In my earlier post on pronouns, I indicated a reluctant willingness to accept "he" (and therefore "him" and "his" too) as long as no assumptions were made about what "he" might mean. Thus, at the next Recreation meeting, I said I didn't really like pronouns but that people could use "he" for me. And this little statement got a nod of understanding.
But now I'm thinking about changing my mind, because I've just come across a post by Kate Bornstein: A Tribute to Mx Justin ViVian Bond, which includes the half-sentence "V (Justin ViVian's pronoun of choice)". Say what?! Going to Mx Bond's own site, there is this explanation:
Not long ago I was asked to speak on a panel at Columbia University entitled “Denaturalizing Gender and Sex”. Before introducing me the organizer of the panel asked how I would like to be “pronoun-ed”. I wasn’t quite sure how to reply. Obviously for the majority of my life I’ve been referred to as “he” or “him” and to a lesser degree “she” or “her”. I don’t usually think about it too much except when reading it in print where it has annoyed me to no end. I’ve never really addressed it because I have had no better suggestions to offer. For some time I’ve been familiar with the words zee, hir, or they as gender-neutral terms but I’ve never really liked them. So the fellow who was going to introduce me, upon sensing my dis-ease suggested “they” because “that’s Genesis P-Orridge’s preference”. I said okay thinking I might as well try “they” on… “if it works for Genesis….”
Well after introducing two of the other panelists I heard my name followed by “they” and I began looking around to find out who the other people were he was talking about, then I remembered that “they” was me. I got a good chuckle out of it but my pronoun quandary was clearly NOT solved.
So what I’ve come up with is “v”. Since my name is Justin Vivian Bond and since Vivian begins with a V and visually a V is two even sides which meet in the middle I would like v to be my pronoun.
For example:
Justin Vivian Bond was described in The New Yorker as “a bar of gold in the new depression”. V’s latest eponymous show at Joe’s Pub will be Saturday January 8th at 11:30
or
“Have you seen Justin Vivian?”
“Yes, V ran to the store to pick up the dress v is having altered.”
V covers it all.
In the future if I see or hear the words he or she, her or him, hers or his, in reference to me, I will take it either as a personal insult, a weak mind (easily forgivable), or (worst case scenario) sloppy journalism.
Ah, that's splendid! And v's descriptions of "Prefix: Mx" and "Gender: Trans" are also very engaging.
So, I guess my pronoun should be "J". As in: "Is Jonathan coming tonight?" "Yes, J said J'd be down at 6:30, but J'd have to leave by 9:00 so that J can catch J's bus home."
Okay, maybe not. Using "J" in there makes it all a bit convoluted and clumsy. But it's a nice idea all the same :)
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Jasper's Wardrobe.
Well, it seems I wrote Jasper off too soon in my initial post. Clicking the link therein on an impulse, I discovered he's restructured his site so that it functions in the blog world once more. Nice to see. Jasper is an interesting guy and an – perhaps the – original male femme blogger. Although... I do have problems with some of the stuff he posts.
For one thing, Jasper's identity seems to be defined, at least partly, in opposition to transactivists and feminists, with whom he has running battles. So you get headings like the recent "Women's Studies Made You Ignorant" and "Male Lesbians, Feminine Boys, Sissies, I Went Trans So You Don’t Have To". Okay, those are probably deliberately provocative with more than a dose of humour added, but still, for me they're a distraction. Feminism and trans theory are two of the most important branches of modern thought, our most serious tools in examining and reshaping the world we live in, when we're dealing with gender. Feminists and transactivists are – or should be – our allies and friends, not our opponents. We should be able to carve out our own space, own our identities, without sniping at theirs.
And then there's Jasper's interest in AGP. For instance, he reblogs Hontas Farmer: For a long time now many trans activists (...) have crusaded against the very notion of autogynephilia (...), or denied the very existence of autogynephilia. (...) The transactivist claim that autogynephilia is based on pseudo science. (...) That autogynephilia is just the work of a transphobic quack named Ray Blanchard.
I have to say I agree with the transactivists entirely. AGP is pseudo-science. It's a lame attempt to pathologize a particular area of human behaviour in the specific instances where it's deemed gender inappropriate. It's that supposed inappropriateness that we should be challenging. We don't need some gender-defending scientist to give it a silly name and tell us there's something wrong with us.
Similarly, in an earlier post by Jasper himself, there is: Anne Laurence (...) builds off of Blanchard’s theories of Male Femininity as a Desire Disorder. The theory has been labeled as “Evil” within LGBT because it sees both male crossdressers and MTFs as the same phenomenon of Becoming-Woman-Desire.
To me, a theory that calls male femininity a "disorder" of anything is just more pathologizing. Okay, I wouldn't call it evil, but I'd say it's at best obscurantist. It deflects us from debating the nature of gender, sets up a normative view of gender as axiomatic, and places us outside the discourse, as aberrant. Oi! Blanchard! No!
Furthermore, in my opinion (and this is just my opinion), male cross-dressing and MTF trans are not the same phenomenon – not in general terms. (For individuals they often can be, as the phenomena overlap, or as people struggle to reach their own understanding of themselves; but that's a different matter.) For those who are MTF trans, "becoming-woman" is not a desire, it's an imperative. Whereas for male cross-dressers – at least if we define ourselves as femmes – "becoming-woman" is a red herring, because we're not women. To use "becoming-woman" in our case merely reiterates a cultural – and false – correlation between sex and gender. For us as male femmes, the categories "man" and "femme" are not incompatible, and to throw the word "woman" in there simply confuses things.
But as I said, these are only my opinions. Obviously Jasper has his own opinions, and it is those which make his blog and his youtube channel worth watching. I shall re-add the Wardrobe to my blog list and enjoy the show :)
For one thing, Jasper's identity seems to be defined, at least partly, in opposition to transactivists and feminists, with whom he has running battles. So you get headings like the recent "Women's Studies Made You Ignorant" and "Male Lesbians, Feminine Boys, Sissies, I Went Trans So You Don’t Have To". Okay, those are probably deliberately provocative with more than a dose of humour added, but still, for me they're a distraction. Feminism and trans theory are two of the most important branches of modern thought, our most serious tools in examining and reshaping the world we live in, when we're dealing with gender. Feminists and transactivists are – or should be – our allies and friends, not our opponents. We should be able to carve out our own space, own our identities, without sniping at theirs.
And then there's Jasper's interest in AGP. For instance, he reblogs Hontas Farmer: For a long time now many trans activists (...) have crusaded against the very notion of autogynephilia (...), or denied the very existence of autogynephilia. (...) The transactivist claim that autogynephilia is based on pseudo science. (...) That autogynephilia is just the work of a transphobic quack named Ray Blanchard.
I have to say I agree with the transactivists entirely. AGP is pseudo-science. It's a lame attempt to pathologize a particular area of human behaviour in the specific instances where it's deemed gender inappropriate. It's that supposed inappropriateness that we should be challenging. We don't need some gender-defending scientist to give it a silly name and tell us there's something wrong with us.
Similarly, in an earlier post by Jasper himself, there is: Anne Laurence (...) builds off of Blanchard’s theories of Male Femininity as a Desire Disorder. The theory has been labeled as “Evil” within LGBT because it sees both male crossdressers and MTFs as the same phenomenon of Becoming-Woman-Desire.
To me, a theory that calls male femininity a "disorder" of anything is just more pathologizing. Okay, I wouldn't call it evil, but I'd say it's at best obscurantist. It deflects us from debating the nature of gender, sets up a normative view of gender as axiomatic, and places us outside the discourse, as aberrant. Oi! Blanchard! No!
Furthermore, in my opinion (and this is just my opinion), male cross-dressing and MTF trans are not the same phenomenon – not in general terms. (For individuals they often can be, as the phenomena overlap, or as people struggle to reach their own understanding of themselves; but that's a different matter.) For those who are MTF trans, "becoming-woman" is not a desire, it's an imperative. Whereas for male cross-dressers – at least if we define ourselves as femmes – "becoming-woman" is a red herring, because we're not women. To use "becoming-woman" in our case merely reiterates a cultural – and false – correlation between sex and gender. For us as male femmes, the categories "man" and "femme" are not incompatible, and to throw the word "woman" in there simply confuses things.
But as I said, these are only my opinions. Obviously Jasper has his own opinions, and it is those which make his blog and his youtube channel worth watching. I shall re-add the Wardrobe to my blog list and enjoy the show :)
Monday, 8 August 2011
Pronoun trouble.
Last week I went down to Recreation Nottingham for the first time. I'm always rather shy and tongue-tied around new people (not that I have much conversation at the best of times), but they seem like a nice bunch. One of the things they did, before getting down to any business, was go round the group and have everyone say their name and which pronouns they preferred. I'm (insert name) and I like "he", or "she", or "they" (gender neutral), or "ze", or whatever. It's a nice idea.
Actually we did this twice (once again after someone else came in later on). First time I said "I'm Jonathan and most people use he, but I'm not really bothered"; second time I said "I'm Jonathan and I use he, but whatever you like is fine", or something along those lines. But what I should have said was: "I'm Jonathan and although I take other people's preferred pronouns very seriously, I've never thought about my own all that much." So, I've been doing that now.
The pronoun "he" is correct for me, but, well, y'know. Occasionally I get called "she" – in trans company, or on trans forums (cf my previous post), or by mistake – and "she" is kind of nice. It recognizes my femme pronoun-wise, if only inadvertently. Whereas "he" doesn't. Using "he" is like ticking the "M" box on a form. I always want to append a "but" to it. Okay, I could get round any pronoun qualms by using a neutral one, but that seems a bit of a cop-out for me. My gender isn't neutral. And "she" is simply wrong, since I'm not female. No, "he" is correct. But then there's that "but" again.
And that "but" means this:
Just because I'm male and accept the pronoun "he", please do not assume that you therefore know anything else about me: how I think, how I feel, what I like, who I like, what I know, what I do, what I can do, what I can't do, what I understand, what I don't understand, how I dress, how I have sex, how I eat my breakfast ... anything. The gender "male", the pronoun "he", the ticked box "M" tells you nothing about any of this. I am not from Mars. Stick your gender stereotypes up your arse and set fire to them.
So, okay, that's settled then. You can call me "he". But...
Actually we did this twice (once again after someone else came in later on). First time I said "I'm Jonathan and most people use he, but I'm not really bothered"; second time I said "I'm Jonathan and I use he, but whatever you like is fine", or something along those lines. But what I should have said was: "I'm Jonathan and although I take other people's preferred pronouns very seriously, I've never thought about my own all that much." So, I've been doing that now.
The pronoun "he" is correct for me, but, well, y'know. Occasionally I get called "she" – in trans company, or on trans forums (cf my previous post), or by mistake – and "she" is kind of nice. It recognizes my femme pronoun-wise, if only inadvertently. Whereas "he" doesn't. Using "he" is like ticking the "M" box on a form. I always want to append a "but" to it. Okay, I could get round any pronoun qualms by using a neutral one, but that seems a bit of a cop-out for me. My gender isn't neutral. And "she" is simply wrong, since I'm not female. No, "he" is correct. But then there's that "but" again.
And that "but" means this:
Just because I'm male and accept the pronoun "he", please do not assume that you therefore know anything else about me: how I think, how I feel, what I like, who I like, what I know, what I do, what I can do, what I can't do, what I understand, what I don't understand, how I dress, how I have sex, how I eat my breakfast ... anything. The gender "male", the pronoun "he", the ticked box "M" tells you nothing about any of this. I am not from Mars. Stick your gender stereotypes up your arse and set fire to them.
So, okay, that's settled then. You can call me "he". But...
Sunday, 24 July 2011
Femme names.
My own femme name is Jennifer. Say it fast and mumbly and it sounds sort of like Jonathan. Previously I called myself Joanna – a partial anagram of Jonathan – but I never really felt like a Joanna, so I changed it.
I should explain that in this context "femme" has a different meaning to the one I am mostly applying in this blog. For male TVs a femme name has nothing to do with "femme". It's simply a female name; a name we use when we're in "feminine" mode, possibly in drag, or possibly just in company with other TVs, or other trans people, or friends, or whoever, either in person or online. A femme name, usually accompanied by female pronouns, acknowledges a certain femininity, whether outwardly expressed or inwardly asserted.
Often this feminine expression is temporary and alternates with a masculine "Bob" mode, indicating a bi-gendered identity. In other words, a person senses their own gender to be both feminine and masculine, and may express this in different ways at different times, perhaps in drag and perhaps in drab. The Manchester-based trans support group The Northern Concord used to (and probably still does) issue membership cards "for the both of you", reflecting this dual gendered nature.
In my case, however, there aren't two of me. That is to say, I'm uni-gendered not bi-gendered, and that single unigender is male. So why do I have a femme name at all? Why do I, for example, sign up for trans-related and butch/femme forums as "jenalex" and mostly post as and respond to "Jen"?
The reason is one of inclusiveness. I've always been bothered that signing up and posting as Jonathan (as male) would be to place myself outside the MTF community, whereas I see myself as part of it. Or at least as coming from it. Even if I no longer regard my own "F" as actually female at all, but as a valid and integral part of "M", of male. Which means I'm not really MTF after all. Or at least I have a slightly unusual and personal interpretation of it. Or...
Okay, I'm rambling now.
As it happens, I've just signed up to a new local trans network as Jonathan. So maybe I'll make Jonathan my new femme name. Mmmm, degendering names, regendering names.
Sure, why not? :)
I should explain that in this context "femme" has a different meaning to the one I am mostly applying in this blog. For male TVs a femme name has nothing to do with "femme". It's simply a female name; a name we use when we're in "feminine" mode, possibly in drag, or possibly just in company with other TVs, or other trans people, or friends, or whoever, either in person or online. A femme name, usually accompanied by female pronouns, acknowledges a certain femininity, whether outwardly expressed or inwardly asserted.
Often this feminine expression is temporary and alternates with a masculine "Bob" mode, indicating a bi-gendered identity. In other words, a person senses their own gender to be both feminine and masculine, and may express this in different ways at different times, perhaps in drag and perhaps in drab. The Manchester-based trans support group The Northern Concord used to (and probably still does) issue membership cards "for the both of you", reflecting this dual gendered nature.
In my case, however, there aren't two of me. That is to say, I'm uni-gendered not bi-gendered, and that single unigender is male. So why do I have a femme name at all? Why do I, for example, sign up for trans-related and butch/femme forums as "jenalex" and mostly post as and respond to "Jen"?
The reason is one of inclusiveness. I've always been bothered that signing up and posting as Jonathan (as male) would be to place myself outside the MTF community, whereas I see myself as part of it. Or at least as coming from it. Even if I no longer regard my own "F" as actually female at all, but as a valid and integral part of "M", of male. Which means I'm not really MTF after all. Or at least I have a slightly unusual and personal interpretation of it. Or...
Okay, I'm rambling now.
As it happens, I've just signed up to a new local trans network as Jonathan. So maybe I'll make Jonathan my new femme name. Mmmm, degendering names, regendering names.
Sure, why not? :)
Saturday, 25 June 2011
So, what is femme? (2)
Right, here it is — a definition of femme that's inclusive, incisive and intelligible. I doubt I'll ever be able to put it better than this:
femme is dispossessed femininity. It's the femininity of those who aren't allowed to be real women and who have to roll their own feminine gender.
Rolling their own is what cis-femme lesbians did in the fifties. By class and by sexual preference, they were dispossessed of real womanhood. For what woman is complete without money or a man? So they learned how to improvise, how to sew; how to turn a thrift-store sow's ear into a vintage silk purse.
Rolling their own is what contemporary femme dykes do. Invisible in straight spaces and frequently trivialized in queer ones, they must voice their own femininity in a way that does not get shouted down or ignored. No easy task.
Rolling their own is what drag queens and trannies do and have always done. For what woman is complete without hairless skin and a cunt? We too learned how to improvise, and when we were mocked as caricatures of real women, we often became skilled caricaturists, owning the insult, engulfing it.
And this is what femme gay men do, too. Dangerously visible in straight space and often ridiculed in gay male space, femme gay men take the shit from all sides. The straights dish it to them because they're visible. Second-wave feminists dish it to them because they're both feminine and male, and have thus sinned twice. Other gay men dish it to them for acting like, well, chicks.
What these groups share, aside from a fondness for eyeliner, is the illegitimacy of their femininity. That's how I understand femme: badass, rogue, illegitimate femininity. It's the femininity of those who aren't supposed to be feminine, who aren't allowed to be, but are anyway.
— Elizabeth Marston; from her piece Rogue Femininity in the fabulous 2011 anthology Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, compiled and edited by Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman.
The contributors include – okay, I'll just list them all in order (I like lists): Anna Camilleri, Kimberly Dark, Miriam Zoila Pérez, Anne Fleming, Karleen Pendleton Jiménez, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Jewelle Gomez, romham padraig gallacher, Zena Sharman, Ivan E. Coyote, Amber Dawn, S.Bear Bergman, Brenda Barnes, Nairne Holtz, Laiwan, Stacey Milbern, B.Cole, Victoria A. Brownworth, Sasha T. Goldberg, Chandra Mayor, Donnelly Black, Redwolf Painter, Sinclair Sexsmith, Belinda Carroll, Zoe Whittall, Elizabeth Marston, Amy Fox, Jeanne Córdova, Rae Spoon, Elaine Miller, Thea Hillman, Bevin Branlandingham, Sailor Holladay, Melissa Sky, Prince Jei and Misster Raju Rage, Ben McCoy, Michael V. Smith, and Debra Anderson, with a foreword by Joan Nestle.
If any of those names mean anything to you at all, you should go and order the book right now!
femme is dispossessed femininity. It's the femininity of those who aren't allowed to be real women and who have to roll their own feminine gender.
Rolling their own is what cis-femme lesbians did in the fifties. By class and by sexual preference, they were dispossessed of real womanhood. For what woman is complete without money or a man? So they learned how to improvise, how to sew; how to turn a thrift-store sow's ear into a vintage silk purse.
Rolling their own is what contemporary femme dykes do. Invisible in straight spaces and frequently trivialized in queer ones, they must voice their own femininity in a way that does not get shouted down or ignored. No easy task.
Rolling their own is what drag queens and trannies do and have always done. For what woman is complete without hairless skin and a cunt? We too learned how to improvise, and when we were mocked as caricatures of real women, we often became skilled caricaturists, owning the insult, engulfing it.
And this is what femme gay men do, too. Dangerously visible in straight space and often ridiculed in gay male space, femme gay men take the shit from all sides. The straights dish it to them because they're visible. Second-wave feminists dish it to them because they're both feminine and male, and have thus sinned twice. Other gay men dish it to them for acting like, well, chicks.
What these groups share, aside from a fondness for eyeliner, is the illegitimacy of their femininity. That's how I understand femme: badass, rogue, illegitimate femininity. It's the femininity of those who aren't supposed to be feminine, who aren't allowed to be, but are anyway.
— Elizabeth Marston; from her piece Rogue Femininity in the fabulous 2011 anthology Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, compiled and edited by Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman.
The contributors include – okay, I'll just list them all in order (I like lists): Anna Camilleri, Kimberly Dark, Miriam Zoila Pérez, Anne Fleming, Karleen Pendleton Jiménez, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Jewelle Gomez, romham padraig gallacher, Zena Sharman, Ivan E. Coyote, Amber Dawn, S.Bear Bergman, Brenda Barnes, Nairne Holtz, Laiwan, Stacey Milbern, B.Cole, Victoria A. Brownworth, Sasha T. Goldberg, Chandra Mayor, Donnelly Black, Redwolf Painter, Sinclair Sexsmith, Belinda Carroll, Zoe Whittall, Elizabeth Marston, Amy Fox, Jeanne Córdova, Rae Spoon, Elaine Miller, Thea Hillman, Bevin Branlandingham, Sailor Holladay, Melissa Sky, Prince Jei and Misster Raju Rage, Ben McCoy, Michael V. Smith, and Debra Anderson, with a foreword by Joan Nestle.
If any of those names mean anything to you at all, you should go and order the book right now!
Friday, 24 June 2011
Femme clothes, women's clothes.
To begin with, an axiom and a statement:
Axiom: There are no areas of human endeavour (apart from those related to procreation), no facets of human intellect or human personality that are inherently male or female. Society may attempt to designate them as such, but all such designations are false.
Statement: Women's clothes are the prime signifiers of femme.
The axiom I hold to be definitely true. The statement comes with several provisos, not least that its truth is somewhat complicated by the axiom. Because if most aspects of human behaviour are not inherently gendered, why should inanimate objects attached to humans be gendered? Why should the majority of human clothing be designated either as male or female? What in fact are women's clothes?
Recently, I've become quite intrigued by the idea of de-gendering or re-gendering clothing. That is since reading another thread on the mHB forum and the online archives of Graham Holmes, former leading light in the Total Clothing Rights group. (Okay, I have some problems with the apparent assumptions of TCR, in particular as regards women's own clothing rights, but that's a topic for another time.)
When I read Graham's articles I immediately thought "this guy is femme". And I thought the same about Jon-Jon Goulian, the author of a new book: The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt. And I may well be right. Or not. That would be for them to say. But in any case, that's not the question right now. The question is...
What are we (Jon-Jon, Graham and I) all doing? We're wearing women's clothes as men. Why? — and here, rather than reaching for complex, loaded explanations such as "transvestite" or "cross-dresser" (Jon-Jon says specifically he is not a cross-dresser; Graham says he is, but challenges what that means) or even "femme" (my favoured descriptor), let's apply Occam's Razor and take the one that makes the fewest assumptions — Because we want to wear prettier clothes.
Do men have pretty clothes? Not really, no. (Alright, the 1980's New Romantics had ruffles and stuff, but that was a particular look, not a general one.) So we have to wear women's clothes. But ultimately these clothes are just things: certain fabrics in certain colours and certain designs, which society has designated as women's clothes.
So let's not do that. Let's de-gender and re-gender. Pretty clothes de-gendered are now just pretty clothes. Pretty clothes re-gendered are now just men's clothes (literally: clothes worn by men). Using this logic (which, I have to say, is not originally mine) we are not cross-dressers, whatever anyone else might think. We are just men wearing clothes that society has arbitrarily designated as female. And as a corollary (rewriting my initial statement): rather than women's clothes being the prime signifiers of femme, it is simply that femme clothes are primarily designated as female.
Okay, I'll confess: I'm not totally convinced by that logic. But I want it to be correct. The sheer subversive audacity of it fills me with glee :)
Axiom: There are no areas of human endeavour (apart from those related to procreation), no facets of human intellect or human personality that are inherently male or female. Society may attempt to designate them as such, but all such designations are false.
Statement: Women's clothes are the prime signifiers of femme.
The axiom I hold to be definitely true. The statement comes with several provisos, not least that its truth is somewhat complicated by the axiom. Because if most aspects of human behaviour are not inherently gendered, why should inanimate objects attached to humans be gendered? Why should the majority of human clothing be designated either as male or female? What in fact are women's clothes?
Recently, I've become quite intrigued by the idea of de-gendering or re-gendering clothing. That is since reading another thread on the mHB forum and the online archives of Graham Holmes, former leading light in the Total Clothing Rights group. (Okay, I have some problems with the apparent assumptions of TCR, in particular as regards women's own clothing rights, but that's a topic for another time.)
When I read Graham's articles I immediately thought "this guy is femme". And I thought the same about Jon-Jon Goulian, the author of a new book: The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt. And I may well be right. Or not. That would be for them to say. But in any case, that's not the question right now. The question is...
What are we (Jon-Jon, Graham and I) all doing? We're wearing women's clothes as men. Why? — and here, rather than reaching for complex, loaded explanations such as "transvestite" or "cross-dresser" (Jon-Jon says specifically he is not a cross-dresser; Graham says he is, but challenges what that means) or even "femme" (my favoured descriptor), let's apply Occam's Razor and take the one that makes the fewest assumptions — Because we want to wear prettier clothes.
Do men have pretty clothes? Not really, no. (Alright, the 1980's New Romantics had ruffles and stuff, but that was a particular look, not a general one.) So we have to wear women's clothes. But ultimately these clothes are just things: certain fabrics in certain colours and certain designs, which society has designated as women's clothes.
So let's not do that. Let's de-gender and re-gender. Pretty clothes de-gendered are now just pretty clothes. Pretty clothes re-gendered are now just men's clothes (literally: clothes worn by men). Using this logic (which, I have to say, is not originally mine) we are not cross-dressers, whatever anyone else might think. We are just men wearing clothes that society has arbitrarily designated as female. And as a corollary (rewriting my initial statement): rather than women's clothes being the prime signifiers of femme, it is simply that femme clothes are primarily designated as female.
Okay, I'll confess: I'm not totally convinced by that logic. But I want it to be correct. The sheer subversive audacity of it fills me with glee :)
Sunday, 29 May 2011
Fuck Yeah, Trans* Femmes!
As an adjunct to my previous post, I've just come across a call for trans femmes (i.e. anyone who is both trans and femme) to post on a new tumblr blog: Fuck Yeah, Trans* Femmes! — a tumblog dedicated to femme expression and/or identity amongst trans* people of all genders.
"Please signal boost," they ask. So:
___________________________________________________
We want you, gorgeous trans* femmes (or trans* people who do femme) to submit!
Trans* people are often marginalized in femme spaces, and femme is often marginalized in trans* spaces, so this is our attempt to “fill the gap” and showcase femme within the trans* communities. Our aim is to be inclusive of nonbinaries and other underrepresented intersectional identities, as well.
We welcome followers of any gender, trans* status, and presentation! But we’re looking specifically to showcase the intersections of trans* identity and femme presentation among our submitters.
___________________________________________________
Original source: Call for Submissions.
"Please signal boost," they ask. So:
___________________________________________________
We want you, gorgeous trans* femmes (or trans* people who do femme) to submit!
Trans* people are often marginalized in femme spaces, and femme is often marginalized in trans* spaces, so this is our attempt to “fill the gap” and showcase femme within the trans* communities. Our aim is to be inclusive of nonbinaries and other underrepresented intersectional identities, as well.
We welcome followers of any gender, trans* status, and presentation! But we’re looking specifically to showcase the intersections of trans* identity and femme presentation among our submitters.
___________________________________________________
Original source: Call for Submissions.
Friday, 20 May 2011
Trans and femme.
So far in this blog I've been hammering home the concept of femme vs. trans: the idea that, for a lot of male TVs, notions of femaleness are (in my opinion) false and that our natures are actually femme (and male). And I'm as sure as can be that this is true for many of us.
But – and it's a big but – I must emphasize that the opposite can also be true: that some TVs are not femme (or at least not just femme) but trans; that notions of femaleness can be correct too. And in this case it might be considered that such natures are obscured by femme: that it is only after someone's femme has been allowed free expression that they can get past the "feminine" aspect, realize there is more to their gender issues, that they are essentially female, and (possibly) that they need to transition.
Perhaps it's that journey – from male to femme to female – which gives rise to the old joke: "What's the difference between a cross-dresser and a transsexual? Two years." (cf Anders, ‘The Lazy Crossdresser’, p5). Obviously that's not always true, any more than my conception of femme (contra trans) is always true, but it's sufficiently true (i.e. sometimes) for the joke to be funny. And there are many other truths as well, and which holds for which person is not for anyone but them to say. In this I think it should be as Patrick Califia once wrote: The best we can do is speak our own truth, make it safe for others to speak theirs, and respect our differences.
While on the subject of trans and femme, I should admit that using quotes from ‘My Husband Betty’ to illustrate my “not woman, but femme” post was somewhat suspect. Because Betty herself is both femme and female (and has since transitioned). I might also add that the author, Helen Boyd, doesn't need any instruction on these matters from me. (It has been, and is, the other way round.) Nor any lessons on femme and feminism either. Here I'd just like to flag her recent interview on Safe Space Radio, in particular the part (from 18:13 to 22:41) with "the shoe store story". I've made a transcript (a nice pun!) of that section (in case the interview gets taken down), but it's much better to go and listen.
But – and it's a big but – I must emphasize that the opposite can also be true: that some TVs are not femme (or at least not just femme) but trans; that notions of femaleness can be correct too. And in this case it might be considered that such natures are obscured by femme: that it is only after someone's femme has been allowed free expression that they can get past the "feminine" aspect, realize there is more to their gender issues, that they are essentially female, and (possibly) that they need to transition.
Perhaps it's that journey – from male to femme to female – which gives rise to the old joke: "What's the difference between a cross-dresser and a transsexual? Two years." (cf Anders, ‘The Lazy Crossdresser’, p5). Obviously that's not always true, any more than my conception of femme (contra trans) is always true, but it's sufficiently true (i.e. sometimes) for the joke to be funny. And there are many other truths as well, and which holds for which person is not for anyone but them to say. In this I think it should be as Patrick Califia once wrote: The best we can do is speak our own truth, make it safe for others to speak theirs, and respect our differences.
While on the subject of trans and femme, I should admit that using quotes from ‘My Husband Betty’ to illustrate my “not woman, but femme” post was somewhat suspect. Because Betty herself is both femme and female (and has since transitioned). I might also add that the author, Helen Boyd, doesn't need any instruction on these matters from me. (It has been, and is, the other way round.) Nor any lessons on femme and feminism either. Here I'd just like to flag her recent interview on Safe Space Radio, in particular the part (from 18:13 to 22:41) with "the shoe store story". I've made a transcript (a nice pun!) of that section (in case the interview gets taken down), but it's much better to go and listen.
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