Burnt my toast again. Thanks Rachel Notley

It’s something of a trope here in Alberta to blame our Premier for stuff she couldn’t possibly be responsible for. Many of her critics will, in all seriousness, blame her for failings (perceived or real) for things not in provincial jurisdiction, like homelessness (which is municipal), refugee resettlement (which is federal),  federal income tax increases (which is obviously federal), public transportation (municipal), trade deals (federal) or Celine Dion(?).

Our previous administration put all our eggs in one basket, which has resulted in a tumultuous economic climate contingent on the precarious whims of the global market for oil. But, you know, it’s her fault Saudi Arabia is undercutting our oil.

And the wildfire. Don’t get me started. Not allowing foreign planes into an airspace with 0% visibility because, you know, millions of trees are on fire is… is… negligence! Impeach! Impeach!

So Alberta’s progressives, and even Notley’s more even-handed critics, have taken the piss out of #ThanksRachelNotley with the help of The Beaverton.

“Rachel Notley convinced my dog to eats its own poop.”

-Shiv

#TransLawHelp

For my American trans comrades, check out #TransLawHelp for lawyers working pro-bono to try and rush trans people through legal hurdles to get their documentation changed before the Republicans take office across the board.

Before sending your ID to anyone claiming to be a lawyer, ask them to verify their credentials first.

Semi-open thread here for the next few days.

-Shiv

31 questions to ask me before you ask about what’s in my pants

Henry Giardina introduces part of “The Trans Experience” in an excellent post over on fourtwonine. In addition to signal boosting his post, I am going to answer his suggested 31 questions.

So here’s the crux of what he’s trying to convey: As fucking violent as transmisogyny and trans-antagonism are, some people’s sense of empathy doesn’t shatter upon contact with gender variant people. The problem is that in their bid to try and relate with a trans person, they ask a lot of invasive and really personal questions (which we sometimes try to answer anyways–see the comments section of his article).

Now I don’t want to antagonize efforts to humanize trans folk, but nor am I particularly interested in letting up on the privacy to which I am entitled. Thankfully, Giardina proposes many questions that do the trick of humanizing without me having to answer the frankly ludicrous question of “cock or pussy?”

1. What was the first time you remember feeling like you were doing something wrong by being you?

I knew from the strict, patriarchal confines of the masculine role assigned to me that donning make-up is treated a bit like taking a chainsaw to school. Nowadays I’m not super in to make-up, at least not all the time, but I can still distinctly remember a very intense duality, a shame that burned alongside a defiant rush, a little voice that told the world to fuck off because I definitely wasn’t going to stop here no matter how much it wanted me to. It was a bit of powder and paint but people acted like I wanted to play with matches.

2. Where did this guilt come from? (i.e. religion, community, social beliefs of parents, class expectations etc.)

It cannot be understated that this guilt was sourced from literally fucking everywhere. Advertising, TV, caregivers, parents, teachers, peers, pastors, neighbours, books. I went the first 19 years of my life not knowing the word “transgender” because the world never at any point wanted me to know that was an option. So every time I tried to voice this periodically crippling disconnect with my sense of self, I was inevitably met with a silence that said more than any screaming or cursing ever could.

3. When was the first time you realized it might be okay to be you?

About the same time I started to improve my mental health by limiting the amount of fucks I gave regarding other people’s opinions about me. Not transitioning or asserting my identity was something I only did to please everyone else. Once I stopped pleasing everyone else, the choice became obvious.

4. What was the reason for that?

In general I was beginning to be persuaded by a lot of movements and arguments that we currently call social justice. I noticed a lot of people didn’t know or didn’t care that these movements were doing good, incredible work, they were just buying in to the smear campaigns uncritically. To be a feminist was to be a bra-burning man hater. That opinion just seemed incompatible with what we were actually doing.

5. Describe the first friendship you made as ‘you’ (after you came out)

Kay, which isn’t her real name, but if she’s reading this she knows who I mean. She will always have a very dear place in my heart despite the difficulties we had in the latter portion of our relationship. She had a great sense of snark and could direct it to the numerous dipsticks that raised my ire. God damn did she know how to hug when I needed it. She saved me… which is too much damn pressure for someone who isn’t ready to rescue anyone. Not fair to either of us.

6. How did your friendships change once you came out (both friendships you made and friendships you’d had before)

Prior to transitioning I overcompensated on my personality to try and make up for my debilitating insecurity. After transitioning my confidence is less boisterous and more assertive. I’m probably less annoying.

7. Who disappointed you the most when you came out to them?

My friend D, also not his real name. We aren’t friends anymore. I kinda wonder why I kept him around considering years before my transition he legitimately tried to argue that homosexuality was bad because the Bible said so. That really should’ve been my first hint.

8. Who disappointed you the least?

My friend C. She responded in the exact correct way: “Okay.” She knew better than to transgress on my boundaries and allowed me to come to her if I needed any tutorials on femme stuff.

9. Who surprised you?

My Dad. I was devoured by the fear that he’d disown me. In reality, he caught up to speed faster than my mom. I think he’s one of my readers, too. Hi Dad. Thanks for having human decency. It’s in shockingly short supply lately.

10. Has your identification changed since you’ve come out?

Yes. I’m more comfortable with ambiguity now. I don’t need to fit in a box. There’s some squiggly-lines in my identity, and I am at peace with that.

11. What about your ideas about gender?

Of course I was indoctrinated into the cissexist belief system and much of my mental health improved when I disentangled that mess. I had a TERF phase during that process which thankfully wasn’t recorded.

12. When did you learn about trans history?

TransAdvocate does a lot of work on that. I got about as far back as 1970s during Janice Raymond’s campaign to have transition services removed from healthcare. She succeeded. I try not to think about how many trans folk died between then and now because of it.

13. Did someone tell you about it or did you seek it out yourself?

During one of my gender frustration rants a friend sat me down and asked me point blank. My kneejerk response was “No, of course I’m not trans.” A week later I phoned him to admit I’m totally trans.

14. What was the first violent event you associated with being trans (the first suicide you heard of, movie or tv show you watched, book you read)

The first trans support group I ever attended, the facilitator said he had an announcement to make about one of the regulars. One of the other women asked “who was it this time.”

This time.

And two more times since.

15. How did it affect you?

It generated a lot of resentment towards people who don’t know about the extent of the problem. You have cisgender academics howling brimstone and hellfire from the safety of their gilded towers, talking about gender variance as if it were a distant, alien theoretical. Meanwhile my community was getting stabbed in the street. Must be nice to have requests for gender-neutral pronouns be the most pressing issue in your life.

16. Who was the first trans person you met?

A group, so I don’t really have a single person to remember.

17. What was (is) your relationship?

They were a support community.

18. In your current life, do you have to tell people you’re trans?

“Have” to? No. But I have the privilege that I can disclose on a regular basis without too much worry, so I do.

19. If so, how does the relationship change afterward (if at all?)

With respects to dating, people get scarce quickly. I’m used to it. I think most people are a lot less likely to turn tail and run in other contexts.

20. If not, how does it affect you?

n/a

21. As a child, when and where did you feel the most safe?

Watching Veronica Mars. Mars was a powerful counter-example to the docile, meek femininity I so often saw depicted in other media. It helped me realize transitioning didn’t have to mean being polite or demure, that my ambition and my femininity as I understood it were not mutually exclusive.

22. As an adult, when and where do you feel the most safe?

…Watching Veronica Mars. I’m also trying to straighten out my money so I can go back to music lessons for this reason.

23. If you could have picked a perfect time to ‘come out’, when would it have been?

I came out without using those words at 6, 14, and 19. What would have been perfect is being believed the first time.

24. What was your first experience with suicide or a suicide attempt (your own, or someone else’s)?

I made a plan to jump off a very high bridge. Called the crisis line the moment I realized what I was planning, and have kept vigilant about suicidal ideation since. Every year or so someone from the support group doesn’t reach out for help, and we never see her again.

25. When was the first time you felt you had established a chosen family (if at all?)

This is going to be a bit sad but my abuser convinced me her & her web would be that chosen family. At the moment, I feel a bit like a stray.

26. When was the first time you felt someone really got you?

My relationship with Kay.

27. What was your first positive mental health experience (if any?)

Coming to terms with my gender identity did wonders all by itself.

28. What was the first representation of transness that you saw that made you angry?

A rape victim shared a post on Facebook about how including trans women in women’s spaces meant introducing rape threats in spaces she otherwise considered safe, which made me double angry because 50% of the people who’ve raped me were cis women.

29. What was the first representation of transness that you saw that left you feeling positive (if any?)

If we’re counting non-fiction, Janet Mock is the on point-est person ever.

30. Do you feel like you had a childhood?

Not really. I felt like my childhood was spent watching a tape projected onto a screen of someone else’s life.

31. What’s something you hope to do for a young trans person growing up that you wish someone had done for you?

Give you the vocabulary to name yourself. Had someone given me the word “transgender” at age six I would’ve started this shit a lot sooner.

-Shiv

Signal boosting: When your existence is up for debate

I will one day try to articulate what it feels like to know an overwhelming majority of mainstream media that an overwhelming majority of voting people access are determined to accept the most dangerous trans-antagonistic premises as simply given when debating our rights. This was the case with Judith Shulevitz’s predictably inaccurate contribution to trans rights discourse, an article I could generously describe as a hit piece rather than a think piece: Is It Time to Desegregate the Sexes?

I struggled with how to formulate a response without repeating myself, as many of the assumptions made by Jesse Singal during his defamatory works on trans people have already been challenged by me, and many of those same assumptions are here. It feels a bit like I’m Hercules fighting the hydra–cut off one head and two more take its place. And chances are the only way I will avoid reproducing the same refutations to the same bullshit peddled by strange bedfellows (religious biological essentialists and radical feminists? ableist hippies and the alt right? under one banner? wtf?) is to eventually collect the bullshit in one place to deal with it all at once.

Thankfully, this time, Chase Stangio stepped into the ring for me, sparing me another grueling analysis and hours of research that trans-antagonists won’t even bother to access.

Whether appearing in the New Yorker, New York Magazine, or the New York Times, these pieces follow the same formula — a non-transgender writer poses a question about the impact of respecting transgender people’s bodies and identities framing it as a “debate”, “culture war” or “clash of values” then interviews a lot of non-transgender people, and concludes that the issue is difficult because unlike other civil rights struggles, transgender people’s demand for humanity infringes the rights of others. Or, as Elinor Burkett put it in a June, 2015 Sunday New York Times op-ed, “the trans movement isn’t simply echoing African-Americans, Chicanos, gays or women by demanding an end to the violence and discrimination, and to be treated with a full measure of respect. It’s demanding that women reconceptualize ourselves.”

…

What Burkett and Shulevitz do is normalize the idea that demands by trans people to, as Burkett says, “be treated with a full measure of respect” necessarily hurt others. For Burkett this is by “demanding” that “women reconcentualize” themselves and for Shulevitz it is by implicating/upsetting the privacy and modesty rights of others — mostly cisgender girls. Though their frame takes these tensions as a given, they are anything but given. Instead, this framing reflects the authors’ ideological views about transgender people disguised by the sanitizing language of clashing values. It is dangerous to accept the premise of these pieces without interrogating those underlying views.

…

Lacking the voices of any transgender people or advocates, Shulevitz’s “debate” is set-up to reinforce all the assumptions about transgender people that many people share — the view that transgender girls and boys are not real girls and boys, the view that the bodies of transgender people infringe the rights of others, the view that inclusion of transgender people would disrupt educational and extracurricular settings.

She systemically introduces voices to reinforce each of these assumptions and never offers the expertise of individuals who can show that none of these assumptions is correct. She quotes Alliance Defending Freedom, a libertarian law professor, a so-called “radical feminist” organization defined by their belief that women who are trans are actually men, and a select group of educators to ostensibly highlight the challenges that transgender people pose in educational settings. Absent from her piece are the voices of transgender people, advocates, medical associations, pediatric associations, school administrators, and others who could clearly explain based on concrete experience that none of these assumptions comports with reality.

If she is going to deem protecting transgender people “a revolution” of notable “magnitude” then it might be useful to include the many school administrators who have testified to the exact opposite of her provocative warning — that such protections caused no disruption at school and were implemented seamlessly. This hyperbolic suggestion that merely allowing transgender people to be present in the locker room with their peers — most of whom love and respect them for who they are — is a revolution is offensive to both the concept of revolution and to the humanity of trans people. All Shulevitz has accomplished through this framing is to reinforce the talking points advanced by anti-trans groups like Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

…

When I challenged Shulevitz about this on Twitter, she responded dismissively and defensively and then deleted her tweets and ended the conversation. My intention was never to demonize her but to draw attention to the risks of what she did on a platform as powerful as the Sunday Times.

As writer Imogen Binnie explained on Twitter, when reading pieces like Shulevitz’s, one must ask “what does this article propose trans people should do”

“[I]f the answer is something like ‘not be trans,’ please consider that most trans people have tried that and it didn’t work,” Binnie tweeted.

And the effect of Shulevitz’s piece is no better demonstrated than the comments over on the NYT. Self-professed Butlerians high-fiving evangelicals interspersed with calls to arms to “protect America’s women.”

Guys, I’m tired of fighting. Jesus Christ.

-Shiv

Zack Ford has also taken Shulevitz to task.

Buy chocolate for sex positivity!

Full disclosure: I am acquainted with the owner of the Alberta Sex Positive Education Community Centre (ASPECC), so my endorsement is completely and entirely biased.

But you should totes buy some chocolate to help them fundraise.

A bit about ASPECC:

Our Mission

To promote sex positive values and attitudes in the Greater Edmonton area, provide low to no cost space for other non profits that are also sex positive, and to facilitate sex positive education and awareness in our community.

What We Do

  1. We maintain a space that has several rooms that can be used for meetings, classrooms workshops etc, and an event area suitable for talent shows, movie screenings, performances etc.

  2. We offer that space at low to no charge to non-profit groups in exchange for networking resources, sharing information, collaboration on large scale community awareness projects.

  3. When we are not already booked, our space is available for individuals and for profit ventures to rent.  All proceeds go towards our mission.

  4. When fundraising events are booked at ASPECC our team is available to help with finding volunteers, finding items to raffle/silent auction, finding sponsors and more.

  5. ASPECC offers workshops presentations and demonstrations, but most often we are facilitators, finding the appropriate individuals/groups to provide workshops etc, then providing the space and advertising the workshop.

  6. ASPECC also hosts fundraiser events.  Proceeds from these events go towards the cost of the centre.

  7. We fund-raise to support the centre and it’s events, striving to keep as many workshops as possible at no charge to our guests.

  8. We provide an Artist’s Corner, in which sex positive and/or LGBTQIA artists are showcased, at no charge.

  9. We offer professional development courses such as Kink Aware and facilitate others such as Sex Positive Professionals and Trans Aware Professionals

  10. ASPECC is a sex positive, safe(r) space for persons of all genders, ethnicity, sexualities, abilities and lifestyles to gather to socialize, to learn, to explore and to celebrate the diversity of humankind.

Besides, chocolate! Chocolate for sex! Positivity!

-Shiv

Signal boosting: Back handed compliments for trans folk

Yeah yeah, two in a row. I’m busy.

James St. James has a piece on Everyday Feminism about four “compliments” you should never give to trans people:

1. ‘S/he Was Born a Wo/man? But S/he Is So Hawt!’

We’re going to refer to this as the Surprise Response.

The Surprise Response is the assumption that trans people are always identifiable as the freaks that they’re presumed to be and could never actually be mistaken 100% as cis (read: normal).

Ouch.

Also, this comment is a thinly veiled attempt to shield one’s own identity instead of trying to say something about the trans person in question.

Some manner of sexual binary-phobia is usually at play here, the speaker finding the trans person attractive, becoming startled by this fact, and then looking to cover it up with statements that reassert their heterosexuality (or homosexuality, since plenty of self-identified cis gays and lesbians have been not incredibly kind to the trans community

Having received all four–from healthcare professionals, even–I can certainly tell you that these are not only irritating to receive, but that they fit into a larger picture of excusing violence perpetrated against trans folk who don’t meet the criteria described in the article above.

So, uh, don’t do that.

Read the rest here.

-Shiv

Signal boosting: Make America White Again

Most of us have noticed the parallels between 1930s Germany and the situation in the United States today. But if we are willing to call the German obsession with the so-called Aryan race a form of white supremacy, it is curious that the designation largely slips past mainstream media when discussing Trump’s campaign, including his supporters.

I suppose it’s easier for a foreign paper to publish it. Content Notice: Paris attacks, not quoted here, but present in the rest of the article. (emphasis added)

Gallup’s goal was to create a profile of Trump supporters, describe their social and economic circumstances and locate them on the map of America. It collected more than 87,000 responses over a year ending this past July.

The resulting analysis is a dry read, some of which confirms what we already knew: Trump supporters are more likely to be white, older males; less likely to have a higher education; more likely to be Christian and to say their faith is important to them.

But the thing that is new and important is how the data upends what many thought was the economic and social experience of Trump supporters — namely, the belief that they are the people most deeply affected by a failing economy and rising immigration rates.

According to the Gallup results, those who support Trump are slightly better off economically and employment-wise than people who don’t support him. While they are likely to live in areas that have suffered economically, they are also likely to be better off than their neighbours, and to have been spared the worst effects of the 2008 recession.

They are also significantly less likely to live in communities where there is a substantial immigrant population. In other words, Trump supporters are less likely than other Americans — and less likely even than other Republicans — to have regular personal experiences with immigrants.

Jonathan Rothwell, a senior economist at Gallup, says that Trump has been misleading his flock.

Intuitively, I’ve been skeptical of any connection with reality concerning the “economic anxieties” line that’s often dropped when discussing Trump’s campaign. I understood that this was the perception, but tried to root around for numbers to substantiate it. The Gallup poll discussed here seems to indicate that while everyone was hit by the Great Recession, Trump supporters took the least of it. If Trump supporters are perceiving economic threats, they are missing the broader picture of who is actually shouldering the burden of the recession.

As is often the case. I refuse to believe that Republican supporters are simply “stupid,” and there had to be a reason they were so prominent among majority demographics.

They’re not rich by any means, but they’re well-off enough that the Republican’s assault on social services won’t generally affect them. That’s why they can support the racist and xenophobic policies of the GOP, policies bundled with a vicious assault on those living in poverty: As a demographic, they ain’t in poverty. By process of elimination, that largely leaves one motivating factor–racial anxiety.

You’re shocked, I know.

Many months ago, I sat down with Matt Heimbach, the leader of the Traditionalist Worker Party. He seemed calm, articulate and determined to sound reasonable — although that was before a YouTube video popped up showing him violently shoving a black woman out of a Trump rally in Kentucky.

I asked Heimbach what Trump meant to his movement.

“I’m not throwing in and saying I want Donald Trump to even be the president necessarily. What I do want is for him to keep saying these things, because it offers us a kind of political cover to be able to say, ‘Well, Donald Trump says it, we’re not that radical.’ It’s moving the discussion toward the right, towards nationalism,” he told me.

“He’s made immigration a topic here in America. He’s making the very question of what’s an American a question.”

That seems true. Trump has given broader license to the kind of political conversation that not long ago was relegated to the alt-right.

In my first chat with Ed Hunter, I asked him whether the people who supported Trump were mostly white people who resented having lost the power they once had in America.

“Well, they should be,” he jumped in, adding that they are struggling for “self-preservation.”

Man, I wish I could self preserve this aggressively. I’d go to jail, for a long time at that. The justice system is brutal to trans folk, trans women especially. That’s why I’m a pacifist–not out of any ideological aversion to hurting someone trying to hurt me–but because I have a better chance fighting a deadly assault in the hospital than I do a murder charge in the courtroom. But I mean, sure, let’s classify roaming lynch mobs in the making as “self preservation.”

“You know what they want more than anything? They want to be left alone.

Again, that’s an odd idea of being “left alone.”

They don’t want to be fighting off hordes and hordes of people from foreign cultures that are utterly changing their country to the core.

“You go into any airport, any public building, any public school and you look at what it is now compared to what it was 30 years ago, the level of security needed, the constant surveillance, the constant police presence.

“That’s not the America we grew up in. We didn’t need that. What changed? Who did they bring in that makes everybody so afraid?”

Immigration to America, both legal and illegal, has increased over the last generation. But crime has not. In fact, violent crime, including rape, has decreased steadily, and in some cases dramatically.

So what is it, really, that “makes everybody so afraid?”

Trump knew from the start.

Again, those pesky statistics can’t survive the lens of fear. It doesn’t matter to Trump supporters that the actual fact of violent crime is decreasing, they perceive it to be increasing and that’s good enough.

Read the rest here.

-Shiv

#TrumpDrSeuss

I do not like this howling man

I do not like his fake orange tan

I do not think his facts are straight

I do not think his speech is great

 

Angry, shouting, screeching too

I think I’m tired of his flinging poo

I think he’s empty in his head

I think he’s creepy in his bed

 

I don’t get it, how he stands

Roaring, waving, with tiny hands

I think he’s spoken, far too long

About the content of his schlong

 

#TrumpDrSeuss

-Shiv