hi ya’ll,
i wrote the below note after being totally inspired by a performance that i just went to. i’m sending this note to out because i love you (the readers) and it means a lot to me to have as many eyes on this as possible. it’s a work in progress and i will truly cherish any feedback.
i wrote the below piece in an anarcho-stream of conscious style so if you get lost, just go with it, i tried to tie everything up in the end. i’m trying a new style and hope it works in this context. it’s also kinda long and pretty unpolished (i only wrote this late last week and have re-visited it twice since), but i would sincerely, genuinely like your input.
this is kind of a coming out for me and my heart is pounding as i send it. hopefully you’ll see why by the end. i’ve been working through these issues for a long, long time but have never felt comfortable talking about them so here they are in written form (scary).
also, a lot of the questions i ask are not rhetorical, but actual questions. so take notes (if you need to), and let me know if what i’ve written is fucked up or not. thanks. and i love you.
*aryenish
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Choosing Transness: A coming out story of sorts, and more…
So I consider myself, as of recent, a pretty confident person. People, for a good portion of my life, have told me that I’m outspoken and am able to advocate various needs. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that from a very early age my parents pushed me, and in that process I found within myself a strong desire to change the world and you have to have a certain kind of strength if you embark on that totally liberation kind of struggle…but I’m digressing and this is only the 3rd sentence.
I’ve been an activist of sorts for about 10 years now, which is a weird thing to admit because saying that I’ve been something for 10 years means almost half my life. Most of my activism has dealt with nearly unfathomable forms of torture and oppression: I’ve worked primarily in the animal rights movement. Yes, it’s a new movement and “controversy” surrounds it due to its very newness in the even radical social consciousness, yet I continue to see living beings continually commodified, consumed, and exploited in this society. I could write a book about this.. oh wait, I already wrote a thesis on this, so let me move on to why you are probably reading this. Transness.
First off let me explain my use of language. What is transness as opposed to being trans? I used the word transness as a very specific variation taken from the word queer. I love the word queer and everything that it symbolizes in its reappropriation (namely: the lack of rules and the fluidity of sexuality and gender).
Just like being queer, we can embrace queerness, so too do I embrace transness. I take language very seriously and believe that at the base level, language reflects our politics, our ideology, and serves as an indicator of how committed we are to our goals. Language is more than a mode of communication; it can be used as a medium for power—an institution of abuse, and in a positive way—an indicator of liberation. Ideological changes must include language, which is why the use of pronouns is so important to individual’s lives (but I’ll get into that later).
If language is a form of activity, then it must be understood to analyze the cultural and social functions of language is also to analyze power, but I’m getting to heavy here. I just wanted to give a brief note on the word “transness” and also to satisfy the need I have to explain the language you’ll see in the coming pages. For the sake of this piece I use the words “nonhuman animal” and “human animal” instead of “animal” and “human.” My goal with this is to be intentional about expanding the way human animals view the word “animal.” Common’ you can’t expect an animal rights activist to let something like that slide. I mean, all oppression are interconnected, so it makes sense for me to stay true to my values and put that note in, right? (If you want more on the interconnections of oppression, or the uses of language ask me about my thesis.. we’ll talk for hours).
So, why transness? And where is the connection to nonhuman animal rights? Well, there isn’t really one other than the connection that is located in my body. Most of my life has revolved around a politic that has resided outside of my identity. It has only been in the past 3-4 years that I have located and understood that my body hosts tremendous strength (remember the first sentence of this piece? I wasn’t born confidant if you catch my drift). I have worked tirelessly in the past few years on trying to find out who I am and in that process fell deeply in love with myself (and am still falling in love with myself), but I’ll leave the gushing for my journal. What I’m trying to get at is that I slowly learned about oppressions outside the singular oppression I knew and fought against: nonhuman animal oppression. And once I learned how things like capitalism, colonialism, orientalism, imperialism, racism, classism, ageism, looksism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, speciesism (amongst the rest) really operate I began to find myself in them. That’s one thing 2nd wave feminism brought us was the logo “the personal is political;” and that’s the truth.
I began to insert myself in this complicated history that is the human animal experience and found that I am a person of color (where I was raised being told I was white.. long story), that I am a ciswoman (and what that really means to me in the moments I chose to think about it), that I am queer (and want to embrace that love for other individuals to all its worth), and that I am product of globalization and born to two immigrants who named this land of the “united states” home eleven months before I was born. I learned that I have absolutely no representation in any forms of media being a queer south asian zirmen who has a complicated gender identity as well many layers of cultural differences that I can’t begin to get into right now. But the personal is political so let’s return to that.
I was always drawn to the struggle faced by “the trans movement” and quickly learned as much as I could about being an ally and fighting the sex = gender debacle as well as the good fight against the gender binary. I wanted to fuck gender. And not in the kinky way.
So there I was. It was my 3rd year in college and I was feeling good. I finally figured out what in the hell I was doing in school, building confidence in myself (again that first sentence… it’s a work in progress), and learning that being an activist doesn’t mean never having fun. In all of this I quickly found that my ability to find a good portion of the population androgynous or gender ambiguous was a pretty rare feat and slowly I began to use the gaze the rest of the world uses to view individuals. I never had any desire to understand “what people are” in the gender context, probably because I get that very question almost daily in regards to my skin color and racial appearance.
In my youth, I don’t remember my parents ever telling me concretely that vagina is directly related and proportional to “woman” / she / pink / Barbie’s / “girly things” etc, and I thank them for that. Although, unfortunately, through virtue of being a product of this society I got plenty of that socialization everywhere else.
And so I learned through talking to friends in New York City and Western Massachusetts that I had a hard time seeing gender, and I don’t mean in that “colorblind” bullshit sort of way, but that I really just never found feminine or masculine features in anyone and was almost always pretty confused about / found irrelevant what sex an individual was, let alone their gender. So there I was on the streets of New York City and Western Massachusetts and I was trying to teach myself to see gender.
That’s right folks, you read me correctly, I was trying to teach myself gender (at age 19) so that I could break it down. It felt like an odd task even for me (and still I’m not sure how good it was for me to do), but I did it, and I am still kind of doing it, and in the process I taught myself to think about gender constantly.
And so there I was (about to be a senior year at Hampshire College) at this prestigious internship at a “women’s” foundation in New York City, (the foundation had just decided to include trans folks in their circuit of fund giving and were doing a lot of work around those issues) and I was feeling pretty stupid and out of place. I considered it a safe space to ask a few questions so I asked one of the staff members “why the “t” was in LGBT?” I mean, really, why is it that when we talk about LGBT we are taking about sexuality and gender at the time, and mostly we aren’t talking about gender at all. Yes, the vast majorities of people who are trans also identify in queer in some way, but why make that a rule? And why more often than not do the organizations that “do LGBT work” aren’t queer. There’s a difference between being “gay” and “queer.”
Well, the staff member didn’t really have an answer. He acknowledged that it was a good point made by a naïve, “new” queer. I didn’t really feel satisfied with his answer and so I have been on a rampant search for the answer to this question for the many years since this day, and have yet to come across a sufficient answer or even something close. I guess the mainstream “gay” movement just likes the sound of “LGBT” as opposed to “LGB.” I mean, if there was more of an effort to address the issues around transness in the gay movement wouldn’t we have at least one trans signified monument in Christopher Park? …The park that commemorates the gay hero’s of Stonewall, because if anyone knows their history there were trans sisters (and I’m sure brothers) in that very joint, on that very night in late June in 1969.
I guess I should just come out with what I’m trying to say in this piece instead of surrounding it with everything else, but the lead up is important… I mean isn’t that why there’s “foreplay”?
I guess this rant got started by an incredible, life-changing, performance I attended that tackled some of the issues the queer, genderqueer, and trans communities face as in conjunction with oppression, polyamory, etc, etc. From it I got a really creative look into myself and into the trans movement and where I fit in it. And I’m still not sure where that is, but I want to be clear that in my own way I want to be an ally because at the end of the day I can pass as a (sometimes) straight woman of fair complexion, and while there are certainly disadvantages to this position in the social hierarchy of power, I am in a much more privileged position than say my freaky looking friend (of color?). I just need to acknowledge that before I go much further.
And so it is. The moment of choosing. In working backwards from the title and exploring transness first I feel I must make a deliberate attempt to now elaborate the more difficult part of the thoughts swimming in my brain around choosing.
I guess I should begin somewhere in the middle because there is no staring point, or continuum, or binary, or hierarchy or anything of the sort for this story. It’s all a jumbled mess and I like it that way. Side note: I don’t understand how or when “we” radical folk, artists, and the such – try as we might to deconstruct this capitalist, misogynist, fear mongering society – ended up using the same tools and thought patterns that came before us. Isn’t it time to think of things as coexisting simultaneously in myriad wavelengths, across time frequencies, and in all of our hearts simultaneously? I’m ready to get creative toward this “revolution” for “liberation” that we constantly all talk about.
So ya, back to choosing, I guess I’ll start somewhere else since the above tangent is forcing me to have two starting points for this portion of my “essay.” I was reading this book a few months back called That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, good essays, good writers, good book. One of the essays stood out as having a significant impact on me: Choice Cuts, by Charlie Anders. It was about choosing queerness. I haven’t read it in a while, but what I took away from it was this: do “we” (whoever you want that to be) devalue the person who chooses queerness? If an individual chooses to fornicate with someone of their same sex or gender how is that any less radical than someone who’s had those same urges since they were seven? I took this essay to directly (although not in language) address the issues of authenticity (a word my friends who study and do anti-racists work are familiar with). Is it necessary to transition from one state to another for us to be authentically queer or trans? Who really is authentically queer? And who the fuck decides?!
Is there some kind of hierarchy of queerness and transness imposed by queer and trans folk? Then what kinds of power are held when interacting with other folks who haven’t felt “those urges” since they were in the womb? And isn’t this just getting into the whole nature / nurture / free-will debate?
If we choose to be queer, trans, non-mainstream, non-conforming, or any variation of these then is it our fault for not getting a job, loosing our housing, or even for feeling safe and comfortable participating in the mainstream “gay movement?” If our perversity and freakhood is a choice and we are screwing the mainstream up the butt then are we proving that we aren’t hardwired for it? We’re saying, “Ya, I had a choice. I’m a freak, I like wearing my full beard with my lavender halter dress and a pair of men’s sandals and it doesn’t matter if I got a penis or a vagina. I’m proud of how I look, ‘cause damnit I look good. I’m doing it because I want to, and that’s good enough.”
In this bogus quest gays have undertaken to claim that, “we are just like you.” No one is begging the question who this “we” is, and who this “you” is. It is the classic case of us internalized othering, of recognizing the “us / them” mentality created by the patriarchal, homophobobic, straight society (I’ll refer you to my thesis if you want more on othering). But really, when the fuck did all the queers in the world become a “we,” and when did we all want marriage rights?
So now when we come back to the issue of “gay pride” doesn’t it seem weird that the underlying mentality has been “we didn’t choose this… if we did we’d be straight” / “we’re just like you.” If we want to be just like straights then where is the celebration and pride in difference? Saying I choose this automatically puts a value judgment on queerness and transness and that’s scary to the straight, mainstream culture because that means that they can be queer too. (Oh, the horror!)
And so there I was first row in the audience and the performer held up a sign to symbolize their own gender identity as “they” and “he.” And not that that was particularly mind-blowing unto it self, but it called into my mind why I can’t do that. Why has it been that for the past three years I have wanted use ALL pronouns but have never once felt comfortable to ask folks to call me by that (and I’m talking about in radical, queer circles). I know why, it’s because for the most part I’m a pretty femmey person. I have never once identified with the word “femme,” but queers all around me seem to label me as such. Even when I’m wearing my “butch” clothes I guess my long hair just does it, and thus I am cast as “femme.”
And so there we are, all of us sitting in a circle introducing ourselves at the first meeting for “X” organization, and answering the classic icebreaker question, and since all of use seem to dress in conjunction with our given sex goes no one asks for “name, icebreaker, and pronoun” we all just go off of cultural assumptions and answer “name and icebreaker.” But the saddest part is that I’m not even sure I would feel comfortable saying that I want to use all pronouns (which is totally weird for me… again, remember my second sentence, where’s that ability to advocate for myself with the gender stuff, right?) because at this point I’m just getting used to the idea of asking people to use all pronouns as I type this very essay. And I want to acknowledge that gender is about more than pronouns but for now that seems like an easy place to start. So I wonder why we can’t choose transness just like we can’t choose queerness.
Why is my desire to fuck with gender seen as less serious because I haven’t been dealing with this on a visceral level for the past ten years? I want to be very clear that I don’t want to devalue or discount the work my fellow genderqueer / queer / trans friends who are working on these issues, but I don’t understand why in this society only the people who have been struggling with gender since childhood are the ones who are fighting this battle in adulthood; and further, why is my struggle of the past three years deemed less worthy?
Why do I feel like I’m being problematic if I want to wear my favorite cream linen dress and want to be addressed in male pronouns? Because I do, so I guess I’ll just come out and say it.. I want people to start using all pronouns with me (please).
Is it problematic for me to want to wear a binder three days in a row and then not for another month? I’m really not sure. I would love for people to call me out if what I’m saying is bullshit, but I’ve struggled with this for a long time and have not really felt like I could create the space to discuss this because my (socially created) gender presentation matches my sex (for the most part). Am I being fucked up here? If so, I’ll own it.
I think it’s time we really start asking more challenging questions. Why are we leaving the fight to confront the problematics of the gender complex only to those individuals who have struggled with it and who find themselves in stark opposition to the gender roles they were assigned based on their genitalia at birth. Isn’t gender about all of us? My biggest fear is alienating trans folks who have had to deal with systematic and institutionalized oppression for being who they are, by asking these questions, but I need to ask them. It’s part of my process.
My aim here is to add a complexity to the gender issue, to find a point of inclusion so that we have a point to break this system down. Can I, a ciswoman, use male or gender-neutral pronouns sometimes (and not only when it’s convenient) and all the while present in my glorious, busty, feminine attire? Isn’t that what the word queer is about… the fluidity of sexuality and gender? Isn’t it time we fuck up the gender institution? And can the desires I just wrote about aid this endeavor? Please say it’s so. And if it’s not, then please tell me why.
Thanks for reading. aryenish. [ abirdie (at) sunflower.com ]
