A worrying sign
Apr 6th, 2008 by Rebecca
I’ve spent a bit of the afternoon reading through the archives of the mailing list discussion that led to this post, and I started to get a feeling that worries me.
The Australian trans community has been lucky to - at least as far I’ve seen - escape some of the conflict that has shown up in parts of the States, with the blatant privileging of transmasculine spectrum identities, especially those identities perceived to be “transgressive”, at the expense of transwomen and others on the transfeminine spectrum. Julia Serano has written quite a bit about this in relation to her experiences in San Francisco, and I notice a bunch of these issues coming up in Galling Galla’s post today about the breathtakingly shitty problems she’s having in Philadelphia. So far, though - I haven’t seen much of this here.
Which is why some of the threads on the Trans Melbourne Gender Project list really concerned me. The group bills itself as “a coalition of people of all genders”, but several transmen on that list were - repeatedly - using “transmen, transbutches and their admirers” and “transpeople” as synonyms, without being called on it by anyone else. The concerns I raised in my previous post raised for me issues of identities perceived as being transgressive being favoured over the concerns of those who identify within the binary gender system, but these posts really did seem to me to be treating the transmasculine spectrum and the transgender community as being one and the same. I suppose it does partially explain the group’s evident relative lack of women (or at least on its mailing list) - and by god I started to feel uncomfortable after reading those posts.
I hope that I’m wrong about this. I know that two of those on my blogroll - the marvellous Nix Williams and Az - are both really involved in TMGP, so maybe it was just a couple of jerks, or some badly worded posts. However, in light of the sorts of similar conflicts had in the US, I find this a bit of a worrying sign.
It’s a real problem, but I don’t think it’s one-sided. There’s a massive cultural divide, and I don’t know how we could bridge the gap.
You’ve seen what CTN are like. It seems a number of the trans groups in Australia are dominated by women like them. I can’t imagine any of the trans men I’ve ever met hanging out with that kind of woman for long.
Hey, are you coming to QC? (Have I already asked that?)
I think they’re different problems, and I’m not sure they’re related. Groups like CTN are abundant, and they’re problematic as all hell, but they’re problematic because there’s so many traumatised and screwed up people in this community. I’ve been pondering a post on that for a while, but I’m still pondering how exactly to put it.
I think the reasons behind groups favouring the transmasculine spectrum are a bit more complicated than that. I know Julia Serano has written about this, and I remember thinking she was right on but I can’t find the exact quote (I’m not sure if it was in Whipping Girl or in her blog archives). Essentially, IIRC, she was drawing it back to the whole privileging of masculinity in society more broadly, with a not insignificant dose of misogyny. The favouring of *transgressive* identities is something that’s a bit different again, but I think that’s a problem in the queer community as a whole (it’s also another factor behind my whole Butler hatred, ftr).
I’m intending to come to QC at this point, but it’s going to depend on both money and work. I’ve been really keen on going for years, and Rhiannon and I are really keen to take the chance to get down to Melbourne and hit the queer scene there with Bea, so I hope so. I should be able to get some money from my folks since I’d be visiting them if I went down, so I *should* be okay with money…whether I can get the time off work is another matter.
Seems like we’ve got a minority of misogynistic men scaring women away from FtM dominated groups, and some bizarre misogynistic women scaring anyone who’s lived as a woman for more than six months away from MtF dominated groups.
And as long as that segregation persists, there will be a cultural divide, and they won’t learn to get along with each other. It’s hard to be inclusive if you don’t know what you’re talking about, and it’s hard to know what you’re talking about if you don’t have the experience of actually knowing the people you’re trying to include.
I really hope this is a generational thing; that trans women of our generation will have an entirely different outlook than some of the old ladies from CTN. I can’t see the divide between MtFs and FtMs being healed without change there.
This is all guesswork and first impressions, of course, I haven’t been on the scene very long.
Speaking as a prospective transgressor, I’m yet to experience the favouring of transgressive identities. Possibly because we live in Canberra, where the queer scene is super conservative and only Manky thinks it’s cool to be freaky
Is it a matter of all trans people being othered and projected into the third-gender-land by the semi-clueless, and the non-binary identified being more OK with being the Other?
It’s been a couple of years since they’ve had a trans workshop at QC that went far beyond basic trans101. If you wanted to give a little talk to educate the folks about the sort of issues you’ve been blogging about then I think that’d be cool.
Seems like we’ve got a minority of misogynistic men scaring women away from FtM dominated groups, and some bizarre misogynistic women scaring anyone who’s lived as a woman for more than six months away from MtF dominated groups.
I think that’s an interesting way of putting it, but I’m not sure that it sums up the complexity of the issues that seem to be arising with transmisogyny in queer/trans communities. It’s a cultural thing, and one that a fair bunch of cispeople are responsible for as well.
I really hope this is a generational thing; that trans women of our generation will have an entirely different outlook than some of the old ladies from CTN. I can’t see the divide between MtFs and FtMs being healed without change there.
I think many of the issues with the latter problem are generational: there’s not nearly the level of bizarreness in most of the transwomen I know of - but then again, that’s not that surprising considering we’re so much younger and have gotten to skip a couple decades of trauma. The former issue, the privileging of transmasculine spectrum identities in certain queer and trans communities? Not so much. That one’s a relatively new problem, and I think it’s getting worse, not better.
Speaking as a prospective transgressor, I’m yet to experience the favouring of transgressive identities.
True - but then again, you’re talking about Canberra. The whole “transgressive good! binary bad!” seems to be coming up in places with really large queer and trans places, rather than, y’know, somewhere where eighty people show up to our main queer festival and I wind up thinking “fuck, we actually have queer people!”. It’s a bit hard to privilege transgressive identities in a place where if you talk about such a thing, you’re probably referring to Manky.
If you wanted to give a little talk to educate the folks about the sort of issues you’ve been blogging about then I think that’d be cool.
Could certainly be interesting. I’ll have to work out if I can go first.
Hey, Rebecca, thanks for linking to my blog.
I am obviously unfamiliar with Australian culture; from my perspective as a US-ian, I see the trans community (which is quite large and active in Philadelphia) buying into the misogyny of the larger culture that we find ourselves in.
Sure, not many transmasculine folk go on 10-minute misogynist rants or call women “slut-hos”. Most identify as ardent feminists. But somehow, transfeminine folk are being squeezed out, and I have to wonder why? Why are transmasculine folk, many who identify as fully male, accepted and welcomed into WBW-only space while trans women are kicked out, and do they not see that their identities are being disrespected when that happens?
And Robbie, I’m 49 and a late transitioner; I wonder if you include me among the “old ladies”, which I think is a pretty dismissive term. Of course, I am not familiar with CTN. I will tell you that many trans women my age are quite uncomfortable with my leftist views and intense feminism; I sure don’t –feel like– an “old lady”.
I’ve met many an asshole on all spectrums, just like I’ve met many a cis asshole. It’s just that when a trans man is an asshole, he is treated as a nasty individual and nothing more; but when a trans woman is an asshole, her asshattery is transcribed to the entire group. That is what I am ranting about.
Hey Rachel - great to see you dropping by!
I think you’re quite right that it’s ultimately the trans community buying into the misogyny of our larger culture. Australia does not have much of an organised trans community anywhere, and I suspect that’s ultimately why we haven’t seen all that much of the same here.
I see many great transmen around the place who do recognise their need to be sensitive with regard to women’s spaces, and to ensure that their engagement does not put the participation of transwomen at risk. But yeah, this doesn’t change that it’s happening more and more, and like you, I’m kinda stumped as to why. I always appreciate it when I see the likes of Drakyn suggesting to other transmen to own their shit (something which the transmen in my own life also do, thankfully), but there’s still too many men who don’t.
As for Robbie’s comments about CTN, I want to assure you that they’re *not* directed against late transitioners in general. Our local trans group is particularly problematic: on my one visit, I found those there to be spectacularly creepy, and often downright misogynist, and I’m increasingly finding out that it has a notoriously bad reputation amongst the broader trans community for those reasons.
It’s just that when a trans man is an asshole, he is treated as a nasty individual and nothing more; but when a trans woman is an asshole, her asshattery is transcribed to the entire group. That is what I am ranting about.
I couldn’t agree more.
Hi Rebecca. I’m not sure that I could speak for anyone else involved in TMGP, but the people who have been participating in this recent argument on the TMGP list are mostly close friends and people I work with on other projects, too. While it may seem as if they’re privileging transmasculine spectrum experience or identities over trans-feminine stuff, I don’t think that’s actually happening in the ‘real life’ interactions we have. TMGP people are usually pretty careful to be as inclusive as possible, of everyone. While I’ve ended up on this ’side’ of the debate, I can vouch for the fact that the people on the ‘other side’ are neither exclusionary or misogynistic. They’re not jerks, they’re really good people. Indeed, we’ve all been thinking recently about how to encourage more transwomen to participate.
It’s not that there haven’t been transwomen participating already, but generally in TMGP, more ftms/transmen are active. This certainly has something to do with TMGP’s origins: myself and another FTM started it because we felt our politics and support needs were quite different to the mainly transwomen-run/attended support groups that already existed in Melbourne. Some of the people running those groups tend to talk in terms of ‘the girls’, without seeming to realise that they themselves are using exclusionary language. Given this background, it felt very important to make space for transmen/ftm’s to network and share skills/information. We did this, and TMGP is still pretty much the only group in Melbourne that addresses ftm issues, while there are at least four other groups that deal pretty exclusively with transwomens’ issues. But TMGP is not about identity, as you know, and what takes place in terms of support and other projects is a direct result of people taking initiative and materialising their own desires about what they need.
Finally, once again I’d urge you to rejoin the list and post your concerns there. (Did you unsubscribe? I’m the moderator, and I usually get a notification of such, but haven’t.) For a start, the people you refer to in this post might like to talk it out with you. They’re certainly not going to dismiss your concerns out of hand. I think if you want to have this debate properly, you need to be very clear about who you’re referring to, and cite specific instances — which of course you can’t do on your blog, because the list guidelines ask people not to repost emails elsewhere. Thus, as a list moderator, I really feel this this discussion could take place really constructively there. On the other hand, I know it must feel slightly uncomfortable to express those concerns when you’re addressing the ‘TMGP organisers’, and aren’t part of the group yourself. Anyhow, I’d like to send your post to the list if that’s okay. (I just wrote this and then read the previous post, and commented there, if that makes sense.)
Az: That’s good to know. I suspected from some of the things I’d heard earlier that that might be the case, but I found the language in some of the threads I was re-reading so exclusionary that I actually went to check the website to check whether as a transwoman I was really welcome.
I’m certainly not arguing about the high ftm content: that’s perfectly cool with me. It was just that the tone was such that I actually wound up checking if I was even welcome. For the record, I joined TMGP because I have my own (and not dissimilar really) issues with the other groups. And I have to say - until this week, I hadn’t really had reason to question that choice.
I am apparently still a member (I tried to unsubscribe, but I appear to still be receiving emails) but - as with the other thread, I’m reluctant to hash this out on the list. The threads *did* piss me off, and I wanted to comment out that, but I feel that I don’t have enough of a dog in this fight (considering my distance, and the fact that I could hope to attend stuff maybe a couple times a year) for the drama that might ensue at being called on stuff by a random stranger who hasn’t really had the opportunity to be involved. I feel that I’ve said my piece; beyond that, it’s the group’s problem.