Try harder
I struggle with some members of the lgbtq community. Or, they struggle with me (trans stuff more generally). Probably both.
I don’t mean struggle in a “we just don’t get along” kind of way, but rather an emotional and political tug-of-war between family members. Do you all know what I mean? Think of the family member (given family or chosen, either way) to whom you are closest, who understands many of the most important pieces and experiences of your life and celebrates and mourns many of the same moments you do. Now think of the family member whose politics and/or general worldview drives you fucking crazy – crazy like an itch under the skin that you can’t quite get to – to the point of exhaustion, who sometimes says offensive or ridiculous things about people you care about, who doesn’t seem willing to listen even when asking a question. Now imagine those two are the exact same person.
That’s how I often feel about these people in the lgbtq community: they are my family, and they “get” what it means to be us. But they don’t “get” me at all. My part in the “us.”
[This sounds so indulgent and trite as I write it out. ("You don't know what it's like to be like me!") Sorry. Please bear with me.]
Today I was out for breakfast and overheard a nearby conversation. There were two people at the table, and they stumbled onto the particular topic of gay and lesbian frustration with transpeople. One person began to voice what she’d apparently heard many times from other members of the lgb community, but it all seemed to flow pretty easily from her, as though she herself agreed or at least struggled in the same ways. There were a lot of sentiments surrounding resentment, hurt, and abandonment. I’m paraphrasing her now, but as best I can remember:
It’s just really frustrating, you know? Women have fought so hard to be free of the patriarchy. Why would women [transmen] just give up on that to become a man? Like around Stone Butch Blues, there was just such a vibrant life for butch women and a growing community around that, but now that these medical interventions are more available, a lot of those women are doing that. And it’s like they use the gay community for support until they get their hetero identity, and then they just abandon us. They can get married now and they can disappear into the rest of the world and they do, and they want nothing to do with us anymore. Like, what do they want from us? I don’t know. That’s just what it seems like a lot of older members of the community feel, anyway.
I’ve both heard and had these conversations before. More times than I care to think about. I know I’ll have them again. But every time, they hurt. I can never just walk away from these experiences – and it’s precisely because the people saying these things are family. I don’t want to walk away. I want them to understand. I want them to get the pronouns right. Even if you disagree with or don’t understand someone’s life, why would you choose to ignore such a simple request as respecting one’s chosen pronouns? It costs absolutely nothing to give respect, and it earns a great deal of respect (and appreciation) in return. It’s one of the easiest ways to be an ally.
I want them to work on their assumptions. Not all transguys were butch before they transitioned (or after for that matter), nor were all transguys even part of the lgbtq community to start with. Further, saying that we all just “get” hetero, get married, and disappear forgets all of the transmen and transwomen who now identify as gay men or lesbians, who very much denounce marriage or heteronormativity, who very much work against “blending in.” These are all just terrible and inaccurate assumptions to start from, and they erase the experiences of a huge number of people. And you know what? None of us get to criticize the transfolk who do go stealth, or other queer folk who don’t identify that way. Being out and being political are privileges, and refusing to recognize that as such sets a dangerous precedent. It sends the message that to be queer, you have an obligation to be out, all the time – even when it’s unsafe. Not exactly the right idea, especially for our youth (and those with less money!), who don’t always have means to get out of dangerous or difficult places.
I want them to work on their understandings of queerness itself, and patriarchy. Why does being in a seemingly heterosexual relationship mean someone is not queer? My girlfriend and I might look like we’re in a heterosexual relationship, but our queerness is the most integral part of our relationship. Maybe being gay (or straight) is about sexual orientation, but being queer is about an orientation to the world. It doesn’t just go away because I transitioned. There is nothing inherently patriarchal about transition either – the act or process of transition does not mean one is somehow buying into the patriarchy, or even into a gender binary. (How is being seen as a man any more binary than being seen as a woman?) It’s not as though being transgender somehow automatically makes one part of the patriarchy. Hardly. Whether a person is sexist, classist, racist, ableist, fatphobic, transphobic, or just plain mean is almost entirely up to them and how they choose to live in the world, to relate to and treat others, and so on. It’s our choices and our ideologies – not our bodies – that determine the kind of person we are. In other words, bodies and biology aren’t destiny, and feminism taught us that a long time ago.
But mostly, I want them to work on seeing me as family too. “Using” the community? (This is maybe the part I feel the most sad about.) I do “use” the community. I use it for finding and creating family. For safe spaces, with people who understand why those spaces need to exist in the first place. For venting when straight people say stupid shit like “But we don’t have a straight pride day.” For celebrating the incremental political victories together, and then for regrouping because we all know there’s still more ahead. I won’t apologize for “using” the community that way. That’s what a community is for. And sure, individuals go through cycles of how much they lean on their community. Now that I’m further along in my transition, I need the community a little less – because I have me a little more. But that hardly means I don’t need the community at all, or that I will ever abandon it.
Sigh.
I don’t expect everyone to “get” all of this from day one. I certainly didn’t, and I was/am the one going through it all. I want them to work on all these difficult ideas, to ask these questions because when I have done so, it’s changed my life for the better in incredible and fundamental ways. Spending all this energy on resenting each other, on blaming each other for our losses, on criticizing each other’s choices – all of it undermines our community – our family – far more than those individuals, losses, or choices ever will. If nothing else, I want them to because I am a part of the community too, and family members do this for each other. We try harder.
This is something I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been thinking about a few things that I can’t seem to reconcile for myself. It seems like there isn’t any place for people who are trying to come to their own conclusions without hatefulness being lobbed at them. I *know* that there is a lot of hurt feelings in the T part of the LGBTQ world that have been caused by the rest of the alphabet, so I can see where the frustration, etc comes from.
Here’s an example: Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Their policy is “womyn born womyn” only. I’ve heard a number of people say that MTF trans people are “being male” by insisting that they be allowed to go. For the most part, I think ALL women should be allowed to attend. The thing that trips me up is pre-op MTF. There are a number of women who go to festival who are very sensitive to male-ness for whatever reason. One of the things that make festival so appealing to women is the safe feeling that some of them feel because of the lack of men. While I know that transwomen are real, actual women regardless of their physical appearance, that can be difficult.
I don’t have a good answer for how to do all of this, but I am trying to sort it out for myself. I hope other people are, too.
Hey you, thanks for the comment.
I struggled a lot as I was writing this post, specifically because I didn’t want to lob the same kind of resentment I felt was being lobbed at me. There’s hurt all around, and I’m most mournful of the seeming fact that these conversations seem to happen most between like-minded people – i.e., that I say things like this to people who feel the same way, and vice versa, rather than us coming together to talk it all out. (Maybe I invest a little too much in the idea that dialogue works or will “solve” these resentments, but damn it I’m a Libra and a politician.
I want to work it out.)
MWMF is certainly an interesting example, albeit a difficult one because a lot of people made up their minds about it long ago. It seems to me that if the idea of the festival is to create a safe space for women, then let people who identify as women be there, regardless of bodies.
Obviously I’m quite biased in the following regard, but I *strongly* don’t believe that biology is destiny – in other words, that bodies constitute gender. An individual’s “goods” neither establish nor preclude what gender(s) they are or might be. Which is to say, having a penis neither determines one to be male nor precludes one from being female. It’s just a body part with nothing inherent about it, and we (“society” etc) add the rest of the meaning on our own.
A transwoman’s body doesn’t negate her place in the world as a woman; if anything, I imagine her body makes it more likely that she will experience gender policing and sexism, i.e. that being trans heightens the possibility she will experience negative reactions to her “female-ness,” femininity, and so on. (Note that I don’t mean to say a transwoman is more likely to experience this than a cis-woman (although she might be in some cases!), but rather that a transwoman is more likely to experience this than a cis-man. Am I making sense?)
Anyway, those negative experiences are what create and contribute to the need for safe spaces in the first place, and so it seems even more urgent that transwomen be welcomed into MWMF and other women’s spaces.
I really appreciate you sharing your own frustrations/struggles/thoughts. Thank you, FFG. *hug*
I like your link to the simple plan song.
To me, this speaks to the fact that we don’t know what it looks like for liberation to happen in collectivities and there is something very frightening about not knowing that. An immediate struggle can start to define horizons in a way that is limiting. People struggling for those things (to create butch possibilities, open gender expression for women) can get confused between that immediate struggle, and the larger fact that none of us, no matter how liberated we are, know what bodies will look like and how folks will be presenting themselves in a gender liberated world. Trans folks can get confused by that too, shoot all of us can get confused around that. We all have to try hard to achieve our own freedom and support the freedom of others. If we all do that, then we’ll find out together what it is that our community looks like when we are free.
Eric Erikson says that the essential choice of human beings when we are older is between bitterness, and wisdom. But I feel like I face that choice at pretty much every turn.
I like this post a lot, thank you.
I love this post!
I get comments from old friends but mostly new friends who ask me about my life before I was with a transman.. they refer to this time as “when you were a lesbian” as if somehow my identity has changed. Because I am no longer seen as queer by my queer community I must be heterosexual now. My partner was never part of the LGBTQ community and hasn’t dealt with that loss of community. I know that some people view transition as a step backward for our community but I think it’s a huge step forward and an even larger step for the world community. People can be who they are and become their best selves due to technology and transition. Like you said, people don’t have to understand it but at least respect it. We all have our struggles with who we are and our place in the big scheme of things and that should bring us closer instead of dividing us.
Thought this quote quite apropos:
“Families still operate as constraints and obstacles to particular forms of self-expression and freedom but also provide support, warmth, security, solidarity, sensuality.” – Biddy Martin