(click image below to view zine)

I wrote some stuff here, but mostly Meg has some great insights, thoughts, questions. When we each stop procrastinating from our PhDs, actually hand in the work we have due, and take a break, I hope we write more about this together. I think it would be really super if DUDE had an issue on sexual violence at some point in the future. There’s so much to say, to ask, to interrogate…

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.

You can do it!

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.

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

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]

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”:

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.

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