Burning Words

I’ve been sitting on this post, not knowing quite what to say, ever since returning from Melbourne. Reading (belatedly) a great post from cripchick tonight compelled me to finish it.

As a trans woman, so much of my life, and my own history, has and is defined by the influence the medical establishment has over that life. I am forced to rely on cis-appointed experts on whose say the medical treatments that have allowed me to get this far are dealt out. The policies, biases, ethics and powers of my doctors have had an enormous influence on my life ever since I was fifteen; for the last seven years. They determined that I couldn’t be seen by a doctor for the first three; that I was too young and too butch to be prescribed hormones for the next two, and that I had to prove my own sanity before being granted to the right to surgery, and thus a body that fits with my own self, for the last two.

I’ve not had a pleasant history with my particular doctors, the Monash Gender Dysphoria Clinic in Melbourne. Neither, for that matter, has anyone I’ve ever known under the age of thirty, with the exception of a trans couple who themselves have heard so many horror stories that they’re highly aware of how much in the minority they’ve been. I’ve had a treatment that has been profoundly influenced by both the sexism and homophobia of the doctors concerned, and their belief in 70s-era transphobic stereotypes, such as that trans youth are inherently suspect and should be delayed until they’re older. This is an environment in which patient respect and autonomy are things that other people do.

Last Wednesday, I went to see the Monash doctors for the first time in six months, and to my great surprise, was told that I was being referred for surgery after four years of ‘therapy’. The 18-month “trial” period assigned by Monash policy had finished, but I was not optimistic; many of those I’ve known over the years have been jerked around over the lot longer, and on my last appointment, I’d been harangued about my level of outness and queerness, and had to debunk some bizarre assumptions the shrink had made about my relationship with my parents based upon the sole fact that my mother had made the appointment. This time, however, I found that I was in luck - although I was left under little doubt as to why. Nonetheless, upon leaving, I was again nagged to participate in their research project, two years to the month after I first declined consent, and nine months after the lead psych attempted to blackmail me into participation.

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Tags: ablism, homophobia, medical industrial complex, monash clinic, sexism, trans

It’s been brought to my attention that my post on the Queer Collaborations conference has been referenced in an article in this week’s edition of Sydney gay press SX.

In an online post, feminist blogger ‘Burning Woods’ wrote: “The socialists wandered off down to the office of the Minister for Finance (because it was close) to do an impromptu protest for the not-especially-coherent manifesto of gay marriage, overturning VSU, and homophobia in schools, while the non-socialists fucked off into the city and went shopping. “Did it actually achieve anything besides giving the Trots an adrenalin high? Of course not. But hey, since when were we expected to try and, y’know, do something useful with the time?”

Firstly, I’d care to point out to Mr. Clacher that my blog is called “Burning Words“, and my name is Rebecca, two things which should be rather evident, seeing as they’re on every page of the site. Secondly, I’m a bit disappointed that he chose to cherrypick that one quote out of what was a particularly lengthy post, most of which was actually not about the role played by the Trots.

That said, at least in regard to the “action”, it was indeed nothing short of a joke. The justification given on part of the Trots was that it was “an exercise in practical activism”, despite the fact that it achieved nothing beyond making Lindsay Tanner’s office staff wonder “who in the hell are these people?” One might think that attempting to teach people lessons in practical activism might involve helping people learn practical skills and contacts by which they might return home and run more effective campaigns for social change. Unfortunately, the problem is that many of these “activists” can’t even write a fucking press release, and whose idea of making an impact seems to extend merely as far as the fun they have getting up behind a megaphone. And that does have a flow-on effect, making attending the political sessions far less inviting.

Burning Words’ criticism extended to the Conference itself, adding that an opportunity for networking and productive discussions were being hijacked by others with less peaceful motives.

It was the inclusion of this in the article bothered me - as that’s not what I said. Yes, Socialist Alternative do have a knack for buggering things up, and were something of a nuisance throughout the conference. However, a lot of what I was frustrated with were not so much deliberate disruption, as much as problems inherent in a lot of student political scenes (and from experience especially in queer circles), such as the tendency to navel-gaze and spend way too much time arguing about nothing much at all, often at the expense of time which could be spent doing useful things. These are by no means easy things to deal with for the conference organisers; indeed, much of that post was a way of outlining for me some of the challenges we’re probably going to face in organising the 2009 conference.

And that’s why I’m a bit pissed off by the way Clacher then seems to frame that as a criticism of this year’s organisers, despite my never having mentioned them in my post.

Nonetheless, Ahrens told SX there were over 30 workshops run by students and representatives from outside organisations on subjects as diverse as queer history, genderqueer and transgender issues and the Federal Government’s intervention in Northern Territory aboriginal communities.

See, had Clacher actually decided to ask me, rather than badly summarising what I’d written on my blog, he’d have found out that I’d have agreed with that: there were indeed some really interesting sessions - though as I said previously, they did tend to be of a more non-political nature. For the record, I think Bree and the other organisers did a great job in the circumstances; they held a conference without any major drama, for the first time in a few years, got numbers back up after a tiny conference in Hobart in ‘07, and worked their arses off trying to keep the conference on track as best they could. I was particularly impressed at the way they dealt with the trans/genderqueer caucus trainwreck, in which they were more than helpful, and helped deal with its aftermath in a way that did alleviate a number of the issues that emerged.

Tags: activism, queer collaborations, queer issues

I’m a bit late to this one too, but it warrants some angry words. Unsurprisingly, both the London Pride organisers and the Metropolitan Police have issued public apologies for the incident at last week’s event where trans women were denied access to the women’s bathroom and threatened with arrest. The London Pride apology can be seen here; the police apology can be seen here. And unfortunately, I have to say that I’m pretty unimpressed with either of them.

Frankly, the Pride apology reeks of arse-covering. They claim to be apologetic, but then instead of taking responsibility, try to create enough room between them and the incident to deny it. The entire mess is dismissed as a “mistake” on the part of the security company, with no further action to be taken for future years. The incident with the LGBT liaison officer demanding GRCs from the trans women present is labelled an allegation, and the press release uses the lovely language “…all legislation in relation to Trans”. I am not a “trans”, you ignorant fucks. The rest of the press release amounts to an “I’m sorry you were offended”, with a healthy dose of “please Roz Kaveney don’t hate us” thrown in, which really does pose the question of how they would have reacted if one of the more well known and influential trans activists in the UK hadn’t been one of the people affected.

The police apology starts with an actually apologetic cover letter from the commander responsible for the police presence at the event. The press release, however, proceeds to blame the women present for “using inappropriate language” and “barging a steward” who had tried to prevent them from using the bathroom, attempts to excuse the behaviour of the LGBT liaison officer on the basis that “their placards were getting in the way”, and tries to suggest that the behaviour of said officer was both laudable and helped the situation. This, not surprisingly, is evidently contested by those present. While Kaveney does state on her blog that the police have been otherwise helpful, the line taken by the police at least publicly seems to be pretty damned disappointing.

I’m sure both organisations are attempting to patch over this mess with the people present privately, but these attempts at a public apology are nothing short of an epic fail, and send a pretty dismal message about the extent to which they give a shit about relations with the trans community.

Tags: trans

I’m a bit late to this one, as a result of being offline for a few days, but this one’s too horrifying not to add to the chorus.

Short version: “male radfem” blogger gets outed as sex offender.

Here’s the long version: Kyle Payne is an American guy who puts himself forward as a feminist anti-pornography activist, researcher into rape culture, and advocate for rape victims. He travels around making presentations about the evils of pornography, purporting to educate folks about violence against women. His blog is a bit creepy to begin with, with his way of writing about issues of violence against women coming across as rather self-flagellating and ever so slightly masturbatory. For someone who purports to spend every day reflecting upon the legacy of Andrea Dworkin, the truth is drastically different.

Reading his blog, with posts right up until the last few days, you’d never know that this is the same guy who, last week, pled guilty to one count of felony attempted burglary in the second degree and two counts of invasion of privacy, as part of a plea bargain, after he sexually assaulted and photographed a female student that he’d been tasked to look after in his role as a campus resident advisor. There’s also reports going around that he had a prior conviction for possessing child pornography (see comments here). This from the guy who purports to believe like this, and managed to take in people to the extent where he, chillingly, seems to have been trusted to do rape crisis counselling. The creep even writes about wanting to produce a book of the things people have confided in him.

He’s due to be sentenced on August 11, facing a sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $7,500. I suspect the odds of him getting off without prison time are fairly high, which is bad enough, but it’s horrifying that he seems to be able to have kept up the facade of being a crusader against violence against women even after the charges against him were filed in February. He certainly seems to have tried to plow on with his blog anyway, apart from something about people saying mean things about him in February. Hell, it looks like he’s still trying to keep it up even today. This man is a predator, and needs to be prevented from getting anywhere assault victims ever again.

There’s more at many places: Renegade Evolution has a full list in her sidebar. Ugh.

I’ve been realising recently, in the wake of having gone mostly stealth as trans, just how much that experience tends to obscure the privileges one has in other quarters. When you’re trans, you’re always the one with the life that no one wants. Take that out of the equation, though, and the picture can be very different.

I work in a pink-collar job. It’s the sort of place where you’ve got women who’ve worked there for the majority of their lives, through to a few younger girls just starting out. It’s a lovely place to work, especially for those of us who’ve come from more troubled backgrounds; the stability of the place, and the way in which the older women tend to act as kind of mentors for us younger ones means a lot. It’s probably the nicest and most friendly place I’ll ever work. It’s also a job with relatively low pay and minimal career prospects, for those people who don’t have an out.

It’s a pretty social workplace, and most of my friends there tend to be in the latter group; mostly from working-class backgrounds who either didn’t graduate high school, or finished with just their high school certificate. I’ve never had the advantages that I have had illustrated so clearly as they have through having friends who will never have nearly as many opportunities handed to them. I love this job, but I also can expect that I won’t be in it forever; for several of these girls, if they don’t stay in this job, they’ll be looking to move up into the sort of public service work that many of those I go to uni with are doing already. I have a couple of other middle-class law student coworkers who, I later discovered, are completely fine and friendly to me, but will roundly snob off most of my friends. This is not a position I’m used to being in; being told basically “I wish I had your life” is not something I’m used to hearing. But take the trans element out of there, and it’s not bloody hard to see why I’ve been hearing it a bit lately.

I may have had a bloody hard time getting here, but I will walk away in a couple of years having, on paper, graduated in the top four percent of the state from a private school, and having a law degree from the top university in the country. I discovered recently that two of my senior supervisors can’t get public service jobs which I’d be considering seeking once I walk away with the arts half of my degree at the end of the year, despite their having twenty years experience and me being 22 and still at school. Getting here for me was unconventional in many ways, and not only for being trans (which is an issue for another post one day), but I’ve never had it hit home quite so obviously how much my own class privilege has saved my arse when it’s really mattered.

Tags: class, privilege, trans

Okay, here’s the one where I retract some of my past views. Like I said in the other post, I’ve had a bit of an interesting week.

I’ve written a few posts and comments before about the issue of folks being attracted to trans people. I’m inherently extremely wary of people who claim to be such, having seen a bit too much plain fetishism of my kind, whether from folks on the radical left or the closeted right. I have, and still do, dislike the tendency in some quarters to excuse that sort of thing when it’s coming from the former. I see now, however, that I think there’s quite a bit more space there that’s unproblematic than I think I ever gave credit for. I kind of had a brief thing with another delegate at this conference I’ve spent the last week at, and one who, among other things, left me with fairly strong vibes that my transness was part of the interest. The thing was that with this person, I found that I really didn’t give a shit, and indeed found that ze was more respectful about my transness than anyone I’ve had ever had any sort of romantic involvement with. It’s an area that’s always going to be fraught, but I’m definitely seeing now that there’s some space there where, if anything, that sort of attraction could well be a good thing. I’m also a bit amused that ze turned out to be a friend of one of the bloggers I’ve argued with most about with this stuff; damn, it’s a small world.

I’m also starting to feel that I’ve been a bit defensive on some trans and genderqueer issues. I have and still do get very fed up with the attitudes in many out trans and genderqueer circles that a) one should necessarily identify as some sort of other, and b) that being stealth is a bad thing. This said, I think I’ve been a bit prone to that spilling over into a general lack of patience with many trans and genderqueer people, and that maybe I’ve been a bit quick to judge. I’ve spent much of the last week hanging around with some amazing gender variant folks of all shades and stripes, and it was pretty refreshing to not once find myself having to defend my choices and identity, and indeed, see many of these folks having the back of trans delegates: when we had the incident where badly transphobic comments were made in the combined trans/genderqueer caucus, it was other genderqueer delegates who firmly shut that person down. For the first time in a while, I’m starting to feel that there is actually room for some pretty strong alliances to be made there.

Tags: genderqueer, queer collaborations, queer issues, trans issues

I’ve recently returned from a week at the national student queer conference, Queer Collaborations, and while I wound up having a pretty awesome week, I’m a bit disappointed to say that not much of that had to do with the actual conference. It illustrated so much of what winds up trashing so many attempts at student political organising, and I dare say left a fair few people not too keen to come back. It’s a challenge for us next year, as we were the winning bid to bring the ‘09 conference to Canberra, but I think we’ll have a fair way to go.

The first day was the scene of many of the issues. Most of the day was taken up with navel-gazing issues around conference procedure that were really quite unhelpful. The womens’ caucus was the scene of a vicious two-hour long argument between the anarchists and the noiser normal people about just how much they hated the police, as people moved to take out a section of conference policy stating that law enforcement were not welcome/should not be cooperated with during the conference. This occurred despite the fact that none of this actually had anything to do specifically with women’s issues. The political pissing contest continued on for another hour on conference floor in the afternoon, with the offending section ultimately taken out, largely on the grounds that shaming people who’ve been assaulted is, y’know, kinda shit and all.

This meant that the better part of the entire first day - and the entirety of the women’s caucus, had been pretty much wasted. From what I heard, the culturally and linguistically diverse and disability caucuses at least functioned, although were also entirely dedicated to issues surrounding the running of the conference. The trans and genderqueer caucus, on the other hand, was a complete and utter fucking trainwreck.  Cispeople who didn’t get that it was supposed to be autonomous outnumbered the genderqueer and transpeople present combined, and the trans delegates in particular got swamped. Most of the session was spent doing trans 101 stuff, and I wound up storming out after one of the genderqueer delegates made some blatantly transphobic comments. No actual issues got discussed, either before or after I left, and I was pissed off enough to out myself to the entire conference so I could make an angry speech to conference floor later in the afternoon.

I’m not entirely surprised that such a big part of the day wound up being spent on internal issues, considering the conference’s history. Last year, some sort of misunderstanding, which turned out to be wrong, led to a vigilante group going to the hostel of one of the gay delegates accusing him of sexual assault, resulting in his attempting suicide and the entire conference feeling very, very unsafe. The previous year, Socialist Alternative plonked a stall blocking the fire exit at a public venue, refused to move, and nearly had the conference organisers call the police on them. A couple of years before that, the entire non-socialist section of the conference walked out and held sessions at a pub down the street. It’s had a history of crazy and often bullshit drama, and this year, for once, there was none of that. I suppose that’s an achievement, but it still doesn’t make the conference any more useful.

I was so fed up with the first day that I wound up missing most of the second. This did mean, unfortunately, that I missed Nix Williams, who I’m told showed up to the “how to be a trans ally?” workshop. The more non-political sessions, I’m told, went well; however, the more appealing a session was to the socialists present, the worse it got was the general vibe. The socialist delegates repeatedly disrupted the conference in the sessions I saw, basically trying to browbeat dissenters into submission, and even pre-scripting and arranging Dorothy Dixers in the plenary session to try to steer the discussion to their ends. It’s not as if I haven’t seen this sort of thing before: opposing some sort of socialist motion at the Queer Space NUS policy conference in 2006 basically saw threats of physical violence made against the independent delegates present. Still, it’s so fucking unhelpful, and does such damage to the prospect of anything actually useful coming out of the conference in terms of campaigns or networking, or fuck, even educating people there.

The consequences of this could be seen in the “action” on Thursday afternoon. The socialists wandered off down to the office of the Minister for Finance (because it was close) to do an impromptu protest for the not-especially-coherent manifesto of gay marriage, overturning VSU, and homophobia in schools, while the non-socialists fucked off into the city and went shopping. Did it actually achieve anything besides giving the trots an adrenalin high? Of course not. But hey, since when were we expected to try and, y’know, do something useful with the time.

The conference did wind up being a good opportunity to meet some queers from around the country and hey, to that extent I had the best week I’ve had in ages, but politically, it could have been so much more.

You’ve got a really rare chance to get a big group of lesbian students, of queer students of colour, of disabled queer students, and trans students together, in person. It’s such a great opportunity to actively network and attempt to share resources and foment potential campaigns. And instead, that time gets spent pissing about with conference procedure. You’ve got a great chance to get interesting speakers in to talk to a bunch of queers to learn from and be inspired, and instead these wind up being persistently hijacked by the bloody socialists and anarchists. You’ve got the best chance you’re going to get to give queer students from all over the country the chance to network with each other, and it perennially takes a backseat to drama and bullshit. Hell, you’ve got such an opportunity to make it a fun, inspiring, and insightful week, and half the time people just walk away feeling pissed. If it wasn’t for the people I met during the conference, that’s about all I’d have come away with. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to try and make for a better conference in 2009, but god we’ve got a long way to go if it’s going to be a useful one.

Tags: queer collaborations, queer issues, student politics, trans

I’ve been meaning to get back into blogging again for a bit, after a couple of months where I’ve been dealing with a bit too much personal crap to be paying much attention to the world around. This incident of “what the FUCK were you thinking?” at London Pride, however, should prompt as much outrage and scorn we can raise.

UK trans activist Roz Kaveney’s account of what went down:

Official stewards who were running the toilets at Trafalgar Square announced that I, and any other transgender or transsexual woman, had to use the disabled toilets and was not allowed to use the regular women’s toilets. I pointed out to the stewards that I transitioned and had surgery before they were born; I was more polite than a polite thing. No dice.

Having this happen at any public event is worthy of a furore, but I can’t even comprehend the sort of cluelessness on the part of those at Pride that would allow for this to happen. It’s really not that hard: you’re organising an event which purports to include the trans community, nay, to represent trans pride, and yet everyone at the scene lacks the most basic awareness of trans issues, or just plain don’t care.

It gets worse.

I went and fetched a posse of transwomen and transmen and we made a collective fuss. Their response - and remember these were official stewards AT PRIDE - was to radio in ‘we’re being attacked by a mob of trannies! send backup’.

Just…fuck. Upon being challenged on an issue where they were firmly in the wrong, their response is not only to decide that they’re being attacked by a mob, but to do so with derogatory language to the minority involved, who, y’know, ARE IN THE GROUP YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE REPRESENTING.

And worse.

They were joined by a policeman, who was a LGBT liaison officer, who claimed that we had to be able to show our Gender Recognition Certificates if we wanted to use the women’s loos and got quite upset when I explained to him that I had been involved in drafting the Act and that it did not take away rights that existed before it. At one point he threatened to arrest us for demonstrating on private property - those loos belong to Westminster Council, so you are not allowed to make a fuss there.

Both of these things greatly disturb me. Firstly, that you have an police LGBT liaison officer who appears to be both blatantly ignorant about trans issues, and not to give a shit about it. There’s something very wrong about the training of community liaison officers if the whole respecting transfolk thing gets missed altogether. This officer needs to be very promptly canned.

Worse than that, though, is the use of Gender Recognition Certificates in this way - and that’s something that might well be a warning to any jurisdictions using similar systems. They’re meant to be a legal document signifying a change of status under the state; they’re most certainly not meant to be a “gender card” if you will, signifying who you’re allowed to discriminate against. Nor are they expected to be something that one would be carrying on one’s person. If as it seems here it’s being used in that way, that needs to be stopped, and that law needs to be changed to make damn sure that pulling this sort of thing has consequences for those who do it. It’s something that I hope Press for Change get onto in the wake of this, and it’s a lesson to those pushing for the adoption of similar systems elsewhere to see that that gets included into any new legislation.

And here’s a big “fuck you” to the stewards concerned for further trying to justify it on the base that there had been a sex attack that night. The trans community gets enough of this absolute bullshit from the batshit right without having to get it from equally ignorant folks who are supposed to be on our side. Props, though, to the trans guys who stood by the women who’d been turned away, declaring that if Roz et al were being told they couldn’t use the womens, then they, beards and all, should have to use them.

To make matters worse, someone who appears to have been one of the stewards dropped by and commented anonymously on Roz’s post:

Amongst the stewards there were indeed a number of trans people and official Pride policy is to treat any individual as the gender they present as. But seriously, you want more trans recognition then it’s up to you to get pro-actively involved rather than complain after the event when something goes wrong.

And for the record a woman was attacked that was not just an excuse. It is possible that there was an over reaction in an attempt to prevent further problems. Unfortunate but surely in such a tense situation to an extent understandable. There proposed solution of asking you to use the disabled toilets (gender neutral) whilst far from ideal was an attempt offer a workable solution.

Yes this wasn’t good but your way of dealing with it only suceeded in putting more pressure on already tense and overstretched Stewards and police officers, which was far from ideal and in my opinion did no favours to tran gender issues and the way trans people are viewed.

It seems that, according to this lovely person, preventing us from using the fucking bathroom is our fault, associating our community with sex offenders is “understandable”, and crying foul in the face of treatment that would be atrocious at any event, let alone at a queer one, “does us no favours.” I say that it does London Pride no favours if these are the sort of volunteers it places in a position of responsibility that involves dealing with members of the trans community.

I think this sort of conduct on the part of an LGBT organisation warrants an international outcry; christ, if it happened to me here, I’d be seeing them again in court.

Here’s the contact details for Pride London. I suggest people drop them a line and let them know how unconscionable this is:

Email: info@pridelondon.org

Post:

344-354 Gray’s Inn Road
London
WC1 8BP

Phone: (in the UK) 0844 884 2439

People may also be interested in contacting the police department in Westminister concerning the actions of the gay and lesbian liaison officer. Their email address is westminster@met.police.uk, and there’s also a contact name and UK phone number for their consultation group, which is supposed to deal with minority issues: Julie Etheridge, 020 7641 3258.

There’s also an online petition about the incident going around; please sign that as well if you get the chance. (Thanks to Helen G in comments for pointing that one out)

Tags: assholes, calls to arms, queer issues, trans

It’s a bit of a small world.

I came out fairly widely to my friends when I was fifteen, and I lost more than a few at that stage. It’s been seven years, and for the most part, the people who weren’t exactly what one might call supportive then are long forgotten, and most of them are half a continent away.

But one of them just popped up with a supportive comment on Ryan’s blog.

It seems as if some people do come around eventually.

Tags: trans

This is hilarious.

Bob Kelleher, a perennial candidate, liberal activist, and former Green Party candidate, has won the Republican Senate primary in Montana to challenge incumbent Democrat Max Baucus, defeating two right-wing state politicians, including the former Majority Leader of the Montana House.

His campaign website makes for an interesting read. It makes no mention of the Republican Party - it actually says he’s running for the Green nomination, and expresses support for trade unions, public transport, ending the war on drugs, ending the Iraq War, improved healthcare and Ralph Nader. He’s quite clearly well to the left of Baucus.

I have no idea what happened here, but I’m very amused. I’m gathering the Republicans aren’t very happy about it: the chair of the state Republican Party basically came straight and told the press that they won’t give him any assistance, surprise of surprises. It could make for an pretty bizarre race later in the year.