Trans Murder Apology

Where to begin?

Forums can be such catalysts for thoughtful articulations! Arguing with people has always been much more fruitful for my brain than analyzing by myself. Recently, as in, over the last two or three days, there has been a conversation going regarding the murder of Angie Zapata.

Now, any feminist who's been around the block has seen this exact same rationale leveled at women who are raped, "well if she didn't [whatever she did] then [that] wouldn't have happened to her!" And we call this rape apology.

I don't know if there is a term for this that I simply haven't come across yet, but there should be a term for the blame I see leveled at trans people for "getting themselves murdered" which is basically what I have been dealing with. In contemplating all the overlapping issues I could think of, I came up with a few things, which I'd like to share with y'all.

There seemed to be a few different concepts underlying people's responses to Angie's murder. The most prominent, which I have seen just about every time this topic comes up anywhere, is that she was "lying", she "deceived" the man she slept with, and don't we all get angry when we're lied to?!

I think it's a bit more complex than that, personally.

We have a situation where say, a transsexual (or intersexed) woman, who has not had bottom surgery, is getting sexually involved with a heterosexual, cissexual man.

Now, this woman is presenting as a woman because she in fact, is a woman. If she still has a penis in some form that doesn't make her a liar for presenting as a woman.

The cissexual man assumed this woman wouldn't have a penis, but if he got involved with a cissexual woman who had a hysterectomy he would likewise assume she had a uterus. This is because these are the typical bodily configurations of a woman. They are what we are taught to expect a woman to consist of. But they are not the only configurations of a woman. Her not telling him of her atypical bodily configuration doesn't make her a liar. She just happens to be a woman with a penis.

The real issue in any of these types of cases is with the murderer involved. It is he who is reacting to his assumptions being incorrect.

Now, there are two ways to react, assuming he is not attracted to women with intersex or transsexual histories. He can say "I'm sorry, I assumed you were cissexual and this doesn't work for me" and go on his merry way (I will refrain from getting into the latent unaddressed issues I believe such men have with their own sexualities) or a variation along the lines of "I'm sorry, I not sexually attracted to people with a penis" (I don't assign such issues to this response), OR he can go all irrationally rageful, as in the Zapata case, and beat or kill this woman for... Well, whatever exactly is going on in his head at the time. It sure seems to me like what these men really get angry about are those latent issues I mentioned earlier. Like somehow being attracted to a woman with a penis, or someone with an intersexed or male-bodied history makes you GAY, OMG.

This is why the issue really, really, never lies with the T or I person.

Yes there is baggage that comes along with ones sexuality and gender. Some guy might see my hairy legs and get instantly turned off. Fine he's not my type. We make these kinds of negotiations in establishing relationships constantly. But if I jump into bed with some guy and he discovers a much loathed hairy bush, he's not going to kill me for it.

Why?

Because it's understood that a part of dating is dealing with the fact that not everything one assumes about another person is going to be true. Ever. That is the nature of building a relationship, even a purely sexual one. Additionally, other information is routinely left out of discussion before sexual relations take place, and that discovery of that information, even important life impacting sorts of things, does not result in murder.

Taking that into account, there must be a unique element to the information of T/I history to the person hearing it, something that might cause such reactions.

I think Radha [yes she was there too] hit the nail on the head, that unique element is homophobia.

The man in this case is not upset that Angie didn't share information with him. Certainly a man you've been married to for 20 years probably IS upset at that, but that's not the case we're discussing here. The man in this story is upset because she "lied" to him, she "fooled" him into think she was a "real woman."

It's not her words or her lack of words that creates this "lie", it is her very existence, and more importantly, his response to her existence. He is attracted to her, and by his definition she is not a "real" woman, but in fact a man. Thus he was attracted to a man, in his mind. If this is what he is in fact responding to, as I'm arguing, then his resulting rage is rooted in homophobia.

These responses from these men aren't about the T/I person. They are purely about themselves and their fear of what their attraction to a person with an intersex/trans history means in relation to their self identity as a heterosexual male.

Which is why my cissexual husband wouldn't respond this way. I discussed this with him, setting up a scenario wherein he meets an attractive woman, they go home together and when things get naked or shortly before, he discovers she has a penis. I asked him what he would do. He said he would feel a mixture of "disappointed" and "terribly amused". Amused at this "oops" moment, because he is simply not sexually attracted to penis. Disappointed that he's not actually getting laid that night.

I asked him if he would feel this woman lied to him or deceived him. No, he said.

This is not to laud my husband. But it was mentioned in the thread also, that cis-men don't need to examine their sexuality in depth the way transpeople do. I couldn't possibly disagree more. In fact I think het-cis guys are the ones who MOST need to examine their sexuality, because (as my husband says too) their homophobia is directly rooted in their NOT doing so.

This is why hubby generally dislikes other het-cis guys (and actually actively prefers the company of gay men). The rampant, thinly veiled homophobia bothers him. The lack of security in their identity and sexuality grates on him. And he attributes it directly to the fact that they don't ever think about their sexuality, don't entertain the possibility that they might not be "all the way" straight. They can't even think about it because it causes how they view themselves to shift so much.

Whereas he did think about it. It occurred to him one day to be curious about the possibility and so he went out and watched some gay porn, studied it, absorbed his reactions to it. What did he discover? Did nothing for him, he envied the guys for their bodies a little bit, and then he went on his merry way.

I think if every "hetero" guy did this same thing, two things would happen. 1. There would be far fewer closeted gay men in the world (:P) and 2. us women would not be abused or murdered by them anymore (because I think misogyny and homo/transphobia are inseparably linked but that's an argument for another time), at the very least gay men and trans women in all their variations wouldn't be. No more Angie Zapata's and Matthew Shepard's and Duanna Johnson's etc etc...

Another element going on in these conversations is that they are simplistic victim blaming. I don't care if you preface your statement with "Now I'm not BLAMING this person for getting themselves murdered...BUT". Whatever follows is some variation of victim blaming!! "Don't swim with the sharks and expect your ass not to get bitten". Whatever way you try and spin statements like this you are putting responsibility for preventing crime against this woman on HER, and by it's very nature that diverts some blame from the perpetrator.

This is usually followed by "well I want people to stay safe! this is a dangerous world we live in!!"

Well, yah. Do any of us REALLY not know that though? Do we need YOU to tell us this?? Don't we as women learn very quickly what actions we need to perform, and what activities to avoid, to keep ourselves safe? Aren't those beaten into our heads on a regular basis from birth?

We are all conscious of the compromises we make in our lives to keep ourselves safe. And we shouldn't think about those compromises as anything but. I know they are, I'm sure you know they are.

And the bottom line, we shouldn't HAVE to make compromises to "stay safe". That is idealistic, I know, but letting the conversations in response to these events revolve around us and how we can stay safe we are in some ways letting abusers off the hook, when the conversation should be revolving solely around THEM and their atrocious actions.

Until there is a resounding "HOW DARE YOU" response to stories like Angie's from the mainstream I feel like I have to just yell it louder to compensate, and going immediately into "stay safe" reinforce exactly what they want...For us to continue making adjustments FOR THEM, thinking how WE can adjust OUR behavior FOR THEM, instead of insisting to be treated like human beings BY them.

When it's doing the latter, and calling men out on their homophobia and misogyny, which will eventually, gods willing, make it possible for us to live in, take up space in, the world without making those compromises.

Budget Hero!

This was terribly amusing. Who knew a Socialist would decrease the size of government?! The rich wouldn't like me very much though...

Homophobia and the Black Community

From the Diary of an Anxious Black Woman

I do think we need to consider the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality to begin to dismantle attitudes, roadblocks, and barriers that have kept marginal groups divided. After all, post-emancipation, there was a reason why the first thing freed slaves wanted to do was reunite with their families, forcibly separated during slavery, and why they married in droves. There's a reason why the romance of the heterosexual family, who in turn serve as a powerful symbol as the backbone of every community, is so powerful. So powerful, in fact, that it has become imperative for LGBT communities to fight for marriage equality today. The romance of marriage and family is the romance of acceptance and respectability, and every marginal community has fought for that acceptance and respectability because of the belief that this is the key to equality. And, there must be some truth to this for why were white supremacists so opposed to black families that they worked hard to keep them broken down? There must be some truth to this, for why are heterosexists working overtime to prevent lesbians and gays from gaining full access to marriage, and all the economic, social, and cultural benefits that accompany it?

Black people's sexuality has been attacked for so long, that church, family, and community have been a refuge. It's a difficult thing, then, to give up the romance of the heterosexual nuclear family by supporting what has been preached to them as "sin." This "family" is supposed to protect our respectability and our acceptance. A significant number of black people whom I've come across, keep harping on how proud they are, not only that Obama was elected, but that he had his black wife and children with him. I am quite sure that unified heterosexual family portrait signaled something else for LGBT communities in California, Florida, and Arkansas (where they also lost the right to adopt children), who lost their right to marry the same night this First Family was embraced and celebrated.

And, yet, this same First Family has been on the receiving end of many death threats, despite this acceptance, which suggests that certain privileges and power - which are preserved for white heteropatriarchy - are now being powerfully contested. What is a powerful symbol for one group is a threat for another.

As Prop 8 Discussions Continue

This post outlines a lot of things we need to think about.

As attractive as it is, let's not give into the urge to oversimplify what happened on election day. We need to move forward from here and change people's minds about things, we can't do that if we ignore their history, the context of their life as they know it.

A sample:

That is why we end up with claims like, "{Black people} know what it's like to be discriminated against. Why are they doing to us what happened to them?" White liberals are the first ones to utilize the history of racial violence to demonstrate why another oppression is also bad. "Just like segregation..." "Just like lynching..." Rights are like baseball cards that can be traded because their essential nature is the same.

But this shit is not the same. I don't have to argue that it's worse to assert that it ain't the same. The history of racial violence against Black people since we were brought to these shores to this very day is unique and wholly disturbing. There are lessons we can learn from that history that we can thoughtfully apply to other situations. There are connections between this and other trajectories of colonization and subjugation. But I'm noticing that there are some white folks that feel pretty entitled to rustle around Black history like some kind of curious anthropologist, picking out things that are convenient for them to use, often to legitimize their own experiences of oppression.

To be real, before this prop 8 stuff hit the fan, I was more tolerant of the parallel that some white queers drew between the Black Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the more recent LGBT Civil Rights Movements. I thought it might be a useful strategy. However, with all the sturm und drang of the past week, I'm beginning to see how this usage gets boiled down to a tit for tat strategy: We have your back (i.e. voted for Obama, sympathy to the story of the Black Civil Rights Movement), why don't y'all have ours? We (as of 2008) think that U.S. slavery was totally wrong, why don't y'all get that banning gay marriage is wrong? Or Jon Stewart's joke (third rich white guy) that as soon as Black people "made it" with Obama, it only took us 24 hours to use that brand new power against gay folks. Tolerance goes "both ways." "If {your people} want to call me a faggot, I can call you nigger." I'm not even picking on the fellow who gave us that last gem, I really think this is the essential point that Olbermann, Savage, and others are making. It's the same thing. A right is a right. A slur is a slur. There is no substantial difference.

While I have argued that this is the wrong way to think about oppression, I do not believe that just because something is different than something else doesn't mean that it doesn't have it's own moral weight. Just because I think not legalizing gay marriage isn't "just like" not legalizing marriage under chattel slavery (seriously, I can barely write that without making a face), doesn't mean that I don't think that prop 8 doesn't have it's own profound moral significance.

Protest!

It was fun! Not a lot to tell, I was out on the street, there were many of us, two of "them" and it sounded like the rally itself was having a good ol' time but I had a hard time hearing it. I did see the beginning, where they did some smudging, which was awesome, I could smell the sage all the way at the back. And they did some drumming and then again at the end which was nice. We had two-spirit representatives as a part of that, which was pretty cool to me because it seems like transgender folks have gotten sort of elided in the fight. Overall it felt nice to be out with people, creating collective energy, and there was a LOT of honking for us. Honking from people of all ages AND ethnic backgrounds tyvm.

Oh, the sign I finally decided to go with! I got a poster board that was orange on one side and purple on the other. On the orange side I wrote "'Defending TRADITIONAL Marriage'?? Are you bringing back DOWRIES and MARITAL RAPE too?? No thanks!" On the purple side it said "Obama was AGAINST 8!" \o/ One of my favorite signs said "Don't you want Dumbledore to be happy? Let him marry!" I spent most of the time chatting with the two women standing next to me, one an obvious middle class Cali born white woman like me and the other an immigrant from Kenya who said after talking with her particular community after the voting she found a lot of them didn't really understand what they were voting for and said we really need to go into the community and educate to change that. They were both cool. The only thing that bothered me was this one older man of apparently Asian descent who kept yelling at the guys across the street "religion is the root of all evil!" That made me sad because I don't think it's true. The pronouncement did get me thinking about something I read at The Wild Hunt today though, something I think we forget in all this is that some religions are having THEIR beliefs trampled by other religions in this fight.

Overall though, good times.


*EDIT* I'm sharing pictures through my Tumblr: Rags'n'Bones as I find them!

Colbert - Savage Prop 8

Help Me!

Think of good protest signs!

So far I have:

Traditional Marriage:
Arranged by parents
Dowry/Wife is property
Marital Rape - Legal
Domestic Abuse - Legal
Why Would You Protect This?

Same Sex Couples Don't Threaten My Marriage - Bigotry Does!
other side: Who's Next?

Will My Marriage Be Illegal Next?

If a gay person threatens your marriage
it's because you're sleeping with them!

Christians share their "religious institution" with atheists and pagans why not homosexuals?

Join the Impact - Nationwide Prop 8 Protest Update!

A LOT of new cities have been added in California, I'm going to the imagine the same is true for other states, find out if there is an event close to home!! And if you're going to be in Oakland, come join me at city hall!



http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/

8:30AM Hawaii
10:30AM Pacific
11:30AM Mountain
12:30PM Central
1:30PM Eastern

Larry Summers is made of LOSE

Women's groups may have ousted Summers
by Politico.com
Thursday November 13, 2008, 8:14 PM

Intense backlash from women’s groups may have pushed former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers off the short-list to lead Treasury for President-elect Barack Obama, according to widespread reports circulating in Democratic circles.

The women’s opposition to a possible Summers’ appointment was the explanation some Democratic sources are hearing for why the Obama transition team has crossed Summers off their list. The Obama team doesn’t want to kick off its administration with a controversy nor go head-to-head with an important constituency when there are other qualified candidates, political operatives speculate.

WE are made of win.