Equal Rights For Transgender Canadians – Bill C-279

Next month, in April, an extremely pivotal bill is going to be up for debate in the Canadian parliament. It’s Bill C-279, which will add gender identity and gender expression to the list of statuses protected under the Canadian Human Rights Code, and amend the pertinent sections of the Criminal Code in regards to anti-transgender violence, assault, and harassment.

Currently, transgender Canadians have no such protections, and may be discriminated against on the basis of their gender by employers, businesses, shelters, institutions (public or private) and individuals without any legal consequence. Effectively, I can be turned down for a job, barred from entering a restaurant, denied admittance to a shelter or hostel, or forced to comply with male dress-codes at public institutions without my having any recourse. If I am harassed, assaulted or murdered on the basis of my being trans, this does nto qualify as a hate crime. I am in the position of having to depend simply on the mercies of a legally empowered majority to choose not to exercise their right to openly discriminate against me.

This is not okay. [Read more…]

Pie Is Scrumptious

The difference between “die cis scum” and “die trans scum” is one side has managed to make it happen.

– Nicholas Kiddle

I’ve noticed lately that Asher’s “Die Cis Scum” post, although it was originally posted way back on Transgender Day Of Remembrance in November, has over the past couple weeks suddenly developed an intense amount of heat. It is is being widely and intensely discussed, with a great deal of thought being put into it, from a variety of positions, perspectives and voices.

This is lovely. This is perfect. People are talking, and thinking, about trans violence, the fear, helplessness and anger it generates, the form that trans-advocacy should take, how we ought empower ourselves, what it means (potentially negatively) to reclaim violence as a means of asserting our autonomy and empowerment, how context modifies what violence or threats thereof mean, and all kinds of other super-duper brainy and important things.

It’s beautiful. This could not, or at least would not, have happened a couple years ago. But as Patience Newbury said to me the other night, we’ve recently “woken up”. Over the past year or so, the trans community has stirred to life. We are awake. We are angry. We are now making our voices known. We’re organizing and acting and demanding our rights. It’s an amazing, exciting and at times a bit scary time to be a trans person. And it’s a wonderful thing to be a part of this.

Seeing this conversation developing around “Die Cis Scum”, I’ve suddenly felt like I didn’t give the issue its due consideration when it first popped up on my blog. I had only referenced Die Cis Scum tangentially, by linking Lisa Millibanks list of things trans people are expected to do in return for cis people not hating us, and a conversation simmered in the comment threads, but I didn’t tackle it head on.

Perhaps I was a bit scared to. While I was prepared to adamantly defend Asher’s right to have made the post, and feel it was an extremely important post to make, I wasn’t sure I felt comfortable putting myself on the line by making a definitive statement of my own. And perhaps also I hadn’t had time to really collect my thoughts.

But I’d feel like a bit of a wimp if I let this entire discourse pass me by without at least throwing in at least a little something. Some small contribution. [Read more…]

Being The Pejorative

Continuing along with my little totally-accidental “covering the basics” theme for this week, it seems appropriate to cover one of the most basic and recurring trans issues of them all (and one of the most overarching), being the ubiquitous use of transgenderism as an insult or pejorative.

[Read more…]

Un-Gendering Sexuality

Disclaimer: This was written very late at night, while very tired. Very sincere apologies if it’s a bit sub-par, or a bit weird.

Lately I’ve been feeling a little bit lonely.

Sorry, everyone. I know FTB isn’t livejournal, and there’s no “current music – Bright Eyes” or  “current mood- WHEN WILL SPRING AT LAST COME TO THE WINTER OF MY SOUL AND LET ITS SUNLIGHT DRY MY BITTER TEARS” buttons at the bottom of the WordPress Visual Editor (though maybe I could ask Jason to have them installed? I’m sure he’s considered doing it for his own blog). But still, it’s true. I have squishy emotion things. And lately they’ve been rather squishily unsatisfied with my dinners-for-one at the computer, watching the crumbs of my Oreo Cakesters flutter down to the keyboard’s crevices in the romantic light of the antiquated monitor.

And last night, while being lonely, I ended up ruefully thinking about all the various lovely, awesome, brilliant, wonderful lesbian or bi trans women I know in internet-land who have professed crushes on me over the last couple months. It can get a bit frustrating hearing internet people say they think you’re cute when you were just a moment ago reminiscing on the fact that you haven’t been on a date in over three months.

So I began joking that if that’s how it’s going to be, I might as well just throw in the towel on this whole pitifully doomed “heterosexuality” thing and begin accepting applications for a lovely, awesome, brilliant, wonderful trans lesbian girlfriend. Send cover letter with attached resume and cookies (I have a fondness for macadamia snickerdoodles) to sincerelynataliereed at gmail dot com. Please include three references. [Read more…]

Gender Expression Is Not Gender Identity

This is sort of turning into a bit of a “covering the basics” sort of week here- mixed with a little “dealing with stuff I’ve been meaning to address for awhile”. So it seems appropriate that I should also take a moment to handle one of my biggest personal pet peeves regarding how people talk about gender, and transgenderism in particular.

Honestly, I think I could feel pretty satisfied with my entire “career” (I know) if I could just manage to put this one thing to rest.

Gender expression and gender identity are two different things. [Read more…]

The “Ethical Imperative” Of Disclosure, or: How To Believe Your Victim Owes You An Opportunity For Abuse

Another sad and tired cliché of the trans discourse. Another offensive question that cis people consistently ask us so as to assert their privilege. Another way they seize control of the discourse to subtly remind us who’s boss. Something I’ve been skirting the edges of for quite a while but haven’t yet dealt with directly.

Ahhh, “It’s Unethical To Not Disclose”, at last we meet. This battle has long been our destiny.

*activates lightsaber- FWOOOMSHzzzz-* [Read more…]

Proving Skeptics Wrong, Urban Outfitters Successfully Stoops Even Lower

Apparently no longer content with simply ripping off designs from independent artists without paying or crediting them, clothing a generation of hipster misogynists, pulling their “I Support Same-Sex Marriage” tee off store shelves after just one week (citing non-existent “bad press”), selling packages of ramen noodles for $5.00 USD a pop, drastically marking up products cheaply manufactured in overseas sweatshops in order to make heinous profits, funneling exorbitant sums of said heinous profits to finance Rick Santorum’s presidential bid, and their infamous “eat less” women’s long v-neck, Urban Outfitters have decided to continue their campaign of branding themselves the hippest purveyors of pure evil on the corporate high street by engaging in cheap tranny jokes! [Read more…]

“Trapped In A (Wo)Man’s Body”

Okay darlings, let’s get this cleared up, please. Because I’m sick of dealing with this.

You know the whole “woman trapped in a man’s body” / “man trapped in a woman’s body” thing? That is a metaphor.

Okay? Do you have that? Do you understand? I’ll repeat: It’s a metaphor. A simplification. A way of putting transsexuality into terms that are easily explained to a cis person. That is why it exists, that is its job. Helping you understand something very complex (and very alien to your own experiences), in a way that is quick and easy, for contexts where a full and nuanced explanation is not feasible, and for people who wouldn’t understand those full and nuanced explanations.

It does NOT accurately reflect actual trans experience, is NOT intended to, and is DEFINITELY NOT the entirety of our thinking on the matter.

So when you mistake it as what (and all) we really believe, and decide to mock or discredit our identities by joking around about “what if I think I’m a penguin trapped in a human body?”, “what if I’m a black guy trapped in a jewish guy’s body?”, or “what if I’m a robot trapped in an organic body?”, you are making an ass of yourself. You haven’t dropped some wicked awesome truth bomb that totally proves how crazy and irrational trans people are. All you’ve successfully managed to do is point out that a simplified, dumbed-down metaphor is simple and dumb (which, I might add, is simplified and dumbed-down for the purpose of helping out simple-minded dummies like you). Congratulations!

When trans people use this metaphor, it is not because we don’t understand the complexity and nuance of gender and sex and how they work. It’s because we need to cope with how many of you don’t understand it. [Read more…]

Birdo, Poison And How To Construct Trans-Pride From Transphobia

I’m not really a gamer. I don’t own any consoles. It’s been a long, long time since I did. I’m usually pretty okay with that. Life is too big and expansive to fit all its subjects and media and passions into one little brain and lifetime. With some things you just have to accept “okay, I guess I’ll just be mostly oblivious about that particular thingy” or “okay, I guess I’ll just accept this particular gap in my education”.

(which is fine as long as you remember not to start acting like you are an expert on those things)

But every once in awhile, something comes along that makes me think yeah, I really kind of wish I did have a console or two, and was a gamer.

Like the recent release of Street Fighter X Tekken.

Why? Because I could play as Poison, the semi-iconic (and tediously “controversial”) transgender character originally from Final Fight. I could play as a beautiful, femme but totally badass trans woman, and spend all day kicking the will to live out of a series of virtual cisgender assholes. Kick back and harmlessly vent my increasingly pent up rage at a non-virtual world where all too often we’re the ones who get hurt. [Read more…]

The Gendering Of Children, And Raising Trans Kids

There are a couple interesting things going on on twitter lately. There’s the hashtag #ididnotreport, where women (and men, and members of other genders) describe circumstances of rape or sexual assault that they did not report to police or authorities, and why. It’s a very, very chilling look at the intense social pressures that enable rape and sexual assault, and burden its victims with guilt and shame, and pressure them into silence.

Then there’s @NiceGuyBrianG, an apologist for rape and general non-consensual sexual acts, who has mocked and derided the #ididnotreport trend.

But beneath this, there’s been seething a subtler little trend that speaks volumes about where we still are as a culture in regards to homophobia and attitudes towards sexual variance, and the degree of violent (and frankly incomprehensible) hatred that is still openly stated towards homosexuality.

Recently, another hashtag, #ToMyUnbornChild has been trending, where people speak messages to their future children. And an alarmingly large number of these messages are along the lines of “If you’re gay, I’ll beat the shit out of you / kill you / disown you / etc.”

Yes. People are taking the opportunity to make their feelings towards their future children not as a chance to talk about offering them a better world, or treating them with love, or trying to suggest some scrap of wisdom they’ve managed to eke out of our confusing and strange world, but instead as a chance to iterate that they are so frightened, disgusted or hateful of homosexuality that they’ll threaten a child who does not yet exist, their child, with rejection, violence or death if they should end up happening to be gay.

And sadly, it should go without saying that this is not only a hypothetical put forward by some hateful twitter-users who have no idea what love for a child actually means. It is a staggeringly, heart-breakingly common story for queer people to have to choose between their families and their integrity, being able to be open about who they are. Those awful feelings of love for a child being conditional on their conformity to arbitrary cultural standards of sexuality and gender do not always go away when they finally look that child in the eyes or hold them in their arms. Far too often, they still hold that child and while thinking “I love you so much…” are still holding, somewhere in the back of their minds, “…as long as you’re straight, cis and meet my expectations.”

What this horrible little twitter trend has got me thinking about, though, is the number of e-mails (and sometimes comments) I’ve gotten with parents or would-be parents asking me for advice on how to go about dealing with the possibility (either concrete and suggested by present circumstances, or simply an abstract, as it always is) that their children may be gay or transgender. How do you assign a gender? Should you? How do you make sure your child receives the message that it’s okay to explore their gender (or later, sexual orientation)? How do you do this while not having them be bullied or alienated by other kids? How do you protect them from the gender-normative messages of society as a whole? And if they do begin presenting as transgender, how do we deal with that? What is the best strategy to take, and what will give them the best shot at happiness? How do we deal with all the people around us who will see any act of support for gender non-normativity in a child as “abuse”? Etc.

These parents, unlike the would-be practitioners of homophobic infanticide of #ToMyUnbornChild, are already getting it right. They’ve already accomplished the most important thing: putting the child’s happiness first, and thinking through and asking about how to ensure that happiness, and not letting these possibilities (or realities) compromise their love and support for their children. [Read more…]