Jed Hartman has an interesting post up titled “Privilege and allies” in which he links to a number of useful articles about how to be a good ally to marginalized and oppressed groups. This is good stuff. There’s a depressing tendency of people on the left to claim to support all sorts of oppressed groups, but to not actually think much about what that support means, and how they might have to change their behavior and thinking to make it real.

On the other hand, it is also possible to go over the top with the ally thing. As I have said before, and will probably have to say again, an “ally” is not someone who defers to you in all things. An ally is someone who joins with you to pursue a mutual goal, because you both have an interest in achieving that goal. The theory is that by working together you will have a better chance of reaching the goal.

The reason I am reminded of this is yet another blow-up about mis-representation of trans people in the media. Via Monica Roberts I am led to this open letter by a trans activist group to TV producer Ryan Murphy. I should note here that I have never seen an episode of Nip/Tuck, or indeed anything else that Mr. Murphy has produced, so I am not competent to judge the substance of the complaint. What stopped me short was this sentence:

We expect this from people who are ignorant of our community, but Ryan, as a gay man who purports to be an ally of everyone in the LGBT community, (and I would hope that includes transsexual women as well, not just gay men of privilege), you are held to a higher standard of behavior.

My emphasis.

Now obviously it is disappointing when someone that you thought was an ally does something that offends you. But should you hold such people to a higher standard of behavior than people who you recognize as enemies?

The LGBT community is a rainbow alliance of groups with very different interests. Gay men and lesbians are potentially two warring communities on opposite sides of the gender war. LGB people are primarily about sexual orientation and T people about gender identity, which are two very different things. Even within the trans community people have dramatically different views of what it means to be trans. Of course there is common ground as well, but it is not surprising that parts of this alliance do not always pull in the same direction, and sometimes come into conflict. In addition, people screw up, often because they don’t have a good understanding of the concerns of their supposed allies. How you deal with that is important.

Let’s think about this in military terms for a minute. When the enemy fires at you you shrug and say, “oh, it is them again”, and return fire in kind. But if someone in the allied army camped next to you fires on you, even if it was only by mistake, because you hold them to a higher standard of behavior you immediately order an all out attack. Meanwhile your enemies sit back and smirk.

So let’s be smart about this, people. Sure, allies sometime do stupid things. When they do, talk to them about it, and explain why you thought it was stupid. Be prepared also to be told that, for that ally, it was an important thing to do. You expect your allies to respect your needs, and you should respect theirs too. That’s especially true in a coalition of oppressed minorities. Because if you don’t do this, if you insist on holding your allies to a higher standard of behavior and attack them far more viciously than you attack the enemy, you’ll soon end up with no allies at all.

Here’s some gender material I have been saving up.

– A while back I linked to an interesting set of questions about trans people in the New York Times. That was just Part I of a series. Here’s the whole thing: Part I, Part II, Part III.

– Pauline Park give some interesting information about LGBT traditions amongst Asian and Pacific Islander people.

– Encouraged by their success with “Intelligent Design”, religious fundamentalists have set up a fake academic society of pediatricians to promote fake anti-LGBT “science” to schools. Mercedes Allen has details.

– If you are in the UK, there’s a new organization that needs your support: Trans Media Watch.

– Based on a simplistic view of mammal biology, people often claim that sex is intrinsic to all animals: your chromosomes determine whether you are male or female, they say, and you can’t alter that. Of course we now know that not all mammals, indeed not all humans, have such simple biology. Chromosome mix-ups are surprisingly common, and chromosomes don’t necessarily correlate with gender identity. But the system we use is not common to all animals. Insects have a different system, and birds are different again (Wikipedia has a brief and non-technical overview). And recent research has discovered that in fruit flies most cells in the body are identical, regardless of sex.

As I suspected might be the case, very few people did posts for the Transgender Day of Visibility. It does seem a bit like painting a target on your forehead. But there’s a good post over at Feministing that makes the same sort of points I did, only rather better.

Also as I suspected, I also spotted one high-profile trans activist trying to use the day to guilt frightened trans people into coming out. I’m not going to link to that, but I will link to Donna Rose patiently explaining why everyone’s situation is different.

What’s that? Another campaign day? I’m afraid so, but this one has its uses.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance has been going for 11 years now, and shows no sign of being any less needed that it was when it started. Trans people are still at great risk of murder than almost any segment of the population. But TDoR is a very sad event, and no community should be remembered only for sadness, so someone came up with the idea of having a Transgender Day of Visibility [Facebook], something that celebrated the lives of trans people rather than commemorated their deaths.

That, of course, is not an easy thing to organize. Heck, even now, even in British universities, even gay people are frightened to be open. Here’s a quote from an article in yesterday’s Guardian Education:

While more than 90% of LGBT students are out to their university friends, almost two-thirds chose not to reveal their sexual orientation to academic staff for fear of discrimination; 15% of students feared losing the financial support – which the government assumes will be forthcoming – of their parents if they came out; LGBT students also reported significant negative treatment on the grounds of their sexual orientation from 50% of their fellow students and from 10% of academic staff.

The article talks exclusively about homophobia and sexual orientation. It doesn’t touch on trans people at all save for tacking a T on the end of LGB, so I have no idea whether those figures include trans people or not. However, trans people are generally much more frightened of being open about their identity than LGB people.

Today’s most visible trans person is Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar, because she’s today’s murder statistic. And sure enough at least one newspaper has chosen to deliberately insult her memory by describing her as a “man”.

Yesterday the spotlight was on Caster Semenya once again, because the IAAF are refusing the release the results of her “gender tests”, refusing to talk to her lawyers, and refusing to allow her to compete in her sport.

Much of the hatred and distrust of trans people arises from ignorance and fear. People still cling to the idea that all creatures come in two basic forms: male and female; and that anything that takes us outside that simple binary is somehow unnatural. Yes science journals are full of articles about the rich variety of gender in the natural world. There were two yesterday: one about flies, the other about olive trees. It would be rather odd if human biology was so simple when nothing else is, and of course it isn’t. We are, after all, rather complex animals.

The trouble is that if trans people are afraid to go public about their identity, how are people going to learn not to be ignorant and frightened? Indeed, how are they to understand at all? That’s a question that gay philosopher, John Corvino, tackles today at 365 Gay.

That makes this pretty much a Catch 22 situation. No one should try to force trans people to be more open, especially if it puts them at risk. Equally society as a whole needs to talk more about trans people, and it needs to get it right when it does so. Which is why I go on about it so much here.

I’m not going to point at anyone today, even if they are open. I’ll wait until tomorrow and see what posts I can find around the blogosphere to point you at. In addition, those of you who are going to be at Eastercon (and can drag yourselves away from the excitement of the UK 2014 Worldcon Bid Launch) might like to attend this:

Alternative Sexualities in SF Literature and Media. 9pm-10pm. Connaught. How are alternative sexualities and lifestyles represented in SF literature? How have these approaches changed over time? How accurate a picture do writers give of poly/gay/bi/trans people? Did SF help pave the way for wider acceptance of sexual minorities? No children without a responsible adult. Lilian Edwards, Persephone Hazard, Ian Jackson (mod), Roz Kaveney and Farah Mendlesohn.

Note that it too talks mainly about sexuality, so whoever put the panel together probably thinks that being trans is a “sexual orientation”. I’m sure the panel will take issue with that. Also at least one of the panelists has read my undelivered ICFA paper.

Some of you may remember that a couple of weeks ago I talked about a rather dangerous aspect of the new diagnostics manual being proposed to the American Psychiatric Association. Psychiatrists have long taken an interest in men who like to dress as women, if only because the social stigma attached to such behavior can cause considerable distress. DSM-V, however, removes the requirement for distress from the diagnostic criteria. As a consequence a psychiatrist will be able to label a man mentally ill simply for wearing clothes that he deems more appropriate for a woman. As I noted at the time, this also provides a “back door” by which transphobic psychiatrists can label trans women crazy despite the general retreat on such issues evident in the parts of the DSM specifically aimed at trans people.

I don’t think I need waste your time pointing out just how pernicious this is. The simple fact this this “diagnosis” applies only to men and trans women should be quite enough to ring alarm bells and suggest that it is more a product of the psychiatrists’ misogynistic phobias than any real science. How much influence we outsiders can have over the APA is, of course, a matter for conjecture. But if you feel like signing a petition, you can find one here.

Given that a bunch of trans people may click through here from the Lambda Literary article, I figured I should post something trans-related. Sadly there is something that very much needs talking about. I’ve put it under the cut because it is very long.
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Yes, I’m sorry there’s more on this, but I have a couple of interesting links.

The first is a piece on how not to get sucked into RaceFAIL situations, written by Kate Nepveu for a talk at Boskone. While it is technically about race issues, much of what it says in equally applicable to people trying to respond to angry outbursts from any identity group. The last section is particularly to the point.

Suppose I step on someone’s foot. They say, “hey, ouch, you stepped on my foot.”

My proper response is, “Gosh, I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.” Depending on the situation, I might add something like, “I was looking for my kid’s sneaker that she always kicks off,” or “I’ve got something in my contact,” etc.

My proper response is not, “Well, I didn’t mean to step on your foot, so why are you angry?!”

For Ian Berriman’s benefit I might also add that the proper response is not, “My foot is rigorously intellectual whereas yours is unimportant, therefore I am perfectly within my rights to tread on you.”

The other link is an article in today’s Guardian about the lack of women and minority judges in the UK. It talks about a report on the problem produced by a committee headed by Lady Neuberger. The article itself, and in particular the subhead, which I know I should not blame on the author, makes it seem like although we now have plenty of women lawyers, none of them are as good as the men. However, if you read carefully you will see that Lady Neuberger doesn’t say this. Firstly she notes that being a judge is not a career that it is easy to follow if you already happen to be a housewife and/or a mother. But the most important comment is right at the end:

But the most important category of potential judges identified is those women and minority members who don’t even think of applying because they’re sure they have no chance or don’t think of themselves as judge material, or are ignorant of the possibilities that exist, or lack the confidence to realise their own talents.

So if people still believe that society is biased, they won’t put themselves forward for such jobs. And if women are trained from birth to believe that they are inferior to men, they won’t put themselves forward for the jobs.

Similar sorts of problems may well explain why women writers are more likely to submit to lower-profile, poorer-paying markets, rather than to major publishers and magazines.

Does anyone have Neuberger’s actual report? Marjorie?