A Temporary Marriage of Convenience
There's something fascinating unfolding at Bilerico for those among us who can handle some lengthy posts and comments that are intelligent and thoughtful on the subject of LGBT unity and division, feminism and trans people (and that would be all of my readers).
First you ought to read Bil's post in which he admits to knowing not as much as he would like to know about feminism and trans people in order to better inform his writing. The comments are a graduate course in LGBT issues.
Then you should read Bil's follow-up post and the comments in which we discuss the nature of the LGBT community and dissect/dispute its unity.
I think that for a long time we have been afraid to admit that we gay men really don't have much in common with lesbians and trans people. You will find in my comments on Bil's posts that I feel that all the facets of the LGBT diamond together make for brilliance but that we are soldiers from different hamlets, recruited for a common battle which, when over, will allow us to return to our separate ways.
I know at least one rather well read blogger who turns up his nose at Bilerico saying that it is boring. I disagree. Focus, dear, and pay attention for longer than it takes to hit the bridge in a Neil Sedaka tune.
PS: don't miss the comment in which I am accused of being Andrea Dworkin.
First you ought to read Bil's post in which he admits to knowing not as much as he would like to know about feminism and trans people in order to better inform his writing. The comments are a graduate course in LGBT issues.
Then you should read Bil's follow-up post and the comments in which we discuss the nature of the LGBT community and dissect/dispute its unity.
I think that for a long time we have been afraid to admit that we gay men really don't have much in common with lesbians and trans people. You will find in my comments on Bil's posts that I feel that all the facets of the LGBT diamond together make for brilliance but that we are soldiers from different hamlets, recruited for a common battle which, when over, will allow us to return to our separate ways.
I know at least one rather well read blogger who turns up his nose at Bilerico saying that it is boring. I disagree. Focus, dear, and pay attention for longer than it takes to hit the bridge in a Neil Sedaka tune.
PS: don't miss the comment in which I am accused of being Andrea Dworkin.
Labels: feminism, LGBT, trans people
posted by Father Tony of the Farmboyz at 8:43 PM
13 Comments:
Tony – love your blog -- love your honesty and curiosity. If you're interested in hearing other sides to the one big happy community myth, then check out the articles below and especially the web comments that follow them. They present 3 major ideas realted to what is happening at bilerico: 10 gay men’s power and privilege is despised by LBTransQueer people; 2) lesbians and trans people are engaged in all out war over the definition of “woman”; 3) Gender Theory, which states that all gender and sexuality is a social construct and that hierarchies of oppression exist with men/gay men at the top thus evil.
You may not hear these points on Bilerico where I notice all the comments are from women/transpeople (except one or two from you and another gay man) – you will note below the same thing that there are no men responding -- gay men learned a long time ago to say nothing about these issues in public.
These links are to Xtra, Canada’s largest and oldest gay (now queer) publication dating back to the Body Politic 1971 and famous for gay liberation theory and writing – its offspring Xtra has virtually purged gay men from its pages over the past 10 years replacing them with the new Queer world. More education from other points of gay view if you’re interested.
http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Hierarchies_of_oppression_a_highway_to_nowhere-5113.aspx
http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/So_what_do_you_want-5244.aspx
http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Reclaiming_the_G_word-5354.aspx
http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Back_from_Michigans_Camp_Trans-5355.aspx
ps I am the David from Toronto in the comments on these threads and used to write for Xtra many years ago as did a couple of other regular JMG posters.
dwerk
I LOVED your comment. I’m glad you’re really digging into this. I’d encourage all of your readers to join in and ask their own questions too. I know I’ll end up asking some stupid questions, but we have to allow for that since we have all levels of knowledge on the blog. The experiment is simply this: can we give each other the space to learn and grow and help each other along that path without resorting to the usual hurt feelings and biases a lot of us turn to when confronted with something new and unknown? I hope so. I’d like to be a better trans advocate - and a better woman’s advocate.
Dwerk, I'd encourage you to leave your comment on the site and help us build up the G participation. I tend to agree with what you said and I'm sure we're not the only two that think this way. If you don't want to comment under your own name or your regular account, just leave a moderated comment with a fake name. If it's a real comment, it'll get approved.
And as for boring... I have to admit, I find it boring too sometimes. Usually those are the posts that I don't feel knowledgeable enough to comment on! Thankfully, with over 60 contributors there's always something new showing up on the site.
I wish it was temporary, but I've spent enough time in places that were technically more progressive than the US to know that even when the legal battles are won, there will still be the need for those who are gender non-conforming to hang together against those who don't care for that sort of thing.
Same-sex loving = gender non-conforming
trans-whatever = gender non-conforming
As a trannyfag, I know that David is convinced that my vagina and I are the enemy, but I don't think that such paranoia is the thrust of Bil's or your posts on this topic.* I think that we need to remember that being educated about the experience of others is a privilege and that not everyone has the privilege of educating themselves to use the right language. That said, the internet makes it pretty easy to track down basic information on damn nearly any topic and skip the embarrassment of asking the killingly basic questions. Bilerco is adding to the ease of this process.
*A paranoid corner of my mind is convinced that I briefly met David the one time I have been in Toronto. I find this funny; I hope it doesn't give him hives.
1) Same-sex loving = gender non-conforming
trans-whatever = gender non-conforming
I do not believe that gay men's same sex love/fucking is gender non-conforming, although I believe that all womens, trans and queer loving is gender non-conforming because that's how YOU all self-define it. This commandment is also the central tenet of the TransQueer religion and nothing any gay man says about his own lived life experience will be theoretically challenged and dismissed -- when faced with this hatred, gay men say anything.
2) I would never comment on bilerico because I will only tolerate vicious attacks from transpeople in my own country.
3) Tony -- I will stop using your blog for this discussion -- sorry!!! As Michael said to Donald in Boys in the Band, "You are a real person." thanks, you`re a lovely man
correction:
make that "anything" and not "nothing" in this sentence:
...and nothing any gay man says about...
d
ps Paris -- using ad hominem misquotes (or twistquotes) to attribute fictional psychological motives to someone's argument just makes you look silly.
One last comment on this topic. Tony please indulge my posting this question for bil browning here on your blog .
bil browning -- you pointed people to:
Questioning Transphobia's "Bilerico Project: Questions About Transgender People"
Never did a series of comments more clearly support my point that Gay is despised by LBTransQueer. Bil, there is no "dialogue" or "rapprochement" or "bridge building" or "education" going on in the blog threads you directed us to nor on your own site for that matter. No offence to you or Tony as I KNOW you mean well. I know men like you who are honest and sincere and trying to live their good principles. I applaud both of you for this. The following comment is in no way a put down of either of you but is a criticism of your actions because I think you represent where a lot of gay men are these days in relation to the issues of the relationship between LBTransQueer and Gay.
Neither of you has obviously spent any time over the past 15 years in either academia (English, Culture, Women's, Gender, Sociology, Education, and a few others -- NO sciences) or in community social and related services (where the graduates of these academic areas have been working at jobs for 15 years). I guess over the past 2 decades you’ve never scutinized closely any intellectual Gay or Queer publications (Harvard Lesbian and Gay Review, etc.) or have been to any community meetings in your local "gay now queer" community or visted any trans or gender activist web sites/blogs. If you had you would not be asking such naive questions in the first place.
The reaction you are getting especially at the blog cited above is an avalanche of hatred and mockery of your "innocence" which is being seen as the dilettantism of your gay male power and privilege. They deride you as having been off having your privileged gay lives of male separatism wherein your sex, parties, money, consumerism, silliness, etc. prevented you from any interest in the developments of oppression politics, New Gender Theory, transactivism, 3rd wave feminism, etc. As many blog posters said, this ignorance alone disqualifies you from any input into Queer discourse, politics, community activity or especially trans anything. Sit on your white gay male thrones of privilege and shut the fuck up. That is the message that is being sent to you. Why can you not hear it? I don't understand why you are hitting your head against a brick wall that is not going to welcome your advances; indeed mocks and spits on them?
Why not put your energy into rebuilding a vibrant gay men's community -- own your own privilege (to use their term) -- accept that Gay has NOTHING in common with LBTransQueer -- no common issues of any kind -- only endless LBTransQueer hatred and contempt to Gay men. Gay men alone have so many things that need addressing back in our own gay men's community (continuing AIDS issues, aging issues, sex-negative laws, homophobia and ageism, isolation, depression, drug and alcohol use -- none of these things have been "solved" and all need gay men to work on them in our own spaces with our own perspectives). Gay men once developed our own discourse that addressed our identities as male homosexuals – not the gender theories thrust upon us – we need to pick up work of men who died prematurely and sponsor and support gay male academics to develop our own Gay Therory freed from women’s theories. Why would any gay man waste time, breath and money on other communities who hate you as their privileged, oppressing enemy? I do not understand why you desert your own brothers for people who spit in your face and don't want anything to do with you except your money.
Be friends with anyone you want. Socialize with anyone you want. Support other group’s struggles (gender groups, racialized groups, poverty groups, etc.) But direct your primary political energy into your own community. One that welcomes you; one in which you belong without qualification or question; one in which you can say what you want because diversity of opinion is not a threat; one in which your brothers need you to help revive us from so much loss and fragmentation and attack from perpetual enemies on the far Right and insidious enemies who pretend to be “family” (LBTransQueer).
Maybe I am misrepresenting David, but I seem to have driven him off free participation in this blog. Or not.
I am sorry for this because I think blogs have great potential in this area because one can sit and read (and re-read) posts and comments on one's own time whereas in a community meeting or verbal discussions, there is greater opportunity to miss important moments or nuances.
Yet, who hasn't gotten intolerant of an email that is "too long" where a letter of equal length is fine? (I suppose those who are young enough to have never used letters to correspond). The nature of the web browser format demands greater concision and blogs invite fragmentation. Who hasn't not commented on a post that was interesting but has dozens, hundreds, thousands of comments already? Where to enter in the conversation?
I am not sorry because I found that last comment almost illegible and I am painfully aware that I must reserve patient reading for those whom my salary obliges me to decipher.
The unlengthly, unintelligent, unthoughtful response to David's last comment: huh?
Dear Dwerk and Paris,
Please fell free to continue this as long as you like. I may not add to it, but I am reading what you both are saying and I appreciate it.
As a transgendered person in my early 50s, until recently I had been hidden all my life, although it has been a part of me for as long as I can remember. As a person born with female genitalia, but gay male in brain, heart and soul, I have always felt alone and alienated.
I have no formal education in the understanding of these issues, and admittedly will probably sound naive, but I can only speak from my heart.
The values of our society tend to favour fences. As a culture, we seem not to have the ability to live in a home that is undivided and less managed. I think of it like a fledgling forest which needs time to mature.
James Lovelock's "Gaia Hypothesis" recognises diversity as the variety that exists within a species ... socially, sexually, physically ... as part of the full abundance of the mystery and beauty that is us. I think until we understand that when we have a narrow definition of humanity, let alone gender and sexuality, we limit the potential for joy and love in all human beings.
Human hieroglyphics are enigmatic. They are not anchored in the mind like a logical alphabet. They have the ability to recognise whole concepts and complex visions, and not just single words. I think maybe to secure our full acceptance … all of us … we need to balance our intellectual observations and our passions. How we view each other is highly coloured by our very human and personal perceptions of value.
Jo
Tony -- thank you. This is an important topic and so few places exist in which to freely discuss it.
Paris -- 2 things -- dwerk = david; I am the same person -- I used my actual name in my posts on Xtra because I know the people there. I use alias (dwerk, bat chain pullover, others) on the wider web because there are so many insane people out there and my opinions on this (and other) topic often elicit rage or worse.
re: length of comment: these blog comment things do not allow spaces! Or if they do I do not know how to put them in -- so a completely intelligible paragrah with spacing and so on is crammed together making it harder to read.
Are we not as a species meant to be diverse? Climate, region and circumstance have shaped the human animal into an astonishing range of permutations.. I would posit that any gender/sexuality divergences have been around since the human animal first evolved higher thought processes.
Perhaps I am being naive as well Tony, but in many ways, as the old saying goes, we’re all on the same lake, we’re just in different boats. GLBTQ people and women in general all face a certain amount of bias and any infighting serves to merely give rise to the ability of the power elite to divide and conquer much more easily. One can be terribly academic in this regard, and most certainly such work is of great value, in and of itself. But I really think the only way to have a truly integrated attempt at a level playing field is to stop and take a look at societal constructs from an experience that is genuinely not your own. An understanding of how your own behavior impacts the larger picture tends to lend a bit more perspective on the struggles of others to gain their fundamental rights. And the only way to be able to comprehend an experience that is alien to you is to ask questions, and genuinely listen to the answers. If we’re all too busy fighting people that fundamentally have many of the same problems- nothing will ever really get accomplished.
Human nature tends to make many things much harder than they need to be. There’s something ingrained in the human animal that compels us to unnecessary complications. Being angry with others that also have a common need for the right to simply live their lives in dignity and without fear serves no useful purpose. I find the application of the dusty old golden rule can go an amazingly long way in adjusting one’s point of view on a myriad of subjects. And in a broad way, isn’t respect the core of much of the infighting?
And well done Tony to open yourself up to asking the questions and listening to the answers in a thoughtful way. (My apologies for going on so long)
Jo,
Human hieroglyphics are enigmatic is a big observation in a tidy one liner. I'm going to steal it, thanks.
Dwerk,
I had no idea you were Bat Chain puller/pullover!
Doralong,
A constant series of little implosions has kept the whole LGBT community from hitting home runs. That's the keeper in your valuable comment.
Sock puppets! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
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