Video of the Day: Laverne Cox on Bullying and Being a Trans Woman of Color

I saw this posted to Jezebel's groupthink form, but I think it was originally posted at Racialicious's Tumblr (which you should follow right now). This is a great speech about the bullying and harassment that trans women face.

Non-binary in Tech

Geek Feminism  posted this essay from Forister on their experiences -- and sometimes the privileges -- of being a  non-binary person in the male-centered tech world:

Just because it is easier doesn’t mean it is easy. So much of my effort has gone to things that have nothing to do with tech. I choose my company for culture and the possibility of being promoted as a woman, even one who looks like a man, instead of for the technical problems that I would like to solve. I don’t move around as much because I would have to establish myself all over again. I’ve wasted countless hours to men who find it easier to ask questions of me than my colleagues, though I value the opportunities to mentor as well. At meetings I’m distracted from the topic at hand when the only other woman is ignored. “What was that?” I ask, interrupting the interrupter, but in the same moment I’ve lost the technical thread in a rush of adrenaline. At technical conferences men ask me what I think about women in tech, or guiltily admit their discomfort with our culture, instead of inquiring about my work. I’ve given up on Hacker News after yet another vicious round of misogyny and had abandoned Slashdot years before, and so my coworkers talk about things I have no energy to seek out for myself. I limit my conferences to ones where I will not be an oddity. (In the rest of the world my masculinity makes me an oddity. Here it is the vestiges of womanhood.)

Video: Justin Vivian Bond and "Mx."

I certainly don't want to police the language of Justin Bond, but I have to put a CN for the t-word here. Otherwise, I love this short interview about being non-binary.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Yesterday of Transgender Day of Remembrance, and the Advocate put together a memorial of all the trans* men and women who were murdered in the US this year. It also perfectly illustrates how at risk trans women -- particularly trans women of color -- are.

More on the "universal girlhood" myth

Here are two more links that debunk the idea of a universal "female socialization" -- a tactic TERF'S often used to discredit and exclude trans women from feminist spaces -- but speak to all kinds of intersecting identities:

It’s evident that at least for many trans women, internalization of a male identity is rejected entirely, and to insist that these women experienced something so wholly apart from female socialization that they cannot possibly understand the experiences of other women is to hold her to a ludicrously strict standard of how she was supposed to have experienced female socialization, a standard that a great many cis women themselves would not meet. Are you to say that all cis women internalized the prescriptive cultural messages of the female gender role? Because if not (the only realistic position), there’s no way you can exclude such a trans woman from your clubhouse on these grounds without also excluding any cis woman who managed to dodge the bullet of fully-internalized female socialization. -- Natalie Reed

Now, there’s so many issues and problems with “female socialisation”. It comes from the belief that all women have the same socialisation, which, if a group claims to be intersectional in their approach, is nonsense. A white woman does not have the same “female socialisation” as a black woman. There is not one shared experience that we all digest and thus result in the same perspective. Not to mention, internalised misogyny is a thing. If “female socialisation” gave anyone who identifies as a woman insight into anything, than wouldn’t pro-life women not exist? Wouldn’t women who firmly believe that they belong in the kitchen and men belong in all positions of power not exist? Of course not. -- Boldy Go

I received a mix of typical "girl" and "boy" messages growing (fear strange men = girl; don't cry= boy), plus a lot of other ones that have nothing to do with gender, so I think discussions like these are invaluable. (One that sticks out in particular is a working-class distrust of authority bred by a lack of agency. One reason I don't "fit in" within the feminist blog world is that most of them have an implicit trust of authority figures - doctors, police, etc. That surprised at first, until I realized that the loudest voices are also the most privileged. Those institutions work for them, therefore, they have no reason not to trust them.)

There is no universal girlhood

This is a fantastic piece by CN Lester about the myth of a universal "girlhood," something TERF 's use to delegitimatize trans* or genderqueer people:

"It seems bizarre that, in 2012, anyone would still argue, or even casually assume, an overarching gendered experience that overrides intersecting social, cultural and personal factors of oppression and privilege. I’m more than happy to acknowledge the perverse debt I owe to a society that tried to fit me into the box marked ‘woman’ – it’s taught me a great deal. What I’m not happy to agree with is the sophistry that that coercion has made me a better feminist – or closer to being a woman – or to the idea that there is a mythic notion of unified womanhood or manhood that society pushes us towards, one or the other."

New CW Show Features Trans* Character

The CW has a new show in the works called Ze, which is centered around the life of a trans* character. Says  Feminspire:

As details for the new show are limited, it’s uncertain what steps are being taken to preserve the authenticity of the subject matter, especially for presentation outside of the LGBT sphere. The show’s title, for example, begs the question of whether or not the main character will adopt the gender-neutral pronoun ze as his own or even if the show will delve into such terminology in a respectful and detailed manner. No casting information has been provided either, but given the CWs history with trans* performers, it seems likely that they would consider a trans* actor to fill the role, especially if they follow the upward trend that has given trans* actors more visibility by featuring them in roles written for trans* characters — Laverne Cox from Orange is the New Black or Candis Cayne from Elementary, for example.

Valentine Road

HBO is showing a documentary  this month on the 2008 murder of Lawrence King, a gender-nonconforming* kid from Oxnard CA. Thanks to the wonder of HBO On-Demand, I was able to get an early preview of it.

As a former journalism student, I understand objectivity, and the need to show reality in all its unflinching ugliness, but Valentine Road was hard to watch without becoming viscerally angry. The bigotry of some of the school officials is laid bare. The most prescient scene is one where some of the former jurors in the murder trial move from talking about Trader Joe's wine to their sympathy (!) for Brandon McInerney, the fourteen-year-old who shot King at point-blank range. Listening to these three white, (presumably middle-class, cis-and-heterosexual) women, it's hard not to draw parallels to the Trayvon Martin case from earlier this year.

I've read so many positive things about this documentary, I feel as though I was watching an entirely different story -- there were so many things that could have been explored more deeply like the intersection of race (King was biracial) and sexuality, femmephobia, misogyny, cis supremacy, and a million other vocabulary words those outside the social justice world aren't privy to. And this documentary is for them, the mainstream audience who is unfortunately going to see a lot of victim blaming and rationalization of a hate crime.

*This is how the media referred to King.

Signal Boost: A Statement of Trans*-Inclusive Feminism and Womanism

Feminism has a long history of being inhospitable toward trans* people, trans women in particular. feministsfightingtransphobia  is trying to change that with A Statement of Trans-Inclusive Feminism and Womanism:

We are proud to present a collective statement that is, to our knowledge (and we would love to be wrong about this) the first of its kind. In this post you’ll find a statement of feminist solidarity with trans* rights, signed by nearly 100 feminists/womanists from at least eleven different countries [it's now 161 signatories -- 153 individuals and 8 organizations -- from 13 countries!] who wish to affirm that feminism/womanism can and should be a home for trans* people as well as cis. It has been signed by activists, bloggers, academics, and artists. What we all have in common is the conviction that feminism should welcome trans* people, and that trans* people are essential to feminism’s mission to advocate for women and other people oppressed, exploited, and otherwise marginalized by patriarchal and misogynistic systems and people.

Bloggers, writers, academics, activists, or anyone else "in a position to affect feminist or womanist discourse or action" can email them at the link to sign the statement.

The Trans* Erasure of Chelsea Manning

I was going to write a longer post about how the media (not surprisingly) mishandled Private Manning's transitioning, but this piece Jos wrote for Feministing is better than anything I could have done:

"NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, the Boston Globe, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Politico, the Telegraph, Reuters, and the Los Angeles Times all used masculine pronouns (I would typically link to all the articles I’m referencing, but I am not giving away traffic for shitty journalism. I’ve included contact information for these news organizations at the end of this article). The New York Times and the Associated Press used masculine pronouns, and they both have style guides that say you should use the name and pronoun preferred by the subject you’re reporting on. The AP’s standards are too strict – they say to respect the pronouns of people, “who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.” Frankly, coming out publicly should count as presenting yourself in a way that doesn’t correspond with your assigned sex. Chelsea has publicly lost her access to maleness, even if folks aren’t respecting her female identity."