For some reason unknonwn to me, the entirety of Femmeessay has been deleted (maybe it was the comment storm/fail that happened in the post? or maybe a wordpress fail?). At any rate, it is still technically up, all you have to do is Google the article title and click “Cache” under the link. Google keeps images of everything on their server, so nothing deletes automatically.

I originally had reposted this article, but have since taken it down. If you are “Woman” from Femmeessay please contact me.

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I’ll respond to portions of your post in a quotations then response fashion, as I can’t think clearly right now.

“If a bio-born male identifies as female, I am a little uncomfortable with her describing femaleness as a freeing experience when women are de facto an oppressed group worldwide. And when a bio-born female identifies as male, I cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that being recognized as male automatically confers male privilege upon oneself.”

I think a trans woman describing her woman identity, and femininity as “freeing” has to do with the fact that she has experienced internalized conflict of not having her assigned sex align with her gender identity or expression or expectations that society puts upon her. I think there is a similar (but not identical) feeling of when a woman finds solace in expressing her masculinity or femininity when that was suppressed (like when I identified as a lesbian, I found expressing extreme femininity empowering to me).

This feeling of liberation is rooted in the freeing of one’s gender identity, even if that places them into a box of oppression. The oppressive nature of the patriarchy does not keep women from feeling empowered, right, free, or any other sense because they can or choose to express themselves in the way they see fit.

Yes, a trans man, like myself, cannot deny the fact that he does acquire male privilege (assuming that one passes as male in the first place). Dually, the Feminist Movement cannot deny the fact that trans women lose that privilege and face all of the harsh realities that other women face when they are living in a patriarchal society.

Also, be careful with the word “bio-born” as it implies that one person is less biological than the other. Is that really true? I tend to just stick to language of “assigned male at birth” or “assigned female at birth” because it is also inclusive of intersex people that may or may not identify as transgender.

“What does “appropriate to your proper sex” mean, and how can I understand it without inferring the involvement and reinforcement of crippling gender roles I oppose as a cis female feminist? How is Lisa’s statement not a reinforcement of our socially enforced gender dichotomy? The idea of gender-appropriateness sent up a HUGE red flag for me.”

I have a hard time accepting gender roles that are considered “appropriate” to one’s sex. However, Lisa’s experience may be that she views herself not only as a woman but as having a feminine identity and her idea of femininity may align with the gender roles that society dictates. There is nothing wrong with that. There is also nothing wrong with those whose identities work against “typical” gender roles -whether they be transgender or cisgender. In reality, we need to all get to accepting that people can express themselves in whatever fashion they see fit, and that shouldn’t be a threat to anyone’s identity or agenda. Lisa’s expression of femininity and her gender may in fact work in conjunction with the dichotomy of expression our society sets us up for – but at the same time, her gender and expression is what she feels she needs to do for herself, and what is right for herself.

So I guess in terms of the status quo, I would challenge you – why does it really matter? Feminism should not be at war with masculinity (and those that view Feminism this way likely are the same that view trans men as traitors to the movement), but rather working to de-privilege masculinity. I guess where I am going with this is, yes dichotomies are bad, but just because you fit into the model does not mean your expression of yourself is wrong.

“So I don’t know what Lisa means here: a trans person only finds their anatomy to be lacking? This can’t be true, or transitioning individuals would not so frequently take on the trappings of the gender roles that accompany their true sex.”

Like I was trying to get at earlier – there is no “right” way of being trans. I don’t think it is simply about anatomy of lacking, nor is it simply about taking on the “trappings of gender roles”. Its a lot more complicated than that, and that looks very different for each person.

Also, I do not think your vision is anti-trans, but it may be kind a idealistic. People will always find a way to create a system of differences between each other, whether that’s on gender or not.

Sorry for the length of the comment. I hope it helped.

First Hate Comment on My Site : A person by the name of “Disgusted” posted this on my site in response to my KRXQ updates. I initially deleted the comment, but I feel like this person has a right to voice their “opinion”, but I am going let it be posted here so that my readers see the kind of bigotry that transpeople face in their day to day lives. Trust me, this is nothing compared to other things I have heard.

“You all need to get over yourselves. You are turning this country into a bunch of whiners. Your hypocrisy amazes me. I understand that it is quite “Trendy” to be gay, lesbian, transgender or whatever you call it these days, but I do not have to accept your choice or agree with it. I can disagree and even say so if I want to. I could even go as far a make a joke about your life style if I felt like it, because I am a Free American. The biggest tragedy of all is that people like you are trying to change America. You don’t want people to be free to think, to have opinions and voice them, especially if they disagree with you. I wonder what other freedoms you think Americans should no longer have…”

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Writing By Us, For Us, and About Us: An Autoethnographic Literature Review

Introduction

There have been many routes in which this paper could have been written. I imagine that when my advising professor suggested that I write an autoethnography combined with a literature review, that she had in mind that I would criticize the works from other academic fields that have been very harmful to the transgender population, using my personal anecdotes as a means for which to defend both my fiery argument and inevitably my personal identity.

I must admit that I began this paper with that intention. Studying those texts are important, as they have shaped the laws and options of the dominant culture of today. Instead, I have chosen to focus on what transgender people have written about “transgender”, in an attempt to demonstrate that the literature by trans people is of equal validity as the literature of the cisgender researcher. My focus will likely be called into question. However, there is a clear gap in every realm of academic study when it comes to recognizing, criticizing, and including works by transgender people about gender, themselves, and the transgender category.

As a minority in population, it only makes sense that we would also be a minority when it comes to composing literature for our own field of academic study. Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that there are more works written by cisgender people that proclaim to be experts about transgender issues, than works written by transgender individuals about themselves.

Most of the literature about transsexuals has been written by self-proclaimed experts, from a position that claims to be academic or scientific, and therefore objective…I am uncomfortable with the stance of the objective outsider who, because of a sheaf of credentials, purports to have a point of view that is more powerful than that of transgendered people themselves. [Califia 1997:1]

By focusing my paper on transgender literature that is written only by transgender individuals, I am attempting to bridge the gap in academia, and create a space through which self-penned transgender literature can be regarded as equal to the cisgender “objective” expert. Dually I am attempting to create a space through which I, as both an academic and a transgender individual, can critically examine theses texts through an intersection of identities.

I undoubtedly face criticism from the academic world, which will likely accuse me of loosing sight of my position of the objective anthropologist and allowing “the personal” to bias my writing. Dually, I face criticism from my own transgender community for critically looking at the works of my peers when I should be protecting them from being used as tools for furthering transphobia.

This paper is primarily a literature review, but not your typical one. I am positioned as an anthropologist trained with a critical eye and as an insider with the first hand experience of being transgender. I am including literature from the academic fields of creative writing, history, women’s studies, and anthropology. I plan to show where trans writing can evolve while dually making a call to academia to recognize the importance of people writing for themselves and attempting to include such works in their research. In order to emphasize this point, I have chosen to write this paper from an autoethnographic stance, where I use my personal experiences as one of the lenses through which to critically examine literature.

The style of this paper, being an autoethnographic one, will be more relaxed than the typical social sciences study. There are many ways in which one can write an autoenthnography, some much more creative than others. I have chosen a balanced method, where I will focus on remaining analytical while writing an active and personal voice. I will occasionally include my personal interactions with the texts when appropriate. I have also chosen to include a novel-like scenario at the beginning in order to allow the reader to experience a portion of my life as a trans man. Thus, this paper is as much of an experimental ethnography as it is a literature review.

Instead of conducting a participant observation study with a population to which I do not belong, I am positioning myself as both the researcher and the observed, the academic and the subject, and the insider and the outsider. “Research practices of orthodox social science do not encourage scholars to document these events in their own lives or even to talk about themselves (Krieger 1991). We are inhibited by the bias that WE study THEM … (Ellis 1991b; Gouldner 1970),” (Ellis 1993). Carolyn Ellis, the leading scholar in autoethnographic work, is redefining what it means to do ethnographic writing. Ellis uses her personal lived experiences as a means through researching, educating, and informing the readers in a way that dualistically provides information while evoking feeling.

I seek to reposition readers vis a vis the authors of texts of social science research, evoking feeling and identification as well as cognitive processing. … Perhaps reading my work evoked in you emotional experience that you could then examine. … I write this narrative as an example of a form that will permit researchers and readers to acknowledge and give voice to their own experiences. I also write to motivate social scientists to encourage ethnographic subjects (co-authors) to reclaim and write their own lives as well. [Ellis 1993: 726-27]

Similarly, I plan to use my personal experiences as a means through which to attempt to evoke a deeper level of understanding in the reader, and a framework through which to critically examine literature, culture, and the academic fields. Instead of relying on emotional recall methods as Ellis does in her 1993 essay “‘There are Survivors’: Telling a Story of Sudden Death”, I will rely on a collection of written records I have about my personal journey of questioning my gender, coming out, and beginning the process of medically transitioning.

I will use a combination of notes I wrote in the books I am reviewing and my personal website, Gendersaurus Rex (dot com). Gendersaurus Rex functions primarily as a blog for recording critical thoughts of my personal experiences as a trans man. As my advising professor said, “Your blog is your field notes of the self”. Like other cultural anthropologists, I keep detailed notes throughout the day that allow me to conduct my write-ups in the evening – the only difference being of course that the notes are about myself rather than “the other”. When appropriate, I will use pseudonyms for the other people who are a part of my story.

This paper will conclude with why I did not choose to limit my scope to anthropological texts only, while dually taking a take a critical look at what anthropology as a discipline has focused on in regards to transgender people. I will finish by using a combination of my knowledge as an anthropology student and my experiences of being transgender to argue where anthropology can improve.

Two questions though…

1. What’s your favorite thing on this site? Is it when I talk about my personal gender experiences? The resources page? Or something else?

2. What would you like to see done differently? Do you have a topic suggestion for a post? Do you want a different kind of page? Any resource suggestions?

Thanks again!

Love,
Huck

Never start statements with “I love [enter trans person's name here], but—” and then say something incredibly transphobic. Especially when the said trans person is not there, and the said parties are at a conference focusing on trans issues.

I feel tokenized by those kinds of statements. Like the fact that I am their trans friend, negates all other acts of transphobia and what they actually think and feel about trans people.

The fact that the said transphobic dialogue occurred while I was not there (and likely would not have occurred if I was there) was even more telling of how the people involved knew what they were were saying was a) transphobic b) insulting c) and something that I would have personally taken offense of.

What makes things worse, is that I am very open and honest about my trans experience, and I am willing to answer questions and confront transphobic statements and tell people that what they are saying is indeed offensive. So when people, who I have had these kind of conversations with, decide to not only conveniently forget things I have told, them, but bash trans people behind my back (dually stating me as the exception), I am naturally going to be pretty upset about it.

Hooray for a reminder that not all LGB people are your friends.

———-

This is a topic that has been vital to my understanding of the world over the past few years, but it’s still relatively unknown outside certain circles of activists. When I mention it as an area of my work, I almost invariably have to explain what it is. The short answer is that it is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny that specifically targets trans women. But that dry academic answer never communicates the visceral and intense experience that it is.

Here’s a limited list of examples of what transmisogyny looks like. Every example on this list has a story (or dozens of stories) behind it.

Relationship and Sexual Violence

When trans women desperately in need of sexual assault or domestic violence services are turned away because their needs are considered less important than the hypothetical discomfort their presence might cause for others, that’s transmisogyny.

When activists encourage people not even to try to fight for trans women’s access to sexual assault and domestic violence services because of the possibility that it could leave trans men unable to access those services, that’s transmisogyny.

When I, personally, sought out support after being abused by my trans male partner and was told by a prominent genderqueer activist that because I’m a trans woman and felt validation in talking with cis women who have experienced abuse, I must have invented the abuse in an attempt to feel more like a woman by having an abusive boyfriend, that’s transmisogyny.

When a trans woman is brave enough to talk openly about surviving childhood violence and experiencing rape, only to be told that her pain is less valid or important than cis women’s experience of sexism, that’s transmisogyny.

Gender Expression

When trans women who present femininely or assert a binary identity are blamed for perpetuating binary gender roles, while it’s forgotten that many or even more cis women do the same, that’s transmisogyny. (When cis women who present femininely are also blamed for perpetuating binary gender roles, that’s femmephobia)

When trans women have every aspect of their presentation examined and labeled either hyperfeminine and therefore fake or not feminine enough and therefore male, while the same traits would be seen as normal in cis women, that’s transmisogyny.

When trans masculine spaces allows cis butch women to attend but turn away trans butch women, that’s transmisogyny. (When femme trans men are also turned away from those spaces, that’s femmephobia.)

Politics and Activism

When trans women and transfeminine genderqueers are assumed to be conformist, apolitical, and weak while trans men and transmasculine genderqueers are assumed to be radical, with it, and hip, that’s transmisogyny (and femmephobia, and subversivism).

Specifically, when I present in a butch or genderfuck way and people assume I’m radical, politically knowledgeable and pay attention to me, but when I present femininely I am ignored, that’s transmisogyny (and femmephobia and subversivism).

When trans women are told that they are politically ignorant when they object to trans men “reclaiming” a derogatory term that has been used specifically against trans women and not against trans men, that’s transmisogyny.

When almost every local trans group in my state (and likely a majority in other states) are run by trans men and attended by a significant majority of trans men, yet people still complain about trans women dominating groups and point to inappropriate behavior by Virginia Prince and other transfeminine activists from decades ago as if it’s representative of what’s happening today, that’s transmisogyny.

When there’s only one trans support group in town and it’s for transmale folks only, or only one comprehensive online network to discuss surgery results and it’s for transmale folks only, or only one foundation offering financial help accessing surgery and it’s for transmale folks only, that’s transmisogyny.

“Male Privilege”

When trans women are told that they need to stop being assertive and strong because it is a sign of male privilege – invariably by “feminists” who, of course, encourage cis women to be assertive and strong – that’s transmisogyny.

When trans women are pressured into being silent, rarely offering their opinion, and refusing leadership roles for fear of being seen as male or accused of having male privilege, that’s transmisogyny.

When trans women are afraid to analyze or discuss the role of male privilege in their life because of the way accusations of male privilege have been used as weapons to silence, shame, and misgender trans women, that’s transmisogyny.

When trans women do analyze and discuss the role of male privilege in their lives and come to different conclusions than the dominant cis feminist perspective and are told it is because they simply don’t understand privilege or are ignorant of feminism, that’s transmisogyny.

Community and Relationships

When “women and trans” space allows everyone on a transmale spectrum to attend unquestioned (because even if their trans status is not respected, they would still be welcomed as a woman) yet people on a transfemale spectrum are subjected to scrutiny and those who are not “trans enough” are asked to leave, that’s transmisogyny.

When those same “women and trans” spaces, or even the ones that don’t police entrance, are attended by a dozen or so trans men yet zero or only one or two trans women, that’s transmisogyny. (It obviously indicates that they don’t feel welcome, don’t trust the organizers, or weren’t outreached to.)

When queer women’s spaces have trans women inclusive policies, yet any trans women who attend are generally ignored or not included in discussions, that’s transmisogyny.

While it’s true that individual preferences in partners are complicated, when large swaths of queer women’s community exotify trans men or identify as trans-sensual or even “tranny chasers” while being clear that they will not consider trans women as potential partners, that’s transmisogyny (and in some cases, general transphobia or cissexist exotification as well).

When people who are attracted to women and have met only a few trans women announce that they would never date a trans women, that’s transmisogyny. (Think about it, if a white person announced that they’d never date a black woman, especially if they had only met 2-3 black women in their life, we’d name that as being influenced by racism.)

Sexualization

When the main way to diagnose fetishistic transvestitism or autogynophilia is to look for the presence of sexual enjoyment, and trans women who enjoy their sexuality risk being given one of those diagnoses and denied trans related health care, that’s transmisogyny.

When being sexually available to men and not interested in your own sexual gratification is another way to prove that you are not a fetishistic transvestite or autogynophile, that’s transmisogyny.

When doctors encourage target testosterone levels significantly lower than cis women’s average levels requiring high doses of testosterone blockers, and when the most common testosterone blocker reduces sexuality in addition to blocking testosterone, that’s transmisogyny. (When that’s something that trans women are asking for themselves, it’s more complex, but probably still influenced by transmisogyny somewhere.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjqsB1huDxg&hl=en&fs=1]

Interesting how this video is funny in some was, terrible in others, and yet so very accurate. It has kind of stuck with me all day. Thoughts?