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http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17256

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan contemplates the “decline in American optimism,” as evidenced by polls saying that 55% of Americans believe the country to be on the “wrong track,” and 66% don’t think life will be better for their children than it has been for them. Now, Noonan is not one to go with those boring old reasonable causes for pessimism everyone is talking about, like the fact that lots of us are unemployed, and uninsured, and people are losing their houses, and we’re at war and have been for a really long time, and so on and so forth and oh God let’s not list all the reasons right here. Oh, no! These, to Noonan, are mere distractions! She goes directly to the real reason: perhaps it is all because we are so upset about that Adam Lambert kissing a boy on the teevee, hmmmmm?

This was behind the resentment at the Adam Lambert incident on ABC in November. The compromise [whereby all GLBT people and non-conservatives apparently agreed to move to New York where Peggy Noonan and her friends will never see or hear from them ever again? You can read the whole article, but it seriously makes no more sense than that and this may in fact be what she is literally saying - Ed.] was breached. It was a broadcast network, it was prime time, it was the American Music Awards featuring singers your 11-year-old wants to see, and your 8-year-old. And Mr. Lambert came on… People were offended, and they complained. Mr. Lambert seemed surprised and puzzled. With an idiot’s logic that was nonetheless logic, he suggested he was the focus of bigotry: They let women act perverse on TV all the time, so why can’t a gay man do it? Fifteen hundred callers didn’t see it as he did and complained to ABC, which was negligent but in the end responsive: They changed the West Coast feed and apparently kept Mr. Lambert off “Good Morning America.”

Mr. Lambert’s act left viewers feeling not just offended but assaulted. Again, “we don’t care what you do in New York,” but don’t include us in it, don’t bring it into our homes. Our children are here… increasingly people feel at the mercy of the Adam Lamberts, who of course view themselves, when criticized, as victims of prudery and closed-mindedness. America is not prudish or closed-minded, it is exhausted. It cannot be exaggerated, how much Americans feel besieged by the culture of their own country, and to what lengths they have to go to protect their children from it.

Yes. A gay man kissed a man. And he did some sexy Gaga or Britney-worthy dance moves on television. Also, sang a song. And you, Noonan, suggested this was an “assault,” especially on The Children, who must never ever see this happen, and used the phrase – willfully, consciously, seemingly completely unaware that you might just have set yourself up by using the phrase – “idiot’s logic” to suggest that this reaction miiiiiight be a little bit bigoted. While suggesting that this – Adam Lambert, that is – is actually what is Wrong With America.

I. Just. No words.

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http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17254

I know it’s been approximately 17 years since I’ve done one of these, but I thought I might bring it back. Here’s the drill: Set your MP3 player to “shuffle” and post the first ten songs that come up. Here’s my ten, and a few videos:

Passion Pit, who I saw two weeks ago and who were just delightful:

1. Ted Leo – Timorous Me
2. Sufjan Stevens – Chicago
3. Girl Talk – Summer Smoke
4. The Mountain Goats – Pale Green Things
5. The Capstan Shafts – The Flowering Universe Confounds
6. Tom Waits – Baby Gonna Leave Me
7. Rufus Wainwright – Evil Angel
8. The Bad Plus – And Here We Test Our Powers of Observation
9. Grizzly Bear – All We Ask
10. Jans Lekman – Shirin

Girls, Lykke Li and Thao & the Get Down, Stay Down below the fold.

Girls, who make me want to move to California:

Lykke Li:

Thao & Get Down, Stay Down

feministe

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http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17253

Yesterday, December 17, was the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, a day that was created to draw attention to violent hate crimes committed against sex workers all over the world. Unfortunately in my hectic day, I missed blogging about it. No excuses, and my sincere apologies.

I would, however, like to take the belated opportunity now to highlight this epidemic of violence, and the work that activists are doing to combat it. Here is a remembrance list of known sex workers murdered in the past year (pdf). There are almost certainly unknown victims whose deaths have not been recorded. And while this is a list of those who have been killed, the number of those who have lived through physical and sexual assaults is infinitely longer.

For more about violence against sex workers, and the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, I recommend checking out this blog post about a MADRE event on Human Rights Day (thanks Robin), this article by Annie Sprinkle in On The Issues magazine, Audacia Ray’s post, the GRITtv video commentary on violence against sex workers (sorry, no known transcript yet), and lastly the new report from the Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN), Arrest the Violence: Human Rights Violations Against Sex Workers in 11 Countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

This is just a tiny fraction of what actions have been taken, what information has been released, and what blog posts and articles that have been written. So if you’ve written a post yourself, or have something else you want to pass along, please feel free to leave links in the comments.

xkcd_rss

http://xkcd.com/677/

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http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17251

We’ve written here at Feministe before about the common practice of U.S. prisons shackling pregnant prisoners in while they are in labor. And despite the increased recognition that such treatment is inhuman, it’s one that has not entirely ceased.

Now an article over at Alternet (originally published at The Nation) gives us awful if not hugely shocking news: shackling during labor isn’t the only atrocious and dangerous treatment that pregnant prisoners are receiving. Rather, many have been undergoing abuse at the hands of the prison system for months:

When women are brought to a hospital in shackles, the pain and humiliation they endure likely caps months of difficulty from being pregnant behind bars, months without adequate prenatal care or nutrition, or even basics like a bed to sleep on or clothes to accommodate their changing shape.

The lack of common sense and compassion with which imprisoned pregnant women are treated is chilling. Three stories illustrate the dangers women face when they cannot get anyone to take their medical needs seriously.

First, some women are not taken to the hospital until after they have already given birth, despite having informed staff members that they are in labor. Women wind up giving birth in their cells with the assistance of a nurse, corrections officer or cellmates. Others give birth in their cells with nobody to help. Both situations endanger the woman and her baby. Nineteen-year-old Terra K. screamed, pounded on the door and asked for the nurse in the Dubuque County Jail in Iowa, only to give birth alone in her cell. Afterward she asked, “How does somebody have a baby in jail without anybody noticing?”

The article tells the equally distressing story of a woman whose fetus died in utero due to a lack of needed medical care, only to have prison officials then delay getting the dead fetus removed from her body, as well as that of a woman who miscarried as a result of an assault by other prisoners, and who ended up requiring surgery and a blood transfusion because prison officials refused to take her to the hospital in a timely manner.

Further, while these incidents would be horrifying and entirely unacceptable even if they were unusual, sadly they’re not:

These are not isolated events; they are just a few that recently made the news. Institutions of confinement are not required to report the pregnancy outcomes of women in their custody. Until elected officials mandate such reporting, we will have to rely on the efforts of imprisoned women, journalists, human rights investigators, researchers, lawyers and advocates to document the reality of life for pregnant women inside prison walls. Reflecting on more than thirty years of experience, ACLU National Prison Project director Elizabeth Alexander says, “In virtually every case that I have handled involving healthcare claims of women, I have found women who lost their pregnancies or newborns due to the prison’s atrocious neglect.”

The denial of appropriate care to pregnant women is part and parcel of the general state of medical neglect in prisons in the United States. Access to timely, appropriate medical care is further undermined by the trend to contract out medical services to private, for-profit companies.

When it comes to these issues, I feel like we talk a lot about a lack of prison oversight — rather than why so many people are in prisons to begin with, whether prison is really the best place for most of these people to be, and why such conditions are allowed to exist at all. And while the first two are unfortunately a bit beyond the scope of this post and my knowledge base, I don’t think we can really begin to intelligently discuss this issue at all without looking at the last.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: this is what happens when we decide that people who have broken the law (or are merely accused of doing so!) have relinquished their most basic and inalienable human rights. This is what happens when we decide that punishing people is worth more than our Constitution, ethics, or simple decency. This is what happens when a system steeped in racism, classism, ableism, and misogyny is given complete control over people’s lives, with everyone else throwing up their hands and saying “they should have thought about that before.” And while I’m ranting, it’s also what happens when (usually privileged) people run around complaining about how “those criminals have better health care than I do,” both spreading a generally untrue, misleading, and dangerous myth, and also suggesting that health care is not something that ought to be a right for all, but something that is earned off of some kind of “objective” personal merit.

It would be easy to sit here and make arguments about the number of imprisoned women who have committed non-violent crimes, and to discuss the important subject of how unjust societal factors lead people to break the law, but I’m not going to reinforce the notion that this would somehow be acceptable for certain women. No person deserves to give birth alone on a cold jail cell floor. No person deserves to leak amniotic fluid for almost two weeks, pleading to be taken to a doctor, until her fetus’ skull collapses. No person deserves to live with an incomplete miscarriage for three weeks until they start bleeding almost to death, because a simple follow-up visit was not allowed to be attended.

This kind of treatment ought to be considered cruel and unusual by any standard. And it’s only allowed to exist as it does because we live in a bigoted society that wallows in a smug sense of superiority and believes it has the credentials and the prerogative to determine that some people don’t deserve the right to safety or even life. Not just because of a lack of oversight, but because so many non-incarcerated people don’t even want that oversight, and actively resist it. Not just because our government is prejudiced and cruel, but because many average people also think that the women living under these abusive conditions are getting exactly what they deserve.

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http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17250

We don’t get that many comments in the SYTYCD show posts, but I figured I should start an open thread for the finale so that no spoilers are posted on the other posts.

So if you haven’t watched, do not enter the comments because this is a Spoiler-Filled Zone.

Everyone else, have at it! What did you think of the judges’ favorite dances? What’s with all the musical performances? And, of course, were you happy with the winner?

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http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17249

It’s time for a story! We’ll call this one “Business or Pleasure.”

I’m at a networking type of event, trying to schmooze, get business cards, that whole bit. I meet a couple of interesting people but move on to the next, as these things go. Next up is a man. He sees me and walks up to me and starts chatting. It’s the usual “so what do you do, where do you work, how’d you hear about this event,” nothing suspicious. Then it turns out that one area of expertise I have is something he needs for his business. Cool, right? Because who doesn’t want to do something they love and get paid for it for some extra income. Awesome.

You keep talking and now it’s more friendly conversation. Where are you from (which in this case meant nationality… you never really know in NY), what’s there to do for fun in NY, do you go out dancing? Because I love going out dancing, you should come.

Wait, what?

So now I’m starting to wonder, is this guy just really friendly and recognizing what an awesome person I am? Or is he not at all serious about needing my expertise and just trying to hit on me?

I sort of presume the former and carry on as normal, but it’s really been bugging me ever since. I don’t usually assume the worst in people, but it really made me think. I mean, I’m at an event, I look nice (if I do say so myself), I’ve got makeup on and heels and everything… How the hell am I supposed to know if a man is actually interested in doing business with me and not just hitting on me?

This is all too confusing. It’s enough to make me want to stay home instead.

(Cross-posted at Jump off the Bridge.)

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http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17248

Today, New York Governor David Paterson signed an executive order barring discrimination against state employees on the basis of gender identity and gender expression. Seeing the high numbers of transgender people who report discrimination in the workplace, this is great news for those current and future employees who will be affected.

But it’s also only a first step in the right direction. While New York is now ahead of many states, it’s also really behind many others:

While supporters of transgender legal protections said they were encouraged by Mr. Paterson’s order, they noted that New York was not a pioneer in extending such rights.

“It has been a long road, and I think New York is behind,” said Dru Levasseur, a transgender rights attorney for Lambda Legal. “So this will bring New York up to par with other states that are taking the lead on workplace fairness.”

Twelve states and the District of Columbia have broad laws prohibiting discrimination based on gender expression or identity, according to gay and transgender rights groups. In addition, more than 100 cities and counties across the country provide similar legal protections

Indeed, just within the state, New York City, Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Ithaca, Rochester, Westchester County and Tompkins County already have workplace discrimination laws applying to trans people in place.

Further, the executive order only applies to state employees, because a law is required to extend those same protections to all workers in New York. What is truly needed is the passage of GENDA, an anti-discrimination bill affecting trans New Yorkers that the legislature has allowed to languish for several years — or, as many would argue, a revamped version of GENDA that doesn’t risk causing as many problems as it solves. (Better yet, an inclusive ENDA would extend workplace protections on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation to all employees across the United States.)

In other words, it’s great news that Governor Paterson finally got around to doing this. But he and the rest of New York’s elected officials still have significantly harder work ahead of them.

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http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17247

Oh, good. I was wondering when someone would publish an article with this headline! Again!

Has Feminism Gone Too Far?

Now: careful readers will note that this is a post on The Frisky, to which I have contributed in the past. Careful readers should also be informed that I like The Frisky, and have had only remarkably pleasant interactions with those who work there. However! I need to say something here.

Because the post is by Susannah Breslin. And, by “feminism,” she apparently means the blog Jezebel, or perhaps this one post that was on Jezebel, which was about a Gap Kids commercial. And by “gone too far,” she means “put forth an opinion with which Susannah Breslin disagreed.” Yes, it’s true: the blog Jezebel did in fact put forth an opinion with which Susannah Breslin apparently disagreed, this one time, in this one post. For the record, I kind of disagreed with that one post that one time as well! But whether this is, in fact, conclusive evidence as to the too-far-gone-ness of the entirety of feminism is where Breslin and I, apparently, disagree. But never mind! Big conclusions! Narrow-ass case study! GUARANTEED BLOG-FODDER PAGEVIEW GOLD!!!

So, the post in question argued that the little girls who danced in a Gap Kids ad were oversexualized. Having seen the ad, I think this is maybe not so much the case! I just see some kids dancing. However, here are the conclusions which Breslin invites us to draw:

You know, I understand there was a time in history when the word “feminism” meant something. Women fought to win equal rights.

Ah, yes! The golden days! When the only people being challenged were people who, living in the past and all, had absolutely zero chance of ever being you, personally!

Recently, it seems like old-school feminism has returned.

So, the feminism of the past was good and “meant something.” You might even refer to it as feminism of the “old school!” But we should all beware the return of… “old-school” feminism?

This time around, though, it seems like all the political action is gone, and the new feminist key activity consist of pointing out all the ways in which women are supposedly exploited, victimized, or hyper-sexualized by the media.

Okay: first of all, determining that there is zero “political action” involved in contemporary feminism on the basis of one forty-word post on one popular feminist-trafficked blog is probably not the most reasonable thing anyone has ever done. And it should be no surprise that, since it is based on that forty-word post, as opposed to actually seeking out and speaking to feminist activists (of which there are, yes, many) it is also completely wrong. Second: leaving aside the part where none of us participates in political action (even though we do), why is media criticism suddenly un-okay? In the eyes of someone who writes blog posts about blog posts? And who is, yes, engaging in media criticism therein?

Oh, right. Because this particular blog post pointed out some possible sexism.

So, let me lay some facts on you here: the popular feminist-trafficked blog Jezebel is, in fact, a blog. To be more specific, it is a for-profit blog, with deadlines and necessary post counts for the day and everything. Which means that the people working there, as far as I can reasonably ascertain, need to put up a certain number of things that are of interest to their readers every day. This particular item was apparently recommended to them by readers, so there’s one more reason for including it right there. And, yeah, they often cover things that are of interest to feminists, or cover things from a feminist perspective, so pointing out The Sexism is something that they do. Which means that they – like me, like everyone who works at this blog probably, like pretty much all ladybloggers – have to go out looking for materials potentially containing The Sexism.

Which is not the same as “looking for things to get offended by,” so don’t even start with me. It’s looking for material. And it’s something that feminist media critics, and feminists, do, whether or not we have deadlines or post counts or even blogs at all: we scan the media, the culture around us, the news, and we examine it for evidence not only of progress or reasons to be optimistic (I’m really into looking for evidence of progress and reasons to be optimistic lately) but for places where progress remains to be made. So that we can work on them. This isn’t divorced from “political action,” it’s an integral part of that action. We have to know where we are to know where we want to go next.

But Breslin isn’t buying the whole “sexism still exists even though it probably shouldn’t, sometimes in the media” thing:

This is what feminism has come to? Pointing out sexism in advertising? Complaining about the latest Gap ad? Functioning as some sort of self-proclaimed social police in order to point out all the ways in which the media exploits women? Surely, the media is a fair exploiter. Men are exploited as rampantly as women, merely in different ways. (Seen “Tool Academy,” ladies?)

Emphasis mine, because: oh, Lord. I know the Breslin is baiting me, here, but: OH, LORD. Yes, men are exploited differently than women. It’s the differences that matter, and often tell us the most about how gender works. “Tool Academy,” the show she’s putting forth as an example of how sexism no longer exists, was a show which posited abusive, misogynist boyfriends as fundamentally funny, as opposed to being a legitimate threat to the women involved with them, and encouraged their girlfriends to stay with them because they could Make Them Change if they loved them enough. See also, “Tough Love,” in which a man verbally and physically abused women to make them better girlfriends. The MTV/VH1 partnership only recently realized the problems inherent in promoting a show by promising that a man would punch a woman in the face for your entertainment. Is “Tool Academy” exploitative of the Tools in question? Sure. It’s also really fucking sexist.

And it shows us something about how sexism works – minimizing violence against women, suggesting that it all only exists Over There, in the realm of Tools and douchebags and losers we would never hang out with, suggesting that abuse is okay if it’s done for your own good or that women can somehow deserve it by being obnoxious enough – which is why we should keep analyzing it. It is, yeah, going to come in handy when it comes time to identify, resist, and hopefully eliminate violence or rationalizations for violence in our communities.

Now: not all of our analysis will be 100% correct at all times. Not all of the problems we identify will be clear-cut and uncontroversial. (In fact, basically all of them will be controversial.) Not every problem we identify will be as consequential or severe as every other problem. And that is just part of the deal, when it comes to examining the culture. Hopefully, we retain a sense of perspective. I think devoting 40 words and a “Sparkle Motion” joke to a potentially marginally creepy ad denotes an excellent sense of perspective, myself. But if we’re wrong occasionally, or if we get a bit too high-strung and stressed occasionally, or if we run into disagreement among our own, that just means we need to get better at scanning. It doesn’t mean we need to stop examining things. It means anything but that.

feministe

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http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17246

If you are not up to the Top 6 yet, please be warned:

Ok, let’s begin. So last week, Legacy and Mollee left. I was perfectly fine with that. I feel that Legacy looked like he was done from the night before, which is why I expected him to go. I think Ryan’s plea at the end of last week’s show saved him and Ashleigh. Now on to this week…

First of all, I was really pissed off that the show was only an hour long. Everything was rushed, I don’t think the show was live (the cuts were awkward which makes me think it aired on a slight delay), and I hate that they didn’t have the same sex dance pairings that they do every season. Anyway, on to the dancing.

Ryan & Kathryn – They had a samba. I think this was Ryan’s best performance of the night. Kathryn was really good, I was surprised. She’s grown a lot this season and I can’t even remember what her actual style is most of the time. And that ending! Awesome!

Jakob & Ellenore – A Broadway routine by Tyce. I wasn’t as blown away as the judges were, but it was good. Ellenore looks good doing it, so that’s good for her.

Russell & Ashleigh – A lyrical jazz routine by Sonya. It was good. Not incredible or mind-blowing, but good. I wanted to throw something at the screen when Nigel would not STFU about Russell. Ok, he’s good, but CALM THE FUCK DOWN DUDE!

Ryan & Ellenore – They got jazz. The quirky concept wouldn’t have been so bad if the dancing had been more challenging. The judges hated it, but, again, at least it suited Ellenore well.

Jakob & Ashleigh – A foxtrot. It was ok, they definitely have chemistry and I liked seeing them dance together again. It didn’t wow me at all, but they danced it well.

Russell & Ellenore – They had the paso doble. I have to say, I was really disappointed at the judges here. The dance was really good, but Ellenore was way better than Russell. But did the judges critique him properly? No, because Nigel is too busy trying to have babies with him, and the critique Mary gave lasted all of 10 seconds before she sang his praises too. I don’t like when the judges rally around one dancer like that.

Jakob & Kathryn – They got contemporary. My opinion? Best dance of the night for sure, probably one of the best of the season. I could not stop watching them and I was sad when it was over, that’s how good it was.

Ryan & Ashleigh – The moment we’ve all been waiting for lol. They got contemporary too. Lots to say here. 1) During auditions, Ryan was always complimented and Ashleigh was ignored, but I think Ashleigh is a much better dancer now than Ryan is. She grew a lot and he didn’t. 2) Ashleigh shined in this dance, IMHO. The emotion between them was obviously intense, but I think she still looked beautiful even while crying. 3) I think both of them gave up last night. They knew they weren’t going to win, so they just danced the steps without trying too hard.

Russell & Kathryn – Hip hop. It was okay. Their energy was good, but their moves weren’t always in sync which annoyed me. Couldn’t they have gotten a better choreographer for the last dance of the season than NappyTabs?

Tonight is the finale! WOOHOO! Who I want to see win is Kathryn. I think she’s grown the most, she’s great at all the styles, she’s adorable, I just love her. Who I think will actually win is Russell. He’s been a favorite from the beginning and the judges make him seem flawless. I’ll be happy if either of them win, or Ellenore for that matter, though I don’t think she will. Jakob won’t win because the best technical dancer never wins (I think that’s why Nigel told him to join a company). Ashleigh and Ryan, as I’ve already said, gave up last night so they won’t win either.

What are your thoughts, predictions, comments?

feministe

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http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17244

Michael Penner committed suicide a couple of weeks ago. I found out about it when this post was linked off of one of our Self-Promotion Sundays.

It is normally wrong to refer to a trans person’s assigned-gendered past as though it lay at the foundation of life, or to place so much emphasis on becoming rather than being. It negates a lived reality, and forces a trans person to bear the burden of marginalization. It fragments a life, and implies that fragmentation is the only way to conceive of a life in or through transition.

Michael Penner’s story is unusual. Michael Penner was a well-known sports writer who worked for the LA Times for more than a quarter-century. In 2007, Michael Penner became Christine Daniels. After coming out, he worked to educate people through his column and other venues. In October 2008, Michael Penner began publishing articles under the Michael Penner byline, although he never wrote the re-transition version of the coming-out article he wrote when he became Christine Daniels. A couple of weeks ago, Michael Penner killed himself.

I can’t call Michael Christine. Changing a byline in the same paper that published your coming-out column is a pretty public step back towards a former name and identity.

Ambiguity has been used to nullify definite trans identity so often that no halfway measure can be respectful either, or even accurate to the purpose. I can’t refer to Michael as “‘Michael,’” or “‘Christine,’” or, “Michael, who called himself Christine,” or “Christine, who called herself Michael,” or, “Michael, who became Christine.” All that means is that I don’t respect him. Michael had a self, even if it was not always rightly named–or ever rightly named. Whoever he was, he was not false.

Whatever his reasons, he did make a choice, and I believe I should respect it. So I am using male pronouns and the name he used when he was a man. However, I agree with everything Gudbuytjane has said about the weight of transphobia and transmisogyny. I agree that it may well have contributed to Michael’s despair at the time he took his life, or helped to turn grief and fear into despair. In other words, I may be using “he” and “Michael” to refer to a woman who killed herself because she could not stand that word or that name.

When he came out as Christine Daniels, he wrote,

I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words. I realize many readers and colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them.

That’s OK. I understand that I am not the only one in transition as I move from Mike to Christine. Everyone who knows me and my work will be transitioning as well. That will take time. And that’s all right. To borrow a piece of well-worn sports parlance, we will take it one day at a time.

When he became Michael Penner for the second time, he wrote nothing at all. As The Sexist puts it,

Then, in October of 2008—with none of the fanfare that accompanied Penner’s original gender transition—the celebrated sportswriter resumed the public persona of Mike Penner, reclaimed his original byline, and scrubbed the L.A. Times‘ Web site of all work attributed to Daniels.

Of course there was no fanfare. Who celebrates a divorce? Did Princess Di?

Gudbuytjane describes her own decision this way:

Transition is an effort many of us expect to ‘fail’ at, not because there is anything inherently flawed about trans women, but because our culture actively works to keep us from existing. The narratives we have forced on us from our earliest age tell us repeatedly that to transition is to lose all – friends, jobs, lovers, relationships, and most of all our hopes for a life in the way we want to live it – and we have those narratives repeated to us our entire lives. My own decision to transition came with a handful of pills in one hand, having decided that if it all went as horrible as I had been told it would then I could go back to the option of those pills. I’ve heard similar stories from many other trans women.

In Michael’s coming-out column, he wrote,

For more years than I care to count, I was scared to death over the prospect of writing a story such as this one. It was the most frightening of all the towering mountains of fear I somehow had to confront and struggle to scale.

How do you go about sharing your most important truth, one you spent a lifetime trying to keep deeply buried, to a world that has grown familiar and comfortable with your façade?

Transition is constructed as loss–burning bridges, stepping off a cliff. It isn’t seen as necessarily healthier or more responsible than suicide. This definition is enforced by a culture that forces transitioning people to give up so much just to protect their lives, authority that makes transsexuality a status crime in so many ways, but it’s more than that. It’s this idea that you’re throwing your birthright away–and that the only compensation you can offer is to turn that prodigality into a sacrifice.

The initial medical criteria for a proper transition–the conscious amnesia, the celebration of estrangement, the constant humiliation, the constant proofs–it was designed to cordon off transsexuality from normalcy. But it was more than that. It was designed to weed out dignity, to teach people to accept indignity as a matter of course. This is what you deserve from us. This is all we owe to you. It was the performance of specialized cruelty as well as the command rehearsal of a specific kind of gender. When trans people agitated for self-determination, they were demanding respect where they had been given none.

As Michael’s own actions indicate, a certain amount of movement is necessary. Transition is change, and it’s welcome change. But there’s a difference between moving forward and being thrown away.

You walk out that door–

It’s not something you just walk away from.

It seems like it would be simple, simpler for people who have already crossed over once. Count down. Take the same directions in reverse. Walk forward again. Come back. Straightforward, if not easy. But for me, it felt like loss upon loss. I didn’t believe that I had anything to return to, and I didn’t believe I could take anything with me. I thought I was finished on the one hand and ruined on the other. I didn’t know how to cross over altogether. I didn’t know how to keep myself on one side of the line, and I didn’t think I had any right to be there. What amount of womanhood could I get back? What was left? All I wanted? All I deserved. I had to nail it down again and learn to walk around inside it. I had to figure out which parts to change. There were all these people telling me how. I had to figure out which ones were right. I hoped they would give me all the help I needed. I didn’t want to let them down.

I had been breathing that toxic scrutiny in like air. You’re doing great! It’d be so much better if wouldn’t it be easier if but shouldn’t you can’t you why don’t you when will you did you have to By the time I went back, I had forgotten what it was like not to have that approval held out to me.

I had never done this before. I was completely unprepared, couldn’t even see what was happening. All I understood was that I’d been an insider once, but had somehow become a petitioner. I’d been a woman for a long time, but never on probation. I wanted to prove myself, but I couldn’t see how. And I was meant to be settling in and shaping up nicely, because this was the right choice, and everyone was being so patient, and of course I was a woman. Comfy? Happy now?

I did have people in my life who couldn’t see me as anything but a woman, because they never had. My parents, some of my older friends. But accepting their version of events–of me–meant cutting away three years of my life. It also meant forgetting any dissonance I experienced, even weeks after I started my period again, months before I had breasts again. Even when no one else saw me as anything but a man. You’re doing just fine. You’re a beautiful young woman. It was easier to quit my job. I took that deal, of course. I was eager. I was so grateful. I didn’t know what else to do. They didn’t know how else to see me. They didn’t know how else to make me happy. It was easier to move out. I’d been planning to take some time off.

It was a couple of years before I thought of myself as anything but you fuckup. It was a couple of years before my journey was anything but don’t fuck it up again. My presentation was one long plea for forgiveness. It’s still difficult to think, let alone write, about this last part of my life. It’s humiliating and terrifying. Not the memory, but the fact that it happened, the fact that it sits there in my memory. You’re not supposed to be that afraid of anything you are. You’re not supposed to approach it from that kind of distance. You’re not supposed to go away, and you’re not supposed to take that long to come back.

Alongside shame and fear is grief. Because that fear sectioned off a part of me. I dismantled a life and a body. These days, it’s like walking into a burned-out room. I have accumulated enough time and space that I have other places to live. Still, every once in a while the door swings open in its unthinking way, and I remember something that isn’t supposed to be there. Something I wanted, could even say I loved. I lose my place.

It feels irresponsible to speculate about what Michael might have wanted or might have become. He shut off that line of discussion forever, and we cannot even know how best to respect his memory. He won’t be. It does seem that he was confronting the idea of becoming Michael again, and of leaving Christine behind. He may not have wanted to stop being Christine. He may not have wanted to move on without keeping Christine’s life or self intact in his mind. He may have been desperate to run. He may have been welcoming a different life back again. I don’t know what was taken, or given away. I don’t know what he wanted back. But it is clear that he was unhappy, and that he believed he had nowhere to go from there.

xkcd_rss

http://xkcd.com/676/

feministe

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feministe-blog/~3/i_Xq9Ft4cS4/

http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17232

A nurse at Mt. Sinai hospital in New York was reportedly forced to assist in an emergency second-trimester abortion, and is now suing. Predictably, the right is flipping out, and even blaming Obama. According to the story, which I can only find one version of (and that’s through an anti-choice Catholic news agency which bases the whole article on a lawsuit filed by an anti-choice organization), a woman came into the emergency room and had to have an emergency abortion — she was a “category II” patient, which means that the surgery had to happen within six hours. Details are spare, but according to the article — which only gets the nurse’s side of the story — the nurse was told that she had to assist in the abortion or she would be charged with insubordination and patient abandonment. She assisted, and now she is suing.

So, first, let me say that I don’t buy this article at face value and neither should you. But it’s an interesting story nonetheless, because it brings up a lot of the problems with conscience clause legislation. I happen to think that workplace accommodation for religious, moral or other belief is a good thing. I don’t think that nurses should generally be forced to assist in abortions if it violates a strongly-held religious belief. I think employers should do their best to make accommodations for a religious employee observing the Sabbath or important holidays. I think if someone voices a serious moral or ethical concern with working on a particular project, their employer should make the best effort to put someone else on.

But all ideals have edges, and I draw the line when you’re a health care worker and someone is dying in front of you. Should the hospital have done its damndest to find a different nurse to help out? Yes. Should it have tried to assemble a team of people who are actually interested in saving a dying woman instead of prioritizing her fetus? Yes. But have any of you been to an emergency room lately, or worked in one? Sometimes there just aren’t other staff members to be found, and in the meantime someone is seriously ill or dying. To have a nurse just standing there is pretty atrocious.

Cassy Fiano, the blogger at HotAir, has this to say:

My first thought is how cruel this is — to force someone to participate in something that they have such a strong moral objection to. If her supervisors knew of her objections to performing abortions for five years now, and then forced her to assist one anyways, then that seems to me like a petty, cruel thing to do. As explained in the article, the hospital is claiming that the patient was a Category II case, meaning the operation needed to take place within six hours. That would have been more than enough time to find a nurse without moral objections to perform the abortion. Yet instead, they sought out the Catholic nurse who they knew had moral and religious objections to abortion, and forced her to do it. That is cruel, and unnecessarily so.

Ah yes, the cruelty of forcing someone to violate their religious objections. So much less cruel to make an emergency patient sit and wait for six hours as she faces possible death or serious bodily harm!

The thing with emergency room categorization? It’s not a science. The six-hour window is part of a triage system; it means that this person isn’t going to die immediately, but she might die pretty darn close to immediately. The longer you wait, the closer death — or serious bodily harm — begins to creep. She’s not just sitting there in great health for six hours. Each of those hours, and the minutes within those hours, matter.

None of that is to say that you must grab the first nurse standing there if you know she objects to the procedure. Ideally, the hospital would have found someone else to assist. But if it wasn’t able to, then the life and health of a patient should be placed first.

Cassy continues:

Unfortunately, this is all too common and in a variety of ways. It’s mostly thanks to feminists who howl in rage if anyone has a moral objection against anything they feel is a “reproductive right”. Doctors and nurses who don’t want to perform abortions, pharmacists who don’t want to dispense the morning after pill or contraception… they’re all told that they’re required to do these things and if they don’t like it, to get out of their field. Organizations like Pharmacists for Life International find themselves the target of feminist wrath. And whether it’s regarding pharmacists, doctors, or nurses, the end point is still the same each time: it’s about restricting choice. This is America, where free-market capitalism is supposed to reign. A business owner can operate his or her business how they want to. They can sell whatever goods or products they want to — and likewise, refuse to sell whatever goods or products they don’t want to sell. Customers, meanwhile, are free to shop wherever they choose. If they don’t like a pharmacy that refuses to sell contraception, or a doctor’s office that won’t perform abortions, they can go elsewhere. Some people though — ironically, most so-called pro-choicers — don’t want people to have that choice, though. Abortion is legal, so therefore, all doctors and nurses must be willing to perform it, no matter what their religious and moral principles tell them.

For someone who loves capitalism and American rule of law so much, she doesn’t seem to have a sophisticated understanding of either.

First, health care is not purely a good up for free market exchange, not in the U.S. economic system. Second, a nurse is an employee and not a business owner. She has rights, but those rights are constrained by the requirements of her job. Third, medicine and pharmacology are regulated industries, and for good reason — they don’t have free reign to provide only what they want and to serve only those they like.

Hospitals don’t have to perform abortions, but they do have a legal obligation to protect the lives and health of their patients. If they refuse to assist a patient who is dying and needs an abortion to save her health and her life, they can be in a good bit of trouble. Nurses can have moral objections, but they still have to do their jobs, which means not letting patients die in front of them. If a religious vegetarian Hindu gets a job at a restaurant and then refuses to serve any customer who orders meat, his employer can probably fire him. If a religious Muslim gets a job at a bar and refuses to serve alcohol to customers, her employer can probably fire her. If a Scientologist gets a job at a pharmacist’s office and refuses to fill prescriptions, his employer can probably fire him. This case is obviously a little different — it’s not like the nurse got a job at an abortion clinic and then refused to help — but she did get a job in an emergency room, where it is her responsibility to preserve the life and health of her patients. That’s a far cry from the hospital forcing her to assist in a pre-planned, elective abortion where there is all kinds of time to put together a medical team. Likewise, there are many people who, out of religious obligation, leave work before sundown on Friday. I think that’s great and should be accommodated to the best of an employer’s ability. But if I get injured on the job and a co-worker starts to help me and the clock strikes 3, that’s the line where they can’t go, “Oops, Sabbath, gotta go!” and leave me to bleed to death. Leave a project, fine. Leave a co-worker with a paper cut, ok. But the rules are different when you’ve started to help someone who is imminent danger. They are very different when you’ve been hired to help people who are in imminent danger.

Doctors, nurses and pharmacists are also licensed practitioners. They are required to get government approval in order to practice, and the fields additionally self-regulate. When you work in a field like that — and I also work in a regulated field — there are certain standards and practices that you have to maintain. You can’t just go all renegade; there are legal and ethical concerns that have to be taken very seriously. Medicine is regulated because it’s more than a market good; it’s often a life-sustaining necessity.

So no, this is not as simple as “We live in a capitalist society and I can sell what I want.”

Conscience clauses and making space for moral and religious beliefs are good things, but they are not always easy things to construct. This case, if the reporting on it is accurate, may show where those lines grow fuzzy around the edges.

feministe

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feministe-blog/~3/nKKymrGEs34/

http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17243

Oh, my goodness! You guys! Look at this exciting SCIENCE FACT I just learned recently!

Casual Sex Doesn’t Cause Emotional Damage: Study

Wha-wha-WHAAAAAAAAT? Oh, man! This is just like the time that I learned you could have an abortion without crying over it and posting blogs on anti-choice websites about the Lessons You’ve Learned every day! Or that time someone figured out that menstrual cramps weren’t actually entirely made up by my wacky incompetent girl-brain! EVERYTHING I KNOW IS WRONG. Whatever shall I do now? Oh, right, quote the study at you:

In the study, University of Minnesota researchers analyzed the responses of 737 females and 574 males, mean age 20.5, who were asked about their sexual behaviors and emotional well-being. Among those who were sexually active, 55 percent said their last sexual partner was an exclusive dating partner. An additional 25 percent said they were engaged to, or a spouse or life partner of their last sexual partner. Another 12 percent said it was a close but not exclusive partner, and 8 percent said it was a casual acquaintance… In this study to determine if sexual activity outside a committed relationship causes emotional damage to young people, the researchers found no differences in the mental well-being of participants who had a casual partner or a committed partner.

Holy cow! So, not only are the college kids NOT all “hooking up” for their “casual sex” “orgies” of “degradation” – only eight percent of them appear to be doing this, in fact – the ones who are hooking up seem to be totally fine. Even the girl ones! They’re not all sobbing into the arms of their besties about the loss of their womanly virtue or anything! Granted, they may be planning to put flaming bags of dog poop on the doorstep of whichever University of Minnesota douchebro has been assigned to write an article for their college newspaper which calls them sluts and warns them not to totally want dudes to be their boyfriends. (Because you always totally want whichever dude you have most recently slept with to be your boyfriend, am I right, ladies? LADIES? Ouch, ladies, stop throwing things at my face!) But that, my friends, is evidence of excellent mental well-being, and a certain admirable resourcefulness and willingness to take matters into one’s own hands.

Now, if you are me, you have one very important question about the potential negative effects of this study. That question being: but what of the entire publishing industry set up to provide books about how all the kids today totally are hooking up and thereby ruining the entire lives of the young ladies involved? Easy. They will keep publishing that stuff anyway. Possibly talking about how the ladies responding to surveys such as these are liars and will never realize the damage they have done to their dainty, fragile female hearts until it is too late. Why let “facts” or “truth” get in the way of your reactionary behavior?

As for the rest of us: go forth, and engage in whatever behavior you feel good about, probably without multiplying, my friends. Science has, for once, done you good.

feministe

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feministe-blog/~3/gjjEC0GYBUs/

http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17241

It seems that James Chartrand of Men with Pens is not, in fact, a man. He is actually a woman with a pen name. Because… wait for it… being a woman writer was making her no money!

Well, I would just like to say I’m SHOCKED!

In that I would like to think these things never happen but I know they do. Every day. So I’m actually totally not shocked.

I learned of this through MediaBistro, where they actually were shocked that a woman writer would not make as much as a man:

But this is 2009, and men still make more than women—double or triple in James’ case?

There are no words.

Which is weird, because the sentence right before it references George Eliot and “even JK Rowling,” who was encouraged to publish with gender-neutral initials rather than her real name Joanne because apparently boys don’t read books (even fantasy) written by women. But, you know, Harry Potter only came out a decade ago, so that seems a bad example.

At any rate, I’m thinking I’ll change my current pen name into something totally awesome. Suggestions?

feministe

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feministe-blog/~3/ImjsQRgyKQc/

http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17240

Say! Do you, like me, get an unexpectedly enormous kick out of Manohla Dargis – New York Times film critic, generally feministy lady, nailer-to-wall of all things inadequate, bringer of great joy and admiration to Sady Doyle on a more or less regular basis – saying “fuck” and “bullshit” a lot? Well, here is something you will enjoy! It is an interview, highly recommended for everyone who loves the work of Manohla Dargis to death, which you should, if you are a person. For example, she said this:

I love romantic movies. I absolutely do. But I literally don’t know what’s happening. I think it’s depressing that Judd Apatow makes the best romantic comedies and they’re about men. All power to Apatow, but he’s taken and repurposed one of the few genres historically made for women. ….We had so few [genres] that were made specifically for the female audience and now the best of them are being made by Judd Apatow. But what are his movies supposed to be about? Nominally about the relationship between a man and a woman, but they’re really buddy flicks.

Indeed! This is a matter of great concern to me, about which I have written approximately 90 kersplillion words! It is also one of the more measured interview responses. Much like her criticism, which is always measured and thoughtful and fair and accurate! But here’s one thing she does not do in her criticism, at least what I have read of it: swear so much. She swears so much in this interview! I had no idea it would make me this happy! It does!

feministe

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feministe-blog/~3/hs5xn90C5zE/

http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17235

The New Yorker compiled a list of pictures highlighting fashion statements of the Obama Era, and the only one I wholeheartedly endorse* is this one:

Thanks to Rachel Maddow I have an excuse to wear Chucks and jeans as business wear.

* Except maybe Madeline Albright’s pin collection.

feministe

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feministe-blog/~3/aCd1RhjaZDg/

http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17239

Via little light, below is a video of Filipina trans activist Sass Rogando Sasot giving an incredible, impassioned speech on transgender rights before an assembly of the United Nations. The speech was delivered on December 10, and entitled “Reclaiming the Lucidity of Our Hearts.” After watching, I felt immediately compelled to repost:

Sass Rogando Sasot has reproduced the text of her speech over at Rainbow Bloggers Phillipines, with permission to repost. That transcript of her speech can be found below the jump.

Let me begin by expressing my warmest gratitude to the Permanent Missions to the United Nations of Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, and to the coalition of non-government organizations defending the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Thank you for making this event possible and for giving us this opportunity to contribute our voices to this ongoing conversation for change. Our esteemed participants, beautiful beings, and profound expressions of this Universe, a warm, vibrant, and dignified afternoon to each and every one of you!

Burned at stake. Strangled and hanged. Raped and shot and stabbed to death. Throats slashed. Left to bleed to death. These are just some of the ways transgender people were killed in different parts of the world, in different times in the history of humanity. These are just the tip, the violent tip, of the iceberg of our suffering. I can go on and on, reciting a litany of indignity upon indignity, but my time is not enough to name all the acts of atrocious cruelty that transgender people experience. But what is the point of counting the dead bodies of our fellow human beings, of narrating how we suffer, and of opposing violence against us if we don’t challenge the root of our oppression?

The sincerity of our intention to address the human rights violations against transgender people rests upon the depth of our appreciation of human diversity and the breadth of our understanding of why transgender people suffer these indignities.

The root of our oppression is the belief that there is only one and only one way to be male or female. And this starts from our birth. Upon a quick look on our genitals, we are assigned into either male or female. This declaration is more than just a statement of what’s between our legs. It is a prescription of how we should and must live our lives. It is a dictation of what we should think about ourselves, the roles we should play, the clothes we should wear, the way we should move, and the people with whom we should have romantic or erotic relationships. But the existence of people whose identities, bodies, and experiences do not conform to gender norms is a proof that this belief is wrong.

Nonetheless, even though the truth of human diversity is so evident and clear to us, we choose to hang on to our current beliefs about gender, a belief that rejects reality and forces people to live a lie. This is the belief that leads to attacks on our physical and mental integrity, to different forms of discrimination against us, and to our social marginalization. This is the belief that led to Joan of Arc to be burned at stake because she was cross-dressing. This is the belief that motivated the rape and murder of Brandon Teena on December 31, 1993. This is the belief that led to the stabbing to death of Ebru Soykan, a prominent transgender human rights activist in Turkey, on March 10, 2009. This is the belief that led to the arrest of 67 Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia for cross-dressing in June this year. This is the belief that keeps the list of transgender people being harassed, killed, and violated growing year after year. And it is very unfortunate that our legal systems, religions, and cultures are being used to justify, glorify, and sanctify the violent expressions of this belief.

So we question: Is human life less precious than this belief? Is our right to life, to dignified existence, to liberty, and pursuit of happiness subservient to gender norms? This doesn’t need a complicated answer. You want to be born, to live, and die with dignity – so do we! You want the freedom to express the uniqueness of the life force within you – so do we! You want to live with authenticity – so do we!

Now is the time that we realize that diversity does not diminish our humanity; that respecting diversity does not make us less human; that understanding and accepting our differences do not make us cruel. And in fact, history has shown us that denying and rejecting human variability is the one that has lead us to inflict indignity upon indignity towards each other.

We are human beings of transgender experience. We are your children, your partners, your friends, your siblings, your students, your teachers, your workers, your citizens.

Let our lives delight in the same freedom of expression that you enjoy as you manifest to the outside world your unique and graceful selves.

Let us live together in the fertile ground of our common humanity for this is the ground where religion is not a motivation to hate but a way to appreciate the profound beauty and mysteries of life;

for this is the ground where laws are not tools to eliminate those who are different from us but are there to facilitate our harmonious relationship with each other;

for this is the ground where culture is not a channel to express the brutality of our limited perception but a means to express the nobility of our souls;

for this is the ground where the promise of the universality of human rights can be fulfilled!

And we will be in this ground if we let the sanity of our desires, the tenacity of our compassion, and above all, the lucidity of our hearts to reign in our lives.

Thank you!

xkcd_rss

http://xkcd.com/675/

feministe

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feministe-blog/~3/B8G_rAKQrvU/

http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=17237

One month ago, I wrote about a fundraising campaign going on over at Scarleteen — a site which is, in my opinion, the best sex education source out there, and which runs off of a very, very small budget. And a month later, I’m a little sad to report that they’re only about one-third of the way to their $24,000 goal.

The other day, Scarleteen announced that a couple of donors have stepped up to match donations up to $2,500 for this weekend. As of last night, they’d only raised about $750 of that $2,500. It would break my heart to see them not reach goal, and watch much needed funds get flushed down the drain. But the Feministe community is large, and we have the potential to play a big role in ensuring that doesn’t happen.

So, I’m asking you again to consider giving to a vital, necessary, feminist source of sexual health information for teens and young adults. Most of us have at some point needed information about sex that we didn’t know how to find, been blocked from getting information by those who should have been educating us, and/or been given misinformation that proved harmful. Scarleteen is working to make sure that happens less and less, and if you’re able to open up your wallet, I’d say that’s definitely worth doing so.

Click here to give to Scarleteen now.

Reading this on Monday and wishing that you hadn’t missed the deadline? Give anyway. It’s still going to be a huge help.