Meg-John Barker's Blog, page 16

All About Writing

This post is dedicated to Alessandro Pedori. Happy birthday! … I’ve been meaning to write about writing for a while. When I went back through my all my old blog posts over the Winter holiday I discovered that it was something I haven’t said much about here since I started this blog back in 2011. The one post I did find from 2011 was prompted by an email from somebody asking for my writing tips, and so is this one. Thanks so much to Rena for asking for my tips for her person Alex, who is keen to write more.

This is a great time for me to reflect on writing. I wrote the 2011 post after I’d finished writing my first book for a general audience (rather than an academic book or textbook) but a year before it got published. Now I’ve published six of those kinds of books, including a second edition of that first book Rewriting the Rules.

I’m working on two more non-fiction books as well as allowing myself to return to fiction writing: something I hadn’t done for years and have never published. I’ve always had a dream to mash up genre fiction like ghost stories and erotica with self-help and memoir. I’m finding that fiction writing is teaching me a lot about writing style and process that feeds back into my non-fic too.

Having long defined myself as equal parts writer, therapist, activist, and academic. I’m now just going for writer first and foremost, and seeing the other three aspects as things that inform my work as a writer.

Becoming a writer

So what are my top tips for becoming a writer? Before I start with the practical stuff it’s important to say that – as with so many things – privilege of all kinds makes it great deal easier. It’s enormously hard to make a living from writing. Sixteen books in and my yearly income from writing is still in the low thousands, and it would be in the hundreds if it wasn’t for one of those books (Queer) being pretty successful. Remember that the writer gets only a small percentage of published book sales

Personally I’m extremely fortunate to have a paid job – at the Open University – which includes public engagement writing as part of my role and gives me some time for it, as well as having writing (textbooks and websites) as a main focus of the teaching work that I do. If your job doesn’t pay you to write, or if you’re unemployed and dealing with the benefits system, it can be much much harder to find time, energy, and motivation for writing.

The other main block to writing – alongside paying the bills – for most of us is our inner critic. Writing tends to bring up all our old shameful messages and pretty much every time I start a new project I face an internal barrage of ‘who do you think you are?’, ‘you don’t know enough to write this book’, ‘you’re going to get it horribly wrong and offend people’, etc. etc. etc. There’s something extremely vulnerable about setting words down on a page: like it might capture our essence and set it in stone, and then if people respond badly it means that we ourselves are bad.

So what ways have I found to write in spite of everyday commitments and an often very vocal inner critic? Here’s a list but it’s important to remember that different things work for different people. As I said in my previous post, no two writers are identical, and you might well find it helpful to read a few books about different authors’ approaches to get a sense of the variety of writing practices that can be helpful.

‘Write with the door shut, rewrite with the door open’

I got this one from Stephen King’s awesome book On Writing, which I return to regularly. How I understand it is that when I’m writing the first draft of a book I just write it for me. I try and put all my concerns about how it will be received, whether it’s problematic in some way, even whether I’ll be able to publish it, on a high shelf and just write however it comes. If I start to get anxious I remind myself that I will be going back through it with all of those thoughts in mind once I reach the end (probably after a month or two to give me some space from it). I make myself a bullet point list of questions to ask during the rewrite so that I can put them aside while I’m writing. I also remind myself that I’ll be passing it by a bunch of beta readers before it goes out more widely who will help me pick up on any errors or problems.

Knowing that I’ll be rewriting with the door open helps me to fully drop into the writing and allow it to flow, instead of that horrible jolting, slow process it can be if you’re questioning every word as you put it down on the page.

Apply your ass to the seat

I’m pretty sure Stephen King has this one too, as do many writers about writing. It is SOOOO easy to procrastinate writing. It is SOOOO hard to actually start writing, especially a big project which can seem impossibly huge when you’re at the start. When I wrote Rewriting the Rules the person I lived with at the time suggested writing for an hour at the beginning of every day, no matter what. No word counting, no worrying about how good it was, just keeping the hand moving – as Natalie Goldberg puts it – for an hour each day.

After an hour, if it was feeling painful – or if I had other things I had to do that day – then I’d quit. But if it was going well – and I was able to – I could keep going. The first three chapters of that first book were pretty painful and I mostly stopped after an hour. But by chapter 4 I’d got into the groove and, when I was able to, I kept on writing beyond the hour.

The other good thing about morning writing is that you do it while you’re fresh before the day properly kicks in. I would usually do it after taking some time outside with a cup of coffee to prepare myself. However, of course, not everyone feels creative in the morning, and you need to tailor your writing ritual to you daily rhythms. Perhaps for you it’s your lunch break, or the hour after you get home from work, or the hour before bed.

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 Go out and write

For me in those early stages of a project I often find it hard to write at home. I can always find a million other things to do there. It’s often really good to take an hour or two out somewhere. Somehow I find it easier to sink into it that way. Cafes are great if you can afford them. I’ve become an expert in which London cafes will allow you to sit for 2-3 hours on one cup of coffee, as well as on free spaces like libraries and museums where you can go and write.

You can also think about whether you write better longhand or at a keyboard. For me once I’m into a project keyboard is fine, but longhand writing can flow more easily in the early stages. I’ve heard of current writers who’ve written their whole first drafts in journals.

Write when it’s live (if you can)

This advice is a bit of a contradiction to advice about finding your writing rhythm or ritual, but when it’s possible it is great to write when your project feels live to you. It’s so much easier to plunge in at those times when you’ve just had a great idea, or you feel the hunger for it, than it is to force yourself to focus when you’re not in the zone.

You might find that certain things tend to enliven you – like going for a walk and thinking about your writing, or journaling about all of the things you want to write about, or chatting with a fellow writer. Writing when it’s live gives you the experience of just how joyful and thrilling writing can be, which makes it much easier to come back to than if every experience of writing is gruelling and hard.

For me, having a couple of projects on the go at any one time, as well as my blog, means that I can go with the one that feels most live on a particular day. I also find that fiction or memoir style writing can work as a good warm-up for other stuff.

Consider your ideal reader and write for them

Something that has cut through the blocks at the beginning of most writing projects for me has been imagining my ideal reader. When I was writing the Queer book I got totally hung up on what well-known queer theorists might think of it and found it really hard to get started. Then I imagined the people who I actually wanted to benefit from the book: people who thought they might be queer, people who were struggling to get their heads around these complex ideas, people who were really scared of getting it wrong. Shifting into writing for them helped a lot. When Alex Iantaffi and I were writing How to Understand Your Gender, we often thought about the younger versions of ourselves who could really have used a book like that.

Consider collaborating

Speaking of Alex, you do not have to write alone! We have this image of the lone writer in the garrett, but some of my best, and most enjoyable, writing has been done with somebody else. Somehow writing with a colleague cuts through the inner critic, because you know that what they have to say is awesome, and they know that what you have to say is awesome. Also you can worry less about the things that you know you don’t know much about if you’re writing with somebody who brings those areas of experience or expertise that you lack.

If you do collaborate I’d suggest choosing writing partners carefully. It’s a very intimate relationship, and like all of those it will have its challenges. Make sure you chat up front about what your writing process will be and find a way that feels write to both/all of you. Personally I’ve found it vital to prioritise self-care first and foremost and to put everyone’s well-being at a much higher priority than deadlines, or even whether the book gets published at all.

Supporting (and surviving) a writer

Rena also asked me about supporting the writer in your life. Again this probably varies from writer to writer, but I would suggest the following:

As with other aspects of relationships it’s helpful to think about what you can offer, and what you can’t. For example, just because somebody is a writer doesn’t give them permission to treat you badly (and we can get grumpy!) It’s okay to expect us to be present with you when it’s our time together. Us being a writer doesn’t trump the things in your life that are important to you, for example in conversations about how to manage finances, childcare, or domestic chores.
It’s fine whether or not you’re into the kinds of things that we write. Just because you are our person, doesn’t mean you have to love our work. We can find other people for that. Don’t feel that you have to be our ideal reader just because we’re partners or friends, for example.
Give us space! We will need time and space to write in. It’s great if you can encourage us in that, whatever it means for us, whether that’s carving out a space in a shared home where we can go without interruption, or reassuring us that it’s good to go off on writing retreats.
Expect the rollercoaster of emotion. Sometimes we’ll be convinced our current project is a work of staggering genius and will change the world. Sometimes we’ll be convinced that it’s dross and we’re just wasting our time. It’s great if you can sit alongside us in those feels, and everything in between. You don’t have to fix it for us, just trust that as we keep writing we’ll eventually find more of a balanced perspective. If we become insufferable it’s fine to take some space from us or encourage us to get some support from elsewhere!

 

Find out more…

My initial post about writing has a few more tips, as well as links to my articles about more academic writing.

These are my favourite three books about writing:

On Writing – Stephen King
Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg
Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott

 

The post All About Writing appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Non-binary gender and LGBT history

February is LGBT history month which is always a busy time for me, hence few blog posts. I’m taking part in several events, mostly talking about the history of the non-binary gender movement which is a topic that I’ve written about – with Ben Vincent and Jos Twist – in this awesome new edited collection from Christine Burns: Trans Britain.

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The deep history of the non-binary movement is also a topic covered in this book that Christina Richards, Walter Bouman and I edited, Genderqueer and Non-Binary Genders. We really hope that this book will become a go-to volume for therapists, doctors, gender clinicians, and others working with non-binary folks. Feel free to recommend it to your counsellor, GP, or other relevant professional.

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If you’d like to read more about non-binary gender in the context of LGBT history, check out this interview that I did with Steve Topple.

We need to talk about non-binary gender. It could be a game-changer for society

Our society faces many challenges: climate change, the threat of nuclear war, and population growth – to name just three. But does the answer begin with the recognition of an issue that has a history stretching back thousands of years? Something which those in power may prefer wasn’t acknowledged?

A journey through space and time

Non-binary gender (sometimes referred to as ‘genderqueer’) is a term for people who don’t identify as male or female. As the Terrence Higgins Trust explains:

Gender is often referred to as a ‘binary’, meaning two – male and female. The term ‘non-binary’ refers to people who don’t believe that there are just two genders and who exist outside of the gender binary. Non-binary people class themselves as neither exclusively male nor female. They’re under the trans umbrella but may not consider themselves trans.

With February being LGBTQ+ history month, non-binary gender is being featured in the OUTing the Past festival. At its hub at the London School of Economics on Thursday 15 February, a presentation called Non-Binary Gender Across Time and Space is being given, providing the brief – often hidden – history of the UK non-binary movement. And its host Dr Meg-John Barker has spoken to The Canary about how non-binary gender has risen from societal invisibility to begin to become a movement; and what this could mean for our future, as a species. Read more…

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Podcast: Who to talk to about sex, and how

Just a reminder that relationships and sex educator extraordinaire Justin Hancock and I have a podcast over on megjohnandjustin.com. If you enjoy listening to stuff about love, sex and gender instead of – or as well as – reading about it then check it out.

This new year episode is all about how to talk about sex with partners and other people in your lives, as well as navigating discrepancies in sex drive in your relationships. You also get to hear me and Justin singing so it’s clearly not to be missed

New Year, New Zine: Plural Selves

To mark the turning of the year I’ve made a new zine about one of the ideas that I’ve found the most helpful during the challenging times of 2017. This is the notion that our selves are plural rather than singular, and that it’s useful to get in touch with all these different selves, rather than fixing ourselves as one true self.

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Rewriting the Rules: 2nd Edition

I wrote about this idea many years ago in the first edition of Rewriting the Rules. During 2017 I got the chance to write a second edition of this book which will be coming out in Spring 2018. I felt very fortunate to be able to revisit this project which marked a massive turning point for me: the point at which I finally allowed myself to do the thing I’d always wanted to do: be a writer. Since then I’ve written several more self-help style books, zines, and graphic guides. 2018 will (hopefully) be a year when I make further steps towards making writing the core of what I do.

Rewriting Rewriting the Rules (!) was challenging exactly because of this point that we are plural selves. I’d assumed that the second edition would just involve me polishing up what I’d written before and adding a few bits based on what I’ve learnt since I wrote the original. Instead as I edited I realised it felt like more of a collaborative writing process – complete with the tensions and conflicts those can involve. I was writing this book with an older version of myself who was a very different person to the person I am now (even with a different name!) I hope that readers will appreciate what’s come out of that collaboration. I believe it’s a stronger book because my current self is a more intersectional thinker, more open about their own experiences, and – I hope – a better writer. But through the process I had to learn to value and embrace the writer and person I was back then too, because I had to write with them not against them.

Zines

One of the challenges of editing this second edition was that I’ve come across so many helpful ideas in the years since I published Rewriting the Rules which I wanted to add in. But I also didn’t want to spoil the flow of the chapters with too many additions and tangents. I hope I’ve struck the balance as well as I could (there may still be quite a lot of tangents!) One way I handled it was to point readers to some of the zines that I’ve published which expand on things like self-care practices, social mindfulness, or staying with feelings.

However there was one topic that needed a lot more detail which I hadn’t already zined about: Plural Selves. So I promised myself I’d get that zine made before the second edition came out, and here it is. As with all my zines it looks best if you print it out in booklet format (at 48 pages it takes 12 sheets of A4 so it’s the biggest yet!) But you can also read it on your computer or phone, or print it the regular way.

PluralSelvesZine

Plural Selves

In Rewriting the Rules I focus on the evidence that we are plural rather than singular, particularly drawing on the work of my friend and colleague Trevor Butt, to whom the second edition is dedicated. In the zine I concentrate more on explaining the various kinds of plural selves that we have, and how we might go about embracing them and improving communication between them.

This metaphor for understanding ourselves – as many selves – has been one of the most helpful in my own life, and when I’ve shared it with clients. It often makes sense of experiences people have struggled with, and offers a set of practices to help them to get on much friendlier terms with themselves. It seems to be helpful for self-understanding, for making choices, for improving our relationships with other people, and for improving mental health.

The zine is a step forward for me because it’s more of a complete (and lengthy) comic than any of my previous zines, with the same characters telling a story from page to page. It’s also a lot more open about my own experiences than previous zines, given that I’ve got two of my own – most confident – plural selves introducing the whole thing! This makes it feel more vulnerable to share, but also – I hope – more engaging to read. Making this zine felt like another step, for me, towards the kind of writing I want to be doing, which is more personal, and also brings in more drawings (which several readers who fed back on Rewriting the Rules told me they enjoy).

I hope that you find these ideas as useful as I have, and wish you all the best for 2018 whatever it may bring for you, and for all of us.

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Hell is other people?

I’ve been looking through old blog posts and bringing them together in one place over the holiday season. Here’s one I wrote back in 2011 that’s relevant to something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the holidays, especially after watching The Good Place on netflix: Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit.

Reading this play is actually a very accessible introduction to the ideas of the French existentialists, and particularly resonant in these days of reality TV shows which place contestants in a very similar situation to the one in which his characters find themselves.

No Exit

In No Exit, three characters (Garcin, Inez and Estelle) are, one-by-one, escorted into a drawing room and left there together, locked in. We soon discover that all have recently died and that this room is the hell to which they have been condemned for eternity. The characters initially respond in surprise that the room is nothing like the fiery pit of torture and torment which they had always imagined hell to be. However, Inez quickly realises that the idea must be that ‘each of us will act as torturer of the other two’. Whilst Estelle and Garcin try to deny that they would torment the others, and even the validity of them being in hell (perhaps it is all a mistake), Inez is more aware of their fate and resigned to her rightful damnation.

Over the course of the play, we discover that all three characters have done things that they regard as bad and/or cowardly: Inez had an affair with her cousin’s partner and he ended up killing himself, which led to his partner killing both herself and Inez, and she admits that she needs to make others suffer. Estelle became pregnant as a result of an affair and killed her daughter despite her lover begging her not to. Garcin tried to run away rather than being sent to jail as a conscientious objector, and beat and cheated on his wife. They succeed in becoming each others’ tormentors mostly by denying each other what they seek which they believed would alleviate their suffering: Estelle wants Garcin to want and desire her and Garcin wants somebody to see him as a hero and not a coward. Eventually Garcin realises that there will never be any escape from being looked upon by Inez and Estelle, and that they will never see him as he wants to be seen. This is when he delivers the famous line ‘hell is – other people!’.

Reading No Exit

Some people have simply read No Exit at face value: that it is about the kind of hell that might await these particularly (bad) people. However Sartre meant it to be a much wider comment on the human condition: other people are always hell for each other. There is some debate between Garcin, Inez and Estelle over whether they have been chosen as the ideal tormentors for one another, or whether they were simply allocated at random. It seems likely that it was the latter: the point being that any human beings thrown together would inevitably end up being hell for each other in some way.

This idea relates to Sartre’s wider philosophy: the notion that as soon as we are in the (real or even imagined) presence of another person, we begin to see ourselves through their eyes and this is the end of our freedom. In his early work Sartre only sees two ways that we can deal with this situation: either we can try to make ourselves something for the other person, or we can try to turn them into something for us. Thus in No Exit we see Estelle trying to turn herself into a desirable object for Garcin, and Garcin trying to get Inez to rescue him from his fear that he is a coward. The Look of other people has this incredible power. If only Inez (the truth-sayer) could see Garcin as not cowardly then that would mean that he is not.

However, Sartre says that such strategies are doomed to failure. Our freedom will always bubble up and we will resent trying to be what others want us to be, or we will grow weary of another person who has turned themselves into an object for us, because they will no longer have the freedom that we were originally attracted to. It is also possible to bring this existential reading together with a more psychodynamic one in the form of the transactional analysis drama triangle whereby there is always a victim, a perpetrator and a rescuer, but these roles keep switching: We see such switches throughout No Exit as freedom ensures that no role remains static for long.

There are also strong echoes of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophies in No Exit (unsurprisingly given the close relationship between her and Sartre). There are reverberations of The Second Sex in Inez’s berating of Estelle for thinking that being a desirable object for a man is something to base her life (and even afterlife) around. And it is rather interesting for those of us who have reflected on the gendered treatment of Sartre and de Beauvoir’s work that Inez sees the truth of the situation from the start, whilst Garcin (who was oblivious) is the one who is given the show-stopping line (which just summarises what Inez has been saying all along).

Is hell other people?

This is the big question that the play raises. Are other people necessarily hell for each other? Is there another way? Garcin tries, in the play, to disengage from the others, thinking that if they all just sat there in silence it might be okay. But the futility of this demonstrates what existentialists know – that we are inevitably in-relation with others and can never truly escape their influence (even if we retreat or rebel we are doing it in relation to them).

But might there be another way of being-with-others? I’m reminded of the Jewish parable of the long spoons, where hell is a place with a magnificent feast but everyone has spoons so long that they are unable to feed themselves and they starve. Heaven is exactly the same, but people are using the spoons to feed each other. Might the heaven version of No Exit consist of the exact same three people in the exact same room, but they have found a way to feed each other?

This idea sounds something like the form of mutual, or reciprocal, relating that de Beauvoir proposes in her work (notably her Ethics of Ambiguity), which also echoes in Merleau-Ponty’s theories of intersubjectivity, and which Sartre was perhaps moving towards in his later, more Marxist influenced, writings. De Beauvoir argues that it is in all of our interests to recognise the freedom of others, not only because this is the reality of the situation, but because we need others to be free in order to trust their validations of us and to aid us in our own projects.

It seems like it is necessary for Inez, Estelle and Garcin to recognise, themselves, that their cowardice or cruelty was there, but also that it was not all that they were, and was not fixed and unchangeable. But perhaps they do require the Look of others to affirm that plurality and flexibility in themselves (they cannot use the long spoons to feed themselves). Do we inevitably regard others as objects for ourselves, or can we aspire to seeing others – and therefore ourselves – as unique, complex, changing, human beings? In fleeting moments of connection or mutuality can we experience a flash of heaven?

Find out more:

You can read No Exit here, and there are some fascinating clips and music videos based on the play if you search You Tube for No Exit.

There is a link to the drama triangle here, which comes across quite clearly in this play and represents another more psychodynamic reading.

For more on the flip side of this, I enjoyed rediscovering this old blog post: Only connect.

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2017 Review: The Transgender Moral Panic

Today there’s a piece by me on the trans moral panic of 2017 in The Conversation . You can read that article here . I’ve also included a longer version of the same argument, with more detail and links, below…

Three years ago 2014 was hailed ‘the transgender tipping point’. The American Psychiatric Association had just changed their category of ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ to ‘Gender Dysphoria’ removing much of the stigma of mental illness which had been attached to being trans. Trans actors finally played trans characters in popular shows like Transparent and Orange is the New Black, moving away from old tragic/evil stereotypes. Laverne Cox made the cover of Time Magazine and Janet Mock’s memoir Redefining Realness became a New York Times bestseller. The first trans pride march in Europe took place. Two major non-binary websites appeared, recognising the many trans people who don’t experience themselves as men or women. The Facebook ‘gender revolution’ offered over fifty possible gender identity categories, as well as a gender neutral ‘they’ pronoun option. Trans was becoming more visible and better understood.

If 2014 was the year of the transgender tipping point, then 2017 was surely the year of the transgender moral panic. Earlier this year each month brought a new story: we had two BBC documentaries, Trump’s attempted ban on trans people in the military, moves towards gender neutral school uniforms, bathroom bills in the US, Piers Morgan’s repeated dismissal of non-binary gender, and many more. Trans communities had only just dealt with the impact of one report when the next one hit.

However the last few months of the year made the rest of 2017 feel relatively spacious. There were trans-related headlines virtually every day, and even several days when one paper published two or three separate articles on the topic. The reports also became increasingly negative.

One reason for this media onslaught is the coming revision of the Gender Recognition Act. Currently trans people who want to be legally recognised in their gender have to pay to submit paperwork – including a medical diagnosis – to a committee who make that decision. The proposed changes – in line with several other countries – would allow people to self-determine their gender, de-medicalising the process, and hopefully making it possible for non-binary people as well as for men and women.

As a trans person myself I’ve noticed the impact of this tsunami of negative press on my own mental health, so I’m deeply concerned about the toll it’s taken on younger trans folk who already have alarmingly high levels of distress and suicidal thoughts. This moral panic will likely bolster existing high levels of trans-related bullying, which eight out of ten of young trans people experience, with one in ten receiving death threats. I also fear a background of heightened cultural transphobia as article after article across broadsheets and tabloids alike give the sense that there are sensible reasons to be concerned about trans people.

Is this a moral panic?

There are many reasons to label this current wave of trans-negative media a moral panic: a process where social concern is aroused over an issue by mass media and others. These include:

The scattergun nature of the content. There’s no one coherent narrative here which could be sensibly discussed, but rather multiple concerns which become unhelpfully intertwined, such as the treatment of trans and gender-questioning kids, trans people as perpetrators – rather than victims – of violence, the changing nature of gendered language, access to rape and domestic violence services, and whether boys should be allowed to wear clothing currently associated with girls. When you trace back the history of the stories, several turn out to be years old rather than current ‘news’, or based on wilful misinterpretation of what somebody has said.
The contradictory nature of the concerns. Trans people are currently being blamed both for dismantling the current gender system and for reinforcing it. Trans-related media calls for both the relaxing and tightening of gender roles for children. Trans women’s status as women is questioned due to their biology in some pieces and their socialisation in others.
The misinformation within the reporting. One of the most concerning features of the media onslaught is the staggering lack of fact-checking that’s going on. For example, many pundits – who should know better – expressed anxiety around young people being given hormones and surgeries when even a cursory online search would inform them this never happens on the NHS. The most adolescents are given are blockers to pause puberty until they reach the age of consent, and even this is relatively rare and only done after full consideration by a multidisciplinary team. Similarly the ludicrously unsubstantiated claim that a large proportion of convicted sex offenders are trans was gleefully reported with zero critical evaluation, as are amplified statistics about people regretting surgeries.
The similarity of the current panic to past panics. Several people have pointed out how similar this wave of reporting is to the media treatment of gay men back in the 1980s during the AIDS epidemic and the introduction of Section 28 – which banned teaching about sexual diversity in schools. Gay men then, like trans people now, were branded as paedophiles, and any mention of homosexuality was regarded as having the potential to turn children gay, just as there is now a concern that young people will be ‘turned trans’ by ‘social contagion’ if they learn about gender diversity.
The lack of positive news stories or inclusion of trans experts . There are so many positive trans-related stories we could be hearing about, and so many wise, knowledgeable, and engaging trans experts we could be hearing from, so why this huge skew to the negative and the focus on celebrities with no expertise or experience around trans issues?

Why the moral panic?

I suspect, as with anything, there are multiple complex reasons behind this moral panic. Certainly the current uncomfortable alliance between some men’s rights activists, some feminists, some religious spokespeople, and various left and right wing campaigners and journalists, suggests a plethora of motivations which could usefully be explored. For now I’ll focus on one reason which may underlie much of what’s going on.

This reason occurred to me when comparing reporting around trans and intersex issues. We hear a huge amount about the former and relatively little about the latter, despite the similar numbers of people in each group. If a major concern about trans is really that children might be subject to non-consensual irreversible surgeries, then why are the same commentators not making serious noise about the continued medical treatment of intersex children? Many intersex people are operated on as babies in ways that are medically unnecessary and frequently lead to adverse effects such as the impairment of sexual sensation in later life, not to mention the potential impact of such early trauma which is often kept a secret from the person concerned.

One reason that springs to my mind for the silence around intersex surgeries, and the deafening roar around trans surgeries, is that the concern is not about physical interventions, nor is it about irreversibility, nor is it about capacity to consent. It’s about normativity. Genital surgeries take intersex babies closer to our current gender norm of two and only two genders which remain fixed throughout life, whereas surgeries on trans people potentially take them away from it.

One key outcome of the moral panic is that it helpfully distracts our attention from this current gender system which we’re all implicated in, and which is bad for everybody whether trans or cisgender, whether intersex or not, and whether woman, man, or non-binary.

We don’t need to look far for evidence of this: it’s been all around us all year as well. The BBC documentary No More Boys and Girls demonstrated the distressing impact of rigid binary gender roles on kids. Viewers saw how seven-year-old girls virtually all aspired to grow up to be nothing but ‘pretty’. Boys lacked the capacity to express – or even find words for – emotions other than anger. All the kids agreed that boys were obviously ‘better’ than girls. When I tweeted about this show, many respondents accused it of ‘social engineering’ or ‘child abuse’ in endeavouring to shift such gender stereotypes. But how are those phrases any less applicable to the current situation of rigidly enforced gender roles?

Earlier this year Robert Webb’s memoir How Not to be a Boy helpfully drew attention to the troubling impact of norms of masculinity on the wellbeing of boys and men, a group with a frighteningly high suicide rate. The current gender system can also be implicated in continued pay inequalities between men and women. The acceptance of toxic gender roles and a ‘boys will be boys’ mentality are a huge part of the cultural normalising of sexual harassment and violence which the recent #metoo campaign so helpfully highlighted.

Shifting the conversation

The conversation I believe we need to be having about gender is one which encourages everyone – young people included – to critically engage with current cultural stereotypes and media representations. This involves opening up our understanding of gender diversity rather than closing it down.

I’m in agreement with those who argue against the replacement of one rigid gender system with another which is equally rigid: for example one in which we assume that any kid who doesn’t conform to gender stereotypes must be a trans man or woman and must therefore follow one of only two very specific pathways of hormones and surgeries. However it cannot be emphasised enough that this is not what any gender-affirmative practitioners, activists, or educators I’m aware of are trying to do. Rather we’re endeavouring to open up understandings so that everybody can find more comfortable, consensual ways to be in relation to gender.

We want girls and boys to be free to express their genders however best fits them, without bullying or coercion, and for that to be able change over time – as it inevitably does for all of us. We want the third or so of people who experience themselves as to some extent between or beyond the gender binary to be able to identify and express that in whatever way feels right. And we want those people – trans and cisgender – for whom some form of social or physical gender-related change will vastly improve their physical and/or mental health to be able to follow whichever pathway suits them in well-informed, well-supported, and consensual ways.

Let’s make 2018 a year when, instead of attacking trans and non-binary people, we listen to what they have to teach us: about the way gender works in our culture; about the diversity of possible identities, expressions and experiences; and about how shifting rigid social scripts and policies can improve things for everybody. Let’s make it a year when we return to celebrating trans voices – as we began to do in 2014 – instead of dismissing them: I’ve listed just some of the amazing people, groups, and projects we could be celebrating and learning from in below.

All the ideas in this article are explored, in more depth, in my book with Alex Iantaffi: How to Understand Your Gender (a book aimed at everybody). If you’re a practitioner of any kind, you might find my Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversity BACP resource helpful as an overview of how gender works, and how to work with gender (and other) diverse people: GSRD resource

Find out more…

For guidance and support about covering trans in the media, check out:

Trans Media Watch
All About Trans

 

Jessica Kingsley have been publishing a range of helpful and important books on gender diversity, and continue to do so. Check these out here.

 

There have been many other excellent publications, performances, and events on this topic in the last year or so. Here are just a few of my favourites.

Trans Like Me – CN Lester
Before (I) You Step Outside. (Love) (Me) – Travis Alabanza
Trans Britain – Christine Burns edited collection
Brown, trans, queer, Muslim and proud – Sabah Choudrey
Trans: A Memoir – Juliet Jacques
Man Alive – Thomas Page McBee
Transpose (ongoing event)
Trans Pride
My Genderation films
I am They film – Fox Fisher and Owl

 

For more information check out these websites:

Gendered Intelligence
Gender construction kit
Tranz wiki
Beyond the Binary
Non-Binary Inclusion Project

 

If you want to improve things for trans people in your workplace, then this is an excellent book:

Transgender Employees in the Workplace – Jennie Kermode

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Rewriting the Rules of the Festive Season

Next year the second edition of my book Rewriting the Rules is coming out. As I was making the edits for the new (hopefully improved) version, I thought that the approach I took to relationships in the book might be useful to apply to lots of other things too, for example to certain times of year, or places, or feelings.

In the book, for each aspect of relationships I explore, I invite readers to consider the following questions:

What are the rules about this thing which are often taken-for-granted (by our wider culture, our communities, the people in our lives, and ourselves)?
Why might it be useful to question those rules?
What might we replace them with if they weren’t working so well for us?
What would it be like to embrace uncertainty and to approach this thing without any rules?

 

Given that the festive season is nearly upon us, and it’s a tough time of year for many people, let’s apply this approach to that. I’ll work through the questions with some of the common social rules that I’m aware of in relation to the festive season, but you might want to consider different rules that apply more to your situation.

It’s important to be mindful that we all have different experiences of this season based on, for example, our family situation, our faith (if we have one), our cultural background, our generation and age, our mobility and health, past experiences over this period and more. That’s why the intersectional approach (which I’ve tried to take in the new edition of Rewriting the Rules) is a vital starting point.

What are the rules?

The three common cultural rules that sprung to my mind when I thought about the festive season were:

You must see your family at this time of year, probably in a very specific way such as staying all together in one place for a period of time, or zooming around making sure you see everyone.
You have to show your love for each other through exchanging expensive gifts which prove how much you really know this person and their tastes.
The festive season is ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ so you must be happy and have a merry time (and definitely not be a Scrooge!).

Why question the rules?

So why might it be useful to question those rules?

In relation to family many, if not most, of us have complicated relationships with our families, perhaps being estranged or distant from some or all of them. Some people find that they always conflict with their family in unhelpful ways when they spend an extended period together. Some enjoy spending time with family but just find the attempt to pack all of them in to the same short space of time very stressful, for example if they feel they have to see the families of themselves and their partner or partners, or all of their extended family who live in different places. This is compounded for people who have little vacation time and really need to spend what little they have relaxing.
Turning to expensive gifts, this recent article by George Monbiot is a good summary of the toll that – often unwanted novelty – presents can take on the planet and on the human lives of those involved in their production. Also many of us simply cannot afford expensive gifts due to the impact of the extended period of austerity we’ve been living through. And, even if we can, the pressure to find the ‘perfect’ gift to communicate our love can be intense and stressful.
Finally, on feeling happy, many of us actually have good reasons to find the festive period emotionally tough, due to the aforementioned stressors and more. The time away from work – and the turn of the year – can get us reflecting on our careers in ways that are challenging, and time with our nearest and dearest can similarly prompt us to look closely on our relationships. Many people have painful anniversaries at this time of year – of bereavements and break-ups for example – and find that the festive rituals, sights, sounds, etc. can trigger distressing or traumatic memories.

What alternative rules are possible?

Given all these reasons to question the cultural rules of the festive season, what might we put in their place if we want to make some changes?

We might get more intentional about who we see and how we see them over this period. For example, many people have found ways to shift family rules, such as deciding to see different family members on alternating years; having different days as their ‘Xmas day’, ‘New Year’s Eve’, etc. with different close people or groups; going away alone for the holidays – or doing charity work or a retreat at this time – in order to disrupt an ingrained family habit; or staying nearby but not actually with family so they can dip in and out of the festive fun depending on the parts which work for them.
We could agree some limits on gift-giving with the people in our life. For example some people decide to just exchange small tokens, or to do ‘Secret Santa’ where you only have to get something for one person in a group or family. You can share wishlists online so that people know what you actually want, or give money to a person’s favourite charity instead of a gift. You might also consider making handmade gifts instead of buying them, or giving people tokens for an experiences they can have with you in future (e.g. tokens for a day out together, cooking them a meal, or giving them a footrub). You could decide to only ever give ‘I saw this and thought of you’ type gifts, rather than exchanging gifts at a particular time of year.
In relation to feelings, all of that pressure to have a happy, merry, wonderful time paradoxically means that we’re less likely to experience the festive season in that way. You’ve probably experienced this yourself: when you put a lot of pressure on a specific day or period to be a positive experience it often feels less so because you can’t be present to what’s happening, and any minor mishap can feel like a crisis. Trying to make it a positive experience for absolutely everyone, and taking responsibility for other people having a ‘wonderful time’, turns up the pressure even more, perhaps meaning that you end up exhausted, or exploding, or missing out on the experience. One alternative to this is to think about all of the feelings that the festive period brings up for you, and to consider what your self-care needs are in relation to these. Do you need to factor in some time alone? What kinds of support might be helpful for you? What might you let other people know about things that you find challenging at this time of year?

Embracing uncertainty

Most of the examples I just gave were about shifting the existing rules, or replacing them with other rules, but still with a sense that we need some rules around the festive period, and perhaps it’s not really okay to step away from those taken-for-granted rules entirely. I want to say here that it absolutely is fine to decide not to see family at all, or not to exchange any gifts, or to refuse to put a happy face on it, if those things don’t work for you. What might embracing uncertainty around the festive period look like, if we stepped away from rules entirely?

In relation to family, you could reflect on Armistead Maupin’s concept of logical family. For many people – particularly those in LGBTQ+ communities – biological family are not our closest people. It really is okay to think about who – if anyone – we want to share this time with. Could you then open up an open, consensual conversation with your nearest and dearest about what is important for each of you around this period, and any limits around what you have the capacity for, or want to offer? Harriet Lerner writes very helpfully about how to do this kind of mutual, consensual communication if you find it hard.
In the book that Jacqui Gabb and I wrote together, The Secrets of Enduring Love, we drew on Gary Chapman’s concept of love languages. This is the idea that people like to express love, and have it expressed to them, in different ways. Giving and receiving gifts is only one of those ways. Again you could open up a conversation with nearest and dearest about how you each enjoy expressing love and having it expressed, and what your limits are around this. You could figure out between you what will work best for all concerned – whether or not it is linked to the festive period. For example, it might be be about writing a list of all the things you’re grateful to somebody for, or agreeing to share a certain period of time together, or doing something particular with them.
Finally, what about making the festive period a time during which all of your feelings are welcome, rather than only the ones our culture labels ‘positive’. Maybe you could share this idea with other people in your life too. You could even make time or rituals around allowing grief, regret, fear, and frustration, for example, alongside the more conventional festive feelings of peace, hope, love, merriment, etc. You could make the movie Inside Out  one of your festive favourites because it’s such a great explanation of why this is important. My zine Staying with Feelings , might be helpful if this sounds like a useful approach to you. You’re absolutely allowed to embrace the ‘bah humbug’ as well as the ‘winter wonderland’.

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New Resource on Gender, Sexual & Relationship Diversity (GSRD) and Mental Health

Today is Trans Day of Remembrance (#TDOR), a sad day indeed which remembers all the lives lost as a result of transgender-based hate or prejudice.

This year the day is particularly poignant because it follows a month in which there has been a transphobic onslaught the like of which we’ve never seen before in the British media. Each day brings with it another attack against trans people and the rights which we’ve struggled so hard to achieve. Much of what is reported is misinformation, and the voices of trans experts – of whom there are many – are rarely included.

The media onslaught contributes to a cultural moral panic which fuels both the kinds of transphobic violence which mean we have to have a trans day of remembrance, and the poor levels of mental health among trans people who have to survive and go about their everyday lives against this background noise.

Throughout this period, like many, I’ve struggled to know what I can possibly say that might be helpful. I’ve felt scared to write into the current cultural situation for fear of fuelling the fire in some way. I’ve worried that any kind of response risks lending legitimacy to the notion that this is any kind of reasonable ‘debate’.

Fortunately many excellent activists have found a voice, and I’d strongly advise anybody who is struggling to make sense of the media onslaught to check out these articles by Ruth Hunt, by Fox & Owl, and by Paris Lees, as well as reading these articles by Julia Serano which provide a clear explanation of the evidence around all of the areas which the moral panic focuses on, and this book by CN Lester which deals with trans panics in the media in detail in a very engaging and accessible way.

Thankfully today a resource which I wrote over the summer has been released which I hope will be a positive contribution in relation to trans people and mental health. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) asked me to write a good practice resource for counsellors, therapists, and potentially other practitioners about working with clients across Gender, Sexual & Relationship Diversity (GSRD).

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Given the distressing high levels of mental health struggles and suicide attempts among trans people, and the shocking accounts trans clients often give of previous experiences of seeking support from practitioners who were not trans-aware, I sincerely hope that this resource will be helpful. I hope it will be useful both for practitioners who want to learn more about GSRD in general, and working with marginalised groups in particular, and also for clients to feel empowered about the kind of practice they should expect when seeking therapeutic support.

The publication of this resource comes shortly after the publication of the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy 2 (MOU2): A document signed by all the major UK therapeutic and psychological organisations against the practice of ‘conversion therapy’. Conversion therapy is any approach which assumes ‘that any sexual orientation or gender identity is inherently preferable to any other, and which attempts to bring about a change of sexual orientation or gender identity, or seeks to suppress an individual’s expression of sexual orientation or gender identity on that basis.’ This brings the treatment of trans people in mental healthcare in line with that of lesbian, gay and bisexual people.

I sincerely hope that the GSRD resource will work alongside the MOU2 to ensure better practice across GSRD in future, as well as a more thorough and intersectional understanding of GSRD by all practitioners. I also hope that practitioners will join activists in speaking against this current media onslaught which puts their trans and gender-diverse clients at so much greater risk.

For myself I’ll be following up my self-help book – with Alex Iantaffi – on understanding gender from this year with a further couple of books on the topic of gender in the coming years, in the hope of reaching different audiences with resources that can help them to to develop a better understanding of gender, and give them more tools for navigating media onslaughts like this one.

Find out more:

BACP GSRD resource
MOU2
How to Understand Your Gender

 

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Polyamory and Wonder Women

Many thanks to Anna Smith for including me in this fab Guardian article about the awesome new movie Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.

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Check out the article if you want to read more about polyamory, how it’s been depicted in cinema, and why this most recent representation is one of the best. Here’s my original interview with Anna so you can read more of my own thoughts…

How would you define polyamory, briefly?

Literally translated it means ‘many loves’ and it’s the idea that it’s possible – and often positive – to have more than one partner-style relationship at the same time. There are lots of different forms of polyamory, so it’s worth seeing that as a broad umbrella term for lots of different kinds of open, or consensual, non-monogamy.

What did you think of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women?

I loved it. I thought it was a wonderful combination of being moving, thought-provoking, and really funny in places. I cried quite a lot all the way through it, so I’d suggest people take a hanky! It was also wonderful to see such a positive depiction of polyamory, and to know it is based on a real life story. Certainly the things the characters went through will be very familiar to polyamorous viewers.

How rare is it to see positive depictions of polyamory in the media? 

It’s very rare sadly. In fact if you think about it, very often the media do the exact opposite of putting polyamory across as a viable option. A person being in love with two people at once is a staple of much drama from romcoms and soap operas to advice columns and tabloid news headlines. Almost always the outcome is that they are forced to choose one person and to let go of the other. This reinforces the idea that the only normal, natural, or good way to have relationships is lifelong monogamy, which is a real shame because actually there are many different ways of doing relationships.

How do you feel polyamory is usually depicted in films?

In the media non-monogamy of any kind is generally depicted pretty poorly if it is portrayed at all – as something dangerous, weird, or doomed to failure. The most common depiction is of secret monogamy, or infidelity, which people are punished for – in films like Fatal Attraction or Unfaithful. Sometimes open relationships are represented but they end in tragedy or difficulty, like in The Ice Storm or Vicky Cristina Barcelona. There are a few more positive depictions of open non-monogamy in films like Shortbus, Kinsey, Summer Lovers, or – kindof – Her. Big Love and You, Me, Her are TV Shows that have explored these themes more positively – although in relation to fairly limited forms of polyamory.

How have attitudes changed over the decades (if at all)?

Definitely they are changing slowly. When I started studying this area fifteen years ago or so virtually all the reporting around polyamory was sensationalist and negative, saying it could never work, or it was ‘taking all the fun out of affairs’, or was bad for kids of polyamorous parents, for example. Now we have a wealth of research on just how common polyamory is (about 5% of people in the US are openly non-monogamous, for example), about the diversity of ways of doing relationships that are available, and about how positive polyamorous families can be for children. The media has latched on to some of this, like Elizabeth Sheff’s column in Psychology Today, Esther Perel’s popular TED talks and books, or Dan Savage’s advice about monogamous, non-monogamous, and monogamish relationships. I find, nowadays, that my self-help writing about diverse relationship styles is reported much more positively than it used to be, for example open non-monogamy is often presented as a more consensual option than secret infidelity.

Do you think film has the influence to change perceptions of polyamory?

I hope so. Watching Professor Marston and the Wonder Women I found myself thinking, ‘how could anybody watching this fail to understand that loving two people at once is completely possible and can be extremely positive for all concerned?’ The thing about fiction is that it encourages empathy with the characters, and so hopefully can reach people’s hearts, while more evidence-based arguments can reach their minds. However I also found the film very sad because many of the battles they fought are still being fought today. The internalised shame that one of the characters feels is very familiar to therapists like me who work with polyamorous people. The accusations that they were damaging their kids is also still sadly common. And, of course, there is still no legal recognition of polyamorous relationships – indeed during the same-sex marriage campaigns both sides argued against extending marriage rights to more than two people. We’ve still got a long way to go.

Any other thoughts?

It’s important to say that depicting polyamory is not about saying it’s superior to monogamy, just that there are many different relationship styles, and that different things work for different people. It would be great if we could embrace relationship diversity instead of trying to force people into a one-size-fits-all model.

 

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How to Understand Your Gender – US book launch

Alex Iantaffi and I got to launch our book for the second time together this week. The first launch took place when he was visiting the UK in September, and this launch took place during my trip to Minneapolis, where Alex lives.

This launch happened at the East Side Freedom Library in the twin cities which has a mission to inspire solidarity, advocate for justice, and work toward equity for all. So it was a very appropriate place for us to launch our book. Friends and colleagues also donated sparkling cider and cupcakes frosted in the colours of our book cover!

In this Facebook Live video of the launch we talk about why we decided to write this book, our process for writing it, the parts we are most excited about, and the structure and content of the book. We also read out the section on how our various intersections affect our experience of gender, and take some questions from the audience.

One of the largest and sweetest dogs I have ever met also makes a guest appearance