violence – (en)gender

October 4, 2017

CisHet White Men Questionnaire

Application Allowing Cishet White Men to Live Among Us

In the light of yet another mass shooting by a cishet white man, it is apparent that, as a group, these individuals do not quite understand the basic laws of civilization. Therefore, this committee recommends only allowing them to live among us once they have filled out this questionnaire which will in turn be reviewed by a small committee consisting of 3-5 individuals preferably including (1) RBG or Elizabeth Warren, (2) a professional woman, (3) a radical queer/trans activist, (4) an ethnic studies prof, critical race theorist or BLM activist, and (5) a gender studies professor or long-time feminist activist. Much thanks to Jonathan Swift for his input.

Do some women just regret having sex the day after, or are some just making up sexual assault allegations?
Do you secretly wonder if gay men find you attractive? Are you able to acknowledge in public and around other men that any man makes you a little tingly? Do you respect and admire him for that?
Do you actually believe you are smarter than a black man, a woman, or any queer person? Please provide reasons and evidence.
Are you absolutely sure that you can bring a woman to orgasm? Like, are you really really sure? 100 million percent sure? Are there women in your life/past who will certify that you can?
Have you ever used any of these phrases while involved in sexual activity: “It’s just so hard to tell when a woman has an orgasm” “Did you come yet?” “You’d be more attractive if you __________” “I really can’t use condoms” or “But I really only get off with a blowjob.”
Have you ever noticed that you talk a lot in classes/meetings/political rallies? Are you aware of talking significantly less when only other men are present?
Do you maintain personal hygiene, clothing, weight, hair style, and shoe selection based on being attractive to women or gay men? Do you often think “she’d be pretty if…”?
Do you watch porn/fantasize about fat women, mature women, women with penises, women with short hair, muscular women but *somehow* managed to marry/partner with a conventionally pretty, feminine, petite woman with a tiny waist and long pretty hair whose only goal in life was to have children?
Do you understand any jokes women tell?
Do you feel left out when in a room full of women/black people/gay and lesbian people? Does it anger you to feel left out?
Have you ever stopped a meeting to point out or repeat what a woman has just said and made sure to give her credit for the idea you’ve just re-shared?
How often do you call any woman who was kind to you – your mother, an aunt, a grandmother, a sister, friend, whoever – just to thank her? Have you sent her a card on mother’s day or brought her chocolate just because? Have you ever calculated the unpaid labor that people around you do to make your day/life easier? Do you, in turn, try to make it easier on them?
Have you ever gotten away with some high school prank that you know would have gotten a person of color in much more trouble? Have you ever done anything to acknowledge that incident?
Are you aware that you have emotions other than anger? Do you ever have them in front of other people? Are you secretly pleased with yourself if people are a little scared of you?
Have you ever threatened violence, raised your fist or hand to slap or punch a woman, or threw a nearby inanimate object in a woman’s general direction?
Are you aware that most of your people do not know how to resolve conflict or frustration without committing acts of violence? What are you doing to help them?
Do you understand that many people are nice to you precisely because they’re afraid of you? How does that feel?
Have you ever truly felt that someone owed you sex because _________________.
How many times a week does someone like you make a joke that makes fun of women, black people, trans people, gay people, different abled people or the mentally ill? Have you ever shut down the person telling that kind of joke or stopped being friends with them?
Do you understand that guns kill people, and that it is not our god-given right to decide to kill them depending on your mood/financial situation/having been cheated on/had a woman turn you down or break your heart?
Is depression for women?
Can you dance, cook more than 2 meals, get a baby to sleep, change a diaper, or resolve a conflict between children?
Can you get two of your own kind to STFU, sit down, and stop arguing?
Do you think of your wife or girlfriend as “yours”? Your children? Do you take pride in how good they look or in how well they do in school while doing absolutely nothing to foster those achievements?
Have you ever felt you deserve a job and are surprised or chagrined because there are women, black people, and gays who are “doing better” in life than you are? Are you confused by how that is even possible?
Do you understand that black men generally comport themselves in a way to be less threatening? Has it ever occurred to you that there might be any situation, save one concerning a police officer when you’re drunk, where you need to be compliant or passive and otherwise agreeing with whatever someone else is saying to you?
Do you understand that violence is not a way to resolve conflict, to express emotion, or to make a political statement?
How often do you tell women to smile? Do you feel better when they oblige you?
Have you ever tried to explain/justify racism to a person of color, try to give pointers on how to behave around police, or even thought “just don’t break the law” when a person of color is arrested for a minor offense?
Are you super proud of your daughter when she steals a base? Are you as proud when your son wants to be Wonder Woman for Halloween? Are you even aware you should be?
Do you think it’s a woman’s responsibility to dress in a way that makes you capable of controlling your penis/libido/anger?
Can you recite any lyrics by Morrissey, Big Freedia, or any female lyricist? Are any of those lyrics words you would have tattooed on you or that you feel you live by? Are any of your favorite bands lead by women or gay men?
Do you think of yourself as a “hothead” “hot under the collar” or as someone who just “needs to let off some steam” once in a while? Have you ever noticed that children or women around you look worried or concerned when you do so? Or that, if they are able, they leave the room/house/bar when you start to get upset?
Do women simply stop talking altogether when you start yelling? Have you noticed a worried, faraway look on a woman’s face when you are angry? Have you ever noticed a woman moving toward people if you are having a personal quarrel with her in public? Have you ever seen another woman glance protectively toward your wife or girlfriend during an argument with you?
Have you ever started to disagree with a woman by saying “Well, actually…”?
Are you aware that trans women are women, that your desire for them is heterosexual, and that having been assigned male at birth is not some weird way to trap you into expressing same sex desire?
Do any of your favorite movies or books pass the Bechdel Test? Are any written by women, feature a female narrator, or involve only a female heroine or protagonist? Likewise for any books or movies written by or about black people, Native Americans, books that are translated from another language or films with subtitles?
1. Do you know what the Bechdel Test is?
Does it upset you not be able to use the N-slur, the T-slur, or to be told, in general, that you shouldn’t use a word if it is not one used to describe/denigrate you?
Are you endlessly “intellectually” curious about whether women or black people or whoever can actually do science, art, comedy, or any other pursuit? Do you seek out scientific validation of your own biases and validate them by calling these studies scientific?
Finally, please write a short essay explaining briefly why most of the violence in the world, especially gun violence, is committed by you & your kind. Spelling and grammar count.

December 9, 2016

Unerased: New Resource on Trans Murders

Mic has introduced a new resource for tracking the murders of trans people. It includes murders in the US since 2010, only, but it does a little more digging into the statistics and how transness is “negotiated” not just by the reporting of these crimes but also by their representation in obituaries, the press, court cases, etc.

The actual database includes not just numbers but faces, info on rulings (if there is one), and can be filtered for year, age, race, gender, circumstances of death, and outcome.

The occasional pullquotes throughout are sobering, like this one: “People who kill black trans women and femmes are usually convicted of lesser charges than those who kill people of other trans identities.”

And this, from Shannon Minter: “Other factors contribute to underreporting. Minter said that while murders of trans women are visible and documented to some extent, those of transgender men may be harder to track. ‘I also think there’s a lot of unreported violence against transgender men that gets recorded just as violence against women,’ he said.”

And all of this is far more troublesome because the statistics are already so high, and yet:

But it’s difficult to know the full scale of the problem. When a transgender person is killed, each step in the process of accounting for their death risks erasing that person’s gender identity. Many can’t spare the expense of having their names and gender markers updated on government documents. Law enforcement and coroner’s offices are not trained to identify transgender victims. Immediate family members who reject a trans person’s identity often withhold it from authorities. When the press learns of these murders, local reporters often don’t have the knowledge or information to investigate whether the victims were trans. The United States Census does not track transgender people, and while the FBI added gender identity as a category in its annual self-reported hate crimes report in 2014, the agency does not track gender identity along with its homicide statistics.

Please take care of each other out there.

June 13, 2016

Orlando

Yesterday I saw students graduate who have been out and proud for most of their young lives; others are still shy around their families of origin but also full of pride in their own queer selves; some I did a small tutorial with this past Spring on pre Stonewall identity where we learned how important bars have always been – as safe space, as community, as political rallying cry. I am happy to know they are armed with that little piece of history that might help make some sense of this. I say that as if there is any to be made.

Another student who is a deep thinker, big hearted and logical, wrote to ask if I thought maybe at least this violence would be pivotal.

I had to say I didn’t know. I do know that somewhere a parent has just called their queer kid to tell them they love them for the very first time in a long time. I also know there are people whose hate burns so hot that they are happy one of these shooters finally found “a worthy target”.

I know that that hate, and that love, may appear in equal measure.

For those of us who live and work and love on the trans end of things, this news is not as shocking as it should be. We are too used to violence, fatigued by it.

I do know that the love and art and community we will create around this wound will knock our socks off; it’s how gay people live; it’s how we have lived through so much. As Solomon Georgio tweeted: the gay agenda has always been “enjoy every moment you can before a hateful person takes it away” and that is only more true today.

Take some joy in some small thing. Cry. Keep finding beauty and joy in places others don’t look. Find each other, at vigils and rallies and, yes, in bars. Dance. Give someone else safe harbor, a hug, a thought.

I keep thinking about Esqualita and the abuelitas who would come to see their queer grand kids walk and I know there is no consoling them and there shouldn’t be. We should live in a world where they are safer.

Love to all of you today. I am so, so tired of crying.

December 9, 2014

#blacklivesmatter

Oh, #alllivesmatter people, please, just listen for a minute.

For those of us in communities that are targeted for violence – from both people who hate us and often the police who are supposed to serve and protect us – we’re aware that our lives are supposed to matter. We know our own lives matter.

But for LGBTQ people, that is not often the case.

For trans people, it is rarely the case.

For Hispanic people, it is rarely the case.

For black people, it is almost never the case.

The reason #alllivesmatter is an insulting response to a racial problem is because it whitewashes the problem. Being more humane doesn’t work; racial prejudices and homophobia go so deep historically, personally, unconsciously, that unless we pay special attention to the kinds of hatred that fuels the killings of trans women and black men, trans women of color in particular, young black men in particular, our systems don’t get any better.

Look, the hippies tried loving everyone and that was a long time ago, and if the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner teach us anything, it’s that people refusing to call our national race problem a race problem is part of it.

Please. Of course #alllivesmatter. But as Orwell once wrote, the problem is that some lives matter a hell of a lot more than others, which is why we need to highlight that #blacklivesmatter and #translivesmatter and #queerlivesmatter.

Step away from your white privilege. We are part of a system that kills black men and imprisons them and throws them away. “Universalizing” is exactly what disappears black lives in the first place.

November 25, 2014

No Justice, No Peace: UVA & Marisa Alexander

A first year student was gang raped at UVA, and it took a Rolling Stone article (TW) to get anyone to pay attention.

It turns out UVA doesn’t even expel people who have admitted to rape.

Those of us who teach gender studies are assumed to be pessimistic at best and paranoid at worst, but you read two facts like that and wow, we’re just right.

Or you read that Marisa Alexander – the woman who fired a warning shot because she feared for her own life after her husband barged through a door she had locked herself behind and grabbed her by the neck – and all that 9 days after she’d given birth – was convicted and given 20 years in prison. She managed to plea down to 3, but why is she serving any time at all? She didn’t, mind you, kill or injure anyone.

Jeff Severs, a friend of a friend, after reading Wilson’s testimony about Mike Brown – which is something like a compendium of the racist imagination of black bodies as monstrous – wrote that “Brown’s body is bound to bear so horribly, impossibly much”.

As was that student’s, as was Marisa Alexander’s, and in none of these cases is there any justice, any condemnation of the objectification and othering of these bodies and the lives they carry.

I hate being right. I hate that my view of the world as unjust-by-design is so obviously, patently true. You can explain away Grand Jury history (well, actually, you can’t) or you can point up the peculiarities of the criminal justice system, but really, when university administrators are ignoring rape confessions and a woman who was defending herself is found guilty and given 20 years to serve – and who was, mind you, statistically more likely to die at her partner’s hands precisely because she was pregnant or had just given birth – that is, she had a better reason for self-defense than most, and far more than Darren Wilson ever needed – you have to know this system was designed to keep most of us in our places.

Bill Hicks was right, too, except they don’t even bother to tell you to pick up the gun anymore. They don’t have to.

October 16, 2014

It’s Not About Her Ex: A Trans Partner’s Story

My friend M. is a woman who was assaulted by her ex. Her ex happens to be a woman, too, of trans history. W hen the news of what had happened broke, her story was drowned out by all of the people who only wanted to use their story as an ideological argument. They took the focus from the personal, intimate, terrifying crime that happened and put it instead on the identity of the person who was guilty of committing it.

Those of us who are partnered to trans people are used to this, to some degree. The trans person takes up all the space; they’re the ones people are interested in, who people go out of their way to validate or compliment or criticize. We disappear.

My friend needed to press charges, to see justice of some kind, to let her children know that they should never let a lover treat them like this no matter who the person is or the “reason” for it. Instead, reports about the crime disappeared her, the victim, and so the very tiniest thing I could do to help was give her a platform to tell her story.

I am embarrassed and ashamed that my fellow feminists and others have made this about everyone but the person it should have been about, and who effectively forced by friend to speak up as a trans ally instead of being able to focus on her own healing.

So here’s what she had to say:

TO all of the people who deny the personhood and womanhood of trans women,

I am the woman who was victimized by my former spouse. She recently pled guilty to two misdemeanors for domestic violence. The news about her crime has been commented on by people for whom her trans status and her genitals seem to be of utmost importance, and who want to use my ex as a way to somehow “prove” that she’s really a man and in turn that her bad behavior somehow means that all trans women are “really” men (and that all men are, in turn, incorrigibly violent and likely to rape).

My own voice has been drowned out in all this, so I wanted to say a few words.

You are so focused on history and the genitals of the person who violated me. It’s literally the loudest conversation out there, drowning out the actual victim’s story – MY STORY. It is also, GROSSLY missing the point. I’m calling you a “hate group” because your anger regarding the violence against women perpetrated by men has so taken over your brain that your hairtrigger hatred automatically pounces on ANY OPPORTUNITY to denounce trans women as men, and to denounce men for how horrible they are.

My case is not about the genitals of my wife. Her chromosomal structure and genital configuration and that she was assigned male at birth have got NOTHING TO DO with the sexual violation of my body. Why does it matter if she used her penis or even has one? WHO CARES?? You want so badly to create the “all men/penises are evil” platform, that you can’t see the anguish your comments cause me, the victim, and other victims of sexual abuse.

The CRIME here was not her gender configuration. What if she had XX chromosomes or a vagina? What if she had used a carrot? A bamboo plant? A fist, a dildo, or ANY OTHER BODY PART OR OBJECT? The CRIME was the sexual violation of my body by someone I loved, who was under the influence of alcohol. THAT should be the focus of this conversation, not the instrument used.

I’ve always supported my wife’s transition. I didn’t know her as a man for long, but it didn’t matter to me because I loved who she was and didn’t mind what form her body took: I knew that I would love her body forever. She was a gentle, sweet, vulnerable person. It’s one of the things I loved about her. She was the most considerate intimate partner I had ever had. She was a far cry from my previous marriage, where a cisgender male did indeed commit all the crimes you would attribute to a male abuser. He was all the horrible things without the alcohol.

I loved our intimate relationship. That’s what makes this crime particularly horrifying. It was something I LOVED. Something we BOTH loved. It wasn’t her genitals that caused the crime. Even during the assault, she was saying I was beautiful, over and over. She didn’t even know what she was doing. It was like she wasn’t THERE. She wasn’t angry or saying horrible things. On the contrary. But that was the real mind fuck. When I told her to stop and that we weren’t going to be doing that this time, and that she would regret it in the morning, she just said, “No I won’t”, like ‘don’t be silly’, and she didn’t stop. And she wouldn’t stop. And she kept hurting me. And hurting me. She was someone else then.

Because she would have never done this sober.

I am not saying that her addiction is an excuse, but I can’t ignore the horrible effects of it, either. Ask anyone who has had a DUI or done something else horrible while under the influence. The problem is when that usually wonderful person is dangerous when under the influence. They must be held accountable for their behavior. As far as I’m concerned, her crime began that night with her first drink.

In my case, I am deeply saddened that the LGBT and feminist communities have remained almost entirely silent about my experience. The intersectionality of this event SHOULD BE a conversation, and we should have it BECAUSE it makes us uncomfortable. Much easier to pretend it’s not there. Let’s just stay angry at all the men and people with penises! So much EASIER, RIGHT?

It’s disappointing that some people are unwilling or unable to do the emotional work it requires to process that someone they care about can be capable of something really awful. But from the experienced feminist and LGBT communities, I expected better.

The transphobic radical feminists and other transphobic people will continue to rage over the state of my wife’s genitals, and I can’t stop them. But I hope more intelligent and thoughtful people will rise to the occasion to steer the conversation to what really matters.

I want her to be accountable. I want this to never happen again. I want to forgive her. I want this story to be about forgiveness and redemption. I need it to be. I need others to let it be that, too – to be my story, my trauma, my choice, my agency.

July 3, 2014

Tiffany Edwards

Tiffany Edwards was the fourth trans woman of color killed this June. She was also the fourth trans woman murdered in Ohio in the past 16 months.

Her suspected killer, however, turned himself in this morning to police. His mom had prayed he would.

What’s astonishing about the news clip and brief interview with the suspect’s uncle is his idea that this was not a hate crime. The uncle refers to Tiffany as a gay boy (ugh), and from what he says, I’m not really convinced that he equates homo- and transphobia with hate at all.

Just as with other “diversity” issues out there, there is a frequent misunderstanding that hate can only be based on race or ethnicity or religion, and that sexual orientation and gender identity aren’t categories. Maybe it’s because we took so long to pass the Matthew Shepard Act; maybe it’s because these kinds of crimes, and this kind of hate, is so commonplace, and legitimized by panic defenses.

But either way, perhaps some justice for Tiffany Edwards will happen. None that will make any sense, though. She was beautiful and 28 and didn’t live to see the July after Pride month.

Love to her friends and family.

May 28, 2014

Triggery (But Funny?)

I found it kind of stunning, either way. Pretty much the truth of it, as disturbing as it is.

It reminds me of that Margaret Atwood quote that’s circulating a lot- here’s a paraphrase: when men are asked why they’re afraid of women, they say women may laugh at them, but when women are asked why they’re afraid of women, they say men may kill them.

January 20, 2014

What He Did

I love this Daily Kos diary which explains what Dr. King actually did. It’s not about the quotes. It’s about standing up to systemic violence.

My father told me with a sort of cold fury, “Dr. King ended the terror of living in the south.”

Please let this sink in and and take my word and the word of my late father on this. If you are a white person who has always lived in the U.S. and never under a brutal dictatorship, you probably don’t know what my father was talking about.

But this is what the great Dr. Martin Luther King accomplished. Not that he marched, nor that he gave speeches.

He ended the terror of living as a black person, especially in the south.

I’m guessing that most of you, especially those having come fresh from seeing “The Help,” may not understand what this was all about. But living in the south (and in parts of the mid west and in many ghettos of the north) was living under terrorism.

It wasn’t that black people had to use a separate drinking fountain or couldn’t sit at lunch counters, or had to sit in the back of the bus.

You really must disabuse yourself of this idea. Lunch counters and buses were crucial symbolic planes of struggle that the civil rights movement decided to use to dramatize the issue, but the main suffering in the south did not come from our inability to drink from the same fountain, ride in the front of the bus or eat lunch at Woolworth’s.

It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them. You all know about lynching. But you may forget or not know that white people also randomly beat black people, and the black people could not fight back, for fear of even worse punishment.

This constant low level dread of atavistic violence is what kept the system running. It made life miserable, stressful and terrifying for black people . . .

This is the climate of fear that Dr. King ended.

(I think sometimes that in a very different way, this is what LGBT people have been doing for the past 20 years or so.)

December 31, 2013

Dear Brandon: 20 Years Ago Today…

20 years ago tonight Brandon Teena was murdered. Two friends, Lisa Lambert and Philip DeVine, were killed with him.

20 years ago the trans community protested that Brandon was not killed because he was a “lesbian” but because of his gender identity, which in turn triggered the organizing and anger of the contemporary trans community.

20 years after his death, so much has changed — much of it for the good, but so, so much still needs changing. Guys like him — living on the outskirts of mainstream society, with little parental support, so little money, who (want to) transition at a young ago but who have almost no access to good, trans-friendly healthcare — are still under-represented and under-served.

We still don’t have a non-discrimination law that protects trans people from employment, housing, or other forms of discrimination. There is, in part due to his murder, a hate crimes law which included gender identity.

Despite the fact that trans people still face enormous levels of violence and discrimination, more and more are coming out; more and more are getting involved in what VP Biden called “the civil rights issue of our times”. More and more allies who aren’t trans are paying attention. All of which is great, but still.

He would have turned 41 this year. I wish he had.