body is probably what helped that, IMO.

HOWEVER - it's a slight leap to say that Chaz is being prescriptive. A bit misinformed and not the best articulated person, yes. Sure, he could have made it more explicit that he was only talking about his experience, but similarly, in the context of his interview, I'm not sure that you would generally deduce that he was saying "and therefore this is how all transpeople feel". There's always a danger that people are going to see these sorts of explanations as blanket terms. Arguably if you're in the public eye it's a great opportunity to represent your people, but given how subjective each of these experiences are and given how stressful and scary it is, the extra pressure of being obliged to be a figurehead for his cause shouldn't be expected of him.

A lot of people seem to misconstrue personal expressions as prescriptivism in general - but that's not for here.

I love reading this thread because--full disclosure--a big part of my major in college is gender and queer studies (the others are critical race studies, and postcolonial studies). I can't tell you how happy I was to see Irigaray mentioned. She's one of my favorite theorists (along with Foucault, of course, whose theories permeate my entire field of study--critical theory and social justice).

Your course sounds a lot like my undergrad - this was my course.