Please bear with me

There will be posts at some point but my life is… interesting right now.

 

Lateisha Green

Remember the Angie Zapata murder trial? All that coverage and attention?

What about the Lateisha Green murder trial? It was supposed to start on the 11th but it’s gotten all of… zero coverage. Some people are guessing (and I feel that they are probably right) that it likely has to do with the fact that she was black.

http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-if-there-was-trans-trial-and.html

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/06/12/trial-for-the-murder-of-lateisha-green-receives-total-media-blackout/

Apparently the date has been moved to July 13. There’s a Facebook group for her: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=91245428796. I think we need to see to it that our communities do not forget and we need to ensure that the lives of people of color are valued.

 

We can’t now, but we will.

How many times must a man look up

Before he can see the sky?

And how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

And how many deaths will it take till he knows

That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,

The answer is blowin in the wind.

We can’t now, but we will.

I will always strive to be at the front of the line, because in times like these all I can think of are Thomas Paine’s words – Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

 

One foot forward

…and there’s a sickening crunch as a brick pulverizes my skull.  I’ve long since fallen silent; I don’t make any noise.  As I lie the street, I am kicked a few more times until my attacker – or my attackers, I’m not even sure anymore – decides to run.  I wonder if I’m ever going to see any of my loved ones again.  Still, I don’t move.  I don’t think I can.  I listen to the rasping sound of my own breath forcing its way through a crushed throat and then I die.

The newspaper uses the wrong gender when reporting my murder, because I am a trans woman.  Because I am a trans woman, a jury declares that my murder was merely a crime of passion.  The transgender community pounces upon my death and the murder trial and my name (names?) are tossed around for a while by activists and their enemies until they either forget about me or yet another one our sisters is murdered.

This is my fear, my, to take a phrase from Susan Faludi, terror dream.

I’ve had this terror dream every day for a month now, and not only at night.  If I allow myself to daydream, or if I even dare to allow my thoughts to wander, I experience my own death.  I wish I could say that I was used to them, or that they felt any less real, or that I had any idea how to stop them.

I do know one thing.  Besides being my fears made manifest my terror dreams are something far more dangerous.  They’re my fantasies.  I yearn for the day that I am brutally murdered.  More than anything else, I want it – life, or perhaps more realistically, the pain which seems so inextricably linked to life – to end.  I’m not suicidal.  I know this because I have been suicidal to the point of attempting it once, and what I feel now is not what I felt then.  No – I am not suicidal.  I want my life to end because I am tired, because I am angry, because I am miserable and I feel like I no longer have the will to keep enduring.  But I am a rebel and instead I opt to go

One foot forward, one foot forward, one foot forward.  I’m feeling my way through a pitch black rail tunnel and my feet are blistered and bloody but I keep on stepping.

As trans people, we battle each day for our strength, for our purpose, for our resolve. We are neither given nor taught the tools of our power. We are taught a power that will never be ours.  We know this and yet we continue to reach for it because we don’t know anything else.  Or at least we think that we don’t know anything else.  But we do.  Each and every one of us knows strength.  I think of how many hours of my life have been dedicated to simply being able to say four words.  I am a woman.

That is my strength.  That, in spite of everything, I can tell the truth about myself.  Do you feel the power behind those words?  I feel the power.  I am a woman!  It feels good.  Like I can take on the entire world.  Triumphantly I move

One foot forward, one foot forward, one foot forward.  The fatigue threatens to overwhelm me.  I want to lie down on the tracks but I keep on stepping.

Sometimes I see myself as a victim.  A victim of a cosmic joke, an accident.  A victim of patriarchy, of bifurcated gender ideologies.  A victim of the medical establishment, a victim of society.  But there’s no power in that.  I have no use for victimhood.  So I am not a victim.  I am a survivor.  I am a survivor because my pain and suffering are not over, nor will they ever be over, and yet I continue to stand up proud and tall.  I stand up proud and tall of who I am, of what I am, IN ITS ENTIRITY.  I am a woman!  And I am strong!  My strength is not the strength of the cis man.  My strength is not the strength of the cis woman.  But that doesn’t matter, because my strength is powerful.  And like all strength borne through hardship, it is beautiful.  So I put

One foot forward, one foot forward, one foot forward.  I have a migraine and I want nothing more than to collapse against the wall but that is not a choice and so I keep stepping.

I am heart-broken.  People sometimes get the wrong idea, that I am a misanthrope, that I hate men, or that I hate cis people, or even that I hate people in general.   That’s not true.  I love humanity – truly, deeply, and unapologetically.   But loving someone or something means that you have to care about it, and there is so much hurt in the world, so much hurt experienced by fellow human beings and I want to take it all away but I cannot because I am just one poor young trans woman without a real career, buried under student loans for an education I couldn’t afford to finish, just one human with my own pain, my own triggers, my own need for help.  And so I am heart-broken because on paper, all I have is my paltry donations, my insignificant volunteerism, and my meaningless and unheard words and voice.

But then I remember that that’s all I am on paper.  I am so much more than that.  And then I remember that I’m not alone.  People like me, we are everywhere.   Maybe our priorities differ; they usually do.  But people around the world are fighting and more continue to stand up and join the fight and that knowledge gives me the resolve to continue

One foot forward, one foot forward, one foot forward.  My hands and feet and head are tingling from oxygen deprivation because I am having a severe panic attack but I have come too far to stop now so I keep on stepping.

We fight for a better world.  We fight for our hopes and dreams and aspirations, because before anything else we KNOW that this world is capable of being so much more than it is.  Frederick Douglass said that power concedes nothing without a demand and because that is true I will make demands.  I will make demands and be loud because not only do I have demands, I have demands that NEED to be heard because lives are on the line.  Not only our lives and the lives of human beings living today, but the lives of all those who follow – our battles will not be over when we die but when the forces holding us down die.  We hold our heads up and march

One foot forward, one foot forward, one foot forward.  I feel violated and abused, silenced and ignored, omitted and suppressed but I know who I am – somebody that will keep on stepping.

What do I do about my terror dream?  There are no simple solutions I suppose.  If I can’t get rid of it I will find some way to make it empower me, just as I have found ways to make so many other things empower me.  Because that’s what I’m doing every time I move one foot forward.  No doubt I will fail many times.  The marginalized person’s journey of empowerment is never finished, not as long as we exist within a world that oppresses.  There is no set path and the only way forward is through trial and error.  I expect failures because I am young, and I lack both wisdom and maturity.  As I age, as I gain perspective, as my consciousness continues to expand, as my experience with my successes and my failures cements, I think I will get better at it.  But even then there’s no user’s guide.  And that’s also what putting one foot forward is about.  It’s about the increments, it’s about the learning and the experience and the cumulative.  Empowerment is a process, not a state.  We can’t save the world, let alone ourselves in one grand action.  It’s slow.  It’s painful.  It involves us examining parts of us that are hurtful to look at.  But we can do it.  All of us.  Because even if we don’t know it, even if we don’t know where to look, we are strong and we are powerful.  So I call each and every one of you – find your strength  and I’ll do the same and together we can rock the world.

 

Gross

I’ve been using Cetaphil for a while as a facial cleanser.  They must have changed the formula because it used to be clear and now it’s the color of semen.

It’s like I’m rubbing semen on my face.

Gross.

I’ll make a real post one of these days.  Life’s just been hectic, between school and some other things going on.

 

African Superculture

I’ve watched a lot of documentaries recently and something that I noticed that has bothered me quite a bit is that every single one that even remotely touches the subject of Africa seems to feel the need to show footage of women and children chanting and dancing to music.

Every single one.  Even documentaries that focus on a number of locations and there is no such similar footage from the other locations.  I saw one documentary that focused on several sites of genocide and while Rwanda got the chanting/dancing footage I saw no analogous footage from, say, Sarajevo.

Looking at all of these incredibly earnest documentaries, one might get the impression that Africa had a homogeneous super-culture characterized by alternating genocide, poverty, and chanting/dancing scenes.

We get this a lot in Western views on “Oriental” Asia.  The general attitude within society that all (Oriental) Asian people look the same, act the same, and share the same culture.  You see this in the media which uses a homogenized new-agey harmony bullcrap attitude to paint all of Asia – at least when they’re not martial artists obsessed with honor.  In fact, you even see this in media in this generation’s version of yellowface – instead of having white people playing generically Asian people, you have wrong groups of Asians playing other Asians.  See Memoirs of a Geisha, for example.  Or you can go the route of the Avatar movie, that uses generic Asian themes and substitutes whiteness in.

Today I came across this post on Womanist Musings.  Renee posted this video and writes about the continuing colonialism that requires that Africa be characterized as homogeneous.  The video itself is amazing, and raises some excellent questions.

So let’s get to the real star of the show here -

How Not to Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina

Plus some interesting watching (long):

 

Eye of a Hurricane

I was born in the eye of a hurricane.  It’s a slightly exaggerated fact about me that I often pull out as a snappy line for ice-breaking and community-building activities.  Some might interpret that as suggesting importance but I think it more in terms of my identity – at my core I strive to be coherent and calm in spite of the raging tempest of identity labels and the meanings that they confer upon me

I have many labels.  In no particular order, here are a few: Taiwanese-born, American, Asian, white, immigrant, transgendered, lesbian, radical transfeminist, pacifist, lower-middle class, anti-oppression and so on.  I’ll focus instead on race and ethnicity for the purposes of this writing.

I was born in Taipei, Taiwan, to a Taiwanese mother and a father from the United States.  My mother’s family are Han Chinese and had once been quite wealthy although my grandfather’s years of gambling had substantially reduced his fortunes.    My father came from a San Diegan working class family of mixed European ancestry (Glasheen is an Irish name, but German, English, French, and a few other nationalities are included) and he met my mother while teaching English in Taiwan.

Although we lived for a while in Taiwan, we eventually moved to the United States.  At the time, I was fully bilingual although due to lack of use I have unfortunately lost most of my ability to speak or read Mandarin Chinese.  I can still understand it though, which is useful when guests are over and my parents want to discretely tell me something.

Until recently I did not identify as an Asian-American.  Occasionally I jokingly declared my fresh-off-the-boat (FOB) superiority to American-born Chinese (ABCs), played the race card to make people uncomfortable,  and even exploited it as a means to gain access to scholarships which, to be fair, I sorely needed.  But the fact is, I do not look Chinese and the space I negotiate in the world was that of a white person.  In fact, disillusioned after hearing how the parents of yet another one of my Chinese friends were forbidding their children from following their dreams and essentially demanding that they become doctors or engineers, I told my mother that I despised what I saw as the unrepentant Chinese culture of materialism.

I said this as an American and as no stranger to materialism. But to me, the fact that a parent would crush their own children’s dreams in favor of a more lucrative career represented the ultimate obsession over wealth and at that point I had witnessed it far too many times from Chinese parents.

This isn’t a redemption story for me in which I learn about the value of acceptance.  I still think that what my friend’s parents did was disgusting.  But nevertheless, I’m willing to stand up and be counted as Taiwanese now.  It does not form the core of my identity and I still identify primarily as an American.  How could I not?  This is where I spent the most important years of my childhood, went to school, got jobs, loved, lost, and generally lived my life.  But I’m also a vocal critic of the United States.  And I had an epiphany.  The more I criticized, the more I continued to fight for what I felt was right, the more I tried to right the wrongs in this nation, the more I began to distinctly realize that my need to criticism was precisely because I loved my country and because I was proud of my identity.

Taiwan to me is largely a distant memory, a haze with occasional lucid flashes of faces and places.  I’m no surer of what extent its culture has influenced my being today than I am of the influence of American culture.  But I’ve learned that in spite of my objections to the two cultures of my life that I can, and in fact, should, be proud of my identifications.

I’ve been at this point for a while now.  It’s rather comforting to finally allow my heritages to sit at a point of peace, in the eye of the storm.  And ultimately, isn’t that how identity should be used?  It should be a tool to comfort, a tool of strength, not one of angst and division.  It’s not so bad having a dual heritage.  So let me stand up and be counted – I am a child of Taiwan and the United States, and I don’t care who knows!

 

(Active) Voice, part 1

I have a voice now.  It’s strident, confrontational, and arrogantly self-confident.  It also comes from a place of deep hurt and anger.  But it’s a voice, and it’s more than I’ve ever known.

Years of silence have taken a heavy toll on me, physically, emotionally, and psychologically.  There is incredible hurt, yes, and there is incredible anger, yes, and both are due to a profound longing for identity.  I have spent most of my life playing by society’s rules, coming to self-definition through the terms that others have provided for me.  Some of these rules have come from my parents, some from friends, some from schoolyard bullies, some from complete strangers – the list goes on.

It’s only really in the last year that I have finally come to terms with my identity and it is only recently that I have begun to reconstruct it on my own terms.  I have come to my identity through experimentation, through study and application of theory, through worry and betrayal, but also through acceptance and support as well…

…and in this time I have come to find my voice, perhaps for the first time in my life.  I finally have the knowledge, both of self and of theory, to be able to articulate myself.  I finally have an understanding of the world around me and in that clarity I have learned that I was right all along.  I let society run roughshod over me for more than two decades but no more.

I have my voice and I’m not afraid to use it.  So listen to me carefully: I’m trans.

DO YOU HEAR ME?

This is the idea at least.  Having my voice, being able to scream my truth for the first time in my life is supposed to be empowering.  And it has been, more than I could possibly express, but…

But.

Something was off, something was bothering me.  And then I came across this post (which is excellent by the way) by hauntedtimber.  Not only does she make some excellent points, I directly saw myself in her.  Among other things, the following passage could almost be a passage about me – “I exist at the nexus of many forms of privilege and disadvantage. I’m not simply a woman, a transgender person, and a lesbian. I’m also white, able-bodied and American. I’m not poor. I have a college education. I live in a clean, quiet, safe neighborhood. I pass as cissexual. In many respects, I take my comfort for granted.”

There are a few nuances that differ, but by and large this is true about me.  But what really got me was the description of the radical feminism and the role that it plays in my life right now.

“Radical feminism appealed to me because it placed the blame for the fucked up ways of patriarchy squarely upon men’s shoulders. No words were minced. No excuses were made. Radical feminism was a fiery, take-no-shit approach to dealing with sexist oppression. It appealed to me because its intensity reflected my own anger and hurt. Finding one’s anger and hurt reflected in a philosophy and a movement can be a beautiful thing. It can provide a space of healing. It places the blame for the crazy messed-up feelings upon the true source of your pain and it makes no apologies. It turns the pain away from your core and aims it outward. It brings relief from self-hatred. It brings relief from the craziness. It’s powerful. It’s wonderful. It allows you to simply[sic]grow.”

This is very true to me.  Extremely.  It has provided an amazing space for healing because for once in my life I don’t have to the shoulder the entire burden of society’s collective ignorance.  Kyriarchy, and indeed, patriarchy, would still deign to oppress me but I know where blame lies now, without equivocation.

The problem though, is that if radicalism is such a source of empowerment and strength as it has been for me, why do I worry about it?  Why do I feel as though my radicalization and indeed, the discovery of my voice, are problematic?  Is it because I tend to be (or at least used to be) overly forgiving and obliging and it’s against my nature to be strident?  Is it because I’ve so deeply internalized society’s message that voice and identity are wrong if you’re a marginalized body?  Perhaps there are elements of those two but ultimately I think the greatest truth is in hauntedtimber’s words: “There is a danger, though. If one fails to move forward—beyond the hurt and the brokenness—one can become mired in anger, hatred and fear.”

I think I sensed this danger and I have effectively been sitting at a crossroads as a result.  Moving forward, not only forward but doing so in a constructive manner – that is the part I am struggling with.  My anger and my pain are both entirely valid and I will never try to claim that they are not.  And by rights, this society deserves to be taken to task.  Cis people absolutely, without a doubt, deserve every bit of anger I can muster against them, every bit of pain that I can muster against them.

But at what cost?  My soul?

I was writing a response to hauntedtimber and I had a mild epiphany.

I’m tired.  I’m really, really tired.  I’ve had to struggle so hard to come to the place where I am now.  I have had to spend obscene amounts of time thinking about these things since puberty.  I’ve had to contend with myself as well as the overbearing weight of society’s judgment.  I’ve spent untold amounts of time, reading and studying merely to find an identity that most people can take for granted.  My brain is constantly on high gear trying to analyze society.  Ever since I found my voice I’ve been taking the fight to the oppressors, trying to fight on my terms rather than theirs.  But it’s exhausting.  It’s exhausting having to justify your own identity over and over and over.  It’s exhausting having to explain basic concepts to people over and over and over.  It’s simply… exhausting.

And the looming sense of burnout has whipped me into frenzy.  I fight harder, I advocate more, I speak out as much as I can.  In a metaphorical sense I am screaming at the top of my lungs right now.  I’m doing it because I feel that burnout coming and I’m afraid that my voice will not get heard before then. 

But perhaps I’m only ensuring that my voice will give out faster.

Where then, is balance?

 

Trans 101 : FAQs part 1 – What is cis?

Trans 101: FAQs part 1 – “CIS”

Cis is a term that pops up quite a bit in trans discussions.  It is much maligned, usually by the people it applies to but occasionally by trans people as well.  In defining it I hope to present an argument for its validity and indeed, its necessity.  I think I addressed the major definition and concern questions that I’ve seen surface over and over.  Obviously there is quite a bit more to say about it, but this will have to do for now.

This post ignores genderqueer and intersexed definitions for the time being because I am saving that discussion for my next 101 post.

1. What’s cis?

Cis means “on the same side as.”  It’s pronounced “sis” as in sister, and is the functional opposite of trans.  The vast majority of human beings are cis.  Cis people have matching gender and sexual identities.  Trans people do not.

2. What’s wrong with existing terms?  Why create new terms?

Use of cis as a gender term has been going on for more than a decade.  It’s not exactly a new term but because it is not very mainstream it might seem new.  Regardless, there are several reasons that using cis as a functional opposite of trans is preferable and even necessary.  Gender is incredibly complicated.  By clearly distinguishing cis and trans identities we help clarify the language and impart more precise meaning.  It also serves to set cis people on equal footing with trans people, at least in terms of language.  Rather than having people with not-trans being the default and trans being the other, cis or trans become adjectives applied to all people.

3. Does being called cis imply that I follow essentialistic gender roles?

No.  Cis people and trans people both run the gamut of gender presentations and behaviors.  Being cis does not imply that you necessarily act one way or another.  Neither group, cis or trans, has one single type of presentation, behavior, or ideology regarding gender.  In fact, a major part of the marginalization of trans people comes from the assumption that we hold a monolithic set of ideals, aspirations, and desires.  This is simply not true.

4. Is it an insult?

Not at all.  It’s for use as a helpful term that both promotes equality and helps make conversation easier to understand (after the initial hump).  Understand though, that being cis usually means holding privilege.*   This privilege is unearned and usually unasked for, but it is present nevertheless.  It creates a power disparity in which trans people are a marginalized class.  Sometimes trans people are going to be angry at cis people (there are plenty of reasons why it might happen) and they will specifically highlight cisness in their anger.  It’s not an indictment of all cis people but rather of either specific cis people or the power structure that systematicallly privilege cis people (which this blog calls cisarchy).  When dealing with oppression-related anger from any marginalized group, the following idea is key – “if it isn’t about you, don’t make it about you.”

*(I’d argue, for example, that cis intersexed people aren’t privy to it.)

5. Okay, what is proper usage?

Cis woman, trans woman, cis man, trans man.  (there’s more, but as I said, earlier that will be addressed later)  The space between the words is a small but important distinction.  Cis woman/trans woman implies that both are still women; just different types.  It states that both are women first, cis or trans second.  Failing to use the space serves to other and to third-gender trans people.  While gender is not binary, many trans people (like cis people) do not see themselves as anything but man or woman.

 

In Memoriam

I’ve been debating over the last week whether I want to start making memorial posts whenever somebody is killed because of our sad adherence to kyriarchy.  I’ve been wondering how much I should write if I do decide to make them.  I’ve wondered what the best policy for balancing my own feelings on the situation and my desire to teach.

I’m still struggling as to whether I want to do memorial posts.

Other blogs do memorial posts.  I was thinking that because there are people that read my blog that don’t necessarily follow the same news channels that I do, that I could put a face on the violence that impacts people like me.  There’s no question that much of the violence directed at people that are not male, cis, hetero, or otherwise norm-conforming is motivated by hate.  There’s no question that the violence directed against us is minimized or often blamed on us.  It continues to be a huge problem in our communities.

Every time that somebody’s life ends because of hate, whether it be homophobia or transphobia or sexism or racism or classisim or ageism or anything else, I could write a post talking about the hate that courses through our society and remind everybody one more time just how poignant our fear is and how we as a society need to check our behaviors and words to prevent another such tragedy…

You’ve all seen those posts.

But here’s what I wonder.

1. Look at the media.  When we’re not crazed killers or the butt of jokes, we are corpses.  We are bodies, or at best, victims.  And every time we pass around our newest piece of evidence that the world hates us we further that victimization.  I’m not saying that there’s no value in highlighting the violence that gets inflicted upon us.  But it’s just as important to discuss people as actually having lives, breathing laughing loving crying hating lives with meaning.  Which leads me to my next point.
2. Too often in these memorial posts we make the person’s death the entire point.  The people in question are only notable for dying.  At best, passing around their names, faces, and the circumstances of their deaths seems like ambulance chasing to me.  And at its very worse, we disrespect the person’s life by appropriating their life (and more specifically their death) for use in our latest lecture.  Who can tell me anything about Kitty Genovese other than the fact that she was killed and that her death sparked a bunch of social psychological research?  Her life has been erased – only her death and the lessons that it has for us remain.
3. This blog focuses primarily on theory.  While that theory is rooted both in my own experiences and in the real-life experiences of other people, I rarely discuss lives.  Because of the first two points it feels wholly inappropriate for me to simply write a post every time somebody’s life is lost to hate.  I don’t want to perpetuate the identification of people by their corpse status without ever talking about lives.

The problem is this – there are times when it becomes necessary to bring up some point in history as proof that what I say is not unfounded.  And so I will be forced to bring up those names, those deaths, and participate in all of that appropriation.  It’s not even a question of whether I will do that – I have already and I will continue to do so in the future.  It’s unavoidable.  Obviously there are varying degrees of sensitivity that I can use.  Obviously, throwing around people just for the sake of doing so it’s to be avoided.  But using them as a means to make a cogent point?

And if I were to take that one step further and make a memorial post?  What would I say?  Nothing but the basics?  Or should I continue to make cogent points, to use this latest death as a platform with which to write an essay about homophobia among youth (as per recent news)?

The last is very common to see.  And I have seen some very touching pieces written by people who use the memorials to highlight social ills.  But I wonder whether the person being bandied about would appreciate being used in such a fashion.  Whether they would appreciate the concern of random strangers who zero in on their lives solely because of the circumstances of their deaths.  I wonder how they feel about their deaths being used as educational experiences.  I wish I could ask.  I feel so selfish.

I wonder whether, if it’s okay to use people’s deaths to educate while providing evidence, it is okay to continue to do so in the form of memorial posts.  How do we find an appropriate balance between consciousness raising and life appropriation?  What do we do to ensure that we treat these people with the proper and due dignity?

Honestly I haven’t come down on one side or another.  I’m aware of and have seen the good that these can do, and if the post seems to focus more on the negatives it’s because general consensus seems to be that it’s okay and I want to focus on the issues I have with that status quo.

Your thoughts?