thomascwaters.com

Excellent reply, Thomas. Thanks so much for your time (and cogency!). If it's alright with you, I'm going to list you on my blogroll as I think you have some really excellent things to say.

Thomas–

I think every point in your reply is spot on. I stayed out of the comments on Bilerico intentionally, not wanting to get enmeshed on what was shaping up to be a flamewar by comment #5. When things break down that quickly, the good comments get lost in the burn, and it's the profanity and name calling that gets attention, not the attempts to transform the situation into a teachable moment. I think Zoe Brain has done an excellent job doing just that with Ron Gold over this particular blowup.

I absolutely agree that the editors should have handled things differently, and I also agree that their failure to do so doesn't make them transphobes. It smacks a little too much of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, at least for me. Something my brother said to me the last I spoke to him just came to mind: we had been talking, he called me by my old name several times, and I admit that I got a little angry and frustrated with him. We don't talk much, especially since I've transitioned, and while I was getting angry and feeling like he's as much a lost cause as my parents, I think he just honestly didn't get how upset he was making me. I have a feeling that something similar happened here: we're so used to our genders being invisiblized (if I just made up a new word, I'd love to take credit for it), that when it happens within what we consider to be a safe space I think the tendency is just to fly off the handle– we're expecting from others what we maybe haven't set as a ground rule, and take out on the unsuspecting all the anger and frustration and fear that's come our way from the real bigots.

From your OP, I think you make a good point that the “T” in the LGB community tends to be misunderstood a lot. As trans people, many (but by no means all) of us identify within the heteronormative gender binary, and once we transition we really stop being activists (there's a joke I've heard about trans activists having a three to five year life span) as we often gain in passing privilege and there's not as pressing a need to fight for our rights. If people assume we are cisgender, we aren't automatically treated badly by others, so the need to fight for our rights as trans people become less and less important. I think our willingness to blend in and to leave our brothers and sisters that are pre- or mid-transition behind must seem a little like sharks that turn on and eat their siblings, at least to some people on the outside.

Despite the differences and misunderstandings however, trans people can be (and oftentimes are) belittled in a lot of the same ways that LGB people, and I always say that we are natural political allies: LGBT people are all poorly regarded in the US health care system, we all face a lot of discrimination in our daily lives (the conflation of LGB and T being such that I was most frequently called a faggot in high school: I'm guessing that just being called a girl wasn't enough of an insulting epithet), our relationships are belittled and trans people such as myself that go from being (perceptibly) straight to (perceptibly) gay have a lot of the same relationship issues that LGB people have: can I file my taxes jointly, do we get survivor benefits, will this medical power of attorney document suffice if we have to go to the ER?

With so much in common, I absolutely agree that the proper thing is to increase dialog, not to cut it short. If the LGB people that are closest to us (politically and otherwise) don't fully understand our situation, then how can we expect them to really go to bat for us when the chips are down on a(n) (non-)inclusive ENDA? The fact that trans people aren't frequently lifelong activists just makes it that much harder to establish good long term working relationships with people who would. It makes it harder for us to have good representation on the most powerful groups like the HRC and then we all bitch and wonder why we don't have any trans people up in the top positions.

I'm not trying to blame the victims, either. I just think that respect is a two way street, and trying to agree with you that the proper response to Ron Gold was a reasoned rebuttal (which Zoe, God bless her, is trying to do), not a quickly typed insult about how he's nothing but a transphobe. We need to help people understand, and while we don't always feel like doing that, we aren't at a point yet where it's unnecessary. While we can't always expect people to immediately understand the unfamiliar, I think we can be thankful to have rational people on our side so that we're not always going it alone. So thanks for that.

Thomas–
Thanks so much for pimping me out to your readers. If you don't mind me asking, I'm wondering how you came across me; care to divulge your sources?

I'm sorry to hear that you've been having some trouble with trans issues this year– your posts have seemed only respectful to me, but maybe I missed the ones that upset the people you referenced.

Not that I'm defending the vitriol from Bilerico-gate, but it makes a lot more sense to me why trans people got as upset as they did– a rejection of a trans identity is a rejection of the trans gender which in turn is a rejection of the person.

Our identities are so caught up in our genders that we always express things in gendered ways– it's one of the first things that comes up if you meet someone new and they're a little androgynous. As soon as that person gets out of earshot, it's always is that a guy or a girl? And it's not always meant to be rude, either.

Just a few weeks ago, I had a young girl at our church ask me whether I was a boy or girl. I had transitioned in that church, and she knew me, or knew of me at least, when I was still living as a man. So I told her that my name was Jessica and that I was a girl. Satisfied with the answer, she ran off to play with her friends.

When I was mid-transition, prior to hormones, I looked really bad. It was the stereotypical “man-in-a-dress” thing that we all hate, but inevitably have to go through. Being androgynous, and I looked really androgynous, got me stared at. People would laugh in public making no effort to be subtle. It was humiliating, but underscored something very plain– gender is really important, not just to the person experiencing it, but to the people who witness it.

The point of my drawn out comment (I promise I have one!) is that our experiences of gender are vital to our understanding of who we are. Our gender is vital to the understanding of others about who we are. Ron Gold's post on Bilerico denied the existence of trans genders, calling us deluded and mutilated, instead of trying to wrap his head around the fact that a person could be so upset about the body they have that they'd go to the extreme position of modifying it through hormones and surgery in order to make it fit better with their own internal identity. That Gold didn't pause to consider the idea that maybe trans people understand themselves better than he does is what upset so many of us (or at least me).

I'm not saying that you don't understand any of that, as it seems like you must, but that trans people take it really personally when you attack the notion of transgender because that calls into question the “notion” of our own gendered experiences. (The scare quotes there are to emphasize that for a trans person, our gendered experiences are not the product of delusion, but a real thing that causes us real pain and depression throughout so much of our lives. It's not just a notion. It's one of the solid tangibles in our lives.)

Again, not that I'm trying to justify the spite that was directed at Ron Gold as a result of his post at Bilerico, just that the feelings of those trans people are real and legitimate– they were hurt and that is a real thing. Should they have waited to cool down a little before commenting, going back to edit out the profanity? Absolutely. Does that mean that they aren't entitled to feel pissed off? By no means.

What I hope I can accomplish by this comment is to add just one inch to the bridge over the divide that currently separates the GLB from the T. I think you do marvelous work, and I cannot express how much I appreciate your efforts to increase the understanding between all people in the bowl of pink alphabet soup (I love that phrase, and will make a point of giving you credit for it every time I use it).