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Three Afternoon Reads

Cleis outlines why she disagrees with Dr. Crazy’s “Why Women’s Studies Sucks.”

The NYTimes has an interesting article about the risks Dems run if they don’t tow the line on reproductive rights.

An AIDS activist and mother writes on her LiveJournal about raising a gay son in a homophobic world. In part:

Fag: This is what I heard someone call my little boy today. I didn’t ignore it. I asked. I glared. What did you say? The kid muttered under his breath. Nothing. We walked to the car and he was quiet. He’s a boy who takes everything into himself. When he shares, it’s a gift. It has a meaning beyond what it is…

…So here was my golden boy, born at a time in my life when I was acutely aware of the powers of both love and hatred, chewing his nails in the backseat, trying not to cry. He looked up at me with his giant green eyes. I could tell he was phrasing his question very carefully, as he is such a precise little boy. “I’m not a fag if I don’t want to have a girlfriend, am I?” He was so quiet and serious. I pulled over and turned around to face him.

I wanted to tell him about the time into which he was born, how so many people loved him, how so many people saw him as the sign of a good and hopeful future they might not live to see. I wanted to tell him how the woman who came into my office after he was born wept with him in her arms and kissed him all over. I didn’t take him from her until he was sleeping and her tears had been replaced with a soft smile. “No one has ever let me touch a baby since I was diagnosed,” she told me in Spanish, “He’s so beautiful. Thank you.”

One of the scariest things about being a parent is my fear that my child will be targeted for something that ultimately defines his identity. This short post on parenting and homosexuality is beautiful for its complexity and compassion. Thanks for the link, A.

Trans In Iran

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not Ms. Lauren, nor was meant to be; I am Charles Johnson, guest blogging on Ms. Lauren’s behalf while she takes a much-deserved break. You can normally find me at Rad Geek People’s Daily.

Here’s a fascinating read (thanks, LiveJournal feminist community) from several days ago in the Los Angeles Times, on the growing acceptance of transsexuals in Iran–a move that has been embraced by, of all people, the radical Islamist clerics who also staunchly defend unflinching patriarchy and violent suppression of homosexuality:

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, gay male sex still carries the death penalty and lesbians are lashed, but hundreds of people are having their gender changed legally, bolstered by the blessings of members of the ruling Shiite clergy.

“Approval of gender changes doesn’t mean approval of homosexuality. We’re against homosexuality,” says Mohammed Mahdi Kariminia, a cleric in the holy city of Qom and one of Iran’s foremost proponents of using hormones and surgery to change sex. “But we have said that if homosexuals want to change their gender, this way is open to them.”

Not that it’s easy in Iran. The Islamic Republic remains a fundamentally traditional, conservative society, laced by harsh judgments and strict mores. A blizzard of clerical decrees is unlikely to make a mother eager to see her son become a woman or enlighten leery co-workers who squirm at hearing their colleague’s voice drop a few octaves. And the government’s response is fractured, with some officials remaining opposed to sex change.

“The people our age, they all know and accept us,” says Toumik Martin, a brusque 28-year-old businessman who was born a girl named Anita, leaning in close to be heard over the cacophony of ambiguous tenors bouncing off the waiting room walls. “Our problem is with the parents. They don’t know how to differentiate between transsexuals, gays and lesbians.”

Iran isn’t the only Muslim society that appears to be growing more accepting of sex changes while still shunning homosexuality. … But no Muslim society has tackled the question with the open-mindedness of Shiite Iran. That’s probably because the father of the revolution himself, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, penned the groundbreaking fatwas that approved gender reassignment four decades ago.

Khomeini reasoned that if men or women wished so intensely to change their sex, to the point that they believed they were trapped inside the wrong body, then they should be permitted to transform that body and relieve their misery. His opinion had more to do with what isn’t in the Koran than what is. Sex change isn’t mentioned, Khomeini’s thinking went, so there are no grounds to consider it banned.

“There is no reason why not,” says Kariminia, the cleric. “Each human being is the owner of his body, and therefore he can make changes.” … “Islam has recognized the rights of transgender. We can’t say to anybody that they must be a man or a woman,” Kariminia says.

You really should read the whole thing.

I’d just like to add a few slightly pointed, but entirely non-rhetorical, questions. (I have my own opinions on these things but I think that they’re very tricky topics and I want to raise the questions and hopefully provoke some discussion more than push any particular point.)

  1. On the other side of things, some trans activists have tried to argue that critiques of patriarchy ought to be subsumed, or in some places modified, by critiques of a more fundamental form of oppression: the constrictions imposed by the so-called “gender binary.” I wonder what they think about Iran, where trans acceptance is steadily growing and has support among even the most fanatically conservative sectors of society, but where pervasive, thoroughgoing, and violent male supremacy remain widely defended by some of the very same clerics. The rise of Khomeini have made it possible for people who were born as girls to take up life as a man and people who were born as boys to take up life as a woman. But to become a woman still means to be given a chador; while gender identity has become fluid and changeable, gender politics remains the same, and the growing acceptance of trans people in Iran seems to be proceeding without posing any challenge at all to patriarchal norms or traditions. What does that say about whether or not the “gender binary” is really any kind of fundamental explanation for patriarchy (rather than, say, just a symptom of the way that patriarchy happens to be tricked out in certain periods of American and European history)? Not that trans acceptance isn’t important or good enough in its own right to cheer on–it is!–but shouldn’t, well, something more be happening in Iran if the “gender binary” is fundamental in the way that some people have claimed it is?

  2. On the other side of things, the moderate liberal wing of the gay rights movement–Human Rights Campaign and their crew–have repeatedly defended a political strategy of working for legal protections based on sexuality but not gender identity, and have told the trans community and their supporters that they are framing their demands only in terms of sexuality because it’s better to get something than nothing. I wonder whether they feel the same way about the inverted case in Iran. In Iran, the struggle for trans rights is rocky and uncertain, but there is growing acceptance and support from what you might think are the unlikeliest of sources; meanwhile homosexuality remains a capital crime. Political battles on behalf of trans rights are far more likely to succeed than political battles for gay liberation and trans rights together. Should the gay community in Iran just grin and bear it and chip in their support for trans activism in Iran for the good of the Iranian “TLBG community”?

    Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m demanding all-or-nothing politics here, or saying that the surprising acceptance of transsexuals in Iran is bad or even neutral without gay liberation. (The lack of gay liberation is bad, but that’s not the fault of the growing trans-acceptance.) I may be a radical kook, but I also think that piecemeal progress is the only kind of progress that there is. But there’s a difference between what is better than what you have now, and what you should be demanding; the first is always going to be much broader than the second. And the question here for the HRC crowd is how it makes them feel when the shoe is on the other foot, and prominent trans activists are saying things like “Approval of gender changes doesn’t mean approval of homosexuality. We’re against homosexuality,” or “Our problem is with the parents. They don’t know how to differentiate between transsexuals, gays and lesbians”? Yes, we should cheer on whatever victories we win in this world, but when the demands of trans activists in Iran are framed in such a way as to specifically exclude any questioning of violent oppression on the basis of sexuality in favor of sticking to the more politically palatable questions about gender identity, shouldn’t we find that just a bit problematic, and shouldn’t we insist on these points of criticism even while we cheer on what advances the make? And shouldn’t we feel the same way for precisely the same reasons while the reverse is happening in America?

Letter to the Editor Update

My letter to the editor was printed today. Of course they would take the most provocative (remember it’s Indiana) line in the letter and use it as the title: “Isn’t a queer dollar just as green?”

And Linnaeus, you will be pleased to know that they edited out that pesky apostrophe (Word, Mac).

I hate that, as one commenter said, the rhetoric of equality, rights and freedom do not resonate with many of my neighbors. Sometimes Lorde’s master’s tools/master’s house must be inverted. Whether or not the appeal to the most conservative free market Republicans among us is successful can be debated, but it is obvious that words like “liberty” and “love” mean little to this kind of people when the subject regards those that upset their delicate sensibilities. I am also sure that should someone of that vein come by and read this, that same charge will be reversed.

I, for one, am tired of seeing my gay and lesbian friends have their plans and dreams disrupted by a vocal set of neighbors and lawmakers. The disappointment grows deeper.

Knowing the community I live in, and considering the flood of other liberal letters printed today, I expect a response in the next week. Ten bucks on someone writing in objection to the use of “queer.”

Letter to the Editor, And Other Things

I fired off a letter to the editor this evening after stewing over this information.

I read with disappointment that the amendment to the Indiana Constitution against gay marriage was again coming to the forefront of state politics. I was even more disappointed to find that the state legislature was considering two related bills, one that bans gays and lesbians from adopting or fostering children and one that revokes partner benefits from the state’s universities.

Of all the time, money, and energy that could be spent at the state level, why is homosexuality, of all things, the trendy political target?

Indiana is taking great strides to move backwards, and in the meantime wonders why the Brain Drain of our young, successful college graduates is so high and our national reputation is so dismal. Hoosiers will do well to remember that gays and lesbians are among our finest assets and that a queer dollar is still green.

A legitimate government is one that represents all it’s people, not a select few.

It was hastily written but it pithy enough to make a point, I think. And yes, I used some of your words. Y’all are good.

I haven’t been feeling well lately. My poor sleeping abilities are catching up with me, especially with this new evil schedule, and my eyes feel constantly strained. It’s time for glasses but I can’t afford the initial cost all at once. If I spend too much time in front of a computer screen, read a book, or knit with finer gauged yarn, the dizziness, nausea, and headaches set in. To top it off, I have yet to fully shed the cold that killed me last week. Thus, keeping up the blog has become a chore — quick cut and paste jobs done in short spurts to avoid feeling sick. I’m trying to finish knitting a sock, but had to put it down tonight and lay around in the dark. And further, reading for my classes is getting close to unbearable.

My sub-para job was easy but draining. I was reminded today that I am mother to the best five-year-old I have ever known. Not like that’s biased or anything.

Indiana Legislature Proposes Three Anti-Homosexual Bills

I was aware of only one of these bills, but Scott, a fellow Hoosier, alerted me to them.

The fact that I’m living in a conservative state isn’t news, and I knew that a marriage-protection amendment was bound to be coming. But I’m a little bit surprised that not one, but three anti-gay amendments have been introduced by my state legislators.

Yes, there’s the protection of marriage amendment, but there’s also a proposed amendment prohibiting a homosexual from being a foster parent or adopting; and an amendment to eliminate domestic partner benefits for all state university employees.

While I’ve always been less than thrilled about being an Indiana resident, I’ve also always contended that a good job and nice home were enough to keep me here and reasonably happy. But today, I wish this fucking state and 3/4 of its residents would sink into a swamp.

And on the national front, the New York Times is reporting that “a coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush’s plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.”

Today, I’m with Scott; I wouldn’t mind if the whole damn state sank into a bog. Of all the state’s worries, of all the ways political time and taxpayer money could be spent.

I’m so angry there aren’t any words.

These proposals come shortly after the booting of the state’s Democratic governor in favor of Mitch Daniels. Yes, the Mitch Daniels who used to be the White House budget director who wants to clean up Indiana’s deficit by cutting funding to our public schools. The first one in the White House who resigned under accusations of insider trading. Yeah, him. I’m hoping those who are bringing these bills, primarily Brian Bosma, the house bigot, do not have a friend in Daniels.

But it doesn’t look hopeful.