TransRadical

Jun 4

New Miss USA supports trans women being allowed in the pageant

When asked if it would be fair if a trans woman won Miss USA, Miss Rhode Island Olivia Culpo responded, “I do think it would be fair…” because “there are so many people who have a need to change for a happier life. I do accept that because I believe it’s a free country.” The audience applauded her answer.

Later that night, Ms. Culpo was crowned Miss USA.

Miss Universe, who runs the Miss USA pageant, reversed it position on allowing trans women to compete earlier this year after backlash at an attempt to boot transgender model Jenna Talackova from the Miss Canada competition.

Transphobic RadFem 2012 conference kicked out of London's Conway Hall

The RadFem 2012 conference scheduled for July has been booted from their planned location at the Conway Hall in London. The hall specifically cited the group’s policy of forbidding trans* women from attendance as the reason for the forced cancellation, fearing that it could be in violation of Britain’s Equality Act.

Among the planned conference’s transphobic content was featuring leading trans-hatemonger Shelia Jeffreys as a keynote speaker.

Conway Hall released a statement regarding the cancellation:

In consultation with the organisers of RadFem 2012 and our legal advisors, Conway Hall has decided not to allow the booking in July 2012 to proceed. This is because it does not conform to our Terms and Conditions for hiring rooms at Conway Hall. In addition, we are not satisfied it conforms with the Equality Act (2010), or reflects our ethos regarding issues of discrimination.

We had sought assurances that the organisers would allow access to all, in order to enable the event to proceed at the venue. We also expressed concern that particular speakers would need to be made aware that whilst welcoming progressive thinking and debate, Conway Hall seeks to uphold inclusivity in respect of both legal obligations and as a principle.

In the absence of the assurances we sought, the event in its proposed form could not proceed at Conway Hall.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of bigots.

Apr 19

“The idea that all anti-trans sentiment arises from the fact that, as transgender people, we “transgress binary gender norms” does not resonate completely with my personal experiences. As a somewhat eccentric kid, I was given plenty of leeway to opt out of boys’ activities and to cultivate an androgynous appearance and persona. I was sometimes teased for being different, for being an atypical or unmasculine boy, but it was nothing compared to the venom that was reserved for those boys who acted downright feminine. And now, as a transsexual woman, I find that those who wish to ridicule or dismiss me do not simply take me to task for the fact that I fail to conform to gender norms - instead, more often than not, they mock my femininity. From the perspective of an occasional gender bender or someone on the female-to-male spectrum, it might seem like binary gender norms are at the core of all anti-trans discrimination. But most of the anti-trans sentiment that I have had to deal with as a transsexual woman is probably better described as misogyny.”

Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

Apr 12

Transgender Woman in Virginia Fights to Change Discriminatory DMV Policly

Lynchburg, VA - A local woman hopes to change a law in Virginia. Lori Wright is writing a bill that would revise the DMV’s licensing process for transgender people.

Right now in Virginia, transgender people must show proof of gender reassignment surgery. She says this rule violates their civil liberties.

So Wright is trying to draft a bill hoping someone in the General Assembly can sponsor it next year. If the bill doesn’t pass, she plans to get help from a group like the ACLU.

“This one targeted population has to jump through a multitude of hoops, and pay enormous amounts of money just to have an ‘F’ on our driver’s license, and this is bogus,” Wright said.

Wright has also started a petition for her cause. You can sign it here.

Apr 3

“

We don’t need to be repeating in the African American community what we have observed being aimed at white transwomen for decades in terms of the rabid transphobic hate from rad fems, fundies, GL people and the scientifically illiterate transphobic cis masses.

We don’t need to have our academics espousing ignorant psychobabble like autogynephilia. We also need more of our clergy and legacy civil rights organizations getting on board with helping us not only stopping anti-trans violence aimed at our community, but helping us push trans human rights laws through.

Our African descended cis community must be an example to others in how to treat their trans populations with dignity and respect. We need that to happen so that we can do our part to uplift the African American community.

” Monica Roberts, ”Our African Descended Cis Community Must Treat Our Trans People Better”

UPDATE: Jenna Talakova Allowed to Compete in Miss Universe Pageant

In response to widespred criticism over Miss Universe disqualifying contestant Jenna Talakova because of her transgender history, those running the pageant have reversed their decision.

Fantastic news, but you know what this means; Miss Universe is now more progressive than the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Radfems beware.

Mar 30

TW: transmisogynist Sh-word // Don’t forget, Adrienne Rich was a transmisogynist.

andyisreadingbooks:

fuckyeahlesbianliterature:

kiriamaya:

transradicalactionnetwork:

The self-described feminist poet Adrienne Rich died yesterday. If you are a regular follower of feminist blogs, you’ve no doubt seen countless heartfelt sendoffs to the woman, to whom the word influential applies if nothing else.

But for all the good things people could say (and I won’t) about her, it would be wrong to whitewash her participation in the rabid transmisogyny the plagued so much of the second-wave feminism.

Rich recieved an acknowledgement in one of the most notorious transmisogynous works of all time, Janice Raymond’sThe Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Raymond credited Rich with “read[ing] the manuscript through all its stages and provid[ing] resources, creative criticism, and constant encouragement.” She also quotes Rich at one point in the book describing trans women as “men who have given up the supposed ultimate possession of manhood in a patriarchal society by self-castration.”

Cisfeminists may wish do adopt a Puritan policy of not speaking ill of the dead, but the trans women targeted by Rich, her contemporaries, and their modern counterparts cannot afford that luxury.

Bolding mine.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with this on FYLesLit. I’m less interested in her as a feminist and more as a poet, for the purposes of this tumblr. Should I reblog her quotes with the context that she was a transmisogynist? I could not reblog anything of hers at all, but I’m hesitant to dismiss all of someone’s fictional work based on their feminism/opinions. For instance—I continue to love Ender’s Game despite having no positive feelings for Orson Scott Card. And I wonder how helpful it is to dismiss all problematic lesbian writers for this tumblr, instead of owning up to this history (and continuing legacy—how many trans lesbian books can we name?).

If you’d rather I didn’t reblog anything of hers, though, I can do that.

It’s so easy to dismiss second wave feminists as wackos who enjoyed being transphobic and forget that they had extremely different experiences with and feelings about gender and gender essentialism than cis women living in 2012. Second wave feminists lived at a time in history when it was illegal to send somebody a letter in which you wrote about birth control - forget about actually being able to use it, but it was legal for a husband to rape his wife, when gender-based discrimination was widely regarded as a joke, but a working woman earned only 60% of the income a man earned. I could go on with examples of absurd and horrific sexism for some time.

“It’s so easy to… forget that [second-wave feminists] had extremely different experiences… than cis women living in 2012.” What about trans women living in 2012? What about trans women living at the time that they said these horrible things?

You speak as if how transgender people should be treated is nothing more than an academic exercise. You speak as if transphobia in the feminist movement has no effect on the lives of real people.

Trans women are not hypothetically, and the transmisogyny among women who call themselves feminists is not a thing of the past. Trans women are still banned from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, the largest women-only gathering in the world. (And the irony on spelling women with a y while barring women with a y from attendance seems entirely lost on them.)

You talk about the discrimination that cis women suffered at the time of the second wave. As if trans women did not suffer also? As if trans women did not in most (if not all) cases suffer much worse?

To this day, over half of trans women are raped at some point in their life; many are raped on multiple occasions. I’d count all the transgender friends of mine who have been raped on one hand, but unfortunately the technology to graft dozens of extra fingers onto the human hand has not yet been perfected.

To this day, 64% of transgender people make less than $25,000 a year. It’s still perfectly legal to fire someone for being transgender in 34 states.

My heart goes to any of my sisters (trans, cis or otherwise) who have suffered under the discrimination of an unfair system. I am currently homeless myself, so believe me, I know your pain.

But a tragedy against a cis woman is not any more tragic than an equal one against a trans woman. A tragedy against a trans woman is not less tragic than a lesser one against a cis woman.

Trans women have fought for our rights. We have fought for the rights of all women and of all queer people. Many of us have died for our cause. Many, like the great Marsha P. Johnson, have never had their murderers found or brought to justice.

I understand the suffering women went through in the past and still go through. Believe me, I understand better than most. But how does the suffering cis women went through justify feminists like Adrienne Rich turning their guns away those actually responsible for their oppression of women and onto their own sisters who have suffered with them?

It doesn’t. Sojourner Truth knew it, Sylvia Rivera knew it, and I think if you’re really honest with yourself, you know it too.

(via poesizing)

Mar 29

Don’t forget, Adrienne Rich was a transmisogynist.

[TW: Sh-word]

The self-described feminist poet Adrienne Rich died yesterday. If you are a regular follower of feminist blogs, you’ve no doubt seen countless heartfelt sendoffs to the woman, to whom the word influential applies if nothing else.

But for all the good things people could say (and I won’t) about her, it would be wrong to whitewash her participation in the rabid transmisogyny the plagued so much of the second-wave feminism.

Rich recieved an acknowledgement in one of the most notorious transmisogynous works of all time, Janice Raymond’sThe Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Raymond credited Rich with “read[ing] the manuscript through all its stages and provid[ing] resources, creative criticism, and constant encouragement.” She also quotes Rich at one point in the book describing trans women as “men who have given up the supposed ultimate possession of manhood in a patriarchal society by self-castration.”

Cisfeminists may wish do adopt a Puritan policy of not speaking ill of the dead, but the trans women targeted but Rich, her contemporaries, and their modern counterparts cannot afford that luxery.

Transmisogyny is misogyny; you can’t ignore someone’s misogyny when evaluating them as a feminist.

Mar 26

Understanding the Costs of Reclaiming “Tr***y”

[TW: Uncensored t-word on click-through]

I’m at a small local performance hall. It’s the annual queer women’s music festival. In this small college town, events like these only happen a couple times a year, and after an anti-social northwest winter, it feels good to be out. I sometimes forget how many friends I have here; some that I haven’t seen in over a year. The loud music washes over us as we dance in the semi-dark. This is what I needed. But in one moment, all that comes crashing down.

Somewhere in my head, I should have known this would happen and prepared myself. “Tr***y got pack!” shouts the performer on the stage. The crowd begins cheering, but suddenly I’m crestfallen. I just can’t join in the celebration on this one. I withdraw from the crowd and move to the back of the room. Looking around I see a few others who had the same reaction, and I can’t help but notice that out of the small number of trans women in attendance at this show, each of us are removing ourselves. I raise an eyebrow towards one friend and we share a moment of, “Yeah, I know.”

Like many trans women, I’ve got a complicated history with the term “tr***y.” Burned into my consciousness are societal insults about “tr***y makeup,” jokes about celebrities who “look like tr***ies” and fashion tips for how to avoid looking like a “hot tr***y mess.” There is the “tr***y alert” website that encourages people to take and post pictures of suspected trans women they see on the street and log their locations — presumably so that straight men can avoid them, but more realistically so people on the internet can laugh at them. TV crime shows have “tr***y hookers” that are depicted as worthless trash or murder victims. And of course, there is my own experience briefly working in “tr***y porn.”

I’m not so sensitive that I can’t stand to hear the word uttered — but having it repeatedly chanted from the stage is a bit much. This is especially so because every negative message attached to “tr***y” that I know is pretty clearly about women (if you have any doubts, just do a search for “tr***y” in any social media, like Curiouser Jane did last month), yet it’s a guy who’s singing the song. I know he intends for the message to be about empowerment, a celebration that he’s strong enough to reclaim the term. However, I find it to be a forceful reminder of the violence and oppression aimed at trans women like me and that I don’t have the luxury of taking this word (and the stereotypes that go with it) lightly.

(Read more)

Mar 10

If you read Queerty, you’re an asshole.

(Sorry for no TW.)