Let's Not Celebrate TERF Week

Hurray for TERF Week!  Another celebration of rhetoric over compassion.  For those of you in the real world, TERFs are Trans Excluding Radical Feminists.

I know.  In the day-to-day, what’s the purpose of excluding trans folk?  Well, let me tell you, more than you’d ever expect.  Thank God for TERFs who are fast overtaking Anne Coulter in The Big Crazed One category.

Okay, here’s the story.  Let’s take Kellie Maloney, a recent celebrity transition.  In hir sixties, Frank Maloney was a patriarch of an incredibly macho field.  Pugilism, for fecksake!  Which brought hir happiness, right?  Nope.  Frank Maloney had one more goal to accomplish in life. 

The rape of feminism.

Yes, what you read is what I wrote.  Kellie Maloney, a figure in the public eye, a person of privilege and substance tossed all that away, underwent nasty medical procedures and risked ostracisation by not only family, but the Daily Mail in order to what?  Rape feminism.

Rape.

Feminism.

Trans-advocacy aside, isn’t that a big fuck-you to any and all survivors of sexual assault? 

So what about trans-men, you say.  Totally crushed by the patriarchy.  A case of, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  

Right.

(For more hilarity, Google Cathy Brennan or TERF.)

Have any of these TERFS ever sat beside a trans-person before, during and after a transition?  Not saying a word, mind you, but actually experienced what is required?  Actually witnessed the utter misery that comes with being trans in western society?  The rejection.  The violence.  The hindrance to employment.  The banjaxed sex life.  The emotional zap of having two sets of hormones doing the jerk in your system until some medical person somewhere decides to fix all that with a very painful surgery.

Trans-folk are commando humanists. 

So many trans-women go stealth into male lives, become boxers, bomber pilots, racing drivers, non-paediatric doctors, mechanics, bronco busters, infantry.  They knock everyone’s socks off in these fields and then say casually, Oh by the way, I’m a woman. 

How cool is that?

So many trans-men do the same thing disguised as women, go into professions usually restricted to penis holders, survive an uphill battle filled with tomato-throwing spectators to prove they’re better than cis male peers.  When they say, Oh by the way, I’m a guy, they’re told, forget how shitty you were treated; being male’s the real reason you succeeded.  And while you’re at it, stop emoting.  Toughen up, dude. (Can I see your penis?)

Trans lives show us that the arbitrary and artificial definitions we put on people, whether for gender or race or their favourite cigar, these definitions are false.  By choosing to live, whether stealth or fully transitioned, trans folk lead us to a more genuine society where each and every person stands a better chance of reaching their potential, contributing to the greater whole. 

Stop throwing ill-informed rhetoric at other human beings and learn from these acts of heroism. 

Gargoyle and Big Foot

A not-so-nice someone from my past quietly joined my list of followers and I just as quietly blocked the person.  No emotion.  A simple, not happening.  No further thought about it until today when out of the primordial ooze of sleep deprivation I rose . . .

Big Foot & the horse she rode in on
by Siniharraka Urban Photography

 My current WIP isn’t progressing.  I’ve been working on the same paragraph for about two days, not so much because it’s a difficult passage but because of this pickpocket, water loving, newly arrived noodle.  There are horrible and marvellous things happening in the world at large, but in the Writing Closet, there is only Big Foot.

We’d long been thinking Big Nose needed a friend, but he’s such a wonderful dog, we feared the chances of getting a canine version of the Gargoyle Possum.  You remember him.  The stray cat who turned out to be a bloodthirsty desperado with a brain tumour.

Gargoyle Possom

Big Foot is no Gargoyle Possum.  She brings all the clownery of puppyhood but inside a calm and grounded personality.  When she starts sleeping through the night, I may even begin to love her.  (Okay, so I already love her.)

 All the cats including Gargoyle have adjusted amazingly to Big Foot.  In an aura of complaisance, we noticed one of Gargoyle’s paws twitched when he slept but if you have dogs, a twitching paw doesn’t compare. 

So one afternoon, I’m snoozing on the couch with Big Foot when the slap of body part against wood wakes me up.  The Butler, who’s not really paying attention, says it’s Gargoyle twitching in his sleep.  Gargoyle is out of the Butler’s line of vision, but I see the cat’s upper body rise and slam against the floor.  The Butler’s examination makes Gargoyle march indignantly into the back garden and the incident gets swept away by Big Foot doing a flying leap onto the kitchen table.

The next morning, the Butler goes into town.  Big Foot settles into her morning nap.  There are various cat bodies scattered around making cat snore music.  I’m at the computer writing when Gargoyle goes into grand mal seizure.

If you’ve never seen a cat have a grand mal, don’t put it on your bucket list.

The vet wanted us to see if Gargoyle had another fit before medicating him.  Fuck this.  The cat has a brain tumour.  Of course he’s going to have another one.  We’re now in the stage of continued petit mals until the meds are regulated, but everyone (except, presumably Gargoyle) knows this is the last stretch for him.  We’d hoped he’d go quietly in his sleep, but he’s never been an easy cat, has he?

There’s no sense of Alpha-Omega for me in this juxtaposition of Big Foot and Gargoyle.  It’s the story that’s happening now in my anonymous little life.  While I toss tennis balls and take shoes away from Big Foot, Gargoyle’s emergency rectal dose is always within reach. 

Accepting inconsequential details
by Siniharraka Urban Photography

Every life is made up of these inconsequential details.  The heroic outburst of the Paris rose, the variety of butterflies around the buddleia, the buzzard and fox sightings, Big Nose’s hydrotherapy and Bunny Butt’s latest kill, these are the warp and weft of my existence. 

So it is that when these inconsequential details are attacked, taken from us, something so small that it seems childish to complain, that’s actually where something greater, more destructive starts.  Awards that are only allowed display in the guest bathroom.  A favourite TV show always interrupted.  A brazen hussy of a red dahlia ripped up by the roots.

The message here is that your right to small little pleasures pales in comparison to mine.  Or maybe even that this right doesn’t exist for you.  That, my friend, is a scary message.  On an interpersonal level, it’s new stepchildren insulting the bride’s friends at the wedding lunch.  On the global level, it’s the genital mutilation of all females aged 11 to 45.  Or happy dances over the most recent genocide.

Trollop
by Siniharraka Urban Photography

In my garden, there grows an inconsequential detail I call trollops.  Malopes, to the uninitiated.  El Punko, who has narcoleptic episodes when I discuss the garden, took photos of them for his urban photography website.  The message here is that exercising my right to have small little pleasures actually gives him pleasure.

With people like that in my life, not-so-nice someones from my past will continue to be quietly blocked.  If only it were so easy to block the not-so-nice from doing harm on the global level.

Radicalised

I learned a new word this fortnight.  Radicalise.  I haven’t looked the word up, but from its usage in news reports, the definition is, to become scary to us.  It implies a metamorphosis from human to monster by a force beyond our comprehension.  Sorcery.  I don’t mean to trivialise what’s happened in Boston, Newtown, Columbine, Utoya.  Rather, I fear that being blind to our participation in these incidents is dangerous to everyone.

El Punko getting radical

Not that we’re to blame for Boston, Newtown, Columbine, and Utoya.  No.  The perpetrators are to blame for the choices they made.  But terrorism is a complex phenomenon and we’re giving it a simple solution – Get a bigger gun.  We may still need that gun.  I’m not going to argue with that.  But you don’t teach a child not to hit by hitting her.  When a 19 year old boy kills an 8 year old, there has to be something more than the big gun in our solution. 

How did he become radicalised?  He’s as American as I am. 

I’ve introduced you to Diana Afanador’s monsters before.  Here’s another one with two heads.  A two spirit, in a way.  Something which has been subjected to several forms of sorcery and has divided itself in order to survive.  It’s these two heads which enable people to say in confusion, but he’s as American as I am, when in truth, he simply didn’t feel he could show the part of himself that wasn’t like you.  While we all have persona we drag out in different situations, managing two heads is quite a feat and I would postulate, damaging to the monster in question. 

Monster
by Diana Afanador

I was raised Catholic in Appalachia, the Bible Belt.  The Mecca of the Born Again Protestant, for my non-American readers.  Some children in our small rural community weren’t allowed to play with me because of my religion.  A classmate once asked the teacher about the Catholic practice of killing babies.  There was even a social studies teacher who wouldn’t give Catholic students a grade higher than C.  We were the one true faith, however, so I considered these people misguided. 

I moved north for tertiary education, where being Catholic wasn’t such a big deal.  But in the north, coming from below the Mason-Dixon meant I was a whole crate load of negative things, mostly amoral and some even criminal.  I noticed that the bad and the stupid on TV were people with my accent even when they lived in California.  There was no One-True category to protect me from feeling Less-Than.

Then I emigrated.  Having an American accent in Galway equated to wearing a bulls-eye and carrying a sign that said, Toss all your shit here.  I loved Irish trad music but learned quickly that my accent brought out the worst in the Galwegians, so in order to hear the music, I’d sit in my local and not speak.  At work, the Yank bashing was pervasive and when I complained, I was told by the director that I was a super power.  Our agency had a diversity audit and met in discussion groups with the auditors to share our experiences.  I shocked my colleagues by repeating the things they’d said to me.  But, but, but, it was a joke!  What a begrudger! 

Or had I become radicalised? 

In my next stop, Glasgow, I was pretty much allowed to be American and Appalachian as long as I didn’t admit to being raised Catholic.  Here, however, I was warned to watch myself around my Asian colleagues who were uber sensitive to racial slurs.  To be honest, after a lifetime of being Other-ed, to be told about people who weren’t going to take it any longer, that was like waving bacon in front of the Big Nosed Dog. 

It’s natural to hide what you value when other people want to destroy it.

Don’t misunderstand.  I had friends, good friends, in all those locations.  And, I was still myself– a self I liked – but part of me stayed on the inside.  I’d learned not to show my true face or use my true voice – I even toned down that accent of mine.  Although I still have a distinctively American twang, my friends think it’s a great party trick if I slip into Appalachian.  Do it again, Lora, as if being myself isn’t real, but a form of entertainment.

I’ve not included what being a woman is like nor the fact I’m mixed race – most people don’t look past my Welsh grandfather’s nose and the henna to see my Leni Lenape eyes and cheeks bones.  Even including those experiences, the bigotry I’ve endured, though uncomfortable, is small fry.  Let’s try getting cosy with the big cheese.  Let’s say that you’re blond with a London accent, C of E, and enjoy Morris dancing.  The latter might bring a bit of ribbing in the UK, but the rest is pretty much acceptable here.  So pack your bags.  I’m moving you to another dimension. 

London’s been taken over by the Westboro Baptist Church and you’ve left for political asylum.  You now live in a world where every villain or bigot on telly has a London accent.  The non-villain fictional Londoners don’t so much live in family groups as cesspools of sexism and domestic abuse.  There are protests whenever Anglicans want to build a place of worship, and existing churches are subjected to vandalism; the police can’t seem to help.  You’re routinely pulled out of boarding queues by homeland security for cavity searches until your name appears on a no-fly list.  Your vicar sister-in-law has been detained for six years and you don’t know where.  People in public places stare at your blond hair suspiciously, mothers edge their children away from you, old men cross to the other side of the street.  Your Morris dancing costume has been made illegal and all blond London Anglicans are accused of uniformly sexualising your male children.  You endure daily verbal abuse and periodic physical abuse from complete strangers; the police still can’t help you.  Super powers want to attack London to liberate your men from misandry.  And every single time some act of violence occurs, brown eyes look suspiciously toward the Archbishop of Canterbury.

If you think this is amusing, it isn’t meant to be.  This is reality for certain groups of people.  They live in a cage of being hated and feared without cause.  So damaging is this, in fact, that there may come a time when they say, fuck it.  And fuck you as well. 

Anger is a normal response to being treated like crap.

When American as I am people become violent, we look for the OTHER that RADICALISED the begrudger, who, by the way, is a LOSER whom we took under our wing and offered great opportunities to, and look at him bite the hand that fed him.  Radicalised.  By extremists who hate us, hate humanity, do vile things in the name of sorcery and call it religion.  Inbred BABY KILLERS who can’t take a joke. 

We never look at ourselves and say, you know what?  We could have done better.  Not ‘we’ being social services, immigration, the FBI.  We, being the social studies teacher.  My boss in Galway.  Myself, when the Asian guy on the train drops his backpack in the seat next to me and walks away.

A Trans-Parent Request

Not Friday yet, but I didn’t expect the week to be like this.  It started so well.  I finished draft 7604 of my Afghanistan novel, the blog post here did nicely, I even (with some technical aid from my son, the peripatetic El Punko) entered into the Twitter world.  Nature cooperated by keeping our snowfall in the ‘pretty’ rather than the ‘I-hate-feckin-snow’ zone and Big Bang had a new episode.  Then there was Julie Burchill.

My first reaction, to wonder if Burchill understood the what-happens-next after publishing an article like that.  But then, I always go all left brain when faced with things that should knock me on my ass.  Which is why, about ten years ago, my son had the research ready when I asked him, ‘What did I do to make you like this?’

The morning after Burchill’s rampage, I woke before dawn with what felt like a clunk of The Hopeless on my chest.  Someone who doesn’t know him, hates my son.  How do you fix that?  But when people objected to Burchill’s hate mongering, focus switched from transphobia to freedom of expression.  A slight of hand that equated hurling epithets at a marginalised group as a civil liberty. 

I wanted to take a sick day from life.  An image kept going through my head, a photo I put on Facebook to make El Punko’s cousin in the US laugh.  

I ask you, how can anyone hate an elf?  (Read what my son says about Burchill here http://saschk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/open-letter-to-julie-burchill.html.) 

Ten years ago, a lot of the research pointed to the mother as the cause for Gender Dysphoria, either for psychological, sociological, or physiological reasons.  I suspect some social scientists have issues with their mothers but hey, I’m willing to say to Julie Burchill et al, don’t hate my son.  It’s my fault he’s trans.  Hate me. 

Because even if I didn’t psychologically, sociologically, or physiologically make him into the man he is today, I aided and abetted him.  I stood outside the men’s room when he went in until he pointed out how pervy that was.  I chanted that being trans was a special gift, then shut up when he said he wished he weren’t so damned special.  I visited him in a hospital where it was injudicious for the doctor to admit what type of surgery he’d performed on my son. 

Hate me, because I didn’t even try to stop El Punko.  While you’re at it, hate his friends for not doing a mass intervention to keep him a real girl who fights the male hegemony because hey, that’s more important than his gender identity. 

Hate the men in our family for sharing male greeting rituals with him, because doesn’t that separate us into first class and carriage?  Hate the university that prepares him for his ivory tower existence where miraculously he won’t suffer anymore.  (We’d all get Ph.Ds if that were true.) 

Hate his cat for loving him, too.

Each and every one of us is connected to someone else who’s connected to someone else who’s connected to someone else.  It’d be exhausting to hate all of us, so come on.  We have more in common than we have to separate us.  Julie Burchill attacking transfolk in defence of Suzanne Moore is motivated by the same thing that makes me want to step between her and my son. 

Her results, however, are less attractive.  It doesn’t matter if you’re working to gain equality for women if you’re swatting at transgendered people.  Or persons of colour.  Or Muslims.  Or gays.  Or my Big Nose dog.  The swatting cancels out the gains you’ve made. 

Hatred is an easier tactic because it dismisses the conflict person or group so we don’t have to deal with what we don’t like.  It’s self indulgent.  It’s theatrical.  It’s cathartic.  It’s destructive.  It’s a cop out.  It’s beneath us. 

Here’s my kid and the Big Nosed dog.  Please don’t hate him.