Monstrous Regiment

So, this is what it feels like to be thrown under the bus. And then have another bus drive over you, because the first one wasn’t enough.

Democrats: i’m not feeling the love, okay? Because i can tell that you’re fumbling around to find the barest minimum you can do for us queer folks while still getting our votes and our campaign contributions.

Let’s start with ENDA. The GOP played you suckas like a violin, and you haven’t even realized it. It was revealed the other day (by the Chaliban, no less) that Bush sent folks to negotiate with Congress an exclusion to ENDA for religious organizations. Which you gave them - along with stripping us trannies out of the bill for good measure (oh, we ’scare’ middle America… as if middle America can tell us apart from gay folk anyway). You gave Bush these things, and then he announces he’s going to veto the mess anyway.

Psych! Do you see what the GOP did there? You get it? They are toying with us, seeing how much division they can sow in our community. They got the gays to sell out the trannies, just enough to break our spirit, and now they’re laughing because we’re spitting mad at one another and we aren’t any of us going to get anything for it in the end.

And now… now… et tu, Barack? Do you know what we call a politician who says one thing and does another? A liar. Yes, your PR people made a statement, blah blah blah. Anything a politician says can be safely ignored, however flowery it is, because everyone in the loop knows that politicians will say whatever they think will throw off their detractors just enough to avoid the heat when they vote some other way. It doesn’t matter how much you say you disagree with homophobes, it only matters whether you campaign with them and lend them credibility.

Say, Democrats, while we’re on the subject of lying talking one way and voting another, what’s up with this retroactive telecom immunity, funding and refunding the war, branding Iran a terrorist state, and re-authorizing warrantless wiretapping horseshit?

So a big up yours to the Democrats, and a promise to spend my spare time on Voting Day playing World of Warcraft instead of wasting it at the polls.

A couple of months ago, before the New York Times made it fashionable, i wrote about J. Michael Bailey and his claims about autogynephilia. Now, as Marti points out, Bailey has written on ScientificBlogging about the criticism he’s undergone since his book about transsexualism came out four years ago.

In this blog post he summarizes the argument of his book as follows (emphasis added):

Canadian scientist Ray Blanchard conducted a number of studies in the 1980s and 1990s supporting his theory that there are two, and only two, distinct kinds of males who decide to become women.

Members of one type are best conceived (before they become women) as very feminine homosexual males. They have been extremely and recognizably feminine since early in life. They are exclusively, strongly, and unambiguously sexually attracted to men.

… Members of [the second] type are not overtly feminine (at least prior to taking steps to become women), and they are not primarily sexually attracted to men. Rather, they are sexually aroused by the idea of becoming and being women. Members of this subtype, whom Blanchard has called both “nonhomosexual” and “autogynephilic” male-to-female transsexuals, are best conceived as a type of heterosexual male. In their unusual heterosexuality, their primary erotic target, or sex object, is not an actual, external woman, but rather, a woman that is fantasized, and ultimately created inside the self. That is, the primary sexual orientation of autogynephilic males is toward themselves as women.

…Although it is possible that another kind of male-to-female transsexual exists, no good evidence exists that this is the case.

He writes to say that some gallae have contacted him thanking him for helping to clarify what it is that they experience. So, there is no doubt that what he’s describing is true for at least some gallae.

But, no good evidence of there being other kinds of gallae? Except, perhaps, for the objection of many countless gallae who do not easily fit either description. But let’s not forget that Bailey is well-known in some circles for his prior claim that, despite the protestations and first-hand accounts of thousands, bisexual men do not exist.

He knows this how? Through the magic of watching what your privates do when you are asked to look at various kinds of pornography. That’s right, despite what you may think about the many dimensions of your life which inform your sexuality — your emotional connections with other people, your desires for relationships, your plans, your dreams, even your reactions to scents and textures — all of that means nothing compared to what makes your privates twitch when you look at naughty pictures.

While he claims that he only wants to promote support for transsexual people, at the same time he argues that we are liars:

[A]mong apparently autogynephilic males, those who denied their autogynephilia scored high on a psychometric test developed to detect the tendency to respond in socially desirable ways. Thus, among the transgendered, denial of autogynephilia is apparently related to the desire to give a good impression. Both of these studies suggest that denial of autogynephilia should not be taken at face value.

In other words, “Shut up, i’m speaking up for you.” Our accounts are not to be trusted.

As Joan Roughgarden wrote in her reply,

The dispute and acrimony will not end until transgendered people are permitted to voice their own narratives without being filtered through the lens of psychologists. Transgender narratives must be honored as primary data, first class evidence, and not subject to tampering, manipulation or subversion. Transgendered people cannot concede the meaning and definition of their lives to medical authority.

I hear on a semi-regular basis — again, just the other day in fact — about what foils for the patriarchy transpeople are. How our undertaking of gender transition helps to support rather than to undermine the gender caste system.

And so now i’m frustrated with this to the point of being snarky about it. Because i’d really like to see on what basis, beyond the thoughts in their head, anyone can make such a statement. Please, someone, anyone, name one reward that one receives for being transgender. One kind of social privilege, however small. It’s been my life and i haven’t seen it, but maybe i’m too “close,” you know?

I can name the costs — economic, social, emotional; i can name the the barriers — economic, social, emotional, institutional, ideological; i can name the risks; but the only benefit i can name is my own health and satisfaction, which can never be perfect. So far as i can tell, it hasn’t won me any friends, prestige, acclaim, higher income, personal security, religious merit, a closer relationship to my family.

If being transgender were truly patriarchy-approved, then there would be some benefit or reward, somewhere. Some kind of official approval instead of static, red tape, and moralistic condemnation.

ETA.  Suppose we are foils for the patriarchy.   But then: who isn’t?  Except for a very few who manage to exist as total separatists, who doesn’t, in some way or another, compromise with the demands of gender in order to lessen the day-to-day dissonance?

Why do disagreements between leftists become so adversarial so quickly?

First example: the protest which led to Bitch being disinvited from the Boston Dyke March. Even more recently: in the town where i live, which has a large Armenian-American population, there was an argument over the Anti-Defamation League’s rejection of the Armenian Genocide, which resulted in the town council’s vote to pull out of the ADL’s “No Place For Hate” program.

It kinda disturbs me to see that protest, division, and boycott seems to be the first resort among leftists these days. It’s as if no one has any patience for difference of opinion.

I am not dismissing the importance of the disagreements in the two examples i cited, but in my not-so-humble opinion, we should be saving serious things like boycotts and shunning for war profiteers and the School of the Americas and union-busting corporations. Not people who are members of our own community, people with whom we have many concerns in common, people who may actually listen to us and learn.

Maybe what it comes down to is that people want to be able to do their thing without any fear whatsoever of being offended or troubled.

Thing is, people are not identical, and so from time to time you are just going to be offended. It’s part of the package that comes with this whole “living in society” thing. There is no right to not be offended. When we do anything in public, we have to coexist occasionally with people who offend us. We just do.

Don’t take this to mean that we shouldn’t call someone on being a jerk. Jerks, trolls, deliberately rude, insensitive, dismissive people — by all means, call them on their crap or disassociate yourself. I’m not talking about jerks, i’m talking about situations where someone takes offense even though the other person is polite and respectful. In other words, those situations where someone offends you simply by existing, or having an opinion that differs from yours.

We need more effective strategies for dealing with these situations besides rushing to disassociate with anyone who offends us. Because we are stronger when we can learn to build coalitions.

I’ve written before about “coalition space” vs. “safe space.” It’s not a simple distinction, so i’m going to try to describe it again.

A “safe space” is a place you and a few of your friends create in order to be yourselves and feel safe in doing so. It’s just for you and your friends and you don’t want anyone to intrude.

But whenever there’s a good thing, the people who belong to it want to bring their other friends, too. And they find it’s a good thing, and they want to bring their friends. And as long as everyone’s cool, all this is cool, even when there are now people there who don’t know each other going in.

When a group grows beyond a certain size, it can no longer be a safe space. It’s not just a few friends getting together anymore. When a group grows beyond a certain size, its acts become political acts. Its policies become political policies. This happens whether you like it or not. Once your group gets to a certain size, it begins to influence what other people do and think.

And while the people inside might feel relative safety there, it really isn’t; get 50 or more people together and you will find at least one jerk in the crowd, or one bully, or at the very least someone who disagrees with you about something important to you. And when you encounter that person you no longer feel safe there.

It has passed from “safe space” to “coalition space.” Coalition space is not safe, but it is useful and purposeful. It is a space where you meet people who think in more or less the same way as you, who have more or less the same concerns as you. But it is not the group it once was.

In a coalition space, you can get things done, you can flex the strength of your numbers. But you are operating alongside people who sometimes tick you off. And you CAN co-exist with that person. And unless they are rude or bullyish, if they show up for the same purpose you do, they deserve a chance to prove themselves.

Being transgender is an enigma cloaked in mystery and dipped in murkiness. How and why does gender dysphoria develop at all? Why is it so powerful that many transpeople find it easier to undergo expensive and painful changes to their body than to “just live with it”?

Of course, if i can say, “I was born this way,” there is no longer any mystery. This seems especially true after reading this (h/t to Autumn Sandeen here).

A crucial question resulting from a previous brain study in male-to-female transsexuals was whether the reported difference according to gender identity in the central part of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) was based on a neuronal difference in the BSTc itself or just a reflection of a difference in vasoactive intestinal polypeptide innervation from the amygdala, which was used as a marker. … The number of neurons in the BSTc of male-to-female transsexuals was similar to that of the females (P = 0.83). In contrast, the neuron number of a female-to-male transsexual was found to be in the male range. Hormone treatment or sex hormone level variations in adulthood did not seem to have influenced BSTc neuron numbers. The present findings of somatostatin neuronal sex differences in the BSTc and its sex reversal in the transsexual brain clearly support the paradigm that in transsexuals sexual differentiation of the brain and genitals may go into opposite directions and point to a neurobiological basis of gender identity disorder.

To summarize, what researchers have been finding is:

1. There are differences between the average man’s brain and the average woman’s brain,
2. Transwomen’s brains are in some ways shaped more like the average woman’s brains (and vice-versa for transmen), and
3. By exposing rat embryos to certain hormone levels during gestation, researchers can induce biologically male rats to exhibit female behaviors and vice-versa - establishing a causal link.

So, perhaps i have a brain that more resembles a woman’s than a man’s. I’m ready to accept this as a likely explanation, because nothing else i’ve ever heard makes sense.

And i’m ready to accept this as a causal explanation, because there is nothing in my upbringing that would have led me to consistently lean towards having a female identity. Since i was born people have treated me as male. When i started showing transgender inclinations i was leaned on even more heavily to be male. How could anything purely psycho-social persist in the face of lifelong constant negative pressure?

A lot of the feminists i know are nervous about the idea of biological determinism when it comes to gender identity. Perhaps some of them mistrust this because of their own differing experience of gender (see my post about this a while ago).

But also, any scientific examination of gendering in the brain is dealing with averages, ranges and statistics. The central tenet of feminism — that women deserve equal esteem, equal opportunity, and equal freedom — is not undermined if there happen to be innate differences, because any “innate differences” as such exist only in general, statistical terms. Any generalization reflects a range of likelihoods and has exceptions. So the key to fairness is establishing a society in which individuals are not bound by expectations based on these generalities.

This can be solved quite simply by establishing individual merit and ability as the focus by which we judge aptitude for a given task, and not averages or stereotypes regarding gender (or race, etc.).

And, furthermore, these differences have no bearing on whether or not women should have control over their own bodies or destiny.

Edited to add. Upon reflection, i feel it necessary to add that i am not trying to say that all transsexualism or all gender dysphoria comes from a neurobiological origin, or that it is the only origin. But i do think that it is a piece in the puzzle. Maybe a key piece, maybe not.  But either way, in my case at least, it is an idea that resonates with my experience very strongly and provides the likeliest explanation i’ve encountered so far.

“There’s Something About Miriam” is old news, but as Marti pointed out, it will be broadcast in the US this fall on Fox, making it new news once again.

But here, i will spoil the whole surprise for you and post the transgender money shot which is the climax of the whole show.

I avoided watching this until i knew i was ready. But… it still hurt.

You know what one of the most painful aspects of my life is? It is the fact that i can’t go about my business like an ordinary person and have my life change in the blink of an eye because i bump into a man or woman who finds me attractive. No. I have to have a conversation like this one when that happens. And you can imagine how it almost always turns out. (Although, to be fair, when it happens i don’t usually have a reality-TV host standing beside me trying to pimp me out with an additional £10,000.)

This is one of the most private, stingy humiliations i have to deal with. It’s not easy for the other person, either. And there it is, on goddamn television, appropriated by Sky One and now Fox for their big bucks. I couldn’t have felt more exposed and vulnerable by watching a clip if it was me there, standing naked.

Quite a few have been heaping scorn upon Miriam for going along with this, though i am not going to join that chorus. I’m disappointed that any galla would go along with this, but i have learned never to underestimate the power of internalized transphobia.  Or the offer of money and the closest thing to “tolerance” that i guess we can expect.

I don’t normally read anything by Heart unless someone i read links to something over there. Let’s just say i have disagreements with some of her points of view.

But what is happening to her now is not acceptable.

Misogynists have shut down her website by pinging it to death, using up her bandwidth allotment, and are attacking her mind and spirit with vivid threats of rape and murder.

These aren’t random trolls, it’s part of a coordinated and deliberate effort to shut down several feminists, including Twisty, Ginmar, Biting Beaver, and others. I don’t even want to describe the now-deleted forum conversation i just found thanks to Google’s cache, wherein the attacks were being organized; suffice it to say i am horrified and nauseated.

They think they are doing it “just for lulz,” but, to paraphrase Andrew Vachss, love and hate are not emotions, they are actions. If you perform the acts of hatred, then regardless of what is going on ‘in your mind’ you are guilty of hate.

Feminists do not participate in general internet discourse because we are just frankly outnumbered. We can be as eloquent as we like, as patient as we like, but there is simply not enough time and energy to answer every point raised in objection, every post, every quibble. There are twenty objections for every point we raise. And that is under the best of circumstances, presuming that objections are not (as they usually are) delivered in snide, condescending tones which in themselves sap our energy.

The message, which we get both verbally and non-verbally, is clear: our form of dissent, whether it has merit or not, is just simply not allowed. It will not be answered on the level in which it is delivered. It will instead simply be shouted down, because majorities can do this, and because they think it is not even worth the mental energy that would be required to answer it directly.

In order just to have the chance to collect our thoughts feminists have retreated to a fairly insular blogosphere — but apparently we aren’t allowed to have even this to ourselves. It doesn’t take a mass conspiracy to shut us down, just a few determined kooks everyone else shrugs off as mere pranksters.

And then what are we to think but that is just more proof of what we are saying about there being a globally-pervasive cannibalistic pattern of misogyny?

This is not a “freedom of speech” debate. Freedom of speech has to include the sense of personal peace and security which is required before someone can even sit down to write. And secondly, “speech” is the exchange of ideas. ‘Raep’ threats and other verbal vomit which carry only malice and emotional terrorism are not an exchange of ideas. Quite the opposite in fact.

What are we going to do about this? As a society, i mean. When are we going to say, as a society, that we truly value minority viewpoints in discourse? That this diversity is a resource worth protecting? When are we finally going to take bullying seriously?

A little over one year into transition, and i have days where i’m not sure what it means anymore. It’s ike this looming thing in my life which was once solid and tangible has become ethereal. I used to be able to point to a specific set of thoughts and feelings and say, “This is why i am doing it,” but it’s not so clear anymore.

It has stretched out and taken root in every last corner of my life, so i don’t know where it starts and ends now. In my life now it manifests as a momentum with a life of its own which pulls me along even when i don’t know where it will lead next.

These are not good things or bad things, they just are.

I do know that a lot of the things i thought before transitioning were not accurate. For example, i thought that presenting as female in public some of the time gave me some preparation for what this would be like. Um, no.

Well, i mean certainly i had some experience in the kind of thing like knowing, “They’re saying ‘ma’am’… oh, they mean me“. But that’s trivial compared to what this is really like from moment to moment and day to day.

And it certainly didn’t prepare me for anything like feeling comfortable in my skin all day until the moment i go to the pharmacist to get a prescription filled out in my male name.

I do know, now, that perception is very elastic. There is a strange resilience in people’s capacity to gender someone. Pull it and it stretches, sometimes way out of shape. This resilience makes it easier for me to pass. But it also means people won’t hear me if i speak from certain points of view. This has been the hardest part of this to adjust to.

I do know that it costs me a lot of money, but it’s worth it and i would do it again.

I do know that it takes me longer to get ready in the morning but that it takes less effort, except for the days i don’t feel confident, in which case it takes more effort.

I do know that i wouldn’t go back.

Last week i wrote a long post in response to the online posting of an essay by Dr. Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins. Then yesterday i encountered again the idea of ‘autogynephilia’ among transsexual women, this time in the context of J. Michael Bailey’s work.

Yes, THAT J. Michael Bailey. A number of people far more capable, connected, and knowledgeable than i have undertaken the task of demonstrating the holes, shortcuts, and ethical breaches in Bailey’s research, so i’m going to take a different tack — to explore the subtext and presumption behind this controversy.

When i wrote that post my reaction was fueled by indignation at seeing my life and experiences, and those of many people i care about, reduced to something immoral and pathological. But my reaction assumes the same moralistic paradigm. To respond properly, i need to take that paradigm head-on because i believe that moralism and respectability were self-servingly constructed in order to suppress dissent and oppress minorities. Indeed, we gallae know this well; the iconic story of our life is to have fingers pointed at us in accusation by the very same men who accepted our favors the night before. We, being visible, cannot hide behind the notion of respectability which allows people of privilege to hide from accountability for their deeds.

‘Autogynephilia’ is a model promoted by Ray Blanchard, who coined the term; Michael Bailey, who promoted it; and Anne Lawrence, a post-op TS who lends legitimacy and the weight of further research. The word was defined by Ray Blanchard as “a man’s paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman.”

Look at that definition. The real meaning, which all but literally drips from this statement, is, essentially, “They’re being naughty.” And furthermore, the arguments made by Blanchard, Bailey, Lawrence, McHugh, et al., is that sex-reassignment therapy is a misuse of the medical profession’s sway over the public to promote naughtiness; that transsexual women (where are the transmen in all of this? nonexistent of course) cause psychiatrists and surgeons to be unwitting participants in the acting out of their sexual fantasy.

It’s a funny thing, arousal. In my time, i’ve toyed with the idea that arousal is one of the body’s ways of telling us that something is good or right. I can lay beside my partner, or walk down the street holding her hand, and feel my flesh get warm and tingly, you know, down there; i’ve even heard that women sometimes feel arousal when breastfeeding their child. Affection and breastfeeding are good, and if they should be accompanied by arousal, why should we conclude that there is suddenly something immoral going on? Why shouldn’t the body be able to respond positively to encourage us to seek more of something, when after all, the body is also capable of reacting with physical repulsion or sickness?

This doesn’t mean that arousal is always good or right. But maybe, even just sometimes, it can be a reflection that we are doing something right.

Furthermore, and here’s the point i am really heading towards: even if some or most of us do happen to be aroused at some point in conjunction with of our transition, it does not necessarily follow that transition is therefore invalid, or improper, or unhealthy. It does not mean we are lying when we say it is what we need.

I find particularly moving this essay by Margaret McGhee, who was a participant in a now-defunct online autogynephilia support group. I was going to quote from it, but i’d rather anyone interested just read the essay.

She arrived a conclusion not unlike my own, that gallae live our lives adrift at sea, tossed this way and that by competing ideologies and narratives that silence us and re-write our lives in their image. There is not a single paradigm for answering the “transsexual problem,” but there are instead numerous competing narratives. If we live our lives in resonance with one, we run afoul of another; there is no way to win. In the spaces between competing paradigms, our lives, our bodies, our minds, even our sexual favors, are bargaining chips.

An underlying implication of this conflict is that gallae are not allowed to be aroused. This is a running theme: it is a likely reaction to medicines and surgery; it is a prominent theme in many a galla’s sex life and is often found in galla-objectifying pornography; and then we see moralistic, pathologizing condemnation like this if it does occur. Sexual arousal is the prerogative of the ruling class.

I’ve written a bit in the last few months about affinity politics and how it differs from identity politics.  This morning i was thinking about the language we use and how it affects the way we think about identity, affinity, and “who” or “what” people are.

Take the term “LGBTIQQ:” Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Questioning, and Queer.  This term has grown like a snowball because of attempts by activists to grow a coalition from scratch.  It started out as “Gay and Lesbian,” which (anyone alive during the 1970’s can tell you) was not always an obvious alliance.  The other terms were added as the coalition grew, in recognition of affinity between various groups, and to prevent re-invention of the wheel with regards to addressing similar political needs.

But the term feels unwieldy now because the community is changing its approach from identity politics to coalition of affinity.  If we want to be more inclusive, we can’t just keep tacking letters on (how about a P for polyamorous and a K for kinky too?).  Yet if more people join the movement, they deserve to be recognized somehow.  (At the same time, a danger here is that the needs of some of us could be lost in the wash — see Marti’s posts on the Transadvocate main page for insight about this.)

The difference between affinity and identity could be compared to the difference between analog and digital.  “Analog” looks at the world and sees continuous spectra; “digital” breaks the world down into discrete, distinct units. “Digital” makes it possible to condense information, but a lot of information is lost in the process.

The human brain looks for shortcuts.  It prefers digital over analog because categories make it possible to make decisions and draw conclusions without having to juggle a lot of possibly irrelevant information.  But when we do this to a person, we write over a lot of who that person is, and draw a lot of conclusions, possibly incorrect, about what they are like or what they think based on just a small amount of knowledge about them.

Our brains learn to break people down in a very digital way: “man” vs. “woman,” “gay” vs. “bi” vs. “straight:” distinct categories which we speak of as attributes that a person “is.” This leaves no room for contrary information (”How can he be ‘gay’ if he’s dating a woman?”) and it leaves no room for change (”You’re dating a man? I thought you were a lesbian.”)

We meet someone and then file away in our brain that this person “is a gay man” or a “is a straight woman.”  And then whenever we think about that person we pull whatever thoughts go along with “gay man” or “straight woman” and, accurate or not, apply those thoughts to that person and even write them as expectations of that person. We also treat these people according to the rules and dictates of society, many of which depend on this categorization of people.

Earlier forms of the liberation movement have reacted to this treatment by questioning the stereotypes without questioning the identity.  Affinity coalition is the next obvious step: questioning the discreteness of identity. It’s helpful to be able to describe where we are in our lives right now without having to be saddled with an identity forever and ever; a lot of these things change. Indeed, liberation depends on the loosening of categories just as much as it depends on the loosening of categorical expectation.

A few people around me have taken to describing themselves using numbers along the Kinsey spectrum rather than say they are “gay,” “lesbian,” “bi,” “straight,” “pansexual,” or what have you.  And they might say, “At this point in my life i am a Kinsey 3, but when i just entered adulthood i was a pretty firm Kinsey 0.”  Being able to express this variance-over-life is important because it helps to reduce the chance that someone will assign us to one category for life (and then have to deal with dissonance when we change). I’ve also heard the word “spectrum” being used to refer loosely to categories of people: for example, “female spectrum” as a term loosely referring to anyone who feels they are anywhere on the female side of totally androgynous.

I think this is a step in the right direction, but i wonder if terms like “spectrum” aren’t inherently dualistic.  We often think of a spectrum as a range going from A to B, and so i wonder if it’s still too easy to fall into dualistic or digital thinking.

To this end i pondered a number of other possible terms, which do not necessarily imply linearity: cluster, community, constellation, galaxy, nebula, orbit, set, sphere, universe, web.   Another factor is, if i use the term outside this journal, someone would have to intuitively know what i mean; this rules out some of the terms above.

I think i like “galaxy.”  If i were to say “the MTF galaxy” versus “the MTF spectrum,” you’d know roughly what i meant.