Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics

Rain Taxi has posted my review of Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. It's one of the best books I've read all year, certainly one of the best poetry anthologies I've read in a long time. Here's a sample of the review:

Reading the book, with all its diversities, can be dizzying—and it’s a glorious feeling. Rarely do anthologies capture quite so much energy of expression. No reader is likely to find all of these poems to their taste, and that is part of the fun, because as we traverse the types and tones, we are challenged to define our own tastes, desires, and identities. Who am I when I read this book? we ask. And: Who might I be?

Regardless of our own relationship to gender, to bodies, to love, lust, and loss, we will find ourselves somewhere within these pages, within these lines. Here are voices to hear—voices that, because of all their differences, are ineluctably human: our friends, family, neighbors, ancestors, lovers, selves.

For a Trans-Inclusive Feminism & Womanism

We are committed to recognizing and respecting the complex construction of sexual/gender identity; to recognizing trans* women as women and including them in all women’s spaces; to recognizing trans* men as men and rejecting accounts of manhood that exclude them; to recognizing the existence of genderqueer, non-binary identifying people and accepting their humanity; to rigorous, thoughtful, nuanced research and analysis of gender, sex, and sexuality that accept trans* people as authorities on their own experiences and understands that the legitimacy of their lives is not up for debate; and to fighting the twin ideologies of transphobia and patriarchy in all their guises. [read more]

I agree with everything in the new "Statement of Trans-Inclusive Feminism and Womanism", and so just sent my name in to be added to the list of signers. The statement is well-written and thoughtful, a nice counter to the reckless, hateful statements and actions of certain people who have taken to calling themselves "radical feminists". Here's to a wondrous diversity of gendericity!

Thanks to Cheryl Morgan for sharing the link. If you want to sign on, here's the info:

If you are a blogger/writer/academic/educator/artist/activist/otherwise in a position to affect feminist or womanist discourse or action and you would like to sign on to this statement, let us know!  You can use the form on the contact page or you can email us at feministsfightingtransphobia1@gmail.com.  We’d love to hear from you.

An Argument Against Hate Crimes Legislation

A frustratingly superficial article at The New Inquiry includes a link to a powerfully compelling letter from the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, arguing against added hate crimes provisions in New York's proposed Gender Employment Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA). The letter also includes a very useful collection of links to reference material on hate crimes.

The entire letter is worth reading, but here's an excerpt to convince you to click over there:

As a nation, we lock up more people per capita than any other country in the world; one in one hundred adults are behind bars in the U.S. Our penalties are harsher and sentences longer than they are anywhere else on the planet, and hate crime laws with sentencing enhancements make them harsher and longer. By supporting longer periods of incarceration and putting a more threatening weapon in the state’s hands, this kind of legislation places an enormous amount of faith in our deeply flawed, transphobic, and racist criminal legal system. The application of this increased power and extended punishment is entirely at to the discretion of a system riddled with prejudice, institutional bias, economic motives, and corruption.

Trans people, people of color, and other marginalized groups are disproportionately incarcerated to an overwhelming degree. Trans and gender non-conforming people, particularly trans women of color, are regularly profiled and falsely arrested for doing nothing more than walking down the street. Almost 95% of the people locked up on Riker’s Island are black or Latin@. Many of us have been arrested ourselves or seen our friends, members, clients, colleagues, and lovers arrested, often when they themselves were the victims of a violent attack.

Once arrested, the degree of violence, abuse, humiliation, rape, and denial of needed medical care that our communities confront behind bars is truly shocking, and at times fatal.  In popular conception, hate crime laws were enacted to protect oppressed minorities against bigots who would seek to terrorize a community through violent crime: racist lynchings, gay-bashing, anti-Semitic violence, and so forth. Unfortunately, the popular imagining of the operation of hate crime laws does not bear out in reality. Hate crime laws do not distinguish between oppressed groups and groups with social and institutional power.

Continue reading

Read This: How Not to Write a Trans Character

Cheryl Morgan has written two things you must must must read: "How Not to Write a Trans Character" and the piece it introduces, "The Bone Palace", a review of a novel by Amanda Downum. The review is comprehensive and thoughtful, using the novel as a problematic example, and so it is about much, much more than the book itself. I haven't read The Bone Palace, so can't comment on whether I agree or not with Cheryl's take on it, but the evaluation is not the important thing -- what's important is that Cheryl generously offers us a way of thinking and rethinking representations that have real effects in the world.

Toward the end, the review includes a discussion of the Sandman story A Game of You, with reference to something I wrote about it that Cheryl took exception to. I left a comment on Cheryl's post to clarify what I at least thought I was trying to say, however incoherently, but I'm not going to reprint that here because really I think everybody should read both of her posts fully -- what they have to say is way bigger than any specific story.

The hatred and violence trans people face is nauseating and heartbreaking; whatever we do, however well intentioned, that supports a social, political, legal, or gender system that perpetuates, encourages, or ignores that hatred and violence should be criticized as fully as possible. Beyond that, though, we should work toward creating a world where all different ways of being can be celebrated and enjoyed. Striving for less than that means striving for a world of limits and stereotypes, of prejudices and phobias, of policed boundaries and enforced identities. Shouldn't animals with consciousness and conscience aim for more?

Some Things to Remember

I'm stealing these points from a recent post from Cheryl Morgan because they're important and succinct, and I like a reminder now and then myself:

1. Every time you make a joke about how someone born female is “really” a man you are reinforcing the idea that trans women are something shameful. It is like kids in a school yard yelling “spastic” at the current target of the bullies.

2. Every time you describe trans women as “deceptive” you are denying their gender identity and their right to live as they feel appropriate. You are also making it harder for them to get access to jobs, health care and so on. You are labeling them as inherently dishonest.

3. Every time you describe trans women as deceptive sexual predators you are reinforcing the myth that trans people only do what they do in order to satisfy perverted sexual desires.

4. Every time you advise men to be wary of being “deceived” by trans women you are providing support for the “trans panic” excuse for murdering trans women. This is no different from the “gay panic” defense for murdering gay people, which is still being used today.

5. Every time you attack trans people but actually only attack trans women you are reinforcing the idea that for a woman to want to live as a man is a natural and understandable ambition but for a man to want to live as a woman is somehow shameful and degrading.

GID and Transgender Links

Regarding my "Born to Choose" post, a friend gently suggested the whole discussion gets more complex, thorny, and controversial if you include discussion of transgender issues. This is very true, and though I had considered adding something about the controversy over Gender Identity Disorder (GID), my knowledge of that subject is superficial, and I figured I was going out on enough of a limb already that I probably shouldn't risk inadvertently simplifying a subject so vital to people's lives and livelihoods.

My friend made the useful distinction (which she says may have come from Julia Serano) between de-pathologization of transgenderism and de-medicalization of it, with the former being desirable and the latter not so much, given how much distress trans people can be in before they can get support or therapy, or before they are able to transition.

Though I can't offer an informed opinion on this topic, what I can do is provide some links to discussions of GID by people more knowledgeable than I. Please add others in the comments if you know of any.

• A short answer to the question, "Is transgenderism a disability?" from the LGBT Resource Center at Northwestern University.
• "Is Transgender Pain a Disorder -- or a Symptom", an article from the NC Independent Weekly
• The American Psychological Association's "Answers to Your Questions about Transgender Individuals and Gender Identity"
• "The Medicalization of Transgenderism" from Trans-Health.com
  
• Wikipedia's LGBT portal, Gender Studies category, list of transgender-related topics, and entries on GID and Intersexuality.
• GID Reform Advocates
  
• "Transgender Identity Affirmation and Mental Health" from The International Journal of Transgenderism
• Some articles and essays about GID and transgenderism by a trans psychologist
• Information on differences between transsexuality and intersexuality from the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) Support Group of Australia
• An academic essay from 1997, "The Challenge of 'Gender Identification Disorder'" by Debra Shogan

Update: A couple new links that were emailed to me:

• A page on "Trans Health Priorities" from The National Center for Transgender Equality
• A PDF article on the situation in the U.K. with regard to trans health and access to services