Gender

Transphobia Is So Profitable

~ Cheryl

When Julie Burchill’s nasty rant about trans people in The Guardian last year caused a huge backlash, the paper withdrew it from their website. The Daily Telegraph couldn’t wait to re-publish it. Because, you know, being vile about trans people is just so much in the public interest. There may have been advertising revenue involved as well. And nice fat fees for Burchill and Toady Young for media interviews.

It does not surprise me, therefore, that a website called Real Clear Sports decided to reprint Caleb Hannan’s poisonous piece from Grantland.

But wait, you say, Grantland apologized. They were contrite. They said it was a mistake to run that article. And Hannan is reportedly traumatized by the whole thing and is, get this, asking for his privacy to be respected.

So, if Bill Simmons was approached by Real Clear Sports, do you think he said, “well, no, that was a real error of judgement on our part to run that, we’d like to see it forgotten”? Or do you think he said, “reprint fee please?”

And when Caleb Hannan was asked about it, do you think he said, “please, no, this has been an awful experience for me, I just want it to go away.” Or did he perhaps say, “wow, I never thought that outing trans people could be so profitable. SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!”

I think you know the answer to that.

Professed Ignorance Is No Excuse, Grantland

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Yesterday the editor of Grantland, Bill Simmons, produced an apology about the Dr.V. story. It hit Twitter just as I got back from the BristolCon Fringe event so I wasn’t up for much interaction at the time. I did notice a few people commenting on how the apology spent a lot of time praising the quality of Caleb Hannan’s journalism, but broadly the reaction I saw was of the form, “they’ve apologized, that’s good, trans stuff is so complicated and hopefully they’ll learn from this.”

This morning I read the “apology”, and I’m furious.

I do get that trans stuff is complicated. That’s why I am generally willing to talk about it, and will continue to do so. This story in today’s Bristol Post is awful in many ways, but it is clear that the journalist has no understanding of intersex conditions. That at least we can deal with.

The Grantland apology talks a lot about their lack of understanding of trans issues, but it also repeats some of the mistakes of the original article. I was particularly incensed by this:

When anyone criticizes the Dr. V feature for lacking empathy in the final few paragraphs, they’re right. Had we pushed Caleb to include a deeper perspective about his own feelings, and his own fears of culpability, that would have softened those criticisms.

Are you kidding me?

Simmons is saying that if the article had concentrated more on explaining how their journalist was the victim in all this, rather than the person who committed suicide, it would have made for a better story.

Besides, Hannan’s article wasn’t just ignorant about trans people, it was downright hostile. It used the fact that Dr.V. was trans as the lynchpin of his argument that she was a con artist. That’s saying that all trans people are lying about their feelings, in the same way that Faux News does. I find it impossible to believe that “between 13 and 15 people” read drafts of the article and did not see how hostile to trans people it was. If that was the main thrust of their article, the thing that made it worth running, no amount consulting with the trans community was going to change that.

I mean, what next? Nigel Farage admits that he had not spoken to any Romanians before accusing them of being scroungers? Rush Limbaugh expresses surprise that Muslims find his rants offensive? Would they get a free pass for lack of knowledge as well?

Besides, it so happens that Grantland had run a fairly positive story about the trans musician, Laura Jane Grace, the day before they ran the piece on Dr.V.. If they can do that, they are clearly not ignorant on trans issues.

So no, they do not get a free pass on transphobia by feigning ignorance, and by praising the quality of their own journalism. What they get from me, and they deserve from the rest of you, is utter contempt.

Prejudice Is Not An “Ethics Lapse”

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

If you are not a social media junkie, and don’t read newspapers, then you may not have heard the story of Grantland, Caleb Hannan and Dr.V.. A quick Google should put that right, because it has been all over my feeds. Hopefully what follows will be understandable regardless.

I have to admit that when the story first broke I shrugged. A trans woman is hounded by a journalist. She kills herself. It’s a common enough story. Could easily have happened to me. Had I not had Kevin around I might well have killed myself when I got publicly outed. It has that effect on you. I reckon to see at least one story like that a year. I’m not angry about such things any more; I’m burned out on it.

I am, however, becoming increasingly angry about the number of (mainly cis white) journalists who are writing anguished pieces making out that this was all a just a lapse of judgment by the journalist and magazine in question. That is, in my view, whitewashing what happened.

Obviously there is an issue that if you, as a journalist, are investigating someone, and that person then kills herself, it is perhaps not wise to run with a piece about how awful this person was, and how she has now upset you as well. Clearly that is an issue of journalistic ethics, and would apply in many cases, not just where trans people are concerned.

However, stories like this do still happen. Generally if the subject of the investigation is guilty of some heinous crime, the story still gets run. Often the journalist concerned gets celebrated for helping rid the world of a dangerous villain. My impression is that Grantland and Caleb Hannan believed that they were running this kind of story, and that they were acting highly ethically in exposing Dr.V.

Let me illustrate the point by showing how this story might have been treated, had different types of people been involved.

Someone invents a new miracle golf putter – Yawn, happens every week. Is the putter any good, that’s what I’m asking, otherwise no story.

Person who invented new miracle golf putter has lied about college background and qualifications – Dude, so what? Everyone does it, right? How else are you supposed to get on in life?

Person who invented new miracle golf putter is a good-looking woman – Ha! Bet it doesn’t really work. Let’s look into this and see if we can take her down.

Person who invented new miracle golf putter is a good-looking woman who has lied about college background and qualifications – See, told you! I knew she was a fraud. Let’s get her! Anyone got any topless photos of the bitch?

Person who invented new miracle golf putter is a trans woman – Whoa, man! I can’t believe that I thought that dude was hot. Good job I didn’t tell anyone. We gotta take him down before he cons anyone else. Hold the front page!

You see, what lies at the heart of this story is not the questionable ethics of hounding people who may or may not be behaving dishonestly (as Jane Fae has pointed out, we only have Hannan’s word that Dr.V. lied about her background, she could just have been trying to keep it secret). No, what this is all about is the poisonous idea that a trans woman is a “deceiver”, someone who is lying about who they “really” are with a view to luring innocent people into perverted sexual relationships. We know people have this view. Every year a couple hundred of trans get murdered because straight men think that looking like a sexually desirable woman while being trans is a crime deserving of capital punishment.

So please, when you are reporting on this story, don’t just focus on the journalistic ethics of writing about vulnerable people. Instead try to look at the underlying reasons why those people are vulnerable in the first place, and why anyone might think that exposing them is providing a public service. Otherwise you are not solving the problem, you are just brushing it under the carpet.

Last Week On ShoutOut – Trans & Awards

~ Cheryl

Bristol’s LGBT radio show, Shout Out, had a great trans story last week. Steff, one of the trans presenters on the show, brought her family in to talk about how they coped with her transition. It is my long term hope that providing access to gender medicine to young people will eventually put an end to the heartbreak that transition late in life causes to families, but in the meantime Steff and her family provide a great example of how love can overcome a really difficult situation.

You can listen to the show here. Steff’s segment is about half way through.

In addition the final round of voting is now underway for this year’s Shout Out Listeners’ Awards. I don’t know a lot about many of the categories because I don’t participate much in the LGBT social scene in Bristol. However, some of the categories are much more general, and if you have ever listened to one of the Shout Out shows I have linked to then you are certainly a listener. The ballot is here. Categories you may have an interest in include:

LGBT Role Model Of The year — I’m delighted to see Janet Mock and Paris Lees in there. I might actually have to vote for one of them ahead of Gareth Thomas.

Bigot Of The Year — Doubtless Vladimir Putin will win this hands down, but I would love to see a lot of votes for Julie Burchill. She’s from Bristol so the message would mean a bit more.

Best TV Program — You might be voting for Doctor Who, but I am voting for Orange is the New Black.

Go ye forth and click.

On Gender-Swapped Gaming

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Foz Meadows has a brilliant post up today abut the phenomenon of people who play gender-swapped characters in online games. Famously, on the Internet, no one knows that you are really a dog. Cross-species play is perhaps rare, but cross-gender play is apparently very common. Somewhat more women play male characters than men play female characters, but in both cases more than 50% had at least experimented.

What is so interesting is the reasons that people give for cross-gender play. With women the most common reasons for playing a male character are so that you can get taken seriously by the male players, and to avoid the constant sexual harassment to which female characters are subjected. Men, on the other hand, play female characters because they know that they can play on the insecurities of their sex-starved brethren and use “female” charms to wheedle favors out of them.

Foz, quite brilliantly, points out that the behavior of these gender-swapping male players is very much like something “fake girl gamers” get accused of. The intriguing possibility arises that the majority of the annoyingly manipulative behavior that male players are subjected to by female characters is in fact being done by gender-swapped male players. Of course we girls get the blame for this. No guy is going to admit to being conned by the feminine wiles of a gender-swapped male player. As Foz says, the whole thing is a giant misogynist shell game.

Because I am a bad girl and can’t resist turning something like this into a teaching moment, I have been pondering what this means for trans people. I can quite see that the TERFs1 will be all over this. They will see it as proof of the perfidy of trans women. But there some very major differences between people who gender-swap in gaming and those who do so in real life.

The male players who play gender-swapped in order to exploit their fellow men do not identify as women. They know that they are perpetrating a scam. That’s why they are not worried about the sexual harassment that their characters will inevitably be subjected to. It is not personal for them. Actual women, people who identify as women, whether cis or trans, have to live in the real world, and face the very real consequences of sexual harassment. For us, being subjected to such treatment in a game is deeply personal. Gender-swapped gamers behave as they do because they perceive real in-game advantages in doing so. Trans people live as they do despite the very real social and economic disadvantages that result from being trans in real life.

Nevertheless, many cis people persist in assuming that trans women are, in fact, deceivers, that we live as we do for the sole purpose of tricking other people into believing we are something we are not and, unless we are genuinely insane, know we are not. What they are doing is projecting their attitudes onto us.

It reminds me a lot of how Kevin and I have come to see people who accuse fan groups of conspiracies. Those people who are convinced that con-runners make a fortune out of putting on conventions are the sort of people who would not get involved in con-running unless they could make big profits from it. Those people who are convinced that all awards are fixed are the sort of people who would fix awards if they ran them. And equally people who accuse trans women of being out to trick others (whether to sneak into women’s toilets and rape anyone they find there, or to lure straight men into gay relationships) are the sort of people who can’t imagine transitioning for any other purpose.

Now if only those people could turn their attentions to people who are actually out to trick others — male gamers who play gender-swapped to trick other male gamers — then perhaps the rest of us could get on with our lives in peace.

1 TERF = Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist — sad people who think that being obsessed with hatred of trans women somehow makes them “radical”.

Recommended Reading: Kameron Hurley

~ Cheryl

Kameron Hurley has produced a couple of great posts this week, which I’d like to draw your attention to. Please note that this is not (yet) award-related as we are now in 2014 so the posts are not eligible for the current batch of awards.

The first post is on Juliet McKenna’s blog, and is about creating a realistic religion for your world. The tendency of fantasy writers to create religions as if they running a D&D campaign, and of readers to praise these, is a constant irritation to me. I now wish I had found the time to read Tim Akers’ books when they came out, because Kameron makes them sound very interesting.

The other post is on Kari Sperring’s LiveJournal and is mirrored on Kameron’s blog because LJ is apparently being awkward again (I’m expecting it to go down for the duration of the Sporting Tournament We Are Not Talking About). It is all about gendered behavior, and how our stereotypes for male and female behavior affect how we read characters. God’s War and its sequels do a wonderful job of turning gender expectations on their heads, and I heartily recommend them, but as Kameron says the portrayal of realistically violent women characters brings with it a whole bunch of extra baggage.

This is, of course, of particular interest to me as it has bearing on how trans women get treated. If I adopt a behavior that is typically gendered as male, such as enjoying watching sport, I know that some people will see it as proof that I am “really” male. On the other hand, if I adopt a behavior that is typically gendered as female, for example having an interest in fashion, that will get dismissed as evidence that I am “trying too hard” and “adopting a female stereotype”. Both reactions stem from an assumption that my gender presentation is false, and therefore everything I do must have some ulterior motive. It is all very trying.

Good Show, Paris

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

While I was out hosting BristolCon Fringe last night, Radio 1 was airing a rare documentary. The primary subject was Laura Jane Grace, the lead singer of the punk rock band, Against Me, and one of the more famous trans women in the world. This was then used as a hook to discuss trans issues more widely. The show was hosted and probably largely scripted by trans journalist, Paris Lees, and also featured the trans comedian, Bethany Black, both of whom I have had the honor to hang out with. There are also snatches of interviews with various young people, some of whom I’m pretty sure are friends of Roz whom I have met at some point.

I note these connections, not to name drop, but to emphasize that this was a mainstream national radio show produced by and for, and featuring, people like me. It is probably the only time in my life that I have heard such a thing. Sure there have been shows on local radio in Bristol and Brighton, but this is the BBC, this is national. In a small country like the UK, that matters a lot.

The great significance here is that trans people are getting to tell their own stories on national radio. Previous coverage on radio and TV has all been a case of cis people interpreting the trans experience for a cis audience. Frequently, even when such shows were well-intentioned, the message that trans people would get from them is, “you freaks are difficult to understand and people will not accept you”. Even a show like My Transsexual Summer was deliberately packaged as entertainment for cis people, with the real narratives of the stars often being bent to fit that requirement.

In contrast, while Paris was happy to explain things along the way, she, Laura and Beth were also talking to trans people. In particular there was mention of hormone blockers for trans kids, and encouragement that the world is getting better for people like us. The most common type of comment I have seen on Twitter about the show is how much hope it will give to currently closeted teenagers.

I’m not going to give the BBC too much credit here. They probably see Paris as someone new and different and edgy that can give them a bit of street cred. That won’t stop them from airing dozens of comedy programs that humiliate trans people before the next time they allow her on air. And we’ll doubtless see some concerned feminist writing in The Guardian soon about how Radio 1 is promoting child abuse. But I also have perspective. I also know how far we have come, and how big a step into the future this has been.

Well done, Paris, love. May this be the first of many.

You lot probably already understand most of what was said, but if you are interested the show is available on iPlayer here.

Biology: Stranger Than You Think

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I’m still reading the new Julia Serano book, Excluded, which is very impressive. Part of the reason why Serano is so good on gender issues is that she’s an actual biologist — a proper scientist, not someone who uses a few scientific ideas to advance a political theory. So when she writes about biological aspects of gender she does so from the point of view of skeptical inquiry, rather than from faith in a grossly simplified distortion of science, or faith in the evil of science, as we generally see in such discussions.

Some of you may remember that when I was researching Michael Dillon I came across a condition called hypospadias. People with this condition are often assigned female at birth despite being chromosomally male. Back at the beginning of the 20th Century many doctors were aware of the problem, and would happily write a letter to the authorities asking that a person with hypospadias be re-assigned as male. I suspect that the surgeon who performed Dillon’s top surgery used this as a cover for getting Dillon’s gender re-assigned, even though he did not have hypospadias.

Well one of the chapters of Excluded that I have just read mentioned a related condition, cloacal exstrophy. The reason that Serano mentions is is that she knows of a follow-up study of 14 people with this condition, all of whom had been raised female. By adolescence 8 of them had declared themselves to be male, despite having no knowledge of their male chromosomes. All of them, regardless of how they identified, were reported by the researchers as exhibiting male-typical behavior.

Part of the reason why this resonated so strongly with me is that yesterday The Independent ran an article about intersex people who have the condition known as androgen insensitivity syndrome. This is another condition whereby people with male chromosomes are assigned female at birth, and yet people with this condition typically are very happy being raised female and continue to identify as such. Many are distraught to discover, as adults, that they are infertile.

So there we have two groups of people, both with male chromosomes, both liable to be assigned female at birth. And yet one group mostly grows up to adopt male gender behavior and identity, while the other group mostly grows up to adopt female gender behavior and identity. Mostly, but not all, because our biology is amazingly complex. The idea of master control switches that turn certain behaviors on and off is a gross simplification.

And yet we still have people who claim that science “proves” that anyone with XY chromosomes is “really” a man. *sigh*

Books for Trans Girls

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Last Thursday my friends at Shout Out did a great segment with author B.J. Epstein about her new book, Are the Kids All Right? Representations of LGBTQ Characters in Children’s and Young Adult Literature (which is sadly not available as an ebook so I don’t have it yet). The show is available as a podcast here (28th Nov. 2013 show — we need direct links for individual shows, Mary — Update: here is it, thanks!).

That’s recommended, but what I want to talk about here comes from a conversation I had with B.J. on Twitter yesterday about the representation of trans kids in literature. Here’s the important bit.

Like B.J. says, trans boys are getting much better coverage in YA novels than trans girls. It is useful to have books like Luna available, but it gives a really unflattering impression of what a young trans girl might be like (my brief review here). So why are there so few good books about trans girls, as compared to books about trans boys (I recommend f2m: the boy within; B.J. recommends I Am J), or YA books with trans women in them (such as Eon)?

Well, I’m reading the new Julia Serano book, Excluded, right now, so I know the answer. It is all about different social attitudes towards gender transition.

Any YA book containing trans characters is going to need support to get it to market. You won’t get that from conservative people who regard all trans people with horror. So you need to get left wing people on your side. If you write a book about a trans boy, what you’ll be seen as doing (by people who don’t understand trans issues) is writing about a girl who does boy things and ignores girl things. So the kid might have an interest in cars, or science, or being a rock guitarist, but will have no interest in clothes and make-up. This will be seen as feminist, because it is showing a girl doing things that are traditionally “boy things”. Your left wing friends will approve.

Suppose, however, you are writing a book about a trans girl. What might her interests be? Well if she is anything like me when I was a teenager she’ll be interested in pretty clothes, make-up, boys and babies. She may well be interested in traditional “boy stuff” too, but what she will really want are the things she can’t have because her family are raising her as a boy.

Of course there are plenty of books for young women that deal with those things, but they tend to get published by conservatives types who won’t want to touch trans issues. If you take a book like that to left wing types you’ll probably get told that you are “reinforcing the binary”; that you are damaging young women by encouraging them to focus on “trivial” things like clothes and appearance.

Now of course as trans women grow up they will come to their own accommodation with femininity. Some of them will end up presenting very boyish, because that turns out to suit them. Others will still want to present feminine, but will have a better understanding of the social implications of that choice. However, if you are writing a book for teenagers, about a teenager who is struggling to claim her femininity in the face of social opposition, you need to allow her to be traditionally girly. That will incur the wrath of many cis feminists, which will in turn make it hard to get the book to readers.

Doubtless we’ll get there in the end, but there is a long, hard struggle to be fought first against feminism’s traditional distaste for things feminine. We need more Julia Seranos.

Trans Awareness: Games and Reality

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

With the Day of Remembrance over, I thought I should also do a post that is more about trans awareness and education. This is it.

A while back I noticed a trans activist having a small rant about people portraying gender reassignment as a negative thing. An example given was an unnamed game in which a “sex change” is seen as a curse and prevents you from winning. “I know that game”, I thought to myself. It is Greg Costikyan’s Arabian Nights boardgame, and it is a favorite of mine. Really, it is. So what gives?

Well, the thing is that the characters in the game are not presented as trans people. The game is based, fairly obviously, on the Arabian Nights stories. Each player takes the role of a character known from the stories: Sinbad, Aladdin, Scheherazade and so on (the designers made an effort to provide female characters even though the stories don’t contain many adventurous female roles). Your character then travels about the world having encounters with people, artifacts and places from the Arabian Nights. You might meet an helpful Djinn, or a vengeful ghul; you could pick up a flying carpet or an enchanted lamp; you might even be lucky enough to find Aladdin’s Cave, or the Elephant’s Graveyard. And you might run across the Sex Change Spring, and end up undergoing a magical transformation.

The important point here is that all of the characters are assumed to be cis. So if they undergo a “sex change” they are not receiving medical (well, magical) treatment for a problem they have, they are being made trans. And if they happen to view that as “a curse”, well yes. For many people, it is.

Not all, I note. For some people who are genderqueer being trans may be the best thing in the world and an ideal expression of their personal identity. But for people at the far ends of the trans gender spectrum, people who are deeply uncomfortable in their bodies, it most certainly can seem a curse.

I suspect that most cis people, if they were magically transformed in this way, would also regard themselves as having been cursed. Indeed, if they were the sort of people who would say, “well that might be interesting”, then I submit that they are already somewhat genderqueer themselves, as they clearly have no great attachment to their gender.

The trouble we trans folk often have in explaining ourselves is that cis people consider the possibility of gender transition, recoil with horror, and decide that anyone wanting to do so must be mad. But trans people who want to transition are not doing so from a place of contentment with themselves. They have already suffered the curse of the magical transformation. What they want is to get back to being the people they ought to be. And from that point of view, what they do is not nearly so crazy.

Finally, what about that “unable to win” thing? Well, if you are deeply unhappy in your own body, and prone to fits of depression or self-harm, the chances of your becoming a great hero are not high. You should actually concentrate on fixing yourself first. But is there a way to play the game as a trans character, starting out under the supposed “sex change curse”? I think there is.

When I play the game I have an added house rule. The victory conditions for the game are based on the collection of Story Points and Reputation Points. Under my house rule, if you want to win as a sex-changed character what you have to do is go back to Baghdad, set your reputation points to zero, and then get back to the game.

The rationale for this is that while going through gender reassignment is a great addition to your life story, from then on people will tend to see you as a different person. If you transition in mid life you have to rebuild your career from scratch, getting people to know you and trust you again. It isn’t quite as bad these days. More and more trans people, at least in the UK, are able to transition and keep their jobs, their families and their friends. That wasn’t the case when I transitioned, or when I first encountered the Arabian Nights game, so the house rule made perfect sense to me.

If you think about it, then, the Arabian Nights game has quite a bit to teach cis people about the realities of being trans. And games are a good vehicle for educating people. You just need to make sure they understand the message.

Bonus #TDOR2013 Content

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

BCFM ran a one-hour trans-themed special this evening. There are little bits of interview with me spread about the broadcast, but don’t let that put you off. There’s plenty other content from Nathan, co-presenter Steffi, studio guest Tara and so on. Part of me wants to quibble that it is trans awareness broadcast rather than a TDOR thing, and I tend to get very angry with people who say that TDOR is too gloomy and we should focus on positives instead. Focusing on positives doesn’t stop trans people getting killed, it just allows those who are not getting killed to feel less guilty about it, which in turn stops them doing something about it.

Then again, education is badly needed, and this show has gone out to a mainstream audience. I’m sure that it will have done some good.

You can listen to the show here.

My #TDOR2013 Events Today

~ Cheryl

As it turned out, some of what Paulette had planned for today’s Women’s Outlook show didn’t come off, so we ended up with a whole hour discussing the Trans Day of Remembrance. It was a little disjointed, but the young folks we had in the studio asked some great questions, and I’ve had some positive feedback. You can listen to the show here.

The event at UWE was really good. Huge thanks to Sebastian for putting it on and getting a good audience. Sadly Nathan and I had to rush off and get a cab part way through because Bristol traffic is awful and we needed to be sure we’d be at City Hall by 6:00pm.

The memorial ceremony itself went very well. Huge thanks again to Annabelle and the City Council for providing the space. It was also great to have people attending from the Bristol Hate Crimes Service, and Avon & Somerset Police. We are very fortunate to have such good civic support.

Of course there are people who need support far more than we do. In particular it was heartbreaking to again have to read out the names of so many people from Latin America, so many of them very young. It is trans women of color who bear by far the greatest burden of violence. Most of them may be far away, but the whole point of today is that we should never, ever forget them.

The other 364 days of the year we can be looking for ways to help them stay safe.

Look Ma, I’m On TV!

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Well, local TV anyway. Brighton, you see, has a local TV channel, and one of the programmes on it is QTube, an LGBT magazine. When I was at the Queer in Brighton conference in September they had a camera there and filmed some of the proceedings, including a short interview with me.

The show opens with a segment about Fox & Lewis’s My Genderation project, interviewing Fox and one of their subjects, Alice. That’s well worth watching. The material from the conference is on after that. You get a lot of views of the back of my head, and proof positive why I should only ever be allowed to do radio. All I can say is that I have watched it, and it didn’t damage the screen of my computer. However, if you wish to close your eyes while I am on I would blame you in the slightest.

My thanks to Torsten for doing the best he could with the subject matter to hand.

More Delusions of Gender

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

I added the “more” on the front as I’m not talking about Cordelia Fine’s excellent book, I’m talking about silly people.

I have doubtless had a little rant or two before now about how some self-styled radical feminists like to classify all trans people as men. Trans women are men because they are assigned male at birth and raised, albeit these days just for a very few years, as boys. Trans men are men because they look like men and identify as men. They get you one way or another.

I tend to think that the more a social group becomes obsessed with defining who is not allowed to be a member of it, the more daft and potentially dangerous it becomes.

But other people who are desperate to insult trans people in some way rely on science! I saw an article the other day which used this photo

AIS women

and basically argued that because those people are all men then trans women are all men too.

Who are those people? They are all examples of folk with what is known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). Let me explain. The default state of the human being is female. However, if you have XY chromosomes then, in general, you will turn into a male and your body develops in the womb. The people pictured above are all incapable of processing a chemical called Androgen, and therefore don’t develop as male, despite having XY chromosomes. In general, such people are identified as girls at birth, are raised as girls, and are perfectly happy with their assigned gender. Often they only find out about their chromosomes when they go to a clinic to find out why they can’t get pregnant. In most cases they don’t have wombs. I can’t imagine how it must feel to find out that you have such a condition.

And yet, for some people, science is all that matters, and science, they hold, makes these people men.

Now, what about this person.

Caroline Cossey

That’s Caroline Cossey, one of the heroines of my youth. She’s a former model and actress (she was a Bond Girl) and she has a condition called Klinefelter’s syndrome. People with that condition usually have XXY chromosomes, though Caroline actually has XXXY. Because of that one Y, she developed a male body and ended up going through gender reassignment surgery to get a body she was comfortable with.

However, science, we are told, means that she too is a man.

Now, remember when I said that in most cases people with AIS don’t have wombs, and only find out when they can’t get pregnant? Did you spot the use of the phrase “in most cases” there? Is is possible that someone with AIS could give birth? Yes it is. See this paper, and the comment below it, for examples.

The paper describes a person with XY chromosomes who has had two children, perfectly naturally, one of whom was assigned female at birth but who also turned out to have XY chromosomes.

And according to “science” these people are men too.

Why yes, I did introduce scare quotes there. That’s because when I did my science degree doing science was all about having hypotheses and testing them, by which process you either disproved a theory, or let it stand until new evidence came along that disproved it. Science is not about sticking with an idea that is clearly daft, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. If it was we’d still believe that the Earth was flat, and the center of the universe.

I submit to you that the idea that someone who has a Y chromosome is automatically and unarguably male is something that is well past its sell-by date.

The lengths to which some people will go in order to insist that trans women are “really men” can be quite staggering. I think it is about time we added a new section to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I’m going to call it Obsessive Androidentification Fetishism, and it will denote someone who has a compulsive desire to identify people as male, despite all visual and social clues to the contrary. I’ve used the term “fetishism” because I think we should go the whole hog and suggest that such people derive sexual pleasure from mis-gendering others. That would be entirely in keeping with the way the DSM treats anything gender-related. Also it gives a nice set of initials.

While I’m at it, I think we could also add Archaeoscientism, which is the compulsion to cling to ancient, long-disproved scientific ideas.

And talking of the DSM, via Laurie Penny I found this wonderful article which reviews it as if it were a dystopian novel. In the sad world described by the DSM, no one can ever be happy, as any display of enthusiasm is immediately seized upon as evidence of a psychiatric disorder. Of course no one is oppressed, they are just medicated for their own good. As dystopias go, that’s pretty terrible.

On The BBC

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

As some of you will be aware, the radio interview that I did with my friend Jools for Ujima has got a lot of great feedback. First it got picked up by Shout Out, the LGBT show on BCFM (the other community radio station in Bristol). Then I got contacted by the team who do the Best of BCFM show on Radio Bristol. They ran the interview on their show today (around 20 minutes in, after Tina Turner). It will be available for another week on the BBC’s Listen Again service here. Huge thanks to Harriet Robinson for giving me, and Jools, that opportunity.

By the way, each new show that picked up the interview wanted it shorter. Shout Out wanted 15 minutes, the BBC wanted just 10. It is surprising how much time you can save by ruthless editing out of hesitation and repetition, and I think I kept the majority of the content even in the 10 minute version, but if you want to listen to the full thing it is available here.

On the back of all that, I have been invited to appear on Radio Bristol’s Richard Lewis Show tomorrow. My slot will apparently start around 12:15. That too should be available on Listen Again if you can’t tune in live. Hopefully we’ll get to talk a lot about books and BristolCon as well as about trans issues.

If you are local, or going to be in Bristol soon, I recommend that you also listen through the end of the Best of BCFM where they have an interview with Stephen Gomes from Meluha, a new Indian restaurant in Park Street which has been getting a lot of attention. Emily at Bristol Bites (who I’ve had on Ujima) is a huge fan. And Stephen has recently been voted the best Indian cuisine chef in the UK. Kevin dear, I think we need to go out for dinner while you are here.

Of course I had put the weekend aside to clean the cottage in advance of Kevin’s arrival next weekend. I guess I need to do that all today. At least the Japanese Grand Prix will be just about over when I have to leave to get the train. I hope it isn’t a tight finish.

Today on Ujima: Historical Novels, Equality Act, Women of Color

~ Cheryl

It was another busy day for me in the Ujima studio. Paulette is still on vacation and I had to host 1.5 hours of the show. Many thanks to my colleagues who ran the other half hour to give me a break.

From the bookish point of view, the most interesting session is the first half hour in which I talk to Lucienne Boyce about two panels on historical fiction that she has organized for the Bristol Festival of Literature. These feature Romans and maritime history (including pirates!). You can learn more about them here. We also talked more generally about historical fiction, and I managed to get in mentions for Nalo Hopkinson, Mary Robinette Kowal and David Anthony Durham.

That was followed by a session on the UK’s Equality Act, which managed to be quite topical as an attempt by a Christian couple to claim that they have a right to discriminate against gay people was all over the news today. The last 10 minutes or so of that was given over to discussion of how badly the Act works for trans people. I was not in the least surprised the the current government is busily conspiring with business leaders to remove all of the provisions in the Act that are useful in court, so as to make it seem like the legislation is still in place, but render it toothless.

The whole of that first hour is available on Listen Again here.

I took a break for the third half hour, at least in part because I needed to talk to my final two guests because I didn’t have much idea of what we were going to say. Thankfully Lynn and Sandra proved really good interviewees, having lots of interesting material and a very positive attitude. Basically they were talking about an event later this month that will showcase the craft, entertainment and business talents of women of color in Bristol, and provide training and inspiration for young girls. It sounds awesome. I’m going, and I’m hoping to meet some people who will be good guests on future shows. Also I managed to sneak in a name check for the awesome Laverne Cox and her idea of being a Possibility Model.

The second half of the show is available on Listen Again here.

Queer in Brighton: The Conference

~ Cheryl

I spent yesterday at the conference in Brighton co-organized by the Brighton & Sussex Sexualities Network, Queer in Brighton, and Brighton*Transformed and held at Brighton University’s Grand Parade campus. It was a lot of fun. Personally I was very happy to spend time with a bunch of queer folk who were academics, radical, intersectional and (because even intersectional doesn’t always include me), trans-friendly. I gave a paper about understanding the gender identities of people from history, which I should be posting a podcast of in due course, and I made a bunch of new friends. What follows is a brief overview of the event.

Session one began with Katherine McMahon, a performance poet who argued convincingly for the spoken word community, not just as a focus for revolutionary politics, but as a valuable means of enabling people from marginalized minorities to feel good about themselves.

She was followed by Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah, who is a chaplain at the university, and who talked about being queer and Jewish. I find progressive Judaism fascinating. Their rabbinate is apparently 50% female and 15% queer. Rabbi Sarah is a former lesbian separatist. She has a book out called Trouble-Making Judaism, which some of you may be interested in.

I was up next, and I was followed by Jane Traies who studies the life stories the life stories of lesbians over the age of 60. For some of those people the scars of the homophobia of past times have never faded. Jane told of people who were still not out to their families, and who were afraid to take advantage of new political freedoms because they didn’t trust government not to take them away again once they had everyone’s names on file.

The final session was by Raphael Fox, one of the stars of My Transsexual Summer, who talked about the film production company that he and his co-star, Lewis Hancox, had set up to allow trans people to tell their own stories, free from interference from big media companies with their own agendas. I have enthused about the My Genderation films here before, and will continue to do so because they are great. I have an interview recorded with Fox which I will podcast once he’s had a chance to vet it.

After a coffee break we were treated to keynote speeches by representatives of the organizers. Brighton*Transformed is a new, Heritage Lottery Fund backed project that seeks to collect and tell the stories of trans people in Brighton. Their presenter, E-J Scott, spent much of his time telling us just how important it is for trans people to be able to tell their own stories, because once the mainstream media gets hold of them we are inevitably exploited and almost always denigrated in some way. Only by making our stories available free from media bias will we be able to let the rest of the world see that we are ordinary people, not disgusting freaks. The same points are made in the project’s launch video below.

The other keynote speech was by Lesley Wood of Queer in Brighton which has produced a more general QUILTBAG history of the city. Those of us who have been involved in such projects all smiled quietly when Lesley explained some of the difficulties involved. “There is almost no end to the ways we can upset people,” she commented. Oh dear me yes.

During lunch, Fox, E-J and I did short video interviews for QTube, an LGBT programme on Brighton’s local TV station. They also filmed a lot of the presentations including mine. I was really pleased to see that sort of thing happening. I’m looking forward to seeing Bristol having community TV as well.

After lunch the papers resumed with Lisa Overton talking about her research into queer communities in New Orleans and how they have rebuilt their lives after Katrina. Lisa’s academic field is disaster studies, and before she mentioned it I hadn’t quite realized just how hetero-normative news reporting of such events is. Of course I’m always happy to hear about N’Awlins, a city that I love. And I was delighted to find out in the pub afterwards that Lisa and I have a shared passion for pretty dresses, food, and Angela Carter novels. Lisa introduced me to her friend Vanessa, and that’s how I ended up at Dig in the Ribs for dinner.

The next paper was from Jeff Evans who has been painstakingly sorting through court records from Lancashire to try to get a true picture of gay history in that part of England. What he found was very different from the picture you get from reading about gay life in London. His research period stretched (as I recall) from the mid 19th Century to the mid 20th. The number of prosecutions for buggery in his data are too small for many statistically significant conclusions to be drawn, but it was interesting that 98% of them involved working class men, and a high percentage, particularly earlier in the period, were for bestiality rather than male-male sex. Also very interesting was that there were some parts of the county where the police were keen to prosecute, and others where they never did. The moral panic that supposedly gripped London in the wake of the Oscar Wilde trial apparently didn’t make it as far as parts of Lancashire.

Kate Turner’s paper was all about queer identities in Scotland, as exemplified by Scottish writers such as Ali Smith. She was followed by Kath Browne who presented Ordinary in Brighton, an academic study of QUILTBAG life in the city. That sounds very interesting, but being an academic hardback book it is hideously expensive. You can find out more about the project here.

The final session opened with Rose Collis who had run a fascinating project teaching young queer folk in Worthing about the history of QUILTBAG folk in their town. Alva Traebert, from the University of Edinburgh, talked about her research into QUILTBAG folk in Scotland and some of the negative attitudes she has faced from colleagues in academia as a young, and not obviously lesbian, woman doing queer studies in a redbrick university. My favorite was the guy who told her that there were hardly any gays in Scotland and that she should move her research to Canada where they apparently “like that sort of thing”. Be proud, Canada, be proud.

Pawel Leszkowicz is a freelance museum curator (who knew that there were such things? I didn’t) who has been looking around the museums of Sussex and has discovered a wealth of early 20th Century art by painters mostly famous for their war work, but who also happen to have all been gay men.

The final session was from Sally Munt who, together with a number of the other local academics, is bidding for a big government grant that they will use to study QUILTBAG communities to understand how they work to provide social support in the absence of traditional family structures. This will all be done through the medium of art (due to the nature of the funding). One of the people they have on board is Alison Bechdel. And thanks to this presentation I think I have a paper topic for Loncon 3.

The final session was a round table in which we all discussed ideas for next year’s conference. I suggested that we do something on queer creativity. Obviously that would give me an opportunity to talk about my favorite writers, but I’d also love to see Jon Coulthart as a guest speaker, and Katherine McMahon organizing a spoken word event in the city in the evening, with Hal Duncan as a guest. Stella Duffy could come and talk about theatre. I think Brit Mandelo will still be in Liverpool then, so we could get her along. I want to see Fox giving a workshop on movie-making. Yeah, I know, I am full of ideas. I’m bad.

Now if only we could have conferences like that in Bristol…

Busy Day

~ Cheryl

Well, that was fun. I spent most of today at the Queer in Brighton conference. My paper seemed to go down well, and I met lots of lovely people. I’ll blog more about it tomorrow when I have a bit of time.

I’ve also been busy testing restaurants in advance of World Fantasy. If you haven’t been following me on Twitter you need to check out Giggling Squid and Dig in the Ribs. Again there will be more bloggage in due course.

A Public Statement

~ Cheryl ~ 12 Comments

A couple of weeks ago a group of prominent women academics and writers published a public statement denouncing trans people in no uncertain terms. Obviously all of the usual suspects were involved, but there were less-shouty people too, including Marge Piercy which many of us found very sad.

Since then efforts have taken place to counter that message, and last night a counter-declaration went up. You can find it here. Many of the signatories are, of course, trans-identified in various ways, but many of them are not. I’m pleased to see that the statement was crafted in such a way that women of color in the US, who are wary of the term “feminism” because of how racist the movement was when it first started (and may still be for all I know), felt able to sign on. And I am particularly pleased to see how many women from the SF&F community have signed. Thank you, everyone.

If you would like to add your name to the list, there are details on the site. Please note that this may take a while, because they do need to verify who you are. Given their past behavior, I am pretty sure that certain people are busily trying to sign up under fake names so that they can then denounce the whole thing as a fraud.

Laverne & Janet on HuffPostLive #GirlsLikeUs

~ Cheryl

I’ve just seen another excellent piece of coverage of trans issues. It features both Laverne Cox and Janet Mock live in the studio, having an intelligent and respectful discussion with the presenter and two cis male guests. It is about half an hour long, but here it is if you want to watch. The topic under a discussion is the case of a prominent hip-hop DJ called Mister Cee who has resigned from his job after being filmed having sex with a prostitute who is genderqueer in some way. Because, apparently, while people in hip-hop can do all sorts of things involving violence, drugs, straight sex and so on, being involved with genderqueer folks is completely unacceptable and harmful to kids who might be listening.

There is one point I need to make about this discussion. I’m not trying to blame or call out Laverne & Janet here; I know how hard it is get get all of your points across in a live discussion, but it does need to be said for clarity. Mr. Cee has confessed to having a sexual attraction for men dressed as women. That’s OK. There are plenty of men who dress as women with whom he can have fun. We don’t know how the sex worker he contracted with identifies. That person has, probably wisely, declined to talk to the media. However, “man dressed as a woman” and “trans woman” are not equivalent identities. If someone has sex with a trans woman, and objectifies her as a “man dressed as a woman”, that’s abuse, because it violates her identity.

Laverne and Janet are absolutely spot on in saying that there needs to be space for men who attracted to trans women to be able to do so without shame. That space has to exist for men like Mr. Cee, for men who are attracted to people who are genderqueer, and for straight men who are attracted to trans women as women.

It is not just us, either. If a man dates a woman who is disabled, who is large-bodied, who is of a different ethnic group to him, or anyone who doesn’t conform to current cultural norms of “beauty”, he risks being accused of being a fetishist, because it is assumed that no “normal” man would be attracted to such a person. The world would be a much nicer and safer place if it was OK for men to be attracted to women, regardless of their background and appearance.

The other thing that struck me about this coverage, and the previous interview with Laverne that I linked to the other day, is how good the coverage of trans issues is in US media aimed at people of color. I can add that last week I exchanged a number of tweets with a reporter from Al Jazeera who was researching a program on trans issues. I haven’t been able to see it, but from the respectful way he interacted with me and other trans people online I have high hopes that it went well. In addition, of course, I was able to do a whole half hour on trans issues last week on Ujima, a radio station aimed at an Afro-Caribbean community in the UK.

In stark contrast, coverage of trans issues on mainstream TV and radio (by which I mean cis white people’s TV and radio) remains poor. Programs like My Transsexual Summer have done a lot of good raising awareness, but they still tend to be strongly voyeuristic. If that HuffPost show had been on the BBC it would have been deemed necessary to have some religious fundamentalist commentator on the show, and that person would have proceeded to insult Laverne and Janet in disgusting terms. Or if such a person was not available, the presenter would have had to mouth those insults himself as a “of course some people say…” comment. All of this would have been defended by appeal to the need for “balance”.

What is that tag line from Fox News again? Oh yes, “fair and balanced”.

There is no balance for trans people in most radio and TV. Indeed, it seems that there isn’t a single “light entertainment” program that can be made that doesn’t have to denigrate trans people at some point during its run. If we complain, we’ll be told that we have no sense of humor, and that because no cis folk complained the number of complaints was vanishingly small so clearly any offense was all in our minds.

And yet, as soon as serious news coverage is required, this need for “balance” turns up.

I’m guessing that the reason trans folk are getting such respectful treatment in media aimed at people of color (other than Laverne and Janet being totally awesome people) is that the folk running those media outlets have had the “balance” thing done to them, and know it for the hogwash it is.

Sometimes people from minority cultural groups deserve an opportunity to talk about themselves and their issues quietly and respectfully. It is not always necessary to have someone from the majority cultural group on with them to put them down.