Julia Serano's Blog, page 12

Happy Bi Visibility Day!

Given that today is the annual Bi Visibility Day, I figured I would mention that I am indeed bisexual. yay for me!

Also, I thought I'd mention that my recent book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive has a couple chapters about bisexual-umbrella activism, and about my coming out and my experiences as someone who is bisexual. One of these chapters, Bisexuality and Binaries Revisited, can be read (for free!) at the link. Enjoy!

consider bringing Julia Serano out to your campus!

So a new academic year has begun, and as always, I am looking forward to having the opportunity to speak/perform at various colleges & universities this year!

If you are affiliated with a college - especially if you belong to a trans*, LGBTQIA+, women's, and/or feminist-related organization - please consider bringing me out to your campus. And even if you aren't associated with a college yourself, feel free to forward this onto people that you know who may be students or staff elsewhere.

For those interested parties, I have a recently updated booking webpage containing pertinent information, including short descriptions of some of my most frequently requested talks.

a PDF version of this booking info can be downloaded at this link: http://www.juliaserano.com/av/bookingJulia.pdf

Best wishes, -julia

Excluded excerpt of the day: What makes femininity “femme”?

My most recent book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive came out a year ago this month! To celebrate this fact, throughout this month I will post a series of excerpts and essays related to the book.
So today’s excerpt comes from the Excluded chapter “Reclaiming Femininity.” This chapter of the book started out as my keynote talk for the Femme 2008 Conference. And this final passage of the piece is meant to challenge certain notions about “femme” that sometimes proliferate within queer circles.If there is one thing that all of us femmes have in common, it is that we all have had to learn to embrace our own feminine expression while simultaneously rejecting other people’s expectations of us. What makes femininity “femme” is not the fact that it is queer, or transgressive, or ironic, or performative, or the complement of butch. No. What makes our femininity “femme” is the fact that we do it for ourselves. It is for that reason that it is so empowering. And that is what makes us so powerful.As femmes, we can do one of two things with our power: We can celebrate it in secret within our own insular queer communities, pat ourselves on the back for being so much smarter and more subversive than our straight feminine sisters. Or we can share that power with them. We can teach them that there is more than one way to be feminine, and that no style or expression of femininity is necessarily any better than anyone else’s. We can teach them that the only thing fucked up about femininity is the dismissive connotations that other people project onto it. But in order to that, we have to give up the self-comfort of believing that our rendition of femme is more righteous, or more cool, or more subversive than anyone else’s.I don’t think that my femme expression, or anyone else’s femme expressions, are in and of themselves subversive. But I do believe that the ideas that femmes have been forwarding for decades—about reclaiming femininity, about each person taking the parts of femininity that resonate with them and leaving behind the rest, about being femme for ourselves rather than for other people, about the ways in which feminine expression can be tough and active and bad-ass and so on—these ideas are powerful and transformative.I think that it’s great to celebrate femme within our own queer communities, but we shouldn’t merely stop there. We need to share with the rest of the world the idea of self-determined and self-empowered feminine expression, and the idea that feminine expression is just as legitimate and powerful as masculine expression. The idea that femininity is inferior and subservient to masculinity intersects with all forms of oppression, and is (I feel) the single most overlooked issue in feminism. We need to change that, not only for those of us who are queer femmes, but for our straight cis sisters who have been disempowered by society’s unrealistic feminine ideals, for our gender-variant and gender-non-conforming siblings who face disdain for defying feminine expectations and/or who are victims of trans-misogyny, and also for our straight cis brothers, who’ve been socialized to avoid femininity like the plague, and whose misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and so on, are driven primarily by their fear of being seen as feminine. While I don’t think that my femme expression is subversive, I do believe that we together as femmes have the power to truly change the world.More excerpts to come! And you can find out more about the book (including reviews, interviews, and more excerpts) at my Excluded webpage.
(note: this piece originally appeared in Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies, ed. Anne Enke, Temple University Press, 2012).

Excluded excerpt of the day: Proud to be a trans woman

So my most recent book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive came out a year ago this month! To celebrate this fact, throughout this month I will post a series of excerpts and essays related to the book.
So today’s excerpt comes from the first full chapter in the book, called “On the Outside Looking In.” It is about my experience at Camp Trans in 2003, back during a time when most queer/trans spaces (including that space) tended to be dominated by trans male/masculine folks and cis queer women (this is still sometimes true today, albeit less so than it used to be). The excerpt is from the very end of the piece, and takes place at the end of an emotional and often tumultuous week (for me personally, at least), and immediately after a Camp Trans performance event in which I performed my spoken word piece Cocky.
And after releasing all of this pent-up tension and frustration, I had one of those rare moments of clarity. It happened just after my performance, when one of my new friends, Lauren, came over to give me a hug. She said, “Your piece made me proud to be a trans woman.” And her words were so moving because I had never heard them spoken before. “Proud to be a trans woman.” And as I looked around the camp at all of the female-assigned queer women and folks on the FTM spectrum, I realized that in some ways I am very different from them—not because of my biology or socialization, but because of the direction of my transition and the perspective it has given me.
I am a transsexual in a dyke community where most women have not had to fight for their right to be recognized as female—it is merely something they’ve taken for granted. And I am a woman in a segment of the trans community dominated by folks on the FTM spectrum who have never experienced the special social stigma that is reserved for feminine transgender expression and for those who transition to female. My experiences as a trans woman have given me a valid and unique understanding of what it means to be both female and feminine—a perspective that many women here at Michigan seem unable or unwilling to comprehend.
At Camp Trans, I learned to be proud that I am a trans woman. And when I describe myself with the word “trans,” it does not necessarily signify that I transgress the gender binary, but that I straddle two identities—transsexual and woman—that others insist are in opposition to each other. And I will continue to work for trans woman–inclusion at Michigan, because this is my dyke community too. And I know that it will not be easy, and plenty of people will try to make me feel like an alien in my own community. But I will take on their prejudices with my own unique perspective because sometimes you see things more clearly when you’ve been made to feel like you are on the outside looking in.
(note: this chapter was originally written to be a spoken word piece, and video excerpts of my performance of it in 2005 (which includes the above passage) can be found here) 
More excerpts to come! And you can find out more about the book (including reviews, interviews, and more excerpts) at my Excluded webpage.

Excluded excerpt of the day: New Ways of Speaking

So my most recent book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive came out a year ago this month! To celebrate this fact, throughout this month I will post a series of excerpts and essays related to the book.
I figured that it would be best to begin with an excerpt (from Chapter 12) that explains what drove me to write the book:
As countless writers and activists have chronicled, and as my own essays in the previous section of this book attest to, exclusion is a recurring problem in feminist and queer movements, organizations, and spaces. Whether unconscious or overt, exclusion always leads to the same end result: Many individuals who wish to participate are left behind, and the few who remain often bask in the misconception that they are part of a unified, righteous movement. To put it another way, exclusion inevitably leads to far smaller movements with far more narrow and distorted agendas.Those of us who face exclusion within feminism or queer activism will often focus our efforts on challenging the specific isms that we believe are driving our exclusion. In my case, this has led me to spend much of the last decade critiquing cissexism, trans-misogyny, masculine-centrism, and monosexism within the queer and feminist spaces I have participated in. Others have focused their efforts on challenging heterosexism, racism, classism, ableism, ageism, and sizeism within these movements. All of this is important work, to be sure. But honestly, sometimes I feel like we are all playing one giant game of Whac-A-Mole—as soon as we make gains challenging a particular type of exclusion, another type arises or becomes apparent. So while we may make significant inroads in challenging certain isms, as a whole, the phenomenon of exclusion continues unabated.
While the first section of the book is comprised of a series of essays describing instances of exclusion that I have personally experienced (as a bisexual femme-tomboy transsexual woman) within feminist and queer spaces, the bulk of the book seeks to illuminate the underlying forces that lead us to constantly create hierarchies within, and to exclude certain individuals from, our movements. Here is what I say about this in the Introduction to the book:The second section of this book, “New Ways of Speaking,” is a collection of previously unpublished essays that forward a new framework for thinking about gender, sexuality, sexism, and marginalization. Here, I explain why existing feminist and queer movements (much like their straight male–centric counterparts) always seem to create hierarchies, where certain gendered and sexual bodies, identities, and behaviors are deemed more legitimate than others. Of course, past feminist and queer activists have been concerned about these pecking orders, and they have often placed the blame squarely on identity politics, essentialism, classism, assimilationism, and/or reformist politics. However, such claims ignore the fact that sexism-based hierarchies are just as prevalent in radical, anti-capitalist, anti-essentialist, and anti-assimilationist circles as they are within so-called “liberal” feminist and single-issue “A-gay” activist circles.Rather than blaming the usual suspects, here I show how sexism-based exclusion within feminist and queer movements is typically driven by what Anne Koedt once calledthe perversion of “the personal is political”—that is, the assumption that we should all curtail or alter our genders and sexualities in order to better conform with feminist or queer politics. This perversion of “the personal is political” can be seen in both reformist feminist and queer activist circles that seek to purge “less desirable” identities and behaviors from their movements in the name of political expediency, and among their more radical counterparts who denounce identities and behaviors that they perceive to be too “conservative,” “conforming,” or “heteronormative.” In other words, both extremes share the expectation that their members will be relatively homogeneous and conform to certain norms of gender and sexuality. Such one-size-fits-all approaches ignore the fact that there is naturally occurring variation in sex, gender, and sexuality in human populations. We all differ somewhat in our desires, urges, and attractions, and in what identities, expressions, and interests resonate with us. Furthermore, each of us is uniquely socially situated: We each have different life histories, face different obstacles, and have different experiences with sexism and other forms of marginalization. So the assumption that we should conform to some uniform ideal with regards to gender and sexuality, or that we should all adhere to one single view of sexism and marginalization, is simply unrealistic.One-size-fits-all approaches to gender and sexuality—whether they occur in the straight male–centric mainstream, or within feminist and queer subcultures—inevitably result in double standards, where bodies and behaviors can only ever be viewed as either right or wrong, natural or unnatural, normal or abnormal, righteous or immoral. And one-size-fits-all models for describing sexism and marginalization—whether in terms of patriarchy, or compulsory heterosexuality, or the gender binary—always account for certain forms of sexism and marginalization while ignoring others. As a result, such models validate some people’s perspectives while leaving many of us behind. I believe that this pervasive insistence that we should all conform to some fixed and homogeneous view of sexism and marginalization, or of gender and sexuality, is the primary cause of sexism-based exclusion within feminist and queer movements.
More excerpts to come! And you can find out more about the book (including reviews, interviews, and more excerpts) at my Excluded webpage.

Bringing an end to the “end of gender”

So next month will be the one-year anniversary of my book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive being released, and I will be celebrating by posting small excerpts of some of my favorite paragraphs and passages from the book on my blog over the course of September.
One of the passages I was planning to quote is very germane to the latest round of TERF debates, so I am posting it today instead.
Radical feminists who are opposed to trans people repeatedly offer this justification: They are trying to bring on the “end of gender” whereas trans people “reinforce gender.” Throughout Excluded, I eviscerate the “reinforcing trope” and how it is arbitrarily used as a tool within activism to exclude minorities/marginalized subpopulations within movements (including lesbians in the early days of radical feminism).
And in the following passage from the book, I point out how ridiculously vague and arbitrary such “end of gender” claims really are.I cannot tell you how many times I have read and heard claims that feminists are trying to “move beyond gender,” or to bring on the “end of gender,” invoked in attempts to portray transsexuality and transgenderism as antithetical to feminism. Here is what I want to know: what exactly is the “end of gender”? What does it look like? Are there words to describe male and female bodies at the end of gender? Or do we purge all words that refer to male- or female-specific body parts and reproductive functions for fear that they will reinforce gender distinctions? Do we do away with activities such as sports, sewing, shaving, cooking, fixing cars, taking care of children, and of course, man-on-top-woman-on-bottom penetration sex, because these have been too closely associated with traditional masculine and feminine roles in the past? What clothes do we wear at the end of gender? Do we all wear pants? Or do we all wear skirts? Or do we have to come up with a completely different type of clothing altogether? Or perhaps we must go naked because, after all, clothing has a long and troubled history of conspiring with the gender system? Who gets to make these decisions? Who gets to decide what is gender and what is not? By what criteria does one determine whether any given behavior is a wholesome natural human trait or an abominable social artifact? It seems clear to me that everybody has a somewhat different view of what is “in” gender (and therefore bad) and what is “outside” of gender (and therefore good). I have been in spaces that are predominantly genderqueer where I have heard people claim that anyone who uses male and female pronouns necessarily reinforces the gender system. I have on more than one occasion heard people who identify as bisexual or pansexual suggest that people who are exclusively attracted to one sex or the other reinforce the gender binary. Apparently, reinforcing the gender system, like beauty, is truly in the eye of the beholder.
Toward the end of that same chapter, I make the case that, as feminists, we should be fighting to bring on the *end of sexism*, rather than the “end of gender”:
I would have to be pretty full of myself to believe that I could undo the gender system simply by behaving in one way or another. Such notions may be self-reassuring, but they ignore the fact that acts of sexism occur, not by how we dress, or identify, or have sex, but through the way we see and treat other people. Sexism occurs when we assume that some people are less valid or natural than others because of their sex, gender or sexuality; it occurs when we project our own expectations and assumptions about sex, gender and sexuality onto other people, and police their behaviors accordingly; it occurs when we reduce another person to their sex, gender or sexuality rather than seeing them as a whole, legitimate person. That is sexism. And a person is a legitimate feminist when they have made a commitment to challenging sexist double standards wherever and whenever they arise. An individual’s personal style, mannerisms, identity, consensual sexual partners, and life choices simply shouldn’t matter into it.
More excerpts and reviews from the book can be found on my Excluded webpage.

Final thoughts on that Michelle Goldberg article, faux journalism, and recognizing bias

So last week I briefly responded to a Michelle Goldberg article that had just appeared in The New Yorker magazine called “What Is a Woman? The dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism.” It was a piece that I was interviewed for, and felt misrepresented by. It was also a piece that many people (including myself) felt had a strong anti-transgender bias (see critical reviews from Bitch Magazine, Autostraddle, Bilerico, The Slantist, New Statesman, and Columbia Journalism Review).
Three days ago, my formal response to Goldberg’s article was published as an op-ed on The Advocate. It is entitled “An Open Letter to The New Yorker.” Rather than merely listing all my grievances with Goldberg’s piece (many of which have been addressed in the critical reviews listed above, and a few more will be described in this post), I talk more generally about what it was like for me (behind the scenes, if you will) to be a long-time activist within a marginalized community, and to have a mainstream journalist swoop in and cover really complicated issues, only to oversimplify and misrepresent them in a manner that mainstream audiences will find “titillating” and misperceive as “balanced.” For the record, I have been interviewed by journalists countless times, often about the subject in question - i.e., disputes between trans activists and trans-exclusive radical feminists (TERFs). On numerous of these occasions, I have been disappointed by the questions that I was asked, which answers eventually got published, which of my answers were ignored, and/or the tone or presentation of the final piece. Despite my disappointment on these occasions, I have never before publicly complained about how things turned out. After all, I realize that it is the journalist’s piece and they are free to write what they want, and so long as I am not intentionally misrepresented in the process, I will generally let it go.
I spoke out against this particular article because I did feel misrepresented, for two reasons:
1) Goldberg slut-shamed and pathologized me using a disproven psychological theory. As I make clear in my Advocate op-ed, she knew better (as we discussed this at considerable length), but she did it anyway, on purpose, most likely because smearing me helped support her overall goal of maligning transgender activism.
2) It is clear that Goldberg merely used me as a prop in the piece. As I discuss in my Advocate op-ed, she was not at all interested in my views on the issues central to the article - she did not print any of the responses I shared with her in two long phone conversations and numerous emails, nor were these perspectives expressed by other trans activists in her article. I have one quote in the article dismissing the trope that trans women make women’s spaces unsafe, which Goldberg later undermines via a random anecdote from a TERF about vandalism at MichFest that she pins on trans women without any evidence (and honestly, I cannot imagine a trans woman ‘spray-painting a six-foot penis, and the words “Real Women Have Dicks,” ’ - that sounds way more like an over-the-top Brennan-esque sort of stunt to malign trans women than anything else). Oh, and then after my one line, I am misgendered, slut-shamed, and depicted as a sexual deviant via Jeffreys’s description of me (whereas my views on Jeffreys are not included in the article - once again, see my Advocate op-ed). Well-known universities I have given talks at are gratuitously mentioned, seemingly to contrast me with Jeffreys who is not able to speak at many college campuses because her views on trans people violate many antidiscrimination laws and policies.
As others have pointed out, only four trans women are quoted in the piece: two of these side with the TERFs (which is extraordinarily rare - I know countless trans people, and while a few of them identify as radical feminists, none of them are pro-TERF). The remaining two trans women are Sandy Stone and myself, who seem to represent the progress made by transgender activism, especially within academia - in other words, we are painted as beneficiaries of a movement that has (in Goldberg’s rendition of events) marginalized radical feminists. I don’t appear in the piece until about 4,000 words into a 4,500-ish word article, and Stone is introduced at the very end - in other words, we appear well after readers have likely come to the conclusion that trans activism is out of control and unfairly oppresses TERFs. We are merely window dressing. We serve no purpose other than to give the impression that the article is fair and balanced, covering “both sides” of the issue, when in reality it is not.
That, in a nutshell, is why I spoke out about it. If Goldberg had written an essay or an op-ed on behalf of the TERFs and against trans people, I wouldn’t have liked it, but I certainly would not have spent so much time countering it. I have done so in this case because the article misrepresented me and used me to create the false impression of being an impartial work of journalism, when in fact it failed to seriously consider one side of the debate (as detailed in my responses and the other critical reviews that I mentioned earlier).
My view of journalism (as a field) is somewhat similar to my view of science. As a scientist myself, I believe that the scientific method is an important tool for better understanding the world around us. However, because science strives for objectivity (and people know this), it opens the door for a lot of bad science to be passed off to, and taken seriously by, lay audiences - because, after all, if a scientist said it, it must be the objective truth! Similarly, journalism is an important tool for helping us understand what is going on in the world, especially events that are happening outside of our purview. But because readers expect journalists to be objective, they are often lulled into believing that a piece is “fair and balanced” when it is not. This is especially true for topics where readers have little to no previous knowledge, and therefore, remain blissfully unaware when certain perspectives are disproportionately represented or when important facts are entirely omitted.
I have heard a couple people who were previously unfamiliar with this particular topic say that they came away from the piece siding with transgender people (the implication being that it must not have been as slanted as I and others have argued). This is not all that surprising. After all, in order to present her article as a piece of journalism, Goldberg had to at least pay lip service to the transgender side of the story. She did this mostly by talking about all the progress trans people have made in society and academia (at the supposed expense of marginalizing TERFs), and occasionally mentioning trans people’s perspectives on matters (only to challenge them with the TERF counter-perspective, whereas many TERF perspectives and accusations go entirely unchallenged). Also, most people these days have at least some awareness and opinions about transgender people. So if you are inclined to accept or respect trans people, then the TERFs will probably come off as misguided or mean to you, even if their side of the argument was disproportionately advanced in the article.
Finally, some have told me that they have had problems convincing people they know about how slanted the article was, as such people simply cannot see through the piece’s journalistic-ish veneer. Here are three tips that I have offered elsewhere to help skeptical people see some of the problems with the piece:
1) The climate change example:It is rather easy to write an article on climate change that seems balanced (in that both “sides” of the issue are presented), but that is not in any way an accurate representation of reality. Since most people are not familiar with climate science or scientists, they may be inclined to experience the article as “fair,” whereas an actual scientist who is familiar with the facts and understands the situation might be legitimately horrified by the way that material is being misrepresented (cue funny John Oliver climate change video). In other words, journalism isn’t about blithely showing “both sides” of an issue; it is about reporting them accurately and proportionately.
2) The substitute-transgender-with-gay test:This is a handy tool to highlight discrepancies in cases where the skeptical person is gay/lesbian-positive but trans-unaware. For instance, ask them if they would feel differently about Goldberg’s article if the radical feminists in question wanted to create lesbian-free women’s spaces (because they feel that lesbians aren’t “real women” or that they constitute a threat)? Or what if the article trotted out a psychologist from NARTH to share his expert opinion that homosexuals are sick and deviant without any countering views from gay & lesbian activists or the overwhelming majority of psychologists who believe those views are both scientifically invalid and stigmatizing? This is basically what Goldberg did when she trotted out Blanchard in her article. Or what if it was an article involving gay & lesbian activists that almost exclusively featured quotes from social conservatives who feel oppressed by the homosexual agenda plus a few ex-gays who disavow the gay rights movement? This is basically what Goldberg did when she dedicated the bulk of the article to TERF perspectives, and gave more voice to detransitioners and trans people and who side with TERFs (who represent an extreme minority group within trans communities) than trans activists who are actually pro-trans.
3) The who-are-readers-meant-to-identify-with testPeople tend to trust people they identify with and distrust people who they do not identify with. Given this, imagine writing a story about the rise in homelessness in fill-in-the-blank city. Now, there are a number of ways you could write such an article. You could dispassionately talk in generalities and mention a lot of statistics, but that probably wouldn’t emotionally influence readers so much. So you could always quote individuals who are affected by issue in order to humanize the story. But who gets quoted and who does not will strongly influence how readers react to the article. If most of the quotes come from people who have recently become homeless due to the Great Recession or the rising costs of housing, readers may become concerned with the plight of homelessness. If you quote a bunch of people who were once homeless but now are doing quite well, readers may unconsciously come to the conclusion that those who are currently homeless “just aren’t trying hard enough to pull their lives together.” And if you generically talk about homelessness (with hardly any quotes from homeless people), yet extensively quote neighborhood residents who feel unsafe walking the streets at night due to the presence of homeless people, or who have experienced acts of vandalism that they presume were caused by homeless people, well then readers will (unsurprisingly) be inclined to consider homeless people to be a nuisance or a potential threat.
In the case of Goldberg’s article, Autostraddle and The Slantist both added up the number of people interviewed, stories told, and words allocated to articulating each side of the debate, and both found that the article overwhelmingly favored (and thereby humanized) TERFs. 
Anyway, that is my perspective on this particular article. I could say more, but frankly, I'd much rather get back to my life and other projects now...

two articles (plus thoughts on autogynephilia as the transgender equivalent of slut-shaming)

Two things happened today:

1) I have a new article out on Ms. Magazine blog today called Empowering Femininity, wherein I revisit some of the ideas I initially forwarded in the chapter of Whipping Girl called "Putting the Feminine Back into Feminism." Check it out!

2) Some of you may be aware of a New Yorker article by Michelle Goldberg that came out today entitled "What Is a Woman? The dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism." It is basically about how Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists (TERFs) are increasingly becoming marginalized within feminism, and it is mostly written from their perspective (e.g., about ways in which they have been personally attacked or "censored" by trans activists). Let's just say that it is not the piece that I would have written on the matter.

I do not have the time or energy to write a formal response to the entire piece, but since I am one of the few trans voices included in the article, I feel compelled to make a few points "for the record" as it were:

1) When Goldberg interviewed me for the piece, I talked extensively about TERF attacks on trans people: About the hatefull speech I (and other trans women) regularly receive from TERFs on my Twitter feed, blog comments, etc., and how much of it is of a sexualizing nature. I talked at great length about Cathy Brennan who is notorious for her personal attacks and outing of trans people, her various websites where she engages in smear campaigns against trans women (once again, usually of a sexualizing nature). I mentioned how, after my appearance at a SF Dyke March forum on AGE DIVERSITY AND GENDER FLUIDITY - which was designed to build bridges between trans-positive queer women and those (often of older generations) who are trans unaware, and which resulted in respectful and constructive dialogue on all sides - several TERFs crashed the Facebook page and spewed so much hateful speech that they had to shut the whole thread down.

None of this made it into the story, which will likely lead uninformed readers to presume that trans people are simply mean and out of control, rather than reacting to the transphobia/trans-misogyny/sexualizing comments we constantly face from TERFs.

2) I am very disappointed with the way that the issue of "autogynephilia" was handled in the piece. I understand that Sheila Jeffreys cites the concept in her book in order to engage in a form of transgender slut-shaming (i.e., citing trans women's sexual histories as a way to entirely dismiss them and their opinions), and that this fact could be relevant to the story. But to have a paragraph detailing Jeffreys's and Blanchard's views of "autogynephilia" without any counter argument or mention of the fact that THE THEORY HAS BEEN DISPROVEN here and here and here, or that cisgender women experience analogous sexual fantasies, is downright reckless. When (later on in the piece) Goldberg mentions that Jeffreys paints me out to be an "autogynephile," I am sure many uninformed readers will believe that to be true, because no counter argument to the concept had even been mentioned.

And Goldberg's omission here is not for lack of knowing: I discussed my concerns about this matter with Goldberg in two follow up emails - to clear the record, I will paste those emails at the bottom of this blog-post.

3) I would not exactly describe my interactions with MichFest attendees when I attended Camp Trans in 2003 as "cordial." There were some good, positive interactions, but others were tense and somewhat hostile. I discuss this "mixed bag" of experiences in chapter 2 of my book Excluded.

4) Seriously, can we finally put to rest the "one in 10,000/one in 30,000" people are transsexual statistic. It is ancient and it has been repeatedly debunked.

That's it. Now here is what I emailed Goldberg regarding "autogynephilia"

++++++++++++++++++
first email:

Hi Michelle,

I mentioned this recent Vice Magazine interview with Blanchard in our phone conversation the other day and said I'd send you the link. Here it is if you're interested:

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/heres-how-the-guy-who-wrote-the-manual-on-sex-talks-about-sex

Also, I know you said that you will be referring to autogynephilia as "controverial." I do think that it's fair to say that multiple lines of research by numerous researchers have shown that while the fantasies are a real phenomenon, Blanchard's theory (specifically, that there are two "types" of trans women, and that the fantasies drive transsexuality/transition in one group) does not hold true. Also, the two researchers who actually used cisgender female controls in their studies both found that analogous fantasies are experienced by a significant number of cisgender women. 

All this research is summarized in my review:
http://learningtrans.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/serano-agreview-ijt.pdf

and Charles Moser's review:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20582803

both were published in peer-reviewed journals in 2010.

The evidence is clear that the theory Blanchard created to explain these fantasies, and his assumption that such fantasies are transsexual-specific and cause transsexuality, are both untrue. That may not move you. But I wanted to share that with you, because it concerns me when the term "controversial" is used to give a disproven theory some legitimacy (e.g., as it is in climate change debates).

One last thought: I talked before about how the theory is often used (e.g., by Jeffreys) to sexualize trans women, thereby invalidating us. In my paper, I make the following analogy to illustrate why this is such this problem:

"Many natal women have rape fantasies. It is one thing to respectfully attempt to explore and understand such fantasies. It is an entirely different thing to insist that there are two subtypes of women - those who have rape fantasies and those who do not; to use the label “autoraptophiles” when describing women who have such fantasies and to insist that they are primarily motivated by their desire to be raped; to include “autoraptophilia” as a modifier in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; and to encourage the lay public to actively distinguish between those women who are “autoraptophiles” and those who are not. Such actions would undoubtedly have a severe, negative impact on women (who are already routinely sexualized and marginalized in our culture). Yet, proponents of autogynephilia have argued that transsexual women should be viewed and treated in an analogous manner." 

Anyway, that's all I wanted to add.

Best wishes, -julia

++++++++++++++++++

second email: After speaking with the fact checker from the New Yorker, I found that there were several passages from my book Whipping Girl where I discussed certain aspects of my sexual history that were going to be included in the article - I believe that they were meant to show "my side" of the story in relation to Jeffreys painting me out as an "autogynephile." I am thankful that Goldberg did not include those passages in the final draft. But given that Jeffreys's views and the specter of "autogynephilia" were raised in her article with regards to me and without any counter argument, I believe that it is worthwhile sharing what I wrote to Goldberg about the potential inclusion of those passages:

Obviously, I haven't seen the whole article yet. And I understand that, as an interviewee, journalists I speak with will come to their own conclusions, and may portray me in ways that don't necessarily jibe with how I see myself. And I realize that I am (to a certain extent) a public figure who has put myself out there via what I have written, and that people may use that in ways that I didn't expect or do not want. So you are obviously free to write what you want. 

But I would like to share an analogy: Imagine a feminist author who writes seriously about gender and society, and whose ideas are well regarded in certain circles. And imagine someone who has very different views about gender and society - perhaps they are a religious conservative, or a men's rights activists, or an evolutionary psychologist, or whatever. And let's say that they wrote a book challenging feminism, and their central premise was that feminist women are primarily driven by their sexual desires (rather than out of a sincere concern about gender-based oppression or society). And when taking on this particular feminist woman in their book, they didn't focus much on the ideas and theories she has forwarded, but instead dissected her sexual history (which maybe she wrote about in the past because, you know, women have sexualities, and gender-based-oppression is designed to make some of us feel ashamed about our sexualities, and sometimes we have to speak openly about our own sexual experiences in order to debunk heteropatriarchal assumptions that others make about our sexualities).

Anyway, imagine all that already happened. And someone outside of the situation decided to write about this controversy for a mainstream publication. How would you prefer that they cover it:

1) Spend a lot of time discussing "both sides" of the woman's sexual history: describing the religious conservative's/MRA's/evolutionary psychologists's/etc.'s depiction of her sexuality, along with passages of her describing her own sexuality (which, while in her own words, is *more discussion about her sexuality*, and which is not germane to challenging gender-based oppression and other societal issues - the major focus of her work).

or 2) Simply say that, rather than seriously engaging in a debate about the feminist woman's ideas or theories, the author resorted to sexualizing her instead. And as feminists have shown, this is a tried-and-true method for smearing people's authenticity and credibility (as I discussed at great length in our last phone conversation). 

You initially asked to interview me about the "tensions between trans activists and some radical feminists" (which I provided my thoughts on over the course of the interview process). I honestly don't understand how sexual thoughts that I had over twenty years ago (as a young trans person trying to sort out my identity) has any bearing on these tensions, other than the fact that Jeffreys stoops to the transgender equivalent of slut-shaming in her book.   

Anyway, I haven't seen the whole article yet, so I will reserve judgment on the totality of it until it finally comes out. But I did want to share my concerns about this particular aspect of the article ahead of time. As a woman and a public figure yourself, I'm sure you can understand why having one's sexual history litigated in the pages of a mainstream magazine might seem troubling (to put it extremely mildly). And if you had/have ever written about your previous sexual experiences in a publication that primarily targeted your own demographic in order to help folks better understand, and not feel ashamed about, their analogous experiences, I imagine that you too might be worried about how those same passages might be misinterpreted by lay audiences if excerpted in a major mainstream publication (especially one your relatives, potential future employers, etc., regularly read).

Regarding “Generation Wars”: some reflections upon reading the recent Jack Halberstam essay

Jack Halberstam recently published an essay called You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma, and it’s been making waves on the activist internets over the last week. It felt like a bit of a “kitchen sink” article to me, in that it discussed a plethora of different matters (including Monty Python, historical debates between second- and third-wave feminisms, current controversies surrounding the word “tranny,” the recent proliferation of trigger warnings, supposed connections between expressions of trauma and neoliberalism, safe spaces, “It Gets Better” campaigns, and concerns about millennials being hypersensitive) and attempted to weave them into one nice neat coherent narrative. This narrative could be summarized as follows:
queer & trans culture and politics circa the 1990’s was strong, progressive, and fun!
whereas queer & trans culture and politics circa the 2010’s is frail, conservative, and a killjoy.
While Halberstam’s essay made a few points that are certainly worthy of further exploration and discussion, it also overreached in a number of ways, especially in its attempts to shoehorn a potpourri of recent events and trends into the aforementioned overarching narrative. Some concerns that I have about the essay have been addressed by others here and here and here and here and here. 

on having to walk uphill, both ways, in a foot of snow, everyday, on your way to school, back when you used to be a kidI think that a useful place to start is with the “four Yorkshire men” Monty Python sketch that Halberstam invokes as a metaphor for the “hardship competitions...among the triggered generation” (which is to say, how young people today are supposedly constantly complaining about how hurt and oppressed they are by relatively minor things, such as “a cultural event, a painting, a play, a speech, a casual use of slang, a characterization, a caricature and so on”).
Now personally, I always understood that Monty Python sketch as making fun of how people, as they get older, tend to glorify their own past: imagining the hardships they faced as being especially challenging or severe, thereby allowing them to self-conceptualize themselves as being especially resourceful, righteous, cunning, and perseverant for having survived despite overwhelming odds. And this human tendency has historically enabled older generations to outright dismiss younger generations as being misguided, or especially soft (because “they have it so much easier than we did”), and so on.
The notion that queer and trans people of my generation were somehow stoic and resilient, whereas the younger generation of queer and trans people are a bunch of oversensitive crybabies seems to be quite a stretch. I can attest to the fact that we too complained about how oppressed we were, and we often expressed our hurt feelings in public, and we often became outraged about particular language choices or media depictions that we found problematic. The main difference is that we (in glorifying our own past) tend to believe that the causes that we fought for were righteous and justified, whereas the younger generation’s causes and concerns may seem misguided and frivolous to us.
One blatant example of this sort of hypocrisy can be found in RuPaul, who with one hand dismisses concerns of a younger generation of activists who find the word “tranny” problematic, while with the other hand types angry Tweets at people who use the word “faggot” (which he considers to be a “derogatory slur”). The logic here is totally inconsistent. Such actions only make sense if he (and those who agree with him) privileges political stances taken by his own generational cohort over those taken by a newer generation.
We certainly have the right to critique any given strategy taken by younger activists (e.g., if we believe that a particular strategy will be ineffective or cause more harm than good). But outright dismissing all their concerns as frivolous, or as mere expressions of their generational over-sensitivity, is patently unfair.
It is worth pointing out that this sort of dismissal of an entire generation can cut both ways: Sometimes, as younger activists, we view our own generational cohort as especially righteous, lucid, and cutting-edge. This may lead us to view the causes and courses of action that we forward (or forwarded) as being wholly justified, while dismissing the previous generation of activists that came before us as naive and completely misguided in their pursuits. One can see this in both Halberstam’s depiction of “weepy white lady feminism” of the 1980’s, as well as in the comments I have heard certain younger queer and trans activists make these days (e.g., in response to Halberstam’s piece, or RuPaul’s stance on certain issues) that thoroughly dismiss queer theory and/or drag as horrible wrong turns that activism took in the 1990’s. The truth is sometimes opinions and strategies that seemed promising and created positive change in one generation may become less relevant, or appear outdated or problematic, in another.
Here is a germane example: I believe that it is perfectly reasonable for us to recognize that, for its time, Monty Python was truly groundbreaking in its portrayals of gender transgression and sexual expression, while at the same time admitting that, were the comedy troupe to be miraculously teleported to 2014 in their original form, many contemporary activists would likely claim that their sketches perpetuate queer and trans stereotypes, or that they appropriate or mock our experiences in some way. And these critiques would seem to have some merit now, whereas if you teleported those critiques back to 1969 (when Monty Python’s TV series first aired) they would have seemed absolutely preposterous. In activism (as it is with humor), context is everything.
It is crucial that we try to move beyond using broad strokes to paint different generations as being either “right” or “wrong,” or “radical” or “conservative.” We should instead recognize that each generation (and subcultures within that generation) has different experiences and exists under different circumstances, and this will inevitably shape their beliefs about which course and forms of activism should take place. (I have tried to articulate this same point in these two recent blog pieces.)
dead parrots societyAs I alluded to, Halberstam’s essay makes a lot of Monty Python references. The essay also engages in the “straw man” strategy of pointing to numerous instances where today’s youth claim to be triggered or traumatized by relatively innocuous or not-quite-so-serious events—this of course, implies that all complaints they make (e.g., regarding chemical sensitivity, the use of derogatory slurs, etc.) are just as frivolous.
One of the instances Halberstam cites in this manner is “...students trotting out stories of painful events in their childhoods (dead pets/parrots, a bad injury in sports)...” The specific reference to parrots is no doubt an allusion to Monty Python’s famous “Dead Parrot” sketch. Alluding to a humorous comedy sketch here no doubt enhances the frivolousness nature of such a trauma.
However, as I was re-reading the essay while working on this piece, it belatedly struck me: I actually dedicated my first book Whipping Girl (in part) to a dead parrot!
She was a Jenday Conure named Coby. Just after she passed, I wrote this about her. Trigger warning: the webpage that I just linked to is very very sad.
(By the way, the above trigger warning is intended to be a joke, albeit not one meant to ridicule trigger warnings per se. I share some concerns about the misuse/overuse of the concept of “triggers,” and some trigger warnings I have seen seem more about letting people know that an uncomfortable conversation is coming rather than addressing legitimate issues of trauma (e.g., PTSD). But I think we can have that discussion without entirely dismissing the concept of trigger warnings and their potential usefulness in some circumstances for making work more accessible. Anyway, my intention in adding the facetious trigger warning was to challenge Halberstam’s essay’s insinuation that there is some kind of link between acknowledging pain/trauma/triggers and humorlessness. I mean, we as human beings are perfectly capable of being sad and serious sometimes, and then happy and silly at other times. And if you’re a fan of The Smiths and Morrissey’s lyrics, you can surely attest to the fact that both sadness/seriousness and happiness/silliness can even be expressed simultaneously! Anyway, having made that disclaimer, I do feel compelled to reiterate that what I wrote about Coby on that webpage is indeed very very sad.)
I loved Coby and was devastated when she died. I was such a mess that I took several days off from work. I grieved for a very long time. Since her passing, I have named the two laptops I have owned badobeep and badoobeep2 (“ba-do-beep” was the noise Coby used to make when she was happy). She died almost nine years ago, and despite the passage of time, when people ask me what I would get a tattoo of (if I were to ever get a tattoo), without hesitation, I say “my bird Coby.” She died almost nine years ago, and yet right now, as I am typing this, I am getting teary-eyed.
Despite the intense impact Coby’s life and death had on me, I would not claim that I was “traumatized” by her death. Nor am I “triggered” these days by watching Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot” sketch. But do you know what would upset me? If somebody tried to dismiss my feelings about Coby and the grief that I felt after her passing. If my boss (who was very understanding about the situation) would have instead said, “You wuss, it was just some stupid bird, get over it, and get you’re ass back to work,” I would have totally lost it. If someone would have insinuated that I was some kind of “freak” for caring so much about “a silly parrot,” or that I couldn’t possibly have experienced “real grief” when she died, I would have felt legitimately angry and frustrated.
I am trying to illustrate an important distinction here, one that Halberstam seems to gloss over: There is a very real difference between someone claiming to be “traumatized” by their parrot dying, and somebody expressing anger toward people who wholly delegitimize the possibility that the death of an avian animal companion can be a “real,” “serious,” or important” matter.
Analogously, I am not “traumatized” over being trans and queer. Sure, there were times (back when I was much younger) when I grieved over those aspects of myself. But that grieving process is way in the review mirror for me (although I understand that it might not be for some queer and trans folks, especially younger ones). These days, what upsets me is not the mere acknowledgement or reminders of the fact that I am queer or trans. But what I do get legitimately outraged about is when people do not take my identity, experiences, perspectives, or concerns seriously because of the fact that I am queer and/or trans.
In other words, I think Halberstam’s essay seems to conflate complaints about difficult or sad personal experiences with legitimate activist outrage over having our identities, perspectives, and concerns wholly invalidated by mainstream society, or members of our own community, simply because they cannot relate to us or our experiences.
and speaking of taking other people’s concerns seriously (or not)…So another dichotomy upon which the narrative I am attempting to debunk hinges is the presumption that 1990’s-era queer and trans activism (with its poststructuralism and queer theory, appreciation of intersectionality, embrace of drag, pornography, etc.) was truly open-minded, alliance-oriented, and welcoming of diversity, whereas 2010’s-era activists (who are supposedly pre-occupied with expressing their individual traumas and complaining about things that make them feel personally uncomfortable) are thoroughly closed-minded and destroying any chance for us to come together due to their constant “call outs,” “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” etc. (Indeed, it is this supposed self-involved individualism that allows Halberstam to link this new era with neoliberalist agendas.) While I admittedly share some concerns regarding how these practices sometimes play out within activist settings (as I will touch on in a moment), I believe that this presumption as a whole is once again patently unfair to the younger generation of activists.
There have always been activists who only want to focus on, and talk about, their own issues, concerns, pain, perspectives, etc.—they exist in every generation. What is new (or at least new-ish) about many contemporary activist settings is that people are starting to take other people’s concerns seriously (or at least, arguably, more seriously than they used to).
Younger activists have heard the stories about how the concerns of people who fall under the bisexual and transgender umbrellas were outright dismissed by gay men and lesbians for decades. And so now, when some seemingly new queer identity or subgroup begins expressing their perspective, some of these activists will immediately work to accommodate their views and needs. Along similar lines, many activists today take very seriously arguments forwarded by womanists/feminists of color during the 1970’s and 1980’s—for instance, that it shouldn’t be up to the marginalized group to constantly have to articulate their existence and needs, or to single-handedly challenge the ism they face whenever instances of it arise; rather, this is the work that the dominant majority should be doing if they want to be actual allies and make their spaces truly inclusive. This helps explain why many of the “call outs” and monitoring of language that occur in these spaces comes from people positioned as allies.[1] And when activists today ask people not to wear scented products to events, or when they provide trigger warnings before certain blog pieces or performances, it is not because they want to “police” or “censor” people’s behaviors, but rather it’s usually because they have some familiarity with disability discourses and they are trying to make their spaces and work more accessible to others.
To be clear, I am not trying to portray contemporary activism in a utopian manner here. Plenty of people blatantly disregard these tenets, and countless others pay only lip service to them. On the other extreme, if you follow all of these tenets to the letter—acknowledging every single person’s every concern—then that invariably leads to its own dilemmas. What happens when a cis woman survivor of sexual abuse says she feels unsafe in the presence of penises—do we exclude pre- and non-op trans women? If someone argues that they believe that the label “bisexual” invalidates their transgender identity, do we expel bisexual-identified people? And what if some members of a marginalized group say we should do X, while others say we should do Y? How can we best support a marginalized subpopulation within our community if they don’t even agree amongst themselves on that particular issue?
I also share Halberstam’s (and others’) concerns for how calls to make “safe spaces” typically devolve into homogeneous “same spaces,” where people feel “safe” because they only ever have to interact with folks who they view as being “of their own kind”—such tendencies can obviously have all sorts of racist, classist, cis/heteronormative, and other negative ramifications.
So admittedly, the current climate of activism is often messy and sometimes self-contradictory. And its complex protocols with regards to using appropriate language, “call outs,” “trigger warnings,” and so on, can admittedly be difficult to navigate, especially to those brand new to the community (and this, of course, could be considered another potential form of exclusion). This system is far from perfect—indeed, I dedicate most of the last chapter of my book Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive to discussing these problems and how we might better resolve them. But having said that, I wholeheartedly disagree with those who wish to mischaracterize these expressions of activism as “self-focused” and “individualist.” After all, the primary force that is compelling the latest generation of activists to listen to and heed all of these disparate concerns and claims is a desire for diversity and inclusiveness.
Things were definitely different in the 1990’s (when I first participated in trans communities) and early 2000’s (when I first became especially active in queer and trans communities in the San Francisco Bay Area). In certain ways, those spaces were more accommodating of difference: You could identify however you wanted, perform your gender in whatever way pleased you, express your sexuality however you wanted (provided that what you did was consensual), and no one would ever complain.
Wait a minute, let me correct that: Sometimes people would complain, for legitimate or illegitimate reasons (depending on your perspective). But other people in the community rarely acted upon those complaints. The general attitude was: They’re just being themselves, speaking their minds, sharing their opinions, and expressing their own desires and experiences. And you are free to do the same.
Still to this day, I miss certain aspects of those spaces. It did often feel like we were working together toward a common goal despite our significant differences. And it was amazingly freeing to know that I could get up on stage and perform a spoken word piece wherein I made a confession, or got something off my chest, that challenged my community’s dominant narratives and norms. And it was a relief to know that nobody would publicly call me out for speaking my mind (although they might whisper nasty things about me to their friends after the show).
It is easy for me to romanticize those spaces, and that particular time in my life. But then I start to think about the many ways in which those same spaces sometimes failed me.
After a year or so of enjoying San Francisco’s burgeoning queer/trans performance scene, I began to notice that I was one of the only trans women who regularly attended those events. Those spaces were filled with cis dykes, FAAB genderqueers, and trans male/masculine folks galore, as well as various drag and burlesque performers. But hardly any trans women. When I would invite trans women that I knew to these shows, many shared their experiences about how they had been repeatedly disrespected and ridiculed when they attended such venues in the past. And these were not the supposedly “fussy” “oversensitive” trans folks of the 2010’s. No. These were (according to the narrative I am debunking) strong, resilient queer-identified trans folks of the previous generation. And they were not avoiding these queer/trans spaces because they were delicate flowers who were afraid of having their feelings hurt. To the contrary, their attitude about the situation was rather pragmatic, something akin to: “If people in those spaces aren’t going to treat me with respect, then screw them and their events!”
At one trans-themed show that had at least 150 attendees, I purposefully began going up to people I knew and made the following somewhat snarky “joke”: “Hey, so I’m here, and there’s Shawna, and there’s Charlie, and there’s Sherilyn, and there’s Brooklynne. All five trans women in the Bay Area showed up to the event—great turn out!” The people I said this to knew that I was being facetious—after all, the Bay Area has a large population of trans women. And the five or so of us who regularly showed up at these events did so because we were performers sharing our work. But few other trans women showed up to simply enjoy the show. You can understand why the word “token” started to roll around in my mind a lot during that time.
Anyway, when I shared my “joke” about being one of the “five trans women in the SF Bay Area” at the show, people usually got uncomfortable. I could tell that they realized that it was a problem (at least, on an intellectual level). But (with a few exceptions), they almost never asked me what they could do to make the space more welcoming to trans women. Many didn’t even ask why these trans women felt the space was unwelcoming in the first place. Some organizers acted as if the situation was completely out of their control—after all, they flyered the entire city! What more could they do? They were victims of the whims of free market forces!
In the last chapter of Whipping Girl, I explain that while the ideals of that particular era of queer/trans culture might be described as “gender anarchy”—with all of the potential freedom and progressive values that invokes—in practice, it sometime resembled “gender libertarianism,” where those who already had some prestige and privilege within the community ultimately prevailed. In my experiences, trans masculine-spectrum folks, drag performers, and others who were especially visibly gender-non-conforming were viewed especially favorably in those spaces. Trans female/feminine-spectrum folks, and trans folks who appeared too “heteronormative” in their personal style or partner preferences, were often disregarded in those spaces.
Some of us started pushing back (as disregarded people sometimes do). We forced conversations about the subtle and sometimes blatant forms of trans-misogynythat made trans female/feminine folks feel unwelcome in those settings. There were boycotts of queer and trans events that hosted artists who performed at MichFestand other events that excluded trans women. And so on. Unsurprisingly, people who held trans female/feminine folks in low regard dismissed us as “oversensitive whiners” and described MichFest-related boycotts as “censorship” (sound familiar?). But all we were trying to do was to hold our community accountable. Isn’t that what activism is often about?
Anyway, nowadays, when people organize queer events, they are far more likely to consider how to make their space welcoming to trans women than queer event organizers did ten or fifteen years ago. From my perspective, this is a positive development. But after everything that I’ve been through, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t also listen to the concerns of other groups who have been similarly disregarded by queer communities in the past (e.g., people of color, poor and working-class folks, people with disabilities, femmes, bisexual/pansexual and asexual folks, etc.). And as I’ve already discussed, it can get really complicated when you try to take everybody’s concerns seriously. But I believe it is a good place to start.
I can certainly understand why some folks of my generation might view queer and trans culture and politics of the 1990’s and early 2000’s (with its more laissez-faire do-whatever-you-want attitude) as more liberating or progressive than contemporary activism. But I would invite them to consider whether their preference for that era’s politics is directly related to the fact that they were not among those who were disregarded by the community during that time period.
stop me if you think you’ve heard this one beforeSo this is the obligatory controversy surrounding the word “tranny” digression—a topic that I am chock full of ambivalent feelings about. The word has a very complex history (which I discuss at great length via the link in the previous sentence), and I feel that people who completely ignore its previous usage as a reclaimed word within trans communities, as well as those who hurl accusations of “censorship” at those who view it as a derogatory slur, are both severely oversimplifying the matter.
We have to make this unfortunate “tranny”-debate pit-stop because Halberstam makes this accusation of “censorship” in his piece without any serious discussion whatsoever about *why* some activists wish to curb usage of the word.
For the record, this argument is primarily forwarded by trans women—and not just a small “fringe” group of “hashtag activists” (as some claim), but rather a significant number of trans women from diverse backgrounds and ages. And they would point out that trans women are the primary targets of the word (particularly when it is used as a derogatory slur), and that many trans women experience the word in conjunction with abuse and violence (which trans women experience disproportionately relative to other LGBTQIA+ folks). That is their argument. Now, Halberstam may not be moved by this line of reasoning, and he is surely entitled to state his preference for reclaiming slurs rather than eliminating them. But the problem is, he doesn’t even mention these trans women’s concerns or rationale—instead he dismisses objections to the word as a “quest for respectability and assimilation,” or symptoms of hypersensitive and easily triggered dispositions. So I think it is easy to see why many people who read his essay interpreted it as yet another example of how trans women’s concerns are often not taken seriously by others within queer communities.
Perhaps the most ironic aspect of Halberstam’s piece is that he chose the recent name change of the long-running queer/trans event “Trannyshack” (now called “T-Shack”) as the centerpiece for his depiction of overly sensitive censorship gone awry. But as Tobi Hill-Meyer discusses hereand here, the name change arose out of good old-fashioned community dialogue, wherein the two parties worked together (rather than dismissing or censoring each other) in order to create a mutually beneficial outcome. In Hill-Meyer’s words:
I actually was very involved in the conversations around Trannyshack and it was very positive, cordial, and constructive. The organizers of T-shack thanked us for our input and designated our organization the beneficiary of their show. We gave them an award. Everyone was happy and thought it went great. Then a bunch of bystanders simply assumed that we must have strong armed them into it through whining about being triggered. Folks who weren’t involved in the conversation wrote about how terrible trans women are for censoring and being PC police. Hecklina from T-Shack wrote up her perspective trying to clarify that wasn’t what happened and that in fact she got way more pressure from cis fans demanding she not “give in to the trans women word police” but her words never got the same reach or publicity as the folks complaining about emotionally reactive trans women.
I understand why Halberstam and others might want to portray this as a “generation war” of sorts, where folks from the previous generation are politically righteous, while the younger generation is politically incompetent. But when I look upon this matter as a trans woman—from that standpoint—I find that there are people in both generations who are genuinely concerned about trans women’s issues and willing to listen to and work with us, and others who couldn’t care less about our concerns, or who caricature us as the-people-who-ruin-everything-fun-about-queerness.
<!-- end digression -->
everything right is wrong again Okay, so some of you may have noticed what I did earlier: I made the case that self-focused individualism contributed to exclusion within 1990’s-era queer/trans activism, whereas many of the things Halberstam dislikes about 2010’s-era activism are actually carried out in an attempt to create diverse and inclusive queer communities. In other words, I have somewhat turned his argument around. I have also (perhaps not so subtly) peppered my descriptions of 1990’s-era activism with phrases like “free market forces,” “laissez-faire,” and “libertarianism.” All this perfectly poises me to make the case that it was 1990’s-era activism (and everything associated with it) that engaged in neoliberalist rhetoric, and therefore, was irredeemably conservative.
But I am not going to do that. For a couple of reasons.
First, as a trans woman, femme, and bisexual, I have been on the receiving end of too many your-identity/expression/perspective-is-inherently-conservative-and-holding-back-the-movement arguments (both within academic and activists settings) that I now recognize them to be (far more often than not) merely tactics to dismiss people and opinions that we do not like. After all, we (feminists, queer and trans folks, activists more generally) are trying to change the world. So what better way to disparage things we don’t appreciate or understand than to portray them as “conservative” or “assimilationist” or “neoliberalist”?
To be clear, I am not suggesting that we should be apolitical. But we should be cognizant of the fact that these sorts of subversivistarguments—where activists claim that one way of being trans/queer/female/etc. is radical (and therefore good) whereas a different way of being trans/queer/female/etc. is conservative (and therefore holding back the movement)—are almost always arbitrary, and serve little purpose other than to create (or perpetuate) hierarchies within our movements and/or to provide a rationale for us to police behaviors that make us feel uncomfortable. (For a thorough discussion of the numerous problems with such claims, please consult Excluded, especially Chapters 12 and 16)
Neoliberalism is a real thing. But when people start using the specter of neoliberalism to dismiss instances where members of marginalized groups complain about things they find offensive, frankly, I get really suspicious.[2] After all, I’m sure that someone could write an entire dissertation about how, by using the Internet to post this piece, Julia Serano is reinforcing neoliberalist agendas. On the one hand, I understand the importance of examining how underlying forces and political agendas (such as neoliberalism) often shape our lives, and how sometimes we unknowingly participate in these forces. But on the other hand, isn’t focusing specifically on neoliberalism with regards to Julia Serano’s use of the Internet just a convenient way to shut me up or dismiss what I have to say?
Anyway, that is one reason why I won’t be claiming that 1990’s-era queer and trans politics was inherently “conservative,” or that 2010’s-era politics is truly “radical” in comparison. The second reason why I am loath to make such arguments is that I believe it would completely erase the historical context in which these different political movements arose.
If you look back at radical feminism and gay liberation in the 1960’s and 1970’s, there were many aspects of those movements that were truly radical and which created much positive change. But there were also horrible missteps. Certain assumptions and beliefs became entrenched as those movements coalesced, and this led many feminists and (what we would now call) queer activists to feel shut out of those movements and communities. For understandable reasons, it was those people who were excluded from these previous movements who became the driving force behind the creation of 1990’s-era queer politics and culture. The ideas that they forwarded challenged the status quo, and created more inclusionary spaces that allowed for more diverse expressions of gender and sexuality. It was truly radical and liberatory, at least for a time, and for certain people. But once again, over time certain assumptions and beliefs became entrenched, and this led many people (including myself) to feel left behind by that movement. So of course, many of us forwarded new ideas (as well as new takes on older ideas) that challenged that status quo, and which we found to be radical and liberatory. But of course, things will eventually coalesce (or perhaps they already have?), and some folks will feel shut out by the movement (or perhaps they already do?). And they’ll forward new ideas that challenge the new status quo. And so on.[3]
It is also important to stress that we are not merely reacting to the activist movements that preceded us; we are also responding to evolutions in mainstream society that greatly impact our daily lives. As I’ve discussed hereand here (as well as earlier in this very essay), a marginalized group will surely encounter different sets of obstacles during different time periods. And overcoming those time-specific obstacles may require different strategies of resistance in different eras. In the 1990’s, there was almost no mainstream awareness or discussion of trans lives, so in-your-face tactics like embracing the provocative label “tranny” may have been an effective way to disrupt that, to resist a culture that simply wanted us to disappear. But in 2014, trans people are on TV and in the news all the time, and the mainstream is constantly trying to co-opt and consume various aspects of trans identities, lives, and culture (e.g., as seen with the popularity of the phrase “hot tranny mess”). So perhaps in this era, forcefully telling the public “No, you are not allowed to have the word ‘tranny’! That word is not yours to use!” is a form of resistance—a defiant refusal to be assimilated into mainstream culture.
For the record, I am not necessarily making this case—word elimination strategies can have serious negative ramifications that I feel are often under-discussed (or poorly discussed, as in instances when they are flippantly dismissed as “censorship”). But what I am trying to say is that activist approaches that yielded positive results during one era might not be so useful in another era.
As I alluded to earlier, I know younger activists who view 1990’s-era queer and trans politics (and especially things like queer theory and drag) with the same disdain that Halberstam seems to have for “weepy white lady feminism” of the 1980’s. I try to encourage them to see that era contextually, and to recognize that ideas and strategies that may seem “exclusionary,” “outdated,” or “conservative” today may have once been powerful and radical (and perhaps still can be in certain contexts). And I would encourage folks who came of age in previous generations to recognize that aspects of contemporary activism that may seem “exclusionary,” “assimilationist,” or “conservative” to us, may potentially be radical and liberatory during this time period (for some people at least).
Personally, I found 1990’s-era activism to be inclusive in some ways, while exclusionary in others. And now, I find the current activist climate to be inclusive in some ways, while exclusionary in others. I think that it is incumbent on us to try to identify the underlying causes that lead us to perpetually create activist movements that are exclusionary in certain ways (even if the specific groups that are excluded differ somewhat from movement to movement). I spend the second half of my book Excluded discussing these underlying causes and proposing potential solutions. One of the notions that I propose (and which helped shape this essay and some of the other post-Excluded blog-essays that I linked to in this piece) is embracing ambivalence—that is, recognizing that certain ideas or objects may simultaneously posses both good and bad qualities, especially depending upon the context in which they occur.
I realize that, superficially, embracing ambivalence might seem to be the complete opposite of what activism is all about. After all, aren’t we supposed to have strong convictions, and to forcefully and passionately fight for them? Sure, that’s fine when you’re passionate about fighting for “justice” or “equity” or “an end to sexism.” But when we adopt extremely hardline attitudes about very specific issues (e.g., trigger warnings, the word “tranny,” pornography, being out versus blending in, same-sex marriage, wearing high heels, just to name a few lightning-rod topics)—assuming that these things are always good or bad, or wholly radical or conservative, no ifs ands or buts about it—then we lose the ability to see these things contextually (e.g., recognizing that they may have potential positive value in some situations, or for certain people, or when carried out in a specific way, or during certain time periods or places, but not necessarily in others).
Embracing ambivalence may not be a panacea, and it offers no easy answers for what our best course of action might be. But it can help enable us to disagree with one another about the particularities of different activist strategies without having to resort to dismissing one another’s identities, questioning each other’s commitment to “the cause,” dismissing other people as “humorless,” and/or portraying them as politically incompetent.
Since this piece has largely been a reflection on his essay, allow me to state for the record that this last point is not intended to be a “call out” singling out Jack Halberstam, because these sorts of insinuations can be found on all sides of every argument within activist circles. I have made these sorts of insinuations myself in the past. But I think we would all be better served if we sincerely listened to one another’s concerns, and tried to see the merits in each other’s line of reasoning. I am not so naïve as to believe that this will solve all our problems. We will no doubt continue to disagree about many things. But at the very least, such a strategy may encourage us to see our opponents as thoughtful human beings rather than as "whiners," “ignorant,” or “the enemy.”
1. Indeed, one of the “call outs” that Halberstam complains about in the piece is ‘a young person who reported feeling worried about potentially “triggering” a transgender student by using incorrect pronouns in relation to a third student who did not seem bothered by it!’ This is clearly an example of someone in the dominant majority attempting to stand up on behalf of a member of a marginalized group. Such actions challenge Halberstam’s theme about young people being too self-absorbed in their own pain that they are unable to see systemic forms of oppression. After all, one of the ways that cissexism/transphobia works is through invalidating people’s gender identities, and this is often accomplished via pronoun misuse. This student seems to be acting out of an awareness of this (even if framing the potential invalidation in terms of “triggers” is a very loose and arguably unproductive usage of the term).
Regarding the misplaced concern in the incident (i.e., that the person who was actually mis-pronoun-ed didn't mind), I think this may be an example of the messiness of contemporary activism that I discuss in the subsequent paragraph: When the marginalized group that you are trying to support disagree amongst themselves on some matter (e.g., what constitutes appropriate/inappropriate language), it often becomes unclear how to proceed, and may ultimately lead to interventions that some members of that group find to be unnecessary or unwelcome.
2. Not to mention concerned. I can only imagine what the straight majority might do if they decided to appropriate these sorts of arguments: “Hey guys, great news! Apparently, when queer and trans people complain about so-called injustices, they are merely engaging in neoliberal rhetoric. And if they complain about the language we use to describe them, apparently they are merely engaging in a “quest for respectability and assimilation,” which is like, a totally conservative thing to do. So we don’t have to take them seriously anymore.”
3. I am well aware that this paragraph is simplistic in its depiction of three distinct generations, when in fact each generation includes people of disparate backgrounds, geographies, identities, ideologies, perspectives, experiences, etc. While this "three generation" model is admittedly a contrivance, I reference it because Halberstam uses it in his essay when he makes a distinction between cultural feminism and lesbian separatism of the 1970’s and 1980’s, the 1990’s-era feminist/queer/trans politics and culture that he extols, and the current generation of “naked, shivering, quaking” young folks. To his credit, at one point, Halberstam admits this description of distinct eras “[flattens] out all kinds of historical and cultural variations within multiple histories of feminism, queerness and social movements.” If only he applied that understanding to today’s generation, he might have recognized that the more radical/progressive activists of this generation (who happen to be the ones most likely to engage in “call outs” and to offer “trigger warnings”) are often highly critical of “It Gets Better” campaigns and same-sex marriage for reasons similar (if not identical) to those that Halberstam would likely cite.
There are also many potential “subgenerations” (i.e., sub-divisions within generations). Throughout this essay, I paint myself as being of the 1990’s-era age-wise, even though I am about a decade younger (more or less) than the activists most closely associated with that era. If we were to be more precise, I came of age (activism-wise) in the 2000’s, which may be doomed to be perpetually perceived as a “transitional period” between generational shifts, rather than its own distinct time period.

On the "activist language merry-go-round," Stephen Pinker's "euphemism treadmill," and "political correctness" more generally

A couple weeks ago, I published a fairly lengthy essay called A Personal History of the “T-word” (and some more general reflections on language and activism). The first half discusses shifting attitudes regarding the word "tranny" that I have witnessed over my last decade-plus of being involved in trans communities. The second half (and in my opinion, the most important part) of the essay more generally discusses how language within trans communities remains in a perpetual state of flux, where virtually every word associated with transgender people and experiences is eventually deemed by some people to be problematic, and new terms are constantly being proposed to take their place. I referred to this phenomenon as the "activist language merry-go-round."

I go on to make the case that the "activist language merry-go-round" is fueled by stigma: Trans people are stigmatized in our culture, and this stigma latches onto the words that are used to describe us and our experiences. As a result, many activists may feel compelled to focus on changing language (i.e., swapping out "bad" words with new words that feel more neutral or empowering). However, so long as trans people remain stigmatized, these newer terms will eventually become tainted by that stigma, and there will be even further calls for newer and supposedly better replacement terms. I argue that there are no magical "perfect words" that will make everyone happy. And the "activist language merry-go-round" will not stop until trans people are no longer stigmatized, at which point there will be no compelling need to replace existing trans-related terms.

After posting the piece to my blog, one of the commenters mentioned similarities between my "activist language merry-go-round" concept and what cognitive scientist/linguist/author Steven Pinker once called the "euphemism treadmill." I had not heard his term before, but a little bit of google-searching led me to this 1994 article[PDF link] in which Pinker offers numerous examples of this phenomenon over the last century. It seems clear that we are describing the same trend, and I completely agree with his assertion: "give a concept a new name, and the name becomes colored by the concept; the concept does not become freshened by the name."

While I believe that we are discussing the same phenomenon, I disagree with certain aspects of his framing of the issue. I want to discuss these differences of perspective here, not because I enjoy critiquing twenty-year-old Steven Pinker essays (I certainly have better things to do with my time), but because the shortcomings of his essay extend more generally to complaints about linguistic "political correctness" that are commonly made to this day (e.g., as can be seen in current debates regarding the word "tranny").

For one thing, Pinker seems to put his emphasis on the pointlessness of replacing tainted words with "euphemisms"--a term that critics of "political correctness" often associate with words that they believe are less direct and clear in meaning, and which are meant to appease people who are "too sensitive" about a particular issue. While he doesn't explicitly say so in the article, the overall thrust of his argument seems to be that we should simply stop doing this. He primarily talks about how the "euphemism treadmill" makes life difficult for well-intentioned people who have trouble keeping up with all the latest correct terminology, while saying virtually nothing about how marginalized groups themselves feel about living with labels that have become tainted over time.

I also get the impression from other things Pinker has said (e.g., this interview here) that he is primarily concerned with how "political correctness" in language can thwart political dissent in society. His focus is reminiscent of George Orwell's thesis in 1984: Censoring certain words, or making certain ideas taboo, can be a way of controlling people and what is imaginable and politically possible. While I agree that limiting or eliminating language can sometimes lead to serious negative consequences (as I discuss below), he doesn't talk at all about how the *existence* of certain words (particularly those that have become slurs in the public eye) can also be used to wield power over others, especially marginalized populations.

The other major difference between Pinker's take and my own is that he seems to view this as a top-down phenomenon. He begins his article with the (then recent) writers' guidelines issued by the LA Times that "bans or restricts some 150 words or phrases." He talks about "the arbiters of the changing linguistic fashions," as though somewhere in some ivory tower there exists a handful of elite powerful people who are deciding what words we are allowed to use and which ones we should avoid. He says, "Using the latest term for a minority often shows not sensitivity but subscribing to the right magazines or going to the right cocktail parties."

As someone who is not a member of a minority or marginalized group himself, it makes sense that Pinker would *experience* this as a top-down phenomenon, one that seemingly originates in college administration or newspaper & magazine editorial offices who unilaterally decree what language is acceptable and what is not. Notably, framing this as a top-down phenomenon gives credence to his fears of an Orwellian-like attempt by the powers-that-be to control people and thwart political dissent.

What Pinker (and others who frame "political correctness" as a primarily top-down phenomenon) fail to realize is that college administration and newspaper/magazine editorial offices are almost never asserting unilateral power over what language can be used to describe and discuss minorities and marginalized groups. Rather, they are merely responding to a bottom-up movement wherein a critical mass of members of a particular marginalized group have raised objections to certain words that they feel are tainted or outright slurs. And these marginalized individuals are not "exerting control" over the public at large (as they are not in any kind of position of power), but rather they are pushing against the way in which society relentlessly uses certain words to control (e.g., subdue, undermine, ridicule, demonize) them.

So to summarize, Steven Pinker's "euphemism treadmill" imagines a top-down phenomenon, and is primarily concerned with how the elimination of words (supposedly driven by the powers-that-be) complicates the lives of well-intentioned members of the dominant/majority group and ultimately thwarts political dissent. In contrast, my "activist language merry-go-round" (more accurately, I believe) describes a bottom-up phenomenon wherein marginalized populations are pushing back against the stigma that they face, and which (for understandable reasons) leads them to try to eliminate those words that are associated with that stigma. Pinker seems to only be concerned with the potential negative consequences of eliminating words, whereas my model recognizes both the power of words (e.g., the way in which slurs can be used to delegitimize and destroy people) as well as the power inherent in limiting words (e.g., when we try to eliminate words that have played a crucial role in certain marginalized individuals' activism or identity).

I am not especially concerned with how changes in trans-related language will impact the cisgender majority. Typically, dominant majorities tend to overreact when marginalized minorities attempt to transform the language that is commonly associated with them. But I do have concerns about how such word-elimination strategies can negatively impact our own communities. As I allude to in my original piece, some activists have attempted to eliminate the words "transsexual" and "bisexual" in recent years. Both of these words play crucial roles in my own activism and identity. So when some transgender- and/or bisexual-umbrella activists insist that these words are inherently "bad" for some reason or another, they are in a sense undermining my (and other people's) identity and activism. In other words, word-elimination strategies often alienate or invalidate members of our own communities, particularly those of different generations, classes, ethnicities, subcommunities, experiences, etc. And as stated above, they also fail to address the underlying stigma that drives the "activist language merry-go-round" in the first place.

I believe that we, as activists, should be suspicious of word-elimination-strategies. Not because they inconvenience Steven Pinker and others in the dominant majority, nor because they will lead to some kind of Orwellian dystopian future. Rather, we should be concerned with the ways in which word-elimination-strategies often deny the diversity of perspectives and experiences within our own communities (as I detailed in the original piece). And rather than simply eliminate words, we should focus the lion's share of our effort on eliminating the stigma that often lies beneath those words and gives them power in the first place.