- walk into health class, there’s a sex ed guest speaker
- sit down expecting yelling about abstinence and heteronormativity
- the first thing she says is:
- “i’m going to be using gendered pronouns for the sake of simplicity but understand that not all males have penises and not all females have vaginas and this doesn’t invalidate their identity”
the whole article is really just.. ugh.
- Sexism is institutionalized at birth. As Asher Bauer explains in “Not Your Mom’s Trans 101,” “Let’s start at the beginning. A baby is born. The doctor says ‘It’s a boy’ or ‘It’s a girl’ based on the appearance of the child’s genitals. […] the child is then raised as whatever arbitrary gender the doctor saw fit to assign.” On the one hand, this is often the setup for trans identification later in life, with the individual realizing that her gender doesn’t match up with her biological sex (as designated by the doctor and social conventions that elide sex and gender). On the other hand, some argue that girls face sexism from birth while boys, even if they later identify as women, do not, signifying a fundamental difference in terms of privilege and upbringing between cisgender and trans women.
- Gender is socially constructed. Expounding on an idea most famously discussed by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, Laurie Penny writes, “Not a single person on this planet is born a woman. Becoming a woman, for those who willingly or unwillingly undertake the process, is torturous, magical, bewildering–and intensely political.” Trans women have to function in the same patriarchal culture cisgender women do, so it’s not a huge leap to say that all women can stand together against inequality. However, even the term “cisgender” is a contentious one, as it suggests ciswomen have privileges (by “being able to” conform to the sex/gender binary) that transwomen do not. According to Miska, “cisgender privilege” is a fundamental misnomer because “we do not have gender privilege to begin with.”
wait wait I think you must have made a series of really unfortunate errors here because it sounds like you’re suggesting that transwomen are more privileged than ciswomen. And you didn’t mean to say that, right? right? right?“According to Miska, “cisgender privilege” is a fundamental misnomer because “we do not have gender privilege to begin with.”
No… no. OK just off the top of my head, here are some privileges I have as a cis woman over some trans* women:
- No body dysphoria regarding my secondary sexual characteristics (genitalia, breasts)
- No one ever questions me when I walk into a women’s bathroom or dressing room
- No one has ever questioned whether I’m a “real” woman
- As a straight woman, I am free to marry a cisgender man in any state in the US
- No one in my family has ever questioned my gender identity
And the list goes on and on. And being a woman does have some gender privileges. Men have WAY MORE of them, but we have some.
What is with the mainstream feminism transfails going on today???
-Jess
Emi Koyama addressed the first point in her article “Whose Feminism is it Anyway?The Unspoken Racism of the Trans Inclusion Debate,” publicly available in PDF form here: http://eminism.org/readings/pdf-rdg/whose-feminism.pdf
Basically, her main point is that it is ALREADY a White middle-class woman’s privileged fantasy that all women share some “common experience.” If you want to kick trans* women out of the movement, then you’d better be ready to send all the middle-class White women, who have a shit ton of privilege that low-income women of color do not, with them.
(And yes, of course cisgender privilege is a thing. Let’s start with “I am way less likely to be murdered because someone doesn’t think my genitals look right.”)
Hi, yet another reason to never re-up my subscription to Ms. I haven’t subscribed since 2000 and I never intend to start again.
TUVOK YOU ARE FABULOUS
There is a reason Voyager was tied with Next Gen for my favorite Star Trek.
I latched on to him like no tomorrow the moment I saw him.
Now I’m just waiting on my canon black elf on a tv show….
(Source: deepspaceniners)
My female boss during my year-review in regards to my customer service. I don’t have any customer service complaints against me. My male co-workers are never told to “smile more” and do extra, suggestive selling. I do the job of three people and my boss knows it. I scored low on this portion because apparently, politeness, professionalism, and ten years of customer service/sales experience count for nothing, but fake-smiles and high-pitched baby talk counts for everything. It made me feel my self-worth and raise depended upon how big my smile was, rather than how well I can do my job. (via microaggressions)
Okay, uh as a manager, I have to agree with the boss. Being friendly and smiling more will always help your sales. Your male co-workers are already being friendly and smiling. I know jobs aren’t easy to come by, but damn. Do the job. If you can’t endorse a product and suggest it with a good tone to your voice, the customer is gonna pick up on that.
There, my 2 cents.
(via allcapsdoom)
Sorry, nope, this is bullshit. How do you know that her coworkers are being friendlier? Women are constantly told to smile, to look happy, to be perky, to be downright girlish in a way that men never are. Excusing that is internalized misogyny.
(Source: microaggressions)
I’m not giving these guys a cookie (TM) for doing the right thing—which is something you should do without expectation of reward. I’m highlighting this letter as an example (a sadly rare one) of how social justice activists in positions of privilege can use that privilege to make their movements…
(Source: racialicious.com)
“”Instead, rapists look for signs of passiveness and submissiveness, which, studies suggest, are more likely to coincide with more body-concealing clothing…..This suggests that men equate body-concealing clothing with passive and submissive qualities, which are qualities that rapists look for in victims.”
- Duke Journal Gender Law and Policy
wut.
Two girls in study hall. (via microaggressions)
….
This reminds me of the two girls walking and talking in front of me while I was rushing to class in Sweden. I was late, but damned I was tempted to just skip class to yell at them.
While I overtook ‘em, in my hurry, I heard them talking.
They were talking about how “women’s rights” campaigns had actually made life “worse” for women and that it was shitty how they were expected to earn their own living when they really just wanted to marry men who could work “for” them….
I should have just skipped class because I didn’t learn jack shit in it because their voices were rattling in my brain the entire time.
(via miniar)
“Women had more rights than slaves??” Because us darky women don’t fucking exist. I’m betting my last dollar them was white women who said that shit.
And miniar, what is that fuckery that you heard???? “Women have to earn their living!!! WAHHH!!” Black women have been working since we fucking got here, but a LOT of feminists forget that shit (expecting our asses to be grateful that we were ‘liberated’ into the working world!!! No bitch. Sitchoass down.), as well as these entitled fools.
(via sourcedumal)
Oh what the fuck, people?
(Source: microaggressions)
I know I’m not the only woman who has experienced the “Smile!” phenomenon. Mention such an incident to any woman on the planet and prepare for a stream of obscenity-laden anecdotes and suggestive hand gestures.
In the top ten of female peeves it’s right at the top. I’d rather hear a frat boy scream, “show me your t-ts” than have one more middle-aged nincompoop command I say cheese in precisely the same spirit of “fun” that a movie cowboy pulls out a gun and tells the town drunk to dance.
Is this the most annoying thing a man can do to a woman? - Lifestyle - MSN CA (via greaterthanlapsed)
Agree. I hate when men tell me to smile as if I need to put on a mask for them so that they feel better about themselves. If women look happy then apparently they are happy, everyone gets along, and the world is clearly ‘right’ again. F—that. I smile plenty but certainly not to make others feel more comfortable. That’s not my job. That’s not any woman’s.
(via agradschoolbreakup)
In discussions of hip hop homophobia there seems to be a constant need to paint everyone with the same brush.
While a great deal of mainstream Hip Hop is very dependent on a machismo aesthetic, there are layers to a lot of the artists that are constantly ignored in a continued effort to lump them into a monolithic group of homo haters.
The same Ludacris that uses epithets like faggot in his music is the same Ludacris that does extensive AIDS/HIV prevention/advocacy.
The same Ice Cube who once said “true niggas aint gay” is the same Ice Cube who also participates in AIDS/HIV philanthropy & whose sitcom “Are We There Yet” recently had a nuanced portrayal of a young Black teenage male (a rarity in mainstream media of any kind) with little to no fanfare.
The same Common that said “in a circle of faggots your name is mentioned”, also spit bars like “how could I judge him/had to accept him if I truly loved him/no longer he said had he hated himself/through sexuality he liberated himself”
The same Lil Wayne who spits homophobic lyrics also unashamedly kisses his “father” on the lips.
The same Jay-Z that referred to Nas as “a fag model for Karl Kani/Esco ads”, like Luda, also does AIDS/HIV charity work.
To say nothing of Russell Simmons constant GLBT advocacy, Kanye’s fairly pro-gay stance, Nicki Minaj’s openess or Lil B’s recent muddled social statement.
That being said, none of that excuses or makes their (or their peers) lyrics any less problematic.
Conversations about homophobia (as well as gender & misogyny) in hip hop need to happen but there’s also something to be said of the constant reduction of hip hop artists to one aspect of their art.
Is the Rolling Stones musical legacy invalid because of the racism in Brown Sugar/Some Girls?
Were there tons of articles excoriating the Cramps All Women Are Bad, the Stones Under My Thumb, Guns N Roses Used To Love Her or the Replacements Love You Till Friday about their misogyny?
Did the media insist Sebastian Bach’s “AIDS Kills Fags Dead” or Axl Rose’s One In A Million were indicative of their endemic homophobia?
No.
But then again it’s always easier for the media to create scary strawmen of color then to treat Black Men (and Women) as three dimensional human beings.
Everyone is complicated. It doesn’t mean we excuse shit, it means we let people be complicated and acknowledge it.
No, i’m not “cis” i’m a fucking woman. sorry if my proclaiming of being a female is “offensive” - you don’t get to NAME me.
I think the issue here is that you want to continue being the unmarked identity. Trans* women have been Othered by society which, yes, is patriarchal, but the Othering is by no means carried out exclusively by men. People’s have brought up various “radical feminists”, for example, and the Michigan Womyn’s Musical Festival.
But here’s the thing. Being the unmarked identity? It’s a fucking privilege. It means a word exists to describe people who aren’t like you, because they are not “normal” like you are. It means you are the default. And that is a privilege. For years, so many different words existed to describe trans* women - slurs, medicalized language, the trans* community’s own colloquialisms - but there was no adjective for what you are, because what you are is what every woman was assumed to be. That is a privilege. So now, there is a word to describe people who are not part of this marginalized group. If you don’t identify as something non-cis (usually transgender, but not always), then the label that applies to you is cisgender.
The people who need to be able to refer to what you are and they are not are not your oppressors, not in matters of gender. We are talking about a marginalized group, a minority in every sense of the word, who, when people do decide to acknowledge their existence, are seen as not-women because their womanhood has always required an adjective, because they are always the Other to your unmarked, because they have never been seen as simply “women” as you always have been, they have never had that privilege.
To reject a label that marks your unmarked identity is to deny the privilege that you have in not being Other, in not being trans*.
Exactly this.
Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis.
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The Jews were mainly Christians, and the Nazis had a problem with that.
The Colbert Report’s STEPHEN COLBERT, on reports that PBS killed a documentary critical of one of the gazillionaire Koch...
