Not Man Enough for FTM Australia

Or, specifically, not Ftm enough

As you may have figured from my interview with Art, I’m into spreading the word that surgery without T is possible; I was pretty shocked to discover I was the first patient in this situation accepted by surgeon Simon Ceber. I think broader definitions of gender, manliness, maleness and masculinity are imperative to social equality, but also for individual freedom and happiness – as I think Art and I depicted in our article.

In this vein, I wrote a detailed article explaining my experience of obtaining surgery without testosterone, based on this article I found really helpful on the FTM Australia website by William, NSW. I sent my article to FTM Australia and received this reply:

Thanks for sharing your article.

We’ve read it now and the general consensus is it really sits better within a genderqueer framework/website rather than the FTM Australia website. If you were interested in providing evidence that chest surgery without testosterone is possible, have you approached Melbourne GenderQueer to host your work? http://www.melbournegenderqueer.org/ GenderQueer Revolution might also be interested? http://www.genderqueerrevolution.org/

Also Gender Radicals, the email discussion group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GenderRadicals/ might also take it in their files section.

If you want the option of linking it, we can do that with something like “Click here to read account of one genderqueer individual who is not on testosterone and secured chest surgery through the Monash system.”

kind regards,

Craig Andrews
FTM Australia Coordinator

PO Box 488 GLEBE NSW 2037 | www.ftmaustralia.org

OzGuys – National Support and Discussion Email Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OzGuys/

Follow us on Twitter – http://twitter.com/ftmaustralia

Find us on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/ftmaustralia

Seriously? I’ve been dealing with so many cool people and reading so much about how feminists aren’t transphobic and transexuals don’t rival transgender people, I’m caught off guard by their narrow mindedness. As my dear friend Gauche Sinister put it:

that’s so fucked!!! i can’t believe an ftm website has a more rigid

and narrow definition of ftm than your horrible psychologist.

No shit.

They also totally re-gender me as “Genderqueer” (a label I have not used); suggesting that I am not FTM and thus drawing a distinct boundary about what FTM is – which I think is majorly uncool, unproductive and unhelpful. THANK GOD I WORK FOR DUDE.

Oh, and here’s my article:

• on wordpress
• complete printable Max Top Surgery Sans T.pdf

You can do it!

check out my interview with Art about acquiring surgery not testosterone on DUDE 2 EXTENDED:

Pronouns can be awkward

I like to think I don’t care which pronouns people use. But…I do. I guess I just like to be open about which pronouns people use because I don’t like stability, or being boxed in to something rigid. But the thing that disconcerts me is the reasons people use she/her/hers pronouns for me. Because if it’s just that they decide I am “female-bodied” – that’s not really cool. It’s true that I use and prefer he/him/his pronouns. And that my friends use them to describe me. But I do want to be cool with people using feminine pronouns. But I want to know what their reasons are for doing so. Leslie Feinberg is pretty awesome at being cool with people using different pronouns, so long as they’re in context:

Leslie Feinberg: For me, pronouns are always placed within context. I am female-bodied, I am a butch lesbian, a transgender lesbian – referring to me as “she/her” is appropriate, particularly in a non-trans setting in which referring to me as “he” would appear to resolve the social contradiction between my birth sex and gender expression and render my transgender expression invisible. I like the gender neutral pronoun “ze/hir” because it makes it impossible to hold on to gender/sex/sexuality assumptions about a person you’re about to meet or you’ve just met. And in an all trans setting, referring to me as “he/him” honors my gender expression in the same way that referring to my sister drag queens as “she/her” does.

I think for me right now, this is not the case: “referring to me as “he” would appear to resolve the social contradiction between my birth sex and gender expression and render my transgender expression invisible.” In fact, the opposite is true. But it does depend where I am. I grew up in a small town where strangers have pretty much always, and continue to, gender me as male and use masculine pronouns for me. I think this is because they don’t realise queer people, or specifically butch dykes, exist. That is, they’re not recognised. But in Melbourne, especially the kinds of places I hang out, I often don’t look male. So for me, Feinberg’s point would work when people use masculine pronouns for me – which I’m into.

I guess I feel my genderqueerness is unintelligible and that’s really tiring.

Judith Butler: To find that you are fundamentally unintelligible (indeed, that the laws of culture and of language find you to be an impossibility) is to find that you have not yet achieved access to the human, to find yourself speaking only and always as if you were human, but with the sense that you are not, to find that your language is hollow, that no recognition is forthcoming because the norms by which recognition takes place are not in your favor.

I lack the recognition (often but not always) to be intelligibly male.

Also  I’m often in places where it’s clear I’m not a teenager (universities, clubs), so I don’t get gendered as a teenage boy, which is the way I am most often read by non-trans strangers outside of these contexts. And as I’ve said before, I think one of the reasons people are so quick to gender me female and use feminine pronouns for me is because of the snaps from male-looking dykes offended at being called ‘he’ (which is fair enough, but also results in this kind of confusion.) So, seriously: ask what pronouns someone prefers. And just as seriously, don’t be offended by someone asking.

I went home for the holidays, and my parents, as well as many of my old friends, use feminine pronouns for me. I don’t want to ‘correct’ them. That seems wrong, because I don’t feel like I have some essential male being or something; that they’re wrong. But I do want them to know I prefer masculine pronouns, because I think they’d feel embarassed to know that was the case and I just didn’t tell them.

I guess I’d want to ask why people used feminine pronouns for me. And if their reasoning is: “You’re a girl”, “You look like a girl” or “Well I always have,” I don’t think that’s good enough. But I also recognise it’s up to me to tell them otherwise. But like, I’m tired.

Dean Spade: there is no innocence nor insignificance to the mistake of ‘she’ for ‘he’ when referring to a person who has chosen to take on a ‘wrong’ pronoun. even if it is done thoughtlessly, that thoughtlessness comes from and supports the two cardinal rules of gender: that all people must look like the gender (one out of a possible two) they are called by, and that gender is fixed and cannot be changed. each time this burden shifting occurs, the non-trans person affirms these gender rules, playing by them and letting me know that they will not do the work to see the world outside of these rules.

This is probably where I want to be:

Dean Spade: if comfort was my goal, i could probably have found a smoother path than the one i’m on, right? i haven’t chosen this word ‘he’ because it means something true to me, or it feels all homey and delicious. no pronoun feels personal to me. i’ve chosen it because the act of saying it, of looking at the body i’m in and the way that my gender has been identified since birth and then calling me ‘he,’ disrupts oppressive processes that fix everyone’s gender as ‘real,’ immutable, and determinative of your station in life. i’m not hoping that people will see that i’m different, paste a fake smile on their faces and force themselves to say some word about me with no thought process. i’m hoping that they will feel implicated, that it will make them think about the realness of everyone’s gender, that it will make them feel more like they can do whatever they want with their gender, or at least cause a pause where one normally would not exist. quite likely, this will be uncomfortable for all of us, but i believe that becoming uncomfortable with the oppressive system of rigid gender assignment is a great step toward undoing it.

also, check out Dean Spade’s Pronoun etiquette I’ve re-posted here.

Pronoun Etiquette

By Dean Spade
People often wonder how to be polite when it comes to problems of misidentifying another person’s pronoun. Here are some general tips:

1. If you make a mistake, correct yourself. Going on as if it did not happen is actually less respectful than making the correction. This also saves the person who was misidentified from having to correct an incorrect pronoun assumption that has now been planted in the minds of any other participants in the conversation who heard the mistake.
2. If someone else makes a mistake, correct them. It is polite to provide a correction, whether or not the person whose pronoun is misused is present, in order to avoid future mistakes and in order to correct the mistaken assumption that might now have been planted in the minds of any other participants in the conversation who heard the mistake.
3. If you aren’t sure of a person’s pronoun, ask. One way to do this is by sharing your own. “I use masculine pronouns. I want to make sure to address you correctly, how do you like to be addressed?” This may seem like a strange thing to do but a person who often experiences being addressed incorrectly may see it as a sign of respect that you are interested in getting it right.
4. When facilitating a group discussion, ask people to identify their pronouns when they go around and do introductions. This will allow everyone in the room the chance to self-identify and to get each others’ pronouns right the first time. It will also reduce the burden on anyone whose pronoun is often misidentified and may help them access the discussion more easily because they do not have to fear an embarrassing mistake.

From his guide to Making_Classrooms_Welcoming_for_Trans.pdf

Worst Film Ever.

Or, TAKEN: 93 minutes of my life.

As we get ever closer to the release of Twilight saga movie number 4, and as more films are remade barely after their initial release (‘Let The Right One In’ (2008), ‘Let Me In’ (2010)) to unsurprisingly disappointed receptions, there is clearly a lot of competition out there for the worst film ever.

When I was a kid I remember seeing ‘Bean’ (1997) and it was the first time I had actually wanted to walk out. But as my BFF reminded me last night after seeing ‘Contagion’ (2011) “it’s better to be slightly bored than traumatized” – so while ‘Contagion’ was completely uninteresting, there was nothing highly offensive or upsetting about it. The same cannot be said for ‘Taken’ (2008). Three years ago I wrote the following review and I am yet to see it beaten to the title:

It doesn’t happen often that I find nothing at all redeeming about a movie. But last night my sister, brother-in-law and I all agreed that ‘Taken’ was the worst film we had ever seen. And we have really different tastes in movies.[1]

The only film I have ever actually walked out of was ‘Don’t Move’ (‘Non ti muovere’, 2004) – a love/rape story that I simply couldn’t bare at the time. I walked out after 30mins, post the first (of many) totally sexualised rape scene. When I finally watched the entire film in 2006, I did appreciate it. It is a really wonderful film, but the complexity involved in its greatness was beyond me at the time. And it is utterly painful to watch.

The last film I nearly walked out of was ‘The Dead Girl’ (2006), which I think may be the best competition for ‘Taken’.

The reason I went to see ‘The Dead Girl’ was because I had heard an interview with the (female) director where she explained that the film gave a voice to someone otherwise just seen as ‘the dead girl’, which actually is total bullshit. The film does exactly not that. The ‘dead girl’ only appears at the end. And the film plays into super boring lesbian/drug addict/prostitute/’she was asking for it’ narratives without challenging them.

Here are my criteria for judging a film:

1-does it reinforce stereotypes/cliched narratives?
2-does it depict women as victims/helpless/mindless consumers?
3-does it reinforce racist, sexist, homophobic assumptions/stereotypes?
4-does it contain rape (as threat, allusion, or graphic image)?
5-does it play well as a film (that is, have good cinematography), or does it rely more on just a story?
6-does it contain some pathetic love story, where things work out in the end?
7-does someone hot make up for it?
8- does it glorify something repulsive like patriarchy/war?
9-is it critical of oppressive social structures?
10-is the main message of the film super lame unoriginal?

SO. This is why ‘Taken’ is the worst film ever:

Brief synopsis:
Ex-Army Liam Neeson retires to live closer to his estranged daughter. She wants to go to Paris with her friend and needs him to sign a form because she is 17. He says she can go only if she calls him twice a day. She doesn’t call. He calls her and while they are on the phone guys break into their apartment and kidnap the friend and then her. Neeson tracks down every person involved and kills them all, rescuing the daughter.

‘Taken’ rates as follows:

• (1) does it reinforce stereotypes/cliched narratives?

Oh my god Yes. It is a super boring ‘action’ movie. Badly written (so many bad one liners by Liam Neeson in the style of ‘this time it’s personal’). Terribly weak narrative (Neeson’s daughter goes to Paris on a trip and he is worried about her going alone and then lo and behold she is kidnapped on her first day).

• (2) does it depict women as victims/helpless/mindless consumers?

Absolutely. We never see the daughter’s story (for ‘narrative effect’, we are supposed to identify with Neeson ‘not knowing where she is’), thus she is depicted as completely useless/helpless to do anything herself. The (female) friend is found dead and she is just never brought up again.

There is also this thing about her being a virgin, which is so terrible: like she’s a virgin so instead of getting used in a brothel she gets sold off as a virgin, and then it is implied that she is still a virgin when he saves her (and therefore still ‘pure’), which I find super unlikely.

• (3) does it reinforce racist, sexist, homophobic assumptions/stereotypes?

Classic America takes on evil ‘Others’. The guys who kidnap, traffick and pimp the girls are Albanian, one is black. The story takes place in France and the French government is implicated as supporting the ‘trade’. When the girls are auctioned off, the buyers are of Asian appearance, or with dark skin. The final super bad guy (who purchasers the daughter) is West Asian Muslim.

• (4) does it contain rape (as threat, allusion, or graphic image)?

Yes. The girls kidnapped are given heroin and put to work in warehouse brothels. The threat that the daughter will be raped is the basis of the suspense of the film.

•  5) does it play well as a film (employ cinematography), or does it rely more on just a story?

No. but it is an action movie, so that’s to be expected.

• (6) does it contain some pathetic love story, where things work out in the end?

The main love story is the father/daughter, so that’s pretty cool (although obviously lame conservative and unoriginal in other ways), there is no main het love theme. But the father/daughter love story, esp. ending is pretty pretty bad:
When the story begins, Neeson is estranged from his family because of his long absences due to active army service, and he is trying to build a relationship with his daughter. He works for one night on security at a concert and saves the singer’s life. In return she says he can bring his daughter to meet/learn from her (the daughter wants to be a singer). Guess how it ends.

• (7) does someone hot make up for it? 

Only if you’re into Liam Neeson, but the acting is so so bad in anyone. Even Neeson is terrible.

• (8) does it glorify something repulsive like patriarchy/war/…

Yes. Patriarchy: father saves all. The film also has super dubious morals: it condones the use of torture (pretty standard these days but still), Neeson also kills so many people without caring, often unnecessarily, including women at a brothel, and he shoots a guy he’s after’s wife – all in order to save the daughter. He only ‘rescues’ one other girl from a brothel because she has his daughter’s jacket, but he doesn’t seem to give a shit about ‘anyone else’s daughter’.

Neeson is also a trained soldier. He is able to save the daughter because of the skills he gained in the army (the army is really great like that).

• (9) is it critical of oppressive social structures?

It is critical of America’s ‘bad guys’: Eastern Europe, France, Muslims. They appear to suck while white, manly America is there to save the day (world).

• (10) is the main message of the film super lame unoriginal?
  

Yes. Women who travel alone will be kidnapped, sold into prostitution and become drug addicts. their only possible escape is if their father (some man) rescues them.

Even Holly Valance doesn’t make up for it.

Other notes:
It’s also SO unbelievable. And I understand the classic ‘bad guys can’t shoot straight but good guys always do’ scenario, but this is RIDICULOUS. Neeson must be like 60 (and the character is supposed to retired, ie out of practice or at least fitness), he repeatedly beats off 2, 3, 5, 7 (younger) guys without getting injured at all, mostly he is unarmed while they are armed. At one stage a guy shoots a machine gun at him at close range and still completely misses. At another he is handcuffed to a drain pipe against 5 guys with weapons. He is also pursued by the French government and then for no reason they give up, and he is able to leave the country.

Which movie do you think deserves the title WORST FILM EVER?

---

[1] Here are some of our favourite films:

Me: Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Adaptation’ (2002), ‘I Heart Huckabees’ (2004), Penelope Cruz in Pedro Almodovar’s ‘Volver’ (2006)

My sister: ‘The Usual Suspects’ (1995), Al Pacino in Oliver Stone’s ‘Scarface’ (1983), Neil Gaiman’s ‘Stardust’ (2007)

My brother in law: Jim Carrey in ‘Ace Ventura’ (1994), Chuck Palaniuk’s ‘Fight Club’ (1999), Oliver Stone’s ‘Platoon’ (1986)

Born This Way?

The recent “Born This Way” episode of Glee, featuring Lady Gaga’s latest single of the same name, draws attention to the posited-as-postmodern fixation on so-called ‘body modifications’. The episode revolves around self-acceptance and, for the most part, asserts acceptance in opposition to body alterations via plastic surgery. That is, the fairly conservative view that plastic surgery and any desires for such are bad. In this way, Glee positions problems of self-esteem as individual and suggests they are to be conquered via changes to thinking, while plastic surgery is presented as self-hating and conformist.

Earlier in the series, Santana is vilified for having a boob job, and throughout this episode the gang rally to dissuade Rachel from having a nose job. There is no question that Rachel’s flirtation with plastic surgery is “a terrible idea” within the diagesis of the show. But while the gang all profess how much they love themselves, it is Santana — ‘the brutally honest bitch’ — who calls them out for lying to themselves (“As if there aren’t things you’d all change about yourselves”). Self-hatred is conveyed as highly unattractive and unfashionable in this hipster context (as opposed to self-hatred celebratory emo-culture).

The showchoir purport various reasons (other than self-hate) for their body modifications, such as the improvement of talent (Rachel) or trying to be in fashion (Tina), both of which are presented as highly unconvincing; mere excuses for a deeper-rooted and shameful self-loathing.

Rachel: “Look, I’m happy with the way that I look and I’ve embraced my nose, but say I wanted to have a slightly more demure nose, like Quinn’s for example. I would never change my appearance for vanity but the doctor said that it could possibly improve my talent…”

Against conformity

Glee sets up a dichotomy where self-acceptance is ‘good’  and conformity is ‘bad’ (in this case via plastic surgery). This has been the main aim of the show from its inception; the geeks and misfits of the Glee club are constantly juxtaposed to the bitchy cheerleaders and bullying footballers. This distinction is hardly complicated by a number of the popular kids joining the Glee club. There is also a reiteration of the idea that the misfits are ‘authentic’ and the popular kids ‘fake’ — referenced in “Born This Way” through Lauren Zizes comment to Quinn that she is “two different people”, as well as the character of closet-gay footballer Dave Karofsky. It is not coincidence that the two characters who are revealed to have had plastic surgery (Santana and Quinn) are cheerleaders: the archetypical high school example of popularity due to conformity.

With the exception of this one-liner,

Mercedes: “[T]he thing that makes you different is the thing people use to crush your spirit.”

the show really avoids the complications of trying to be different in an unaccepting social sphere; that there are costs to being different.

As Jack Halberstam reminds us: “the experience of transgression itself is often filled with fear, danger, and shame, rather than heroic self-satisfaction.” (Female Masculinity, 1998: 59)

Or, as Quinn puts it: “I pretty much have a warped sense of the world. Being a hot seventeen year old you can get away with or do anything you want, so I just kind of assume that people are always nice and accommodating.”

By revealing Quinn’s “size 2 teenage dream [body]” to be one obtained via various modificatory practices (rhinoplasty, extreme weight loss, acne medication, contacts, hair dye, as well as changing her name and moving schools), the show could be read as embracing both self-acceptance without plastic surgery and self-love via changing what you don’t like “when you look in the mirror”. When confronted with her ‘Lucy Caboosey’ past, Zizes suggests “So, you hate yourself?” to which Quinn retorts:

“No. I love myself, and that’s why I did all those things. I’ve been that girl and I’m never going back. I was a miserable little girl and now I’m going to be prom queen.”

Here, Quinn and Zizes offer a different reading of two perhaps similar looking people with starkly contrasted ways of living it. Zizes just gets off on her subversiveness (which is tied into her ‘badness’); that is, she embraces the ways she is different from dominant cultural expectations of femininity. Zizes clearly loves herself — which is highlighted when she is praised for it by the post-surgery, self-love professing Quinn. But, as Deb Jannerson remarks: “[it is troubling] that the writers didn’t come up with something other than ‘she used to be heavier and bigger-nosed.’ Don’t quintessential popular girls have issues with their appearances sometimes?”

This juxtaposition is perhaps more interestingly explored through the male characters Finn and Sam, each of which are often depicted as lacking in manliness because of their body mass; Finn not muscular enough and Sam obsessed with his musculature. These two can also be seen as representing ‘acceptance’ or ‘change’ in relation to body modification; Finn as self-conscious-if-not-hating of his flabbiness and Sam as obsessed with the constant militant eating and exercising regimes necessary for maintaining his stature. Hence, both ‘acceptance’ or refusal and change can be seen as ongoing systems of self-‘modification’. As opposed to Quinn’s which is seen as a classic before and after; that is, no ongoing work seems to be required.

“it is not enough to unquestioningly assume that conformity is bad  and transgression is good or to presume that such categories are stable, discrete, identifiable, and unambiguous.” (Nikki Sullivan, “Transmorgrifications”, 561)

The overwhelming ‘lesson’ of the episode remains that self-acceptance is — if not necessary at least — preferable to other types of self-modification: Tina concludes that as there are no Asian sex symbols, she should become one. This idea is reiterated in the ‘Barbaravention,’ where Kurt reminds Rachel that Barbara Streisand “refused to believe that beauty could only be defined by the blonde chiselled faces of Hitchcock’s beauties, so she redefined what beauty was and became the biggest female star in the world.” This possibility of reform is highly optimistic, but is in keeping with the show’s feel-good, idealistic raison d’être.

Conclusion

Glee itself purports to be transgressive and celebratory of diversity, but it presents a fairly palatable — conformist — type of diversity (see, for example, nyx mathews’ article on Glee and disability): all of Glee‘s self-congratulatory diversity is sugar-coated (with the possible exception of Lauren Zizes). Furthermore, the purpose of presenting difference as a result of being “Born This Way” disavows other forms of cultural representation and body-modification, rendering desires for such as less, if at all, legitimate.

Quinn’s self-acceptance is side-stepped in the narrative. Or rather, it is only considered in her relation to others: after the publicity of her alter-ego Lucy Caboosey, she’s still popular, adored by the masses (represented by the three identically-dressed fat girls) and her boyfriend, Finn. How she feels about herself after this ‘outing’ is not depicted. And neither is the reality of the suffering endured by rebelling against cultural norms, as Professor Xavier remarks in X-Men: The Last Stand: “Is it cowardice to save oneself from persecution?”

Is Rachel still pandering to social pressure, just that of her friends rather than the greater school community? And where does that leave the characters who have undergone plastic surgery? While it is not highlighted within the text, I think both Quinn and Santana characterise a get-what-you-want attitude that challenges the timidity of refusing change. Quinn’s self-acceptance revolves around not hiding the fact that she changed a lot in order to get where she is, regardless of the stigma attached to cosmetic surgery. And I’m into that.

If only Santana and Quinn had (been allowed to) own it and sung a girl power encore, like Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” or Madonna’s “Express Yourself”.

Glee cast perform “Born This Way”:

Lady Gaga’s original “Born This Way”:

Quinn and Rachel sing a mash-up of TLC’s “Unpretty” / West Side Story’s “I Feel Pretty”:

Transitioning

Resources I recommend on ftm transitioning:

General

• True Selves – Understanding Transsexualiam, M. Brown & C.A. Rounsley.

Memoirs

• The Testosterone Files, Max Wolf Valerio.
• Dear Sir or Madam, Mark Rees.
• Becoming A Visible Man, Jamison Green.

Sex

• Back Pocket Guide for Transmen and the Men Who Dig Them

Essays

• The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You, S. Bear Bergman.

In conversation

I hooked up with aesthetic theorist and artist-designer Nyx Mathews to talk about about body modifications, sexual politics and subversion

Max: Having been brought up by feminist ‘body love’ assertions (like StopHatingYourBody, LoveYourBody) I find the prospect and reality of body modifications fairly troubling. I think because we are taught that ‘dissatisfaction’ is fixed by changing what you want, rather than what you are, you know, things like:  

• SheliaJeffreys: Feminists like myself envisage a time beyond gender when there is no correct way to behave according to body shape.

Nyx: I reckon that’s the wrong way around. What you ‘are’ is just what you’re born with – it’s a bit like…being told you should stick with the family you were born into, or the class – like the medieval idea that being, say, a peasant is something inherent, as though it’s an intrinsic part of the way your head works – I think that’s quite clearly rubbish. On the other hand, what you want can (or has the potential, however often it is under-utilised, to) be utterly deliberate. I absolutely think that wants should be consideredoverandover, and analysed, and that one shouldn’t take them for granted because, of course, they’re (initially at least) products of circumstance. And by no means is something valid just because you desire it. But I actually think that a considered, carefully analysed want is more valid than just what you came out of the lucky dip with.

I get the premise, of course – fix your ideas not your body – but I think it’s predicated on the notion that you can never think, and thus form desires beyond, those which have been thrust upon you. I think that’s a lousy way to approach things, and very limiting. It’s that fine line between idealism and realism, but you don’t really make things better by just being realistic, so…I’m decidedly against making that your baseline.

Max: I think the crux of the problem is we consider bodies as something other than “products of circumstance.” Various feminist emphases on bodily acceptance and pride stems from a defiance of the ways that femaleness and femininity have been (and continue to be) devalued. This is clear in fat pride manifestos such as:

• NataliePerkins: I don’t know if you’ve heard of body acceptance, or fat acceptance, but I’m an active participant within the movement [...] open your mind to an existence where you are free to love your body, instead of feeling ashamed of it.

 I guess the conflict is weighing up what’s at stake (probably always) between conforming to social ideas and hegemonic pressures (of sex, gender, weight) and ‘what you want;’ the hope is one thinks about whether what they want is just a result of social pressure…but is it ok to be against that (if it is)? For instance

• Drakyn: It’s not like we jump into medical transition without thinking. [...] I’ve seen a few trans* guys who’ve had to come to terms with their beliefs about what constitutes healthy tissue and unneeded medical procedures and their need for surgery.

  Some [...] said that they had had a dialogue with their body; telling their chest or uterus how while there may not be anything wrong with them, they simply didn’t belong on their body, how much they needed this surgery, etc.

  I don’t think there is anything wrong with the trans*folks that had/have these feelings; we live in an ableist and transphobic world after all. But I do think we should examine these feelings and decide what are our ethical beliefs and what is just internalized shit.

I guess intentionality is important. But this ismyargumentagainstbeingskinny for reasons other than dieting: it still results in the same thing – being skinny and ‘hot,’ and yet claiming that it’s subversive (which I don’t buy, it’s just another kind of skinniness; barely subversive, but that’s not ok with me).

Nyx: I don’t think subversiveness in itself, even if it is achieved, is inherently valuable. In order to be a valuable form of alternative culture/activism I think it needs not only to be subversive (going against the norm) but cause no harm, and ideally even to have some benefit (beyond a possible/probable immediate personal gain). The point is: I think in this case, as in most others, it’s more a question of the impact of a subversive action. And I do think that altering one’s physical sex characteristics is subversive. It definitely goes against the grain, it upends normative notions of permanence and inherent hierarchy based on sex. I think altering bodies in that way does this regardless of the intentions of the person undergoing the process. What is more blurry is whether the effect of such subversiveness is positive.

Max: Impact, yes totally. That’s the thing that trans folk say, and have to fight for, and I think is the basis of trans/femme alliances; that ‘just because I look normal/straight/normative, doesn’t mean I am.’ But what is the impact of not looking queer?

Nyx: This is something I think about a lot, and I still don’t have an ‘answer’. I do have more questions, though. It starts with the fact that ‘looking queer’ is a fashion in itself. Fashions are, by definition, about emulating other people: fitting in, being a recognisable part of a crowd. I’m not sure that’s ever particularly subversive past a certain point. Sure, you don’t look like the status quo; but there are lots of minority fashions that work that way, and some of them come with very similar risks to looking overtly queer. Goths get beaten up, too. For different reasons, and maybe in different circumstances, but there are similarities in terms of violence. Looking like the status quo is also falsely safe, particularly for women, but increasingly for men also – look at all the straight white guys getting bashed or knifed in clubs. This is not to say that looking queer doesn’t come with special risks or is not valuable; it declares your allegiance, and that’s definitely something important. I’m just not sure that ‘looking queer’ is particularly interesting any more.

That queer look was once revolutionary, but not only has it become a cultural uniform – it’s now being picked up by the mainstream, which is a surefire way to tell an aesthetic has, at the very least, lost a bit of its subversive sparkle. I think like all things ‘looking queer’ should be treated as a springboard for the next step. I think we should think about new aesthetics that are more powerful. I reckon it’s more interesting to think about broadening the spectrum in any given ‘now’ than to speak about what’s ‘queer looking’ or ‘straight looking’ or conforms to any other visual markers. I want to think about, say, how wearing more and brighter eye makeup than is ‘in’ or queer questions ideals of beauty and femininity and heteronormativity and lgbtq-normativity. One of my favourite quotes fromFemmesofPower is about how if wearing makeup makes you feminine, shouldn’t more makeup make you more feminine? How does that add up with ‘don’t wear lip-liner, you’ll look like a drag-queen’?

Altering one’s body whilst simultaneously living in a way that interrogates normative ideas and ideals of physicality, gender…I’m pretty sure that’s positive. And I don’t think that the scope for a lived interrogation of normativity – particularly gender normativity – should be limited to people who maintain the sex organs they were born with; ergo physical alterations – as a politics – I think are less…valuable than what you do. And that is much more vital to how such an alteration should be viewed.

Max: Absolutely. I definitely think that what one does is more important than how one looks. But there’s action in that, that move to alter one’s body…and how we look does matter – we make ourselves look certain ways to be received in certain ways.Someofwhichwe’repunishedfor. I think the implication of my original question is that there is an expectation of [a certain amount of] ‘body hatred’ involved in obtaining ‘sex change’ surgeries, which I don’t know how to reconcile with feminist ‘body love’ politics. Embroiled in all that is the idea that a certain amount of suffering (a huge, unbearable amount in fact) must substantiate trans lives in order for surgery to be admissible. Binding, for example, can be tremendously physically painful. And yet one must construct a story about the pain of ‘the wrong body’ in order to obtain surgery. You can’t just say, ‘well, breasts never go with my outfit, so I don’t want them.’

I hate that suicidal trans discourse, like one has to be suicidal before it’s ok to get surgery? (This is often cited in court hearings related to trans surgeries for minors, such as “The court was told that Brodie had threatened self-harm at the prospect of her [sic] periods starting” -TheAge, or “There were real fears that Alex may be driven to self-harm in the event that he was unable to fully express his gender identity” -DeakinLawReview). I sayNo to that.

Nyx: Part of what needs to be discussed, I think, is changing the way people speak about bodies as something you either love or hate inherently. Obviously this comes with some baggage (like women being encouraged to say ‘oh, I hate my thighs,’ ‘my most/least favourite body part is…’, etc.) but I don’t think desiring to alter your body is synonymous with hating it. What about athletes or iron-…people? They’re types of body obsession which cause very overt physical alterations, but are acceptable because exercise, even ‘to excess,’ is viewed (right now) as ‘good.’ Removal of your breasts, however, is (similarly, at present) viewed as ‘bad.’ But in the 20s women wore corsets that were actually what we’d call binders, similarly to get rid of their breasts, but this time with the approval of fashion/society. It’s fairly obvious, I suppose, but fashion (ie, current physical ideals) also play a big part in the way we see things as body ‘love’ or ‘hate.’ Is it better to wear a corset than get liposuction? Why, because you ‘don’t change your body irreparably?’ But…you do. Corsetry cracks ribs, re-aligns organs, decreases blood flow and oxygen. When you bind your chest, it hurts, makes moving difficult (which, for somebody who is gender ambiguous could certainly be dangerous all in itself), and I’m pretty sure there are long-term implications for squashing and remoulding soft tissue for prolonged periods of time. Is it then worse to undergo surgery entirely?

Or is the question actually whether visually or physically doing away with one’s breasts in any way is a form of ‘anti-feminist’ ‘body hatred’?

Max: I wish I knew.

 

Originally published in The Scavenger: Femme/trans aesthetics and sexual politics: A conversation

“That’s called coercion”

On Vampirism Part 2, On Daddy Power Part 3

see Polyamory & Power Part 1 & Part 2

In the opening scene of the third Twilight film (Eclipse), vampire Edward is trying to convince human Bella to marry him:

“Marry me,” he says.

“Change me,” she replies.

“Hmm, I’ll change you…if you marry me. It’s called a…compromise.”

“That’s called coercion,” she astutely responds. Kissing him, they smile at each other.

Coercion here appears to be set up at odds with “love.” That is, because these two people love each other, even the possibility of coercion makes no sense: it’s a lark. But a closer reading of the text reveals that really love (or the façade of such) figures as precisely the basis on which sexual coercion takes place, and takes place repeatedly with almost all of characters and most of their relationships.

Even the title “Eclipse” can be seen as a veiled reference to coercion; meaning figuratively ‘loss of power or significance’ or, as a verb, ‘to deprive.’ This idea of deprivation makes little sense to the plot: the conflict surrounding Bella’s transformation into a vampire (being deprived of her human life) is deferred to the following installment (Breaking Dawn), and the deprivation that makes up Edward and Bella’s sex life is a constant theme in the entire series.

Rather, the main plot thrust of Eclipse is a territorial one: Victoria vs the Forks community/ Bella, the werevolves vs the vampires and, of course, Edward vs werewolf Jacob. The focus is very much on possessiveness and control, aspects of relationships which are at best unseemly, and at worst abusive.

In this way, the idea of ‘deprivation’ can be read as a comment on power and the interplay of the ways in which persuasion moves to coercion, and the differences between pressure, coercion, harassment and abuse.

Throughout Eclipse, all three of the main characters: Edward, Bella and Jacob exert force – whether physical or emotional – over each other in ways which are coercive. That is,

• Coercion: the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation, trickery, or some other form of pressure or force. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way.

Jacob to Bella: The most obvious example of Jacob’s use of coercion takes place after he discovers Bella’s engagement to Edward: he threatens her with his own life (that he will endanger himself unless she “gives him a reason to stay”) and none of her pleas that she loves him and doesn’t want to lose him suffice. He wants her physically, and clearly cares more about getting what he wants then the fact that it’s not what she wants.

This is exacerbated by the narrative cornerstone that Bella loves both Edward and Jacob (but Edward more), and that Jacob knows she loves him, while she ‘refuses to admit it.’ This works to reaffirm the adage that women don’t know what they want (which in itself suggests that when women say no they mean yes).

Sexual ‘misconduct’ is hinted at when he kisses her after she has told him explicitly to “stop.” This occurrence problematically attempts to differentiate “actual sexual assault” (visible and unacceptable) from “sexual coercion” (invisible and acceptable); while their first kiss is “wrong,” their second kiss is somehow less so.

Edward to Bella: As the opening of this article – and the film – suggests, Edward’s proposal to Bella is, at least in part, coercive. Throughout the film, and even after she agrees to marry him, it is implied that he will still refuse to turn her into a vampire.

Furthermore, Edward’s stalking is a fairly classic way of exerting control over another, and one which much has been said about.

That this way of behaving is diagetically justified further represents control and coercion as acceptable. His stalking results in his “saving her” twice (Twilight) from situations in which we are lead to believe she would not have been able to protect herself (from a car crash and a group of young men).

Bella to Edward: Bella’s initial pitch to Edward as to why they should have sex seems an argument in persuasion rather than coercion: she reminds him that after she becomes a vampire she’ll want blood more than him. Perhaps because we are so used to seeing teenage boys pressuring teenage girls into sex, it seems as though the reverse is impossible. But Edward makes it clear that he doesn’t want to have sex with Bella, and that doesn’t stop her from trying to coerce him into it.

Various minor characters, too, work to focus the narrative on possibilities of sexual coercion: Jasper’s origin story reveals that he was turned into a vampire after being deceptively sexually enticed; Rosalie’s flashback depicts the exertion of social pressure by her fiancé, which quickly turns to rape and murder; and Riley is clearly sexually coerced by Victoria into creating and organizing her army through promises of her love.

As I said in my last post, the way in which vampire violence is justified comments on how we think about power (and its abuse). The depiction of coercion (a type of violence though it fails to be portrayed as such) in Eclipse is troubling because it is well and truly tolerated, justified and, rather straightforwardly, accepted.

Suffice to say, sexual coercion should really not be a part of the way we relate and communicate with each other, and especially not with people we love.

Extended version available at The Scavenger/Sexual-coercion-abounds-in-Twilight

The Power of Politeness

Being gender ambiguous means that I don’t get the opportunity to interact with people the way most people do. Nothing is a given. In every (however minimal) social interaction – from ordering in a restaurant to asking for directions – I’m clocked as abnormal. Androgynous, queer, trans, a gender pirate: people decide whether that’s ok or not, and treat me accordingly: well or ill. It’s a subtle kind of mistreatment, but a constant one. With each polite or kind interaction (of which there are many), I’m relieved. But the relief never lasts.

Feminist sexual politics demands a certain nonchalance in regards to “female masculinity“. Hence, I can’t mind if people think I’m a boy or a girl so much (though I clearly have a preference). Mostly I’m seen as genderqueer “first.” And it is this gender ambiguity that precipitates the unkindness of strangers. This is a form of social sanctioning that acts to preserve the boundaries of gender; individuals are punished or rewarded according to our adhesion to social expectations (especially of gender). We’re taught early and persistently that transgressing these stipulations is punishable by humiliation, violence (including sexual violence) and death.

I don’t think it’s ok that women and people with female bodies are forced to look a certain way in order to get by; that it’s not ok to look queer. I also don’t think it’s ok that maleness and (for the most part) masculinity are reserved for people with certain body types and/or assigned “male” at birth. Men should be able to be as femme as me; I should be able to be read as male. But feminist movement has shifted gendered expectations (rightly) so that women, too, should be able to look like me (and they do). So, really, what’s a boi (like me) to do?

All those dirty looks, short replies and general rudeness hints at the possibility of more severe mistreatment, suggesting that such mistreatment is justified; that the violation of gender deserves punishment. In order to resist these stringent concepts of binary gender (and a gender hierarchy), all you need to do is stop playing a part in policing it; be a little kind, considerate, polite.

Historically, manners evolved as a way to make social interactions less awkward. Everyone knew what to do: shake a man’s hand, kiss a lady on the cheek. Things are certainly different now, and there have been important critiques of the cultural and gendered privileges and problems that come with this type of  ”appropriate-behaviour” manners. But politeness in a more general sense remains a valuable, and too often overlooked, way of communicating.

Politeness can also act to disseminate power. Rather than one party taking control of a situation (with rudeness) to put down someone else, politeness given and politeness returned can level a playing field of power. This doesn’t mean people should get away with behaving badly, not at all. There can (and must) remain space to call people out. But being critical doesn’t need to be rude, and being rude is a pretty poor way to be critical.

Kindness and politeness can pad over more than just social awkwardness and anxiety. As I’ve been arguing, greeting gender ambiguous people with politeness (and respect) actively resists the social regulation of gender (stability and “coherence”); allowing a space for gender (and social) transformation.