Pride week continued...So, Friday and Saturday I attended the Future Queer Conference at University College Dublin. I was invited to be on a panel along with British photographer Sara Davidmann, British FTM activist Robert Allfree, and British MTF activist Gill Dalton (who's been living in Dublin for the last year and a half, busily setting up a trans support group and other organisations).
It’s the first time I’ve ever been invited to be on an academic panel and I was excited and nervous. Sara, Robert and Gill were all incredible, articulate, heartfelt, courageous and each utterly remarkable. Not for the first time, I marveled at how lucky I am to be numbered among such company. I wouldn't trade such an honor to have been born male, even to possess a penis.
People said I was great too, though to be honest I departed from my script and was all over the place, so I don't really have a feel for how I did. I talked about how the queer community feels like home to me because queer-identified people embrace ambiguity and complex identities, like mine, and are comfortable with the evolution and elasticity of identity. Many also understand how utterly inadequate traditional definitions are. What I intended to then go on and discuss included the topics of FTM invisibility, transgender inclusion/exclusion, political infighting and the way trannies
embody queerness.
If you're curious, I've continued with my text (the one I didn't exactly follow) below the fold.
(To continue) it’s interesting because while my very existence challenges pat definitions, at this point in my life my queerness is anything but obvious. I “pass” so well that under normal circumstances, I appear disappointedly normal. And while this helps me find a job and spares me from the very real and scary transphobia out there, it’s problematic in other ways.
Most importantly: finding a date!! Jeeze, I walk into a queer bar and the women look away while most guys, once they find out my, uh, anatomy, lose interest.
Another matter: my queerness utterly disappears when I’m dating a woman. I end up coming across as a somewhat effeminate, straight guy. I don’t mind the effeminate part, but straight?!
The few times I’ve talked with questioning gender-queer butches who were struggling to sort out their identities and were wondering if they might be happier transitioning, I’ve said that one of the biggest things they’d be giving up if they transition is the ready-made, wonderful women’s community. Sure, it can be difficult at times, with the in-fighting and the passionate sometimes incestuous relationships. But it’s there for you! In every major western city, just inside the door of the local dyke bar!
I really miss that. The way my visible queerness used to make me an integral part of the dyke community. There’s no counterpart for FTMs, even in cities with a critical mass of FTMs, like San Francisco. And community is even scarcer in places like Dublin, where both queer and FTM numbers are small.
It can sometimes feel very lonely as an FTM, even in the midst of the larger LGB population.
In the early days of my transition, I tried to overcome my creeping invisibility by externalising my differentness. I looked a lot more “androgynous” then, which helped. It gave me an edgier look to start off, which I heightened with body piercings; blue, yellow and other coloured hair; and experimental clothing “looks”—some that worked better than others! Like an adolescent, it took me a while to realise that many of the “edgier” looking people I was trying to emulate in truth weren’t radical or subversive. And conversely, that a lot of the people who didn’t visually stand out, were.
So, in the larger picture, where does Lesbian, Gay and Bi end, and queer begin? And how to they all intersect with trans?
In my experience, the larger LGB community often shuns the label of queer—to this day, even after all the years of radicals reclaiming it! And their discomfort extends to the tranny community, which they would prefer to disavow. The discomfort is evident in the arguments, both here and abroad, that greet proposed trans inclusion in LGB organisations and legislation. It’s one way we trannies are reminded of our outsider status, even within the LGB community, and it’s a sort of discrimination non-tranny queers are privileged not to face.
This LGB disavowal, which intensifies in proportion to how conservative and committed to assimilation the lesbian, gay or bi person or organisation is, is often couched in terms of political expediency. A prominent example is the long fight in the US over trans inclusion in ENDA (the Employment Nondiscrimination Act). Which still hasn’t passed, right?! The rationale is that you fight first for LGB advancement, and then come back for us trannies. A rationale I reject as not only disingenuous, but a piss-poor political strategy.
What may surprise some on the LGB side of the debate is to find out that the discomfort is not only one way. Trannies, too, can be found who are uncomfortable with being lumped in with the LGBs. To my dismay, I’ve come across a fair number who express their unwillingness to attend support group meetings in openly gay venues--haven’t come across them here in Ireland yet, but I wager they exist. Even worse, I know FTMs who, after transition, go on to live closeted homophobic existences in which they repudiate all former connections with queer or LGB communities. And this after leading formerly VERY queer lives!
This discord brings up an interesting question, one I didn’t originate but which I rarely if ever hear discussed, namely, just who is excluding whom in this counterproductive argument? Reliable statistics are nonexistent, but were we talking numbers, it seems possible, maybe even likely, that LGB is a subset of T, rather than the other way around. That is, if we consider all the straight-identified and largely closeted male cross-dressers out there, and compare the sum total to people who identify as lesbian, gay or bi—or even the folks who don’t identify, but “practice” gay sex—trannies might outnumber the LGBs.
Furthermore, one could argue that the discrimination faced by LGB folk is predicated on behaviour perceived by the larger society to be transgendered. That is, homphobes believe males should love and mate with females and vice-versa, hence, a male loving a male contravenes gender roles. This argument is further supported by the distressing fact that, judging from my experience, it’s the most effeminate men and masculine women—straight or queer—who suffer the worst violence and discrimination.
Do you think LGB organisations would approach trans inclusion differently if they conceptualised the issue this way? That, actually, it could be trans folks who should be considering if we want to include LGBs in our organisations…?
In the end, such arguments and infighting only aid our enemies. The American Religious Right doesn’t distinguish in their rhetoric, legislation and hatred. LGB and T of all stripes are the target-of-choice whenever the Bush/Cheney regime seeks to rally its Christinista base. And, in the way of such bigotry, their official actions trickle down to the street level. I speak as someone who has had the dubious distinction of being vibed or out rightly threatened as a dyke, a fag, and a bisexual man.
Which brings me to my next point, which is how trans folks embody the very essence of queerness. To illustrate, as an FTM who eschews lower surgery, I’ve forfeited the luxury of disregarding the shortcomings inherent in simple, binary identity definitions. My existence as a man without a penis, in a world where the penis is THE defining characteristic, gives lie to the validity of the binary categories. I could walk around fully clothed my whole life, closeted, hidden, and thereby not significantly challenging any hegemony. But even if I did, an accident which, say, put me in the hospital unconscious, or an arrest at a political demonstration, or an unfortunate strip-search at a border, could abruptly toss me back into the center of controversy. Where I’d be at risk of ridicule, discrimination, or worse, violence, sexual assault and even death.
Beyond safety, basic, widely-held definitions and language simply breaks down with trannies. For example, am I engaged in “gay” sex when I’m with a gay male? A dyke? A straight female? Another FTM?
Ever?
I remember once, an ex-boyfriend and I were driving in my little jeep Suzuki, its bumper plastered with various political bumper stickers, when we were vibed by a trio of straight boys in an adjoining car. No words were exchanged, and as such encounters go, it was extremely mild, but it was apparent that our obvious queerness along with the lefty bumper stickers, offended them. I remember wondering later, would they have been reassured to know that my ex and I engaged in the same sort of sex they (probably) had with their girlfriends? That, contrary to what they were assuming, we didn’t engage in “homosexual” sex by the strict definition. Unlike the charge often leveled at queers that what we do is “unnatural,” –-far from true according to zoological studies-- and that “the body parts don’t fit,” actually they did fit, even by straight definitions. So would those guys have felt any better had they known that?
Somehow, I doubt it.
Obviously, the reason we irk the Right has nothing to do with biology, and everything to do with ideology. I’d venture to say that at the heart of the matter, it’s the fact that queers believe first and foremost in our right to engage freely in sex for pleasure. To the puritanical Right, who’d like to turn back the clock to a time when birth-control was unavailable, abortion illegal (as it still sadly is here in Ireland) and all sex relegated to the “lawfully married" heterosexual bedroom, the sex we have upsets them! Not just because we do it for pleasure, with procreation optional, but additionally because our sex is between equals.
Well, by my definition anyway. For integral to my definition of queer sex is not that the participants possess like bodies and/or genders, but rather that queer sex leaves everything open to negotiation. There are no assumptions. No givens. No hard and fast rules that this has to happen, or that, in order for it to be “sex” or to be “right.” Ideally, everything must be negotiated beforehand and/or during, subtly or through clear give-and-take. Which means essentially, the act is unfolding between (or among) equals.
To me, this strikes at the very heart of “compulsory heterosexuality,” which not only seeks to equate and restrain sex strictly to procreation, but, in the process, imbues the encounter with the inherent inequality of the larger society. In the extreme version, you have the Religious Right’s non-satirical "God-given" edict that "a wife must submit to her husband’s will,” in the bedroom and elsewhere. UGH!
Thus, as a reflection of the body I have, I ascribe to the broader Wikopedia definition of “queer” that includes heterosexuals whose sexual attitudes and/or preferences not only place them outside the mainstream (such as BDSM practitioners or polyamorists) but who approach sex and gender with the attitude that it’s all up for negotiation among equals. In the same way, I’d be inclined to exclude from the definition those gays and lesbians who approach sex and gender in a traditionalist way that conforms to society’s binary categories.
As an aside, to the charge that transsexuals actually reinforce the binary gender system by resorting to hormones and/or surgery, I strongly disagree! Some trannies are rebels, others are not. Some subvert the binary, heteronormative system, others do everything they can to conform and fit in. As I read recently on one of my favorite blogs, Alas a blog, why are trannies singled out for this criticism? Why are we not afforded the same opportunity as non-trannies to either support or subvert the binary gender system by our conduct, beliefs, actions, etc?
So, in conclusion, as a mother who is a man, a man who feels that being pregnant, giving birth and mothering my daughter was one of the best things I ever did—and who, by the way, doesn’t believe that detracts from my identity as a man—I believe queer-identified trannies have much to offer the non-tranny world. First, many of us, as a result of our having lived on both sides of the great gender divide, can offer valuable observations on the damaging ways men and women interact and misunderstand one another.
Also, we have keen insight into the way gender operates in league with power in our society. Gender is used to enforce and maintain entrenched power relationships throughout the generations. When used in this way, it hurts everyone, straight, queer, bi and tyranny alike, to greater or lesser degrees. Because the system fails people like me so glaringly, we’re forced to assume the roles of “outsiders” from a very early age. And cultural outsiders make great critics. We know from a deep place, the inherent fallacy of those “basic truths” everyone takes for granted.
At a time when reactionary forces are marshaling throughout the world to entrench not only oppressive gender systems but oppressive economic, cultural and political systems, people who can point to the inherent phoniness at the heart of the arguments are valuable.
In the end, when we—trannies and queers—come out and live our lives honestly, our lives themselves becomes revolutionary. Our existences alone, thereby go far toward subverting the heteronormal hegemony, otherwise known as the "dominant paradigm."
