Gender

Toutes Mes Félicitations, Stéphanie!

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

A couple of days ago I wrote about the French convention, Imaginales, run by my friend Stéphanie Nicot. Now I am even more annoyed that I could not go this year, because I learned from Rose Fox on Twitter that Stéphanie has just got married. What’s more Rose saw the story in Le Figaro!

Why is that so? Surely the French are not that interested in speculative fiction editors, are they? Well, no. Stéphanie’s wedding made the papers because she’s a lesbian. They don’t have gay marriage laws in France, but Stéphanie is trans, and apparently this allowed her and Élise to marry. I’m not sure what the status of trans rights legislation in France is, but reading the article in Le Figaro I get the impression that Stéphanie turned down the option to legally change her gender so that she and Élise could marry, thereby striking a blow for lesbian rights. That sounds very like Stéphanie to me, she’s a wonderful activist.

Anyway, my very best wishes to Stéphanie and Élise. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to offer my congratulations in person last weekend, but I hope you had a wonderful day, and will have a very happy life together.

Where Do They Get Their Ideas From?

~ Cheryl ~ 18 Comments

I wasn’t planning on doing any further feminism posts for a while, but last night something newsworthy blew up so I’m afraid here I am again.

It started with Roz Kaveney tweeting about a blog post by the prominent Australian “feminist”, Sheila Jeffreys. The post that Roz links to is an extended rant about the evils of trans people, including the allegation that gender reassignment is a massive exercise in eugenics and drawing a parallel with the Holocaust.

Men, a class which, by the odd definitions Jeffreys and her allies use, includes all trans people, are not permitted to post on the site, but at least one female-born, female-identified ally has tried to respond (and copied her comment to her LJ). Whether her comment be will allowed on the site is still uncertain at the time I’m writing this. Maybe she’s subconsciously male-identified, or has been brainwashed.

You want to know why all trans people are “men” don’t you? It is because trans women are male-born and trans men are male-identified. See, easy when you try.

The question that kept coming up on Twitter this morning was how people who identify as feminists could possibly have got to such bizarre and hate-filled beliefs. Isn’t feminism all about equality and diversity? (Let’s avoid the discussion about how feminists like me are vicious, man-hating harpies. I have had that explained to me here before, thank you.)

Well, who am I to know? I’m just a fluffy-headed pathetic dupe of the Patriarchy. But here are some ideas to play with.

Firstly most transphobic people seem to have odd ideas about the sanctity of “nature”. You often see them complain that what trans people do is “not natural” or “against nature”. I watched the recent documentary, All watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace, on the BBC and found it very confused and sloppy, especially as I’ve recently been watching the re-runs of Kenneth Clark’s Civilization. However, Adam Curtis does have a point in that some people do have a concept of “nature” that is pure, simple and unchanging, and therefore Right in some way. Feminists are often environmentalists too, so this may feed into the mix.

Then we should probably consider the origins of feminism. Let’s start with the idea that men and women are equal. There are no biological reasons why a woman can’t do a job that a man can do. There are some obvious exceptions — a woman can’t make another woman pregnant without artificial help — but broadly speaking most feminists would agree with that position.

But if there are no biological differences, how does one become a “man” or a “woman”? That is, a gendered person as opposed to a sexed person. A common feminist argument is that people are socialized during childhood. This is the “nature v nurture” debate. And if you accept that the only way to become a “woman” is to be raised as a “girl”, then naturally trans women are a logical impossibility. If your view of feminism is firmly grounded on such beliefs of the nature of womanhood, then you cannot accept trans women as legitimate without abandoning your belief in the theoretical basis of your feminism. Hence brain explosions.

Obviously a certain amount of flexibility helps here, and I’m sure that there are theoretical treatments that get around the problem. Hopefully someone will explain.

The eugenics angle is quite interesting in that it directly reflects something in The Female Man [buy isbn=”9780575094994″]. Russ postulates that in Manland boys who fail their masculinity exams will be required to become “half-changed” (transvestites) or “changed” (transsexuals). This has definite parallels to the “sterilization of the unfit” ideas that Jeffreys has. Now I’m not at all suggesting that Jeffreys got the idea from Russ, but it does throw some light on how such ideas might arise.

Another issue that has been highlighted by Julia Serano in her excellent book, Whipping Girl [buy isbn=”9781580051545″], is that much of the antagonism displayed towards trans women by feminists is not anti-trans as much as anti-feminine. The idea is that in a non-sexist world no woman in her right mind would waste time on fashion and the like. Women allegedly only take an interest in such things because they are forced into it by men. Trans women, who are often accused of being obsessed with gender performance, are an obvious target for people who are anti-feminine.

A related line of thinking is the psychiatric concept of “autogynophilia”, which holds that trans women are sexually obsessed with images of themselves in women’s clothing. Such ideas also preclude the possibility that a woman might “feel sexy” when she’s dressed nicely, because women are not supposed to be filthy, sexual creatures, don’t you know. But I think this is mainly a male-originated idea, not a feminist one.

Finally there is the whole question of the gender binary. The idea that there are only two legitimate genders is very corrosive, especially for those who identify as genderqueer, genderless, third gender and so on. But if your project in life is to destroy the gender binary then trans people suddenly look like very convenient shock troops. And if that is what you want them to be, then you need to make sure that they don’t conform to the binary after transition. Which in turn leads to feminists who are fully supportive of trans people provided they don’t have surgery, or provided they don’t try to pass.

What I have tried to do here is to show how completely reasonable feminist ideas, if pushed to extreme, can lead one inexorably into transphobia. I probably haven’t caught them all, and I certainly don’t have pat answers, but given the discussion on Twitter I though it would be worth opening up the debate, because then we might all be better equipped to help prevent people falling into the black hole of hatred that Jeffreys has dug for herself.

Women Artists

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

Although the issues with women authors we have been discussing recently are very real, the situation with artists is much more severe. We hardly ever see a woman on the Best Professional Artist ballot for the Hugos. I was very pleased to see Kinuko Y. Craft, Julie Dillon and Irene Gallo on the Chesley ballot, but I think they are the only women on the whole thing (excluding Lifetime Achievement, of which much more later).

I was reminded of this today because Jeff VanderMeer did a post about Leonora Carrington who was a surrealist artist and also a writer (she was a friend of Angela Carter). She died last week. I’d never heard of her. I should do better.

But my real failure came to light with another death a few weeks ago. Jeffrey Catherine Jones was one of the leading lights of fantasy art. Frank Frazetta apparently called her “the greatest living painter”. She was also, as you may have guessed from the name, a trans woman.

There’s a very nice obituary for her in the June Locus, from which I learned that she has four Hugo nominations, and two World Fantasy nominations, one of which turned into a win. These all occurred before she came out as trans and added the Catherine to her name, but I’m very happy to acknowledge her as being there before me. (Other people may have been too, of course, but I only talk publicly about people who I am certain are publicly out.) More recently, she won a Spectrum Award and was named a Spectrum Grand Master. I see she’s up for the ASFA Lifetime Achievement Award, and I very much hope that she wins.

But I do wish I had known more about her earlier so that I could cheer her on, and I would have loved to meet her. Mea Culpa.

How Not To Write A Trans Character

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

You may remember that a while back I got very angry about the portrayal of a trans woman in a book. I promised you a review to explain. Well it has taken me a long time, but I have finally got it done. First of all, of course, I needed to calm down a bit. I also wanted to spend time talking with Brit Mandelo who wrote a rave review of the book for Tor.com and encouraged me to read it in the first place. When you see friends and allies extolling the virtues of a book that seems deeply transphobic to you, it is important to understand why. Brit and I have exchanged many emails about the book, and I’m very grateful to her for the conversation.

In addition, while writing the review, I was stopped short by comments about Neil Gaiman’s A Game of You from Matt Cheney, someone else I generally think of as a trans ally. So the review expanded to include my reactions to that too. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Matt about it, but I know his heart is in the right place and I’m pretty sure I know where he’s coming from on this.

So, my comments on The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum, with a diversion on The Game of You by Neil Gaiman, can be found here. The essay is inevitably full of spoilers, so don’t click through if you have a dislike of such things.

I’ll note again here that the problem with this book is not that it portrays one sort of trans person rather than another, but that it starts out encouraging us to think of one sort of trans person, and then goes on to show that this person is “really” something very different, thereby invalidating the original identity. That is, it makes a political argument about the “real” nature of some trans people, which is very much opposed to the way they think about themselves.

Writing this piece has caused me to think about the issue of writers who are “beyond the pale” in some way. I have seen discussion recently of Orson Scott Card and Eric James Stone, with people saying that they refuse to read their works because of their homophobia, which I quite understand. But if I were to give up reading books by people who write transphobic material I’d have to give up on Joanna Russ, Mary Gentle and Amanda Downum, and that I’m not willing to do as they have many fine things to say in other areas. It is a complicated issue, with no easy answers.

I guess some people are wondering why I keep going on about this stuff. Can’t I just shut up, already? Well in this morning’s Twitter feed was a link to this blog post by the excellent Paris Lees, documenting an horrific case of transphobic bullying on Facebook. This happens. Indeed it has been done to me (online, but not on Facebook). Also this morning I stopped following two people on Twitter because they were making transphobic “jokes”. Books that portray trans people as freaks and/or deluded only encourage this sort of behavior.

Trans Fights Back

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

A while back the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) decided to have a conference about trans people. They didn’t actually invite any trans people to speak, but they selected an impressively transphobic line-up to speak against us. Amongst the guest speakers were Dr. Az Hakeem, who believes that he can “cure” trans people, and Britain’s number one trans-hater, Julie Bindel.

Naturally the trans community got a little upset by this, and various protest activities were proposed. This included blogging, bombarding the RCP’s PR department with angry letters, and of course a planned demonstration outside the event. I almost blogged about it myself a couple of times, but I was ludicrously busy for the past year and never quite got around to it. I did, however, note that the conference was very conveniently timed for May 20th, when I was hoping to be in London for the British Library event. I hadn’t been on an actual demonstration (as opposed to a Pride march) in a very long time.

It was a good plan, but I had reckoned without the efforts of my activist friends. On April 19th Charing Cross Gender Clinic, embarrassed by the amount of negative attention the conference was getting, pulled out. This finally persuaded the RCP that they had a public relations disaster on their hands, and they cancelled the event (though of course they made other excuses for doing so — why anyone should believe them when they cancelled immediately after Charing Cross pulled out is a mystery to me).

So there we were, all set to have a demonstration, and nothing left to demonstrate against. It was at this point that some smart person (not me, I wasn’t involved) decided that we should have our own conference. Quite a few people in the trans community are involved in psychiatry, psychology and medicine in various ways. What did we have to say about such issues?

As it turned out, quite a lot. We started out with a presentation from Ruth who is a PhD student researching general health care for trans people. That’s not gender reassignment surgery, it is standard GP stuff. Those of you who have heard me rant about how NHS doctors frequently refuse to treat trans people, even for very ordinary ailments, will know what this is all about.

Next up was Lyndsey who is a trained therapist. Apparently it takes 7 years to qualify to practice psychology. Depending on where you train, that will include between zero and 16 hours on gender issues. And yet trans people are often referred for psychological counseling when they start down the road to transition. Lyndsey said a recent survey of practicing therapists showed that the vast majority believe that trans people are mentally ill.

Much of the discussion centered on the infamous DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and its various definitions of “abnormal” behavior. As this Slate article explains, the new version of the DSM proposes another massive increase in the number of ways people can be defined as crazy. The new “disorders” include being over-fond of shopping, spending too much time on the Internet, drinking too much coffee, and having too much sex. This isn’t psychiatry, this is social control.

There probably isn’t much we can do about this. The power blocks in the American Psychiatric Association are too well entrenched. But we can make fun of it. I think what we need is a disorders trading card game. I’m doing pretty well on the above list already. Gotta Get Them All!

The following session from Natacha took aim at Dr. Hakeem’s ideas about curing trans people, which seemed to revolve mainly around putting the poor patients into “focus groups” whose job it is to bully them into saying they no longer want to transition. Hakeem is very big on the idea of transsexual regret — that people will have gender reassignment surgery and then regret it and want to be changed back. The idea plays very well with the media: man has penis chopped off then wants it back! Why, of course he would, wouldn’t you?

The reality, however, is very different from the scare stories that Hakeem and his friends feed the newspapers. According to Natacha, the total number of confirmed cases of transsexual regret in the UK is 6, with no new cases being reported in recent years. That compares with around 300 people every year applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate.

Natacha also took aim at the idea that being trans is “unnatural”. I knew all about the various species of animals that change gender naturally, and indeed the many plant species that exhibit both genders. What I didn’t know about was bighorn sheep. Like many herd animals, they spend most of the year in gender-separated groups — in which they are enthusiastically homosexual. However, biologists have observed that some males run with the female herd, and mimic female behavior. The natural world is a weird and wonderful place.

I didn’t have the right sort of expertise to give a talk, but Roz Kaveney, Juliet Jacques and I all offered to chair sessions, and that was fun. I always knew that going to conventions would train me for something. Around 40 people attended altogether, possibly more as people were coming and going all day. I got to meet the amazingly talented CN Lester, which made me very happy.

I had to leave half way through the afternoon in order to attend the British Library event in the evening, but I think some of the sessions may be put online soon. That will enable me to catch up, and if they are I will point to them.

Private IDAHO?

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Today is IDAHO, the International Day Against HOmophobia and transphobia. Those of you versed in queer politics can doubtless already see where I am going with this. A day that should be spent fighting for human rights for all sorts of people is, to a large extent, being spent instead on arguments between various parts of the Queer community as to who is actually included and whether they should have a letter in the acronym. There should be a T, because otherwise transphobia is not properly covered. There should be a B, because otherwise bisexuals are being made invisible. There should be an I, because intersex people resent being included under the trans umbrella. And so on. Sometimes I think that if we expended half as much energy on fighting external bigotry that we expended on fighting each other then there would be no need for things like IDAHO.

Still, as we have a day to celebrate, here are a few things to note.

Firstly ILGA Europe has produced a Rainbow Europe Index that shows how different European countries are doing in passing LGBT-friendly legislation. The good news is that the UK comes out top of the heap, with 12.5 out of 17 points, and it loses 2 for not having a constitution, which I suspect some people will see as unfair.

Digging deeper, however, I discover that the UK was awarded 2 points for having legislation about supply of goods & services discrimination on the grounds of gender identity. Well it does. It has legislation that specifically makes is legal to discriminate on the grounds of gender identity. That’s the infamous “Equality” Act, of course, which human rights lawyers are itching for an opportunity to challenge as it may well be contradicting other UK legislation such as the Gender Recognition Act. I’m not sure that the 2 points is warranted here.

And that half point? Hate crimes legislation for gender identity protection — a half point because it is Scotland only.

Unfortunately, while the UK is leading Europe in LGBT protection, it is setting a very bad example elsewhere. There is this thing called the Commonwealth (the political institution formerly known as the British Empire), and it is a festering bastion of homophobia and transphobia. Over at The Guardian, Peter Tatchell explains all. You would think that an organization headed by someone called “The Queen” could do better in this regard.

And finally, I am delighted to report that my beloved World Champion San Francisco Giants are to become the first sports team to record an “It Gets Better” video. Details from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Thank You, @NeilHimself

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

Well, Neil Gaiman’s episode of Doctor Who appears to have gone down very well with the fan audience, doubtless to the extreme relief of all involved. Personally I didn’t doubt Neil’s knowledge of the series, or his ability to deliver a good story. He did, however, still manage to give me a very pleasant surprise. I missed it the first time through because we couldn’t hear the sound in the Ramada bar, and subtitles were not turned on until after the key lines had been delivered, but I watched it on iPlayer yesterday and was very happy.

Because the Doctor regenerates on a regular basis, female fans have long asked why he couldn’t regenerate as a woman. This has happened in fan fiction, and perhaps most famously in the 1999 Comic Relief spoof episode, “Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death”, which ended with the Doctor regenerating as Joanna Lumley.

However, in 2008 Russell (T.) Davies gave an interview in which he stated that a female Doctor would never happen because (eww!) that would make the Doctor a Tranny, and Trannies are much too yucky and pervy for a kids show.

Well, not in those exact words, of course, but that was the clear message. Significantly Davies noted that a female Doctor would require fathers to explain gender reassignment to their sons. Presumably the idea of a female Doctor becoming male would not worry him, because becoming male is something he thinks all women should aspire to.

Davies, however, is very much part of the 20th Century version of the gay establishment which regards transsexuals as people who are “really” gay but are so ashamed of their gayness that they alter their bodies to allow them to have sex with the people they fancy without seeming gay. The existence of transsexuals who identify as gay after transition, or of the various shades of genderqueer folk, is conveniently forgotten.

These days, thankfully, Doctor Who is open to a more flexible view of gender. The story of “The Doctor’s Wife” begins with our hero receiving a distress message from a fellow Time Lord known as Corsair. The Doctor makes it very clear that this person sometimes reincarnated as male, and sometimes as female. As this was said in an actual TV episode, it is now cannon.

Neil has many close friends who are trans people, several of whom he knows much better than he knows me, so I’m not trying to claim that he did this just for me. It is, however, something that he did not need to do, and must have done as a gift to his friends. For that I am profoundly grateful.

Update: Various Doctor Who experts, including Paul Cornell and Graham Sleight, have tweeted to inform me that Steven Moffat wrote a regeneration scene in which The Doctor wonders whether he will comeback as a woman next time. It apparently occurs at the end of “The End of Time” and is repeated at the start of “The Eleventh Hour”. Thanks are therefore also due to Mr. Moffat, though to some extent he simply establishes the possibility of a female Doctor, whereas Neil makes it clear that Corsair is exuberantly genderqueer.

I am leaving the typo in place as it has caused so much amusement. Genre cannon! BOOM!!!

Writing Trans Characters – Good News

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Here’s something I missed because I have been busy with other stuff. Mark Charan Newton has blogged about his latest novel, The Book of Transformations [buy isbn=”9780230750067″], and I can now note that he asked for my help in writing it. Not, of course, that I know much about writing fiction, but Mark wanted to include a trans woman as a character, and he came to me for a bit of advice.

I haven’t been heavily involved in the creation of the book. Mark just sent me a couple of extracts in which the thoughts and behavior of the trans character, Lan, are foregrounded. I made some comments, which he mostly accepted. Hopefully between us we have made Lan a more realistic character (I hesitate to say “believable” because so many people have difficult believing anything that trans people say about themselves.)

I’m pretty sure that Mark is going to get denounced by someone in trans activism. There are simply far too many ways in which people can be trans. Lan is the sort of person who would normally be described as a transsexual, and there are some trans activists who take the hard-line feminist attitude that all such people are self-deluded, brainwashed by doctors, or lying. You really can’t win this game.

What is important, however, is that Mark has chosen to put a trans woman in his book, not because she is trans, but because she happens to be one of the heroes of the story. And he has done his best to try to treat that character respectfully. Furthermore, his editor at Tor UK didn’t insist that he drop her for the sake of sales. This is all very positive, and I’m proud to have played a small part in making it happen.

By the way, I haven’t forgotten that I promised you a review of a book that gets a trans character badly wrong. I’ve just been too busy to finish it, and it does have to be done right.

I’ll Just Grope Your ID, Madam

~ Cheryl

I thought the behavior of the Met was pretty despicable back in 2008 when they tried to claim that trans women needed to carry their Gender Identity Certificates to prove that they are allowed to pee. However, in the last two years things seem to have got much worse. Apparently it is now deemed OK for officers to grope trans women’s genitals in order to ascertain whether they are “real” women or not. UK Law Review discusses the case.

Policing Gender

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

Today my Twitter feed has been filled with outrage over the rather stupid article in the New York Times that dumped on A Games of Thrones on the grounds that it is “boy fiction”. Apparently all of the sex has been added to the story by HBO in a desperate attempt to gain female viewers. Naturally a whole lot of George’s lady fans, and indeed women who don’t like George’s book but do like other fantasy, are yelling about the NYT telling them what sort of books they are supposed to like.

At the same the inimitable Julie Bindel is once again dumping on trans people, because apparently trans people spend all of their time reinforcing gender stereotypes. (I am clearly falling down on the job as I am not typing this blog entry wearing a gorgeous ballgown and full make-up. Sorry.)

It occurred to me that I could perhaps point Bindel at the NYT article. Here, after all, was someone who genuinely was trying to enforce gender stereotypes. Perhaps she could go and harass them instead.

And then I realized that if I told her that trans women like fantasy fiction she’d respond that it proved that they were “really men”.

Actually that is consistent according to her weird form of feminism.

Banned From The Olympics for Being Ugly?

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Yes, it is gender in sport time again. In the wake of the Caster Semenya scandal the IOC wants to test all women athletes for testosterone. They vaguely understand that there are a variety of intersex conditions that can result in people being otherwise biologically female to have elevated testosterone levels, and that not all of these people can actually process that testosterone in a way likely to enhance performance, but despite the uncertainty they argue that Something Must Be Done.

Over at Nature they take a look at some of the science involved and interview some scientists who work on this stuff, including an endocrinologist who advises the IOC. The conclusion the article is pretty stark: they don’t know whether the people banned under these tests would have any competitive advantage or not. They do, however, note that any athlete who fails the test would not be allowed to compete as a man either.

The real issue, however, is very clear. As the IOC adviser puts it: “It ought to at least eliminate the stigmatization of certain women who people feel ‘don’t look quite right'”. Unfortunately he doesn’t say how it will eliminate this stigmatization. Why is it that I suspect it will be by stopping them competing so they never come to the media’s attention. Because surely there will be complaints about “ugly” women being “really men”. There always are.

Given the lack of actual evidence to go on, I’m pretty sure this is more of a spin operation than an attempt to be fair to intersex athletes.

Cultural Conditioning in Action

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

Via various people I have discovered this post in which the words used to describe toys marketed to boys are compared to the words used to describe toys marketed to girls. (For those of you immediately asking questions, “marketed to” is defined as being in the “boys’ section” or “girls’ section” of the Toys R Us catalog — see the original post for more details on the methodology.) The data is presented as wordles. Here are the results.

Words used to describe toys marketed to boys

Words used to describe toys marketed to boys. See full size at Wordle.

Words used to describe toys marketed to girls

Words used to describe toys marketed to girls. See full size at Wordle.

And this, of course, is why people think it is entirely natural and right to schedule program items about military SF against program items about feminism.

Attention: UK Trans People

~ Cheryl

Because I’m assuming that one or two do read this blog. 🙂

There are lots of things wrong with the current government, but one or two people involved do appear to be trying to do good while they are in office. In particular the Equalities Minister, Lynne Featherstone, is actually trying to do something about trans rights. For the first time ever the UK government is canvassing trans people for information about their problems and suggestions for action. There is, of course, no guarantee that anything will come of this, but it is a golden opportunity to register our views.

As with any government survey, it is important that as many people as possible respond, because the more people who respond the more votes the politicians will think are at stake. So if you identify as trans in any way, please take a look here (PDF, goodness knows why) and consider filling in the survey. You do not have to identify yourself.

And if you know any UK trans people who do not read this blog, please let them know about this.

Ms. Cranky Pants, Part I

~ Cheryl ~ 14 Comments

As Twitter followers might have noticed, last night I got very angry about a couple of things. One of those was over a book, and the issues involved are so complex and so personal that it will take me several days to process things and get to the point where I can explain why I found it so offensive. The other issue is rather more straightforward, and involves a skeleton.

Many of you will have seen the news reports. For the benefit of those of you who haven’t, here’s a link: Telegraph.

And for the benefit of those who can’t be bothered to click through, the short version is that some archaeologists working in Prague discovered a male skeleton in amongst a group of female-only burials, and allegedly concluded that they had found a “gay caveman”.

The society that made the burials made a very clear point of interring males and females separately, and burying them in different ways. The individual in question must therefore have been recognized by that society as female, even though the skeleton appears to be biologically male.

This in itself is not unusual. There are many well documented instances of people, in cultures that are not monotheist and patriarchal, who opt to live in a gender role different from that of their biological sex. Pacific Islanders and the native peoples of North America both exhibit this type of behavior, so there’s no reason to suppose that people in Eastern Europe 5,000 years ago might not do so as well.

I hesitate to blame the archaeologists for what followed, because journalists do not always quote honestly. The Telegraph piece I linked to has Kamila Remisova Vesinova saying:

“Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual,”

But the Montréal Gazette quotes her as follows:

“So we think, based on data, that it could be a member of a so-called third gender, which were people either with different sexual orientation or transsexuals or just people who identified themselves differently from the rest of the society.”

What is the difference between these statements? The Telegraph implies that “homosexual” and “transsexual” are types of “sexual orientation”, but the gazette quote suggests that Vesinova understands the difference.

Now think about the gay men you know. Are they the sort of guys who would want to get buried amongst the girls? Some may, but many would not, because one of the things that marks them out as gay men is their wholehearted acceptance of the fact that they are men. Some may play with gender presentation, but most gay men do not live their lives as women. Trans women, on the other hand, do just that.

So given our understanding (and bear in mind that 5,000 years ago notions of what it means to be “gay” or “trans” may have been very different, or non-existent) this person was probably a trans woman. The Telegraph, however, conflates “gay” and “trans”, and then uses this to suggest that the buried person was gay. (Let’s pass on the fact that the term “caveman” is entirely inappropriate for a mere 5,000 years ago in Europe.)

But surely this is a minor distinction? Why am I so cranky about it? Aren’t trans people part of that LGBT group anyway? They are all the same, right?

Well, not exactly. LGB and T people are united in being looked down upon by idiots like Telegraph journalists, but there is a significant different. Being L, G or B is all about who you like to have sex with. Being T is all about who you are. Trans people can come in all shades of sexual orientation, but that has nothing to do with their being trans.

Or, to put it another way, I don’t live my life as a woman just so that I can fuck men. Really. There are easier ways, that involve a lot less pain, expense and discrimination.

The trouble is that the psychiatrists and loony politicians who despise trans people have latched onto the sexual orientation thing. The official line from the psychiatrists is that trans people do what they do in order to satisfy some deep-seated sexual urge. Because, you know, to some psychiatrists anything that anyone does has to have something to do with sex.

What does this mean for trans people? It means that their entire lives are defined as a sexual act. When I get dressed in the morning, it’s not because I’d be cold and embarrassed without doing so, it is supposedly because I am sexually aroused by wearing women’s clothes. If I go to the hairdresser, it is supposedly because I am sexually aroused by having my hair styled in a feminine manner. When I go to the bathroom, its not because I need a pee, it is supposedly because I want to rape someone’s wife or daughter while wearing women’s clothes.

All this sex gets terribly tiring.

And also very frustrating, because it really isn’t much fun to be constantly told that you don’t know your own mind, and everything you feel about yourself is a lie you have concocted to cover up a powerful sexual perversion. Not to mention being constantly told that I am “really” a man.

Most of the time this washes over me. It is a dull background drone of derision emanating from right wing politicians, psychiatrists, religious leaders and hard-line feminists. And many people do know the difference. When the story first broke I saw several tweets pointing out how stupid it was. But yesterday we had the same story being pushed by Dr. Ruth, who represents herself as an expert on issues of sexuality and really ought to know better (or should at least pick people to run her Twitter account who know better). And her opinion, of course, get’s accepted as authoritative by a whole bunch of people, and so the nonsense grows.

Really, painting the Forth Bridge is easy compared to trans rights education.

Still, can’t give up, have to keep trying. After all, I’m supposedly only doing this because I get sexual gratification from it, so it must be fun, right?

Stories of Our Lives

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

OK, so I’m going to talk about trans issues again. But it will come back to fiction eventually, promise. Bear with me, please.

Early this week the campaign group, Trans Media Watch, scored a notable victory with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding by Channel 4. Basically the TV company is promising to think about how it uses and treats trans people in its programming in future, instead of simply using them for sensationalist gawping and as figures of fun, as is usually the case. As far as trans rights goes, this is a huge step forward.

Christine Burns has an excellent podcast from the event, in which she interviews various attendees and includes keynote speeches by various dignitaries. I note with concern that there was a representative from the Scottish Parliament present, but no one from the Welsh Assembly.

It is worth listening to the podcast, if only for the speech by Lynne Featherstone, the Equality Minister. Partly I’d like you to take in what she says about the teenage girl who is bullied at school because her brother is trans. We hear a lot about how sad it is that trans people are often rejected by their families, but it is also true that coming out as trans puts your family directly at risk. It is something that every trans person has to weigh up, and something others should bear in mind when self-righteously outing trans people who are not yet ready to make that big decision for themselves.

More relevant for this post, however, is where Featherstone says very clearly that the media has far more power to advance trans equality than the government does. That, of course, is because we are story-telling, and story-consuming monkeys. Stories are important.

We tend to think that there is a difference between works of fiction and reporting of the news, and certainly there is, but that difference can be wafer thin. In particular, the way in which news is presented can make a huge difference to the story we take away from it. See, for example, the recent New York Times story that presented the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl as a tragic event for the poor, helpless rapists. There’s a reason that a news report is still called a “story”.

So the way in which we present news matters, and so does the way in which we present fiction. (See, I told you I would get back to it.)

Yesterday, in The Guardian, Damien G. Walter continued his excellent crusade on behalf of speculative fiction by pointing out that not all fantasy fiction is hopelessly escapist, or indeed escapist at all.

Today Mark Charan Newton picked up on this, opening up the question of whether there is anything wrong with escapist fiction.

Now partly this is an Internet debate, and therefore full of people taking one side or the other because one side has to be WRONG!!! so that the other side can feel vindicated. But just like most other things in life, there are multiple shades of grey. It is a bit like food. I sometimes eat things that are bad for me because they taste nice. I also refuse to eat cardboard for breakfast, no matter how many ads tell me that it will make me slim and beautiful. But at the same time many people have food that they need to avoid because those foods are poisonous to them. And there are foods that people choose to avoid because their production involves extreme cruelty to animals, or unacceptable levels of environmental destruction.

Equally some fiction can be bad for us. Too much reading about heroism can lead us to think that all of the world’s problems can be solved by sending in a small group of super-soldiers. Also, somewhat inevitably, some trans people have reacted to the Trans Media Watch MOU with cries of “sellout”, because they didn’t get a sparkly magic pony as part of the deal. Consuming too much fantasy fiction can lead us to believe that Happy Ever After is the natural state of mankind, and that the Evil Overlord will always be vanquished. Indeed, it can lead us to think that the world is made up entirely of people who are either Good Guys or The Hordes of Evil.

What we consume matters, whether it be food or stories. A little bit of comfort food can sometimes be exactly what you need. But a continual diet of nothing but comfort food will do you no good at all.

But What If…

~ Cheryl

Today on Twitter I noticed that trans activist Juliet Jacques was speaking at a meeting of a group called The T Party. My initial reaction was one of embarrassment that a trans group should have a name so similar to that of those people. However, Juliet explained that the name was something of a joke, and I began to see the comedy potential in it. Because, you know, people could get confused.

Just suppose that Sarah Palin was addressing a Tea Party rally in Washington, when all of a sudden the Westbro Baptist mob turn up under the impression that they are picketing a group of trans rights activists. I feel that The Onion could do something with this.

I suppose I could do the fashionable thing and auction my story idea on eBay, but it is a bit late for that as I have told it to you now. Apologies if anyone loses their coffee as a result.

The #IWD Post

~ Cheryl ~ 14 Comments

Yeah, it is International Women’s Day. You were expecting me to say something, weren’t you?

Well actually I tend to keep fairly quiet on such days. There are plenty of other people posting, and there’s a not-insignificant number of women who think I have no right to count myself as one of them. But here are a couple of things I noticed today.

Firstly over at The Guardian Meg Clothier asks where all the adventurous heroines in literature are. It very quickly becomes obvious that they are almost all in what people call “genre” fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy, which caused Book Blog editor Sarah Crown to say this:

When we’re children, we see no distinction between SF and litfic; they aren’t different genres (which of course they ought not to be when we’re older, before someone shouts at me). So, Northern Lights is SF/fantasy, but it’s also held up as a great example of children’s literary fiction.

By the time we’re in our late teens, though, the two have diverged, and the heroines only seem to survive in the SF branch. Why is this? It shouldn’t be the case.

The general conclusion amongst the comments appears to be that only be setting your story in another world are you allowed to be sufficiently transgressive as to have an adventurous heroine. The real world is much too tightly policed.

My other link is to Socialist Worker. Yes, really. Despite my friendship with China Miéville and Ken MacLeod I don’t have much fondness for Trotskyism, and when I was in college Socialist Worker hadn’t really caught on to the idea of feminism. Today, however, to mark International Woman’s Day, they have chosen to run an article highlighting discrimination against trans people. Here it is. And they have understood the issue well too:

There is a deep significance in the fact that the study included gender non-conforming people who don’t necessarily want to transition, because it opens a window into understanding how people of any gender who don’t fit the narrow norms of what’s acceptable for men and women are also often mistreated. This makes a strong case for why the struggle for transgender equality is a struggle for the safety and equality of all.

Well done, Socialist Worker. (Never thought I would say that.)

Cool Steampunkery

~ Cheryl

It is busy, busy, busy around here, which is why there has not been much blogging. I did, however, discover something neat on Twitter this morning. It is a blog called Multiculturalism for Steampunk, which is quite wondrous enough in its own right. And the article that got tweeted about was one on gaucho costumes. There are lots of great illustrations. I particularly liked this one:

Cute gaucho

Real Data

~ Cheryl

A couple of people have pointed me at a recent survey on social conditions for trans people in the USA. I wasn’t going to blog about this because there’s not a lot new in it, but as other people have noticed it I might as well point out what is new.

One of the big problems with lobbying government on the subject of trans rights is that there are so few trans people that it is hard to get any statistically meaningful data. The USA, because of its large population, is a good subject to study. This one looked at the life experiences of 6,450 people identified as “transgender and gender non-conforming”. And Mara Keisling, the Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (who co-sponsored the research) is a survey nerd who happens to know how to do these things right. Consequently this could prove to be a very valuable project.

The key findings are listed in this press release. Here are some headline consequences of having a non-standard gender identity:

  • 19% of respondents reported being refused housing
  • 19% of respondents reported being refused healthcare
  • 22% of respondents reported being harassed by the police
  • 25% of respondents reported being fired from jobs
  • 41% of respondents reported having attempted suicide at some point in their lives (compared to 1.6% in the general population)

It is no accident that the survey is titled “Injustice at Every Turn.”