Gender Bending

[Netzach]

So what grade did you get up to in your education, kind sir?

It seemed to have stopped with the construction of little straw men insisting they can't have a feminine side.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ETOILE

I'll ruin your day if I say. I started at the beginning and they kinda let me skip all the shit in the middle. Maybe they just wanted me gone. It's likely.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

NETZACH

How would I know whazz feminine? We got dudes running around in heels, with purses, trying to convince people girls is just tits and make up.

I dont have tits and I dont wear mascara, so I dont have a feminine side. Lest the dudes in drag be lyin about girls.

 

[Etoile]

ETOILE

I'll ruin your day if I say. I started at the beginning and they kinda let me skip all the shit in the middle. Maybe they just wanted me gone. It's likely.

OMG you spoke to me!! Hey will you sign my autograph book? You're FABOO.

 

[Netzach]

NETZACH

How would I know whazz feminine? We got dudes running around in heels, with purses, trying to convince people girls is just tits and make up.

I dont have tits and I dont wear mascara, so I dont have a feminine side. Lest the dudes in drag be lyin about girls.

You are so easily confused, clearly.

 

[unfoundiamond]

While I see this writter clearly has a point to get across,
and somewhere in there is some truth...

I have a problem with the parallel of "white peoples hidden racism" and "American societys fear of trans people" I live in the south and have heard people claim for years that if someone didnt like them for any reason it is because they are black. No matter that it was cultural diffrences that made for the missunderstandings most the time,
These students had been so convinced of this, and brainwashed by others, that mediaition doesnt work. This isnt bridging the gap between whites and blacks here in the south, it makes it worse. This kind of brainwashing is the same kind of ignorance as the racists are feeding their children, Teaching someone to expect someone to hate them is teaching them to play the victim, and preventing people from comming together. I just dont see how feeding ourselves the same propoganda will help us to live safer better lives... Focusing on our diffrences isnt the way to go.

I also want to say, yes, straight women can be very opressive. But, These kinds of bitter articles dont help foster acceptance. So now we are separated by sex, sexual orientation, race, politics and now lets segregate ourselves more and see if we cant turn women against each other...

Society as a whole is opressive, men or women, blacks or whites, gay or straight... I just think we have all drawn enought lines in the sand, these kinds of articles just divide us further... its like passing the hated around so everyone can have some.

I can just feel the bias in that article,

I just believe her bitterness is the kind of thing that, if most people pick this trait up, society will hate us, and will say it is because trans people walk around with a chip on their shoulder, and they will have a nice excuse to couch their bigotry and prejudice...

Is that gonna help>??

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ETOILE

I speak to everyone. I invented Southern Hospitality.

 

[DeservingBitch]

I got about three sentences in and thought to myself "she's rebutting a white chick, I'm certain."

Same here. And it baffles my mind that some white women/feminists are still blind to it. Sure, privilege is a very effective blindfold, but geez, it's not as if other women/marginalized groups haven't been talking/writing about white women/feminists oppressors for decades now. Yeah I know, I'm so naive: I still want to believe that those who are marginalized/oppressed will be more empathetic to others' marginalization/oppression.

And now a small issue with the SM community --
FWIW, though, I do support the notion of woman-only space INCLUSIVE of MTF transpeople and EXCLUSIVE of FTM (if you have changed pronouns, then you should not be here) -- the problem is that FTM's are not accepted more than very very marginally if at all in men-only (play) space. But you know what, it's time for us all as a community to grow a pair and address this, instead of women-only dungeons and playspaces being the safe and happy womb to the SM world's trans boys, which is something I think we're comfortable with. I find that this notion that we're more accepting of FTM than MTF as part of same-sex social scene part of our hangups about origin versus destination gender.

Not that I spend most of my time in women only spaces, though I would spend more if I thought transwomen weren't getting the short end of the stick and if I thought FTM's weren't stuck in a political clusterfuck that prevents them from eventually gliding into the male ID they should be able to claim.

Don't get me wrong - I looooove FTM boys, bio men, the whole spectrum of male whoosits. I just think it's OK to say "this is a woman only space" and expect people who live as a woman every day and are *down with* that and want to be doing it, to be the people in it, playing, fucking, commiserating, whatever you want to do with it. And I think there should be a space for people who have male levels of T, applied or born into it, to hang and beat on one another and fuck and stuff too.

There's nothing about having a space for a weekend a year that excludes boys and bois boyz etc. that says "fuck off we don't like you, die" it just says 'we're doing something relevant to us for a minute." I mean, seriously, you don't see me showing up at the back room of the Eagle on a non-mixed night whining to the bouncer that no, really, I *feel* like a gay man, I should have in. But if I had facial hair and had changed my name to Mr-Netzach-to-you whether I'd had bottom surgery or not should not matter so much either, I think. I certainly would think the Eagle more the right spot for me than the MWMF at that point.

That's interesting. The common argument against trans-inclusive women-only space is that MTF are not 'real' women (often seen as male invading women's space). I actually had to re-read twice your first sentence to realize that this was not at all what you were saying.

I think that what you're suggesting there makes sense -- in a long-term kind of thinking. If FTM had access to other safe-spaces, I would have no issue with excluding them from women-only spaces. But as you yourself, at the moment, they don't. And while I agree with you that women-only spaces aren't meant to be the happy and safe womb for every marginalized identity, at the same time, I think it still makes sense to be inclusive of both FTM and MTF. One of the reasons for this i think is that prior to transitioning, many (if not most) transbois have been part of the dyke scene and allied with its political struggles. I'm kind of uncomfortable with the idea of excluding them -- and as such somewhat dismissing this common history -- because at some point in their transitioning they've changed pronouns. And of course, there's also the issue of transitioning being a very fluid, complex, and messy process -- most FMT don't go through bottom surgery for instance. This shouldn't be relevant in many cases, but if we're talking about dungeons and play-party spaces, I think that it can be quite dangerous for a FTM without bottom surgery to show up in a male space.

 

[unfoundiamond]

me

http://b1.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/00020/13/29/20869231_l.jpg

I wanted people to see what i looked like in high scool, and It was school spirit day, so i was in school colors and he was dressed as a pirate,

And BTW The guy standing next to me, He is straight and He doesnt hate me, he never did, thats why I cringed when I read that article, not everyone hated me for presenting myself as I wanted, only the bigots or the ones who where scared of their own demons...

I am still freinds with alot of the people who accepted me when alot of people hated me and bashed me (and I know these people like me for me, since they accepted me when I was a outsider, didnt care what people said about them). But had I have walked into those classrooms with a big chip on my shoulder because I expect people to hate me, I would have even less friends...

 

[DeservingBitch]

Focusing on our diffrences isnt the way to go.

I think that this kind of statement, made in the current socio-political context we live in, is reflective of privilege.

If you're white, it's easy to say 'lets not focus on our difference'. But if you're black/brown, you are reminded of your difference every single day, and get shit because of it on a daily basis. Same goes for queers and other 'different' social groups.

I agree with you that difference shouldn't be an issue. But the problem is that in the world we live in, it is. Because 'differences' aren't seen and treated on an equal footing: there are hierarchies associated with them. Everybody who is 'different' from what is considered the norm (white, anglo, judeo-christian, middle-class het male) is not treated only as 'different', but as something less than and/or deviant from the norm.

When you are being attacked, threatened, dismissed, excluded, killed because of your 'difference', it's a little bit more difficult to just say 'lets not focus on our differences'.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DB

The problem has two sides. People need to stop feeling bad about liking what they like, and people need to stop feeling bad when everyone doesnt like them.

 

[DeservingBitch]

DB

The problem has two sides. People need to stop feeling bad about liking what they like, and people need to stop feeling bad when everyone doesnt like them.

I should know better than responding to you, but I'll still do it as a kind of public service thing.

I'll stop 'feeling bad' as you say about people not 'liking me' when it won't mean anymore that their 'not liking me' isn't a threat to my life and safety. When 'not liking me' won't mean anymore that some random dudes will feel the need to reassert their masculinity and heterosexuality by threatening me of gang-rape for my crime of being queer. Or when 'not liking me' won't mean anymore that some fascist white boy won't attack me and my brown partner on the street because he doesn't 'like' brown people and he doesn't 'like' that a white chick is intimate with someone he doesn't 'like'.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DB

People are attacked for every reason you can imagine. Queers attack, too. Everyone gets stoned.

In today's paper is a story of a 7 year old kid who wandered inside a motel looking for something to eat. He's emaciated. Cut and bruised. His ears are filled with sores where his caregivers burn him with cigarettes. He says his mother gave him to the lesbian couple who torture him.

 

[unfoundiamond]

Yes, I know

Preconceived notions about any group treating you badly only hurt in the longrun.
I have seen this phenomenon in the restaurant industry,

I used to be a server. Me, who loves to serve, being a waitress... shocking..I know... lol

But the other servers always used to complain about serving black couples and families because the servers where convinced black people don't tip. (HUGE stereotype and misconception)

The girls would walk up to their table, with the preconceived notion they wherent getting a tip, which made their attitude and service shitty- which in turn, made certain the table wouldn't leave a tip...

But Me... I'd walk up and treat every table like royalty... and I got tipped everytime... even when it was the same people that didn't tip the other waitress... The other servers always acted so shocked when I walked away with a good tip, I wasn't shocked.

I realize the diffrences in people but I also have seen first hand how far good attitude and treating others how you want to be treated can take you,

I don't wear big rose colored glasses, I am a realist, for the most part...
But,
Just because I don't focus on the diffrences, doesn't mean I don't see them,
I just chose to look at those people as customers, not black customers who won't tip me,

I can't look at every person and see someone who hates me because I am a crossdressing bi sexual person who enjoys the ever vilified BDSM,
Just as I don't group people into stereotypes based on looks and orientation, If I do it, I can't be mad when they do it to me, since I don't treat others like I want to be treated...

And wouldn't saying all heterosexuals hate gays and crossdresser be a stereotype itself,

Gross generalizations are just that.

 

[Netzach]

DB

People are attacked for every reason you can imagine. Queers attack, too. Everyone gets stoned.

In today's paper is a story of a 7 year old kid who wandered inside a motel looking for something to eat. He's emaciated. Cut and bruised. His ears are filled with sores where his caregivers burn him with cigarettes. He says his mother gave him to the lesbian couple who torture him.

Yes, the most common rebuttal of the obvious fact of institutional and inherent racism/sexism/etc. Life is unfair, you should expect what you get.

 

[DeservingBitch]

DB

People are attacked for every reason you can imagine. Queers attack, too. Everyone gets stoned.

Yeah right. We must live in a very different world then, because in my world, I've never seen a het couple being attacked, beaten up, and/or killed for kissing or holding hand in public. And lynching tend to happen only to black/brown people in my world, not to white people. And I've never been attacked for using a women's public washroom -- my trans friends have and do on a regular basis though. And the very large majority of victims or rape and domestic abuse are women, whose abusers are men.

But yes, go ahead and focus on the exceptions and the small number of attacks whose victims are white het boys and whose abusers are brown dyke women.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

LAVERNE

You look like a Laverne.

Expectations are everything. I usually get what I expect. And much of what I expect never happens. So expect the right things.

Everyone is a queer or freak in some form or fashion. But dont go out alone if youre wearing your team's colors.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DB

Youre not paying attention. The whole god-damned forest is on fire and youre fretting about the tree you roost upon.

I've been places where hetero couples catch hell for public displays of affection. I wuz one.

You have to adjust.

 

[unfoundiamond]

titles are overrated

Hey DB,

I see where your perspective comes from, but I used to go out with a girl named Sabriya, and We had very diffrent expiriences... Men would come up and complement her on me, No Bullshit. I am not a conceited person, and would be very suprised when it happened.

She loved it, a man telling her she had a beautiful girlfriend made her feel like she was the shit... wether that's feeding into patriarcial gender roles blabla, she liked it...

And yes she was black, or brown or african american, or whatever label you need, I think labels are overrated, for people, sexuality, relationships... labels are useful sometimes, but not super important to me as I see everyone as a seprate entity, not all "pick your label" people do this or that.

 

[DeservingBitch]

Hey DB,

I see where your perspective comes from, but I used to go out with a girl named Sabriya, and We had very diffrent expiriences... Men would come up and complement her on me, No Bullshit. I am not a conceited person, and would be very suprised when it happened.

She loved it, a man telling her she had a beautiful girlfriend made her feel like she was the shit... wether that's feeding into patriarcial gender roles blabla, she liked it...

And yes she was black, or brown or african american, or whatever label you need, I think labels are overrated, for people, sexuality, relationships... labels are useful sometimes, but not super important to me as I see everyone as a seprate entity, not all "pick your label" people do this or that.

Yes, label are overated. That's exaclty the point I'm making.

The day differences and labels won't mean anything else than what they are, ie. differences, we can stop caring about it. But until then, and for as long as people get oppressed and killed because of their differences, I think it's a vote in favor of the status quo (ie. a world of inequalities and violence) to say 'lets not focus on our differences'. I also think that it dismisses the very real experience of marginalization and oppression of people who are seen and treated as 'different'.

Like you, I look at people for who they are and not 'what' they are or how 'different' they are. I was with my ex-partner because of who he is, and not because or in spite of the fact that he is brown. But I would never suggest that his being brown is not important or significant: because to him, leaving in a white-dominated society, being brown DOES matter quite a bit.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DIAMOND

There are real lions, tigers, and bears in the world. Fill your purse with rocks or rolls of quarters.

One of my ancestors told the King of England, to his face, to kiss his ass. He got 300 lashes for his opinion. Another ancestor was tried in an ecclesiastical court for buying someone out of slavery. Yet another one stood before the Florida Secession Convention and told them they were "God-damned traitors." And my 5-2 momma laid $100 on a judge's bench (the fine for contempt) and called him everything but a child of God. "Let me know when my time is up." she said to him.

Leave your pregeny some stories worth telling.

 

[unfoundiamond]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=x&oi=dict&q=http://www.answers.com/whites%26r%3D67&usg=AFQjCNGXaQ-nfuT7sMtL49uAflGxKGvlKg

That's like 5 pages of results on white American lynchings... I am not trying to be arguementative, but don't think there isn't an always a exception...

*backs away very peacefully*

 

[DeservingBitch]

I've been places where hetero couples catch hell for public displays of affection. I wuz one.

Here you go. The poor het boy got a few queer people giving him the bad eye for his display of het affection, and that should be considered the same thing as queer people being denied rights, beaten up, attacked, and/or killed for being queer.

Next you're going to whine about the fact that the most oppressed group of people nowadays are white het boys. 'Cause we all know that affirmative action, feminist and queer activists, and immigrants have ripped white het boys of all their rights and privileges.

Cry me a fucking river.

 

[Homburg]

I think that this kind of statement, made in the current socio-political context we live in, is reflective of privilege.

If you're white, it's easy to say 'lets not focus on our difference'. But if you're black/brown, you are reminded of your difference every single day, and get shit because of it on a daily basis. Same goes for queers and other 'different' social groups.

Erm, different/same is a purely location-dependent phenomenon.

I look white enough to pass for a 'vaunted oppressor'. Great, right? Even better, I have enough brown in me to be able to claim non-white status, thus enjoying a little tiny bit of 'downtrodden oppressed' when needed. Either way, the common perception of me is white dude.

Now, I am highly mobile due to my line of work, and deal with folk from across all sorts of socioeconomic, cultural, and ethnoracial backgrounds. It is one thing to go into a restaurant and deal with the hispanic/black/white/etc server, and another entirely to deal with them on their home turf, surrounded by their peers. Huge difference.

My workplace is all over the place. So I don't have some predefined space in which I am seen as staff. My place is wherever my customer's damaged property is. So I meet my customer in their neighbourhood frequently, surrounded by their people. You may look at me and see white guy, and think that I am 'normal' and get treated as normal, but the second I step outside of my normal haunts, I am suddenly different.

The first example, and most obvious, is the ghetto/projects/whatever you want to call it. I go there dressed in my slacks and polo, looking like my scary, imposing white authority figure self, and I am as different as different can be. And as imposing white dude with clipboard somehow equates out to 'cop' I get all kinds of hostility. In short, I get that same shit that you claim brown people get every day*

Luckily my white dude superpowers protect me from violence, right? *shrug* I've been in plenty of situation where looking like a white dude labelled me the enemy, plain and simple. Does it happen to me as often as it happens to some CG drag queen? Fuck if I know, I don't know any well enough to talk about that sort of thing. But I can tell you all kinds of stories of situations where negotiation, belligerence, instillment of fear, and/or the occassional applications of brute physicality were the only things between me and violence. It happens.

So, sure, transpeople are out of place everywhere. I'm sympathetic, but the implication to some of this verbage is that white males stride the world in seven league boots and the oppressed brown/female masses cower before their might. When I wander into the ghetto, minority-dominated rural areas, or what have you, I am as different as can be, and, as the vile oppressor, am in danger too. The 'cop vibe' doesn't protect my ass one bit, especialy when they realise I'm not one.

Now, here's the fun part - I'm in danger when I'm in low-socioeconomic standing white neighbourhoods too. A trailer park redneck will shoot your ass before anyone will.

Disclaimer - I've been poor most of my life. I have friends and relatives that live in trailer parks, and friends that live in ghettos, and I'm perfectly happy to go to places where I'm different because the vast majority of folks in those places don't give a damn about me either way. And I am personally descended from a long line of poor and frequently violent rednecks, soldiers, coal miners, and other working class stiffs.


* - This is an overly strong assertion in my opinion. Admittedly, I'm working off of anecdotal evidence here, but "every day" is pretty damned strong, y'know?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Humbug

Who do you think youre foolin? You look like the carnival geek who bites off the heads of live chickens.

Youre right about trailer trash. The whole time I worked at the psych hospital I never needed to take-down a black patient. With trailer trash it was every day.