On Feminist Men

Part of the problem with men being part of feminism is that ‘community’ isn’t like it traditionally was used. In most things called ‘communities’, most people know everyone else or it’s run by people who try to be familiar with everyone. Even these days, in small towns, some people will hear about everyone else in town even if you dont’ meet face to face. But communities and movements like feminism- there are people in them that will never ever meet or hear about each other. A privileged person can’t be accepted into a community and have everyone know why and know that it’s because the person’s given signs that they deserve it and aren’t just abusing their privilege and trying to make yet another space all about them.

And a lot of people do abuse that, you get men who claim to be feminists because they think it’ll get them what they want from women or so they can use feminist key-words to attack women who speak against misogyny, you get various privileged people claim to support people they have privilege over so they can take over and get a power trip while getting back-pats from other privileged people.

Whether or not men ‘can’ be feminists, seeing a man who you don’t know claiming to be a feminist is going to be a red flag for a lot of people because of people who do that.

But, really, any man who’s calling himself a feminist really should be aware of his privilege enough to be aware of that and accept it.

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This Saturday there is a trans conference. The cis supremacist asswipe is going, this is in no way a surprise but is pretty damn busted.

I won’t be in the same car as him going there.

I may have to eat breakfast with him, I’ll sit at another table with my partner and maybe a friend.

I hope that he won’t be at any of hte workshops, but I’m terrified that he’ll think it’s okay for him to go to a PEER workshop for trans leaders of trans groups.

I pray he won’t go to the intersex one, led by an intersex person. I want to go to that so much. It’s the only reason I’m really going.

I can’t be around him. I hate this I hate this I hate this. I want to go, but I can’t be around him. I hate this so much. I hate that no one cares that I can’t be around him. The fucking genderqueer wants us to all stick together even though SHE FUCKING KNOWS I CAN’T BE AROUND HIM. I hate that I have to choose between my mental health and something Ir eally want to do because no one cares about hte fucking freak. Let’s all make sure the cis people are comfortable.

Trigger Warning: Intersex “Treatment” Trauma and Sexual Abuse Trauma: Not So Different

Take the trigger warning seriously, this does describe systematically made mandatory sexual abuse, it’s horrible and if you don’t have the spoons or if you’re triggered by this, proceed with extreme caution.
From Full-Frontal Activism

In my own experiences, some doctor would feel compelled to check the length of my vaginal canal every time I vistited (every half-year for many years starting when I was maybe 10, and then every year until I was 14 or so). This meant that they would take a freezing-cold metal dilator, coat it with (medical?) lube or something that burned like hell (it was probably alcohol-based), and insert it into my vagina and held for several seconds until I, of course, started to whimper, shout, tell him to stop, burst into tears, or all of the above. I did not know that I had the ability to deny consent to these vaginal-length-checks using the dilators. They were presented as a standard procedure, like listening to one’s hearbeat, or opening one’s mouth and saying, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” really awkwardly. I had no idea that these procedures did not benefit or track my health…they just tracked how likely a candidate I might be for one of several kinds of particular genital mutilation surgeries collectively called vaginoplasties, which would also not benefit or improve my health. It would only give me a reconstructed vagina, which may or may not have serious, deleterious health consequences, as I briefly detailed in a former post.

I was (and still am) outraged that these trauma happened to me and I wasn’t told I had a choice as to whether I want it to happen or not. And I am still dealing with the aftermath. Sometimes, I have vivid daymares consisting of flashbacks of some of these dilation procedures, and the other stigmatizing parts of the appointments that followed before and after. It felt so dehumanizing to me, even as a young child, to have to change into the scratchy-ass nightgown, lay on the cold metal table, and these things done to me I so, so didn’t want done. (Often, multiple times if they couldn’t get a measurement the first time, after which I was berated for moving around and whining too much. Doc, you would do it, too, if you knew what that felt like.) But, as intersex individuals, we’re taught not to talk about our intersex or any issues surrounding intersex with others, oftentimes preventing effective dialogue even among our closest family members and ourselves. So I didn’t discuss it out loud, but I felt that these procedures were abusive. I felt really guilty about feeling this way, because I was clearly taking up space I didn’t need to. I wasn’t “really” abused…abuse was for individuals that were touched, prodded, and traumatized under entirely different circumstances, right? If there was an old white dude in a medical coat present, it wasn’t really abuse, was it?

Emi Koyama, intersex activist and founder of Pacific Northwest’s Intersex Initiative, created a booklet entitled, Introduction to Intersex: A Guide for Allies (2nd Edition). On page 2 of the booklet (or page 5 in the Adobe PDF), she explains the following:

“One of the biggest problems with this “treatment” is that it sets in motion a lifelong pattern of secrecy, isolation, shame, and confusion. Adult intersex people’s stories often resemble that of those who survived childhood sexual abuse: trust violation, lack of honest communication, punishment for asking questions or telling the truth, etc. In some cases, intersex people’s experiences are exactly like those of childhood sexual abuse survivors: when they surgically “create” a vagina on a child, the parent – usually the mother – is required to “dilate” the vagina with hard instruments every day for months in order to ensure that the vagina won’t close off again.”

I would expand on this to include forced dilation at any interval during “treatment,” and not restricted to those post-mutilation surgery. This is definitely how I feel about my experiences.

Koyama continues:

“Even so, many intersex adults report that it was not necessarily the surgery that was most devastating for their self-esteem: for many, it is the repeated exposure to what we call “medical display,” or the rampant where a child is stripped down to nude and placed on the bed while doctors, nurses, medical students, and others come in and out of the room, touching and prodding and laughing to each other. Children who experience this get the distinct sense that there is something terribly wrong with who they are and are deeply traumatized. “

I have not experienced this, but can easily see how being publicly ridiculed would be traumatizing, and how one’s emotions while/after being touched and prodded against one’s will may be akin to those of childhood sexual abuse survivors.

This post is a major bummer, but I’m not sorry, because I believe that negative feelings, when properly channeled, can be used as vehicles to initiate oositive change. If you’re outraged, there are lots of conversations to be had with those that don’t know about intersex issues, e-mails and letters to write, lots of protests to organize, lots of petitions to create and sign, lots of books, zines, art, and music to make and support that raise awareness and try to change these medical abuses. I always must remind myself that it is okay and healthy to allow oneself to experience negative feelings, but if it just stops there after my own negative feelings have passed, will they be gone for good if the social systems and problems informing them still exist? If my own feelings are resolved for the moment, is that justification to stop fighting for others still experiencing pain and trauma? I don’t think so.

Koyama states “…it is estimated that five children per day continue to undergo the medically unnecessary and irreversible surgeries in the United States.” These five (plus?) children a day are worth fighting for. We just have to go out and actually do it.

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Trans Until Graduation

Alright, so the term “Lesbian[Gay/Bi] Until Graduation” exists. It seems a bit busted and biphobic, but I can see how it could be problematic.

Now, a lot of colleges are safe bubbles. You can “experiment” without serious risk of any problems compared to the “real world”. You’re unlikely to be fired or expelled at most schools, you can generally get a circle of friends who’re accepting, and you’re generally far enough from your parents that if there are familial risks there isn’t much danger. The real world generally isn’t so forgiving unless you live somewhere that’s cLG(b) accepting, and not everyone can. There are still camps for all-too-often-married cis guys to try and get rid of their homosexual desires, and they aren’t always bi, this is how strong homophobia and biphobia in the world still is. It’s not really surprising that people would take advantage of a safe bubble then revert back to presenting as straight afterwards.

This isn’t an inherently bad thing, it’s good that people have a safe space to be able to explore other parts of themselves even if they ultimately decide either that isn’t who they are or that it isn’t worth the risk to be out. But I can see how it’s hurtful to people who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual (and generally non-het). For the ones who were used as an “experiment”, if a proper relationship happened, they may feel that their feelings were being toyed with. It also can make the community as a whole look “less valid”, because it’s turning their sexualities into fads. It’s difficult.

Let me make something clear, though: I do not consider this to be the same as a bisexual person meeting someone of the opposite sex after college and getting married while still identifying as bi. Sometimes the term has been applied to people who do this, and I think that’s busted.

Now… trans until graduation. I found a post about it and it seems like it’s far more a touchy issue. Here’s the more relevant bit:

Being transgender has become a fad at Smith College. Yeah, I said it, a fucking fad. Women, especially lesbian women, have come to eroticize and fetishize the trans men in this community or really anyone who expresses masculine traits. I’ve had friends who have had strangers come up to them and ask if they were transitioning simply because they display traits that are not traditionally feminine. When they say they are not, the stranger will respond, “Well, you’d be hotter if you were.” What? Every week I hear of someone else who has changed their name, who’s taking T. Whatever, I guess, you’re choice. But here’s the question no one is asking, after college, will this still be your choice? Some may say, so what if it isn’t? And here’s my response: by co-opting trans identity and shucking it off when it’s no longer convenient or no longer useful, it trivializes the real struggles that transgendered and genderqueer folks have to go through because gender-variant folks can’t do that. They’re playing with oppression, an oppression that they do not have to experience and may not actually fully understand. For so many people, it’s a deeply personal and intensely difficult struggle. Also, it’s a highly politicized identity, which these kids are only playing with, without having to experience the real oppression or the real personal and political struggle.

I still don’t like the word gender-variant and this person is doing nothing to fix that, can’t believe a trans person would actually say “Isn’t transitioning just reinforcing the gender binary?”. That said, I think I know someone who was Trans Until Graduation. I don’t know if she identifies as such, but it seems to fit the bill. Now, I know trans people who don’t medically transition at all are out there, and they can’t always stay out after college, I won’t try to describe the differences as if they’re all-encompassing, but there are differences between that and this. Again, not what I’m talking about. This is much more related to cis appropriation of genderqueer identities.

This whole thing is complicated, obviously. Being too wary of cis appropriators could end up as a dangerous witchhunt of who’s “trans enough”, which we have enough problems with already. There’s no decent way to tell someone to stop identifying as they do, and it’s a slippery slope. But cis people appropriating our identities has its problems. It can end up with skewed ideas about trans people, make people who are trans doubt themselves more than they already do, make others more suspicious of people who only come out as trans after meeting trans people (even though this makes perfect sense) which limits the amount of support the people just coming out get, egg on the trans fetishists who can be very dangerous to our community, etc.

Selling your soul to who, exactly?

I recently read Doktor Snake’s Voodoo spellbook (available in my school library, donated by someone who a building is named after, I find this awesome). I’d recommend it even for people who don’t care to practice Voodoo or hoodoo because it gives interesting information and was pretty nicely written. It’s not just a spellbook, it also talks about some stories and the author’s experiences. Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Conjure: A Handbook is also pretty good for people who, like me, are sick of hearing about Voodoo but knowing nothing about it. I got it from interlibrary loan.

One of the bits Doktor Snake’s Voodoo spellbook spoke of was Robert Johnson, who allegedly sold his soul to the devil. It talked about how the “devil” at the crossroads was initially an African God who acted as a way for mortals to communicate with the Gods. This God was turned into “the devil” by white missionaries who came to Africa. So the term “devil” doesn’t have the same connotations for people who believe in Voodoo as it does for most people, and selling your soul to him isn’t as horrible as it might be to Satan.

I’m not even sure if you are “selling your soul” to him, it seems more like you’re making an agreement that you get something you want and give up most of your life in exchange, I’m not sure if there’s anything about what happens to it afterwards. There are people who would find 10 years of artistic genius well worth never living to see 50, but if the God got to keep your soul afterwards I don’t see why he couldn’t wait a few more decades to get it. But you might be so I don’t know, I’m clearly not an expert here.

Entertainment

One of the most annoying things, for me, of not having privileges is how hard it is to find entertainment that isn’t triggering. It’s next to impossible. I read a lot of webcomics, and a ton of them throw in random transphobia for the hell of it. Something Positive makes “tranny” jokes (I can not be bothered to find proof), and the author hasn’t gotten back to me about why. C’est La Vie just… ugh. Same with El Goonish Shive. I could go on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

And, most recently (for me), Scandinavia and the World failed. Twice. First: (both quotes are from the artist’s comments) “Denmark was the first country in the world to turn a transsexual man into a woman. … Sweden is not a fan of man-boobs” Second: “Denmark once invented man-breasts“

HAHAHAHA IT’S SO FUNNY BECAUSE, SEE, THE AUTHOR DOESN’T KNOW JACKSHIT ABOUT TRANSITION OR WHAT GOES INTO IT OR HOW THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE, REGARDLESS OF COERCIVELY ASSIGNED SEX, HAVE BREAST TISSUE OR HOW SOME CAMAB PEOPLE NATURALLY HAVE “BREASTS” AND BECAUSE TRANS WOMEN AREN’T REALLY WOMEN, THEY’RE MEN- HAHA, SILLY MEN WHO THINK THEY ARE WOMEN

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, really, I’ve got two options here:

1. Figure out how to be completely unphased by this, especially because there are no trigger warnings so I can’t be like “okay, this next bit contains transphobia, I’m ready”.

2. Stop trying to read things I enjoy because it may end up like this, which is seriously upsetting for me.

A rant about a teacher

My partner is majoring in Japanese. My partner’s Japanese teacher is the head of the department and also one of only two people (one of whom is away and will be for most of our time in college) who can be my partner’s academic advisor. She has a lot of power over my partner. This is not a good thing.

The first thing about her that bothered me is that she’s commented on how she doesn’t want to produce “handicapped Japanese speakers”. By this she means she wants everyone in class to be as fluent as possible. But it doesn’t erase the ablism of it. The way she teaches class, a deaf person would almost certainly not be able to learn, and my partner has a hard time due to undiagnosed hearing problems (they probably need a hearing aid, but yay being poor with sucky health insurance). The undiagnosed making it impossible to get the school to tell her to lay off, although I doubt she would anyways.

This teacher expects you to go to class sick. Not just go to class, but go to class completely prepared and able to function as well as you can while not sick. If you can’t do this, she gets furious with you. She gets furious with you if you don’t go to class. Generally not going to class is the better option, but she still expects students to go to class no matter how sick they are and do just as well as they would on a good day.

She also communicates very badly. I don’t mean this to be a jab at her English. I mean that she’ll say “You can use your books in class” then get angry when people use their books in class. I think that what she wants to happen is that she says “You can use your books in class” and then everyone is so awesome that they don’t need to even though they have the option. Similarly, she says “you shouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes in class”. However, if you make a mistake she felt that you shouldn’t have made, she won’t call on you for the rest of the class, meaning that you lose valuable practice. Again, I think what she wants to happen is for her to say that and then everyone is so awesome that they don’t make mistakes. This sets up an incredibly frustrating situation for everyone.

My partner is a UK citizen and a permanent resident in the US. Most of the people in the class are US citizens. The teacher sometimes sends out emails with scholarship opportunities to study Japanese, at least one of which said it was only open to US citizens. My partner pointed this out and the teacher responded with an email giving a link that had to be followed through several pages just to be told “Countries who have an agreement with Japan” (which may or may not include the UK). This link was accompanied with scolding that in the future, my partner should do their own research. She then publicly said to the class not to email her about unnecessary things, which is something she does to publicly shame students.  Let me point out once again that US citizens are not expected to do their own research.

And right now my partner is passed out exhausted next to me and can’t rest as long as they need to and has another unneeded stressor added. Namely, the teacher decided that because they have a midterm tomorrow and can’t study for a test for tomorrow, my partner should just do it today. This was decided this morning, the test’ll be at 2. So rather than having the extra time to study for the midterm at a relaxed pace, my partner will instead be cramming for a test.

This is all without going into the utter fail of the sections on gender or that she forces my partner to use male first-person pronouns (when there are fine neutral options) and say they have a “wife”.

I am not happy with her at all, and there are plenty of other things I’d love to tell her off for. But the problem is that she is the only Japanese teacher in the school and essentially the only person who can be my partner’s advisor. My partner is stuck with this person for 2 of the next 3 years (plans to go to Japan for Junior year. We get to arm wrestle with the school to get them to let me go to a place in Kyoto for a semester as well because she doesn’t want people to go to Japan unless they’re doing it her way).  I do not think that she is in any way above making my partner’s life hell if I let her know that she’s already discriminating against my partner on the basis of their citizenship. Which I’m pretty sure is against the school rules to do, but I don’t know who to go to about this because, again, she’s the head of the department and I can’t risk getting someone involved only for her to take it out on my partner.

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Dear searchers,

Recently some people have stumbled on my blog from some very interesting searches. Namely, “intersex self fucking” and “how to intersex people think”

Now, with the first one, I’m hoping that, dear searcher, you are an intersex person who’s exploring your own sexuality. While I’m afraid you won’t find the information you need here, I wish you luck in your search. However, dear searcher, if you’re simply a non-intersex person who is trying to fetishize or objectify intersex people just to get off? Don’t. It’s wrong. Intersex people do not exist for privileged people like us to gawk at them.

As for “how to intersex people think”, I’m guessing that’s a typo. So, really, I’d say “With their brains, I’d suppose”.

I hope this helps answer your questions.

Intersex is not Trans

This all started from this post.

Say it a few times until you believe it. Intersex is not Trans. Now, this doesn’t mean they’re mutually exclusive. Intersex people can be trans. Trans people can be intersex. But intersex people are not inherently trans. While there’s some debate, I’m gonna go with trans people are not inherently intersex (and if we were, we’d be a small part of their community, not the other way around).

I don’t know if all intersex people get full cis privilege because if they don’t “look cis” then people won’t treat them as such. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t cis. There are plenty of cis people who don’t “look cis” either all the time or sometimes who can face transphobia for it. That doesn’t make them trans. Facing transphobia doesn’t make you trans. A whole lot of straight people face homophobia, being called a fag or queer, particularly as a form of gender policing. It doesn’t make them gay, it doesn’t make it sting as much as using a homophobic slur hurts people who actually are gay.

The problems intersex people and trans people face may have some parallels, but they aren’t identical. Both face abuse from the medical system, but different abuses. And because I’m not intersex, I have no right to talk about the problems they face. But there are intersex bloggers out there who do talk about it. Interphobia is separate and distinct from transphobia. The two are related. Sexism, homo/bi/acephobia, femmephobia, transphobia, and interphobia are all related. But they’re also all distinct and separate, and no one would say that sexism is identical to homophobia, saying that gay men who face homophobia are women because homophobia and sexism are related is pretty damn incorrect.

I’ve seen too many instances of non-IS trans people, trans people who have privilege over intersex people (and, yes, cis intersex people have privilege over us, but that doesn’t erase ours) saying that intersex people are trans. No matter their gender dientity, their assigned sex, their self identity, or anything else- they must be trans. That’s bullshit. It’s appropriative, it’s screwed up. It’s wrong. It’s wrong to tell anyone especially someone you have privilege over, who they are. Isn’t that the entire fucking reason trans people have problems? Because cis privileged people think that they can tell us who we are? So then why the hell do we think it’s okay for us to tell other people that they must be trans?