In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: November 2007

A Thanksgiving Story

A week ago, it was the Transgender Day of Remembrance. A couple days later, of course, it was Thanksgiving. Two annual events that I often have rather mixed feelings about. Obviously I’m almost a week late in writing this post, but more stuff kept happening last week, so it’s only now that I’m getting around to telling the whole story.

The Day of Remembrance has never been my favorite anniversary. I know a lot of trans people who feel the same way: why is the only day devoted to talking about trans issues all about people who have died? All too often, TDOR events have felt to me like some kind of semi-obscene pity party, an opportunity for many LGBT politicians, community leaders, and other professional gays to express their solemn condolences about all the dead trannies before going back to whatever they were doing the next day and mostly ignoring all the most vulnerable parts of the trans population: the poor, the youth, the homeless, sex workers, the HIV positive, people with many overlapping oppressions, and a whole lot of trans women of color.

This isn’t to say that the downcast faces and sorrow aren’t real, or that people don’t know folks who have really died. At some TDOR events, it’s friends and loved ones who are reading the list of the fallen, as opposed to a well-meaning white lady who can’t quite pronounce the names (yes, it’s happened). It’s important to commemorate the dead, to draw attention to the incredible murder rate of trans people–14 times the national average in the US, according to one estimate. 2007 was the year when Erica Keel was run over repeatedly by a man who threw her out of his car, a man who wasn’t even brought up on hit and run charges, much less murder. This was the year when Ruby Ordeñana/Rodriguez was found strangled on a San Francisco street corner, then was subsequently called a “psychopath” for no reason by a radio shock-jock, and had her funeral hijacked by the Nicaraguan embassy, who ordered the funeral home to dress her like a boy at her father’s request. This was the year when at least nine other trans people were murdered or died from lack of medical treatment and a year when odds are we’ll hear of at least a few more.

But why has the TDOR become the key “trans day” of the year? It’s an evening where trans people gather with our friends and family and allies to light some candles, read some names of victims that most of us didn’t know, and then disperse to go home in the night. I couldn’t possibly put it better than Little Light did:

I think it breaks most of us a little, knowing that sometimes the only time in a year we all get together is to read a thick stack of names of those of us who have been ground into the ground, punctured, stolen, crushed and rent apart, all in order to satisfy someone else’s ideas of what the world ought to be–and to tell all the rest of us, look out. You could be next.

I’ll leave the beautiful eulogies to a natural priestess and poet like LL. As for me… I mostly just get pissed off.

So I was thinking about a lot of things last Tuesday.

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Tuesday Travel Blogging – Berlin

I went to Berlin for the third time this past weekend, and at the risk of sounding like one of those Berlin snobs, I think I’m kind of in love. It’s a fantastic city: Lots of history, lots of energy, and far too much to do in just a few short visits. I’m not sure any other city has had a more significant influence on world politics in the past century, and seeing all the layers of that history in one place is fascinating. Berlin doesn’t provide the greatest photo ops in the world, so my pictures probably won’t do it justice; I’ll try and compensate by adding some more detailed descriptions. To start off with a nice big helping of cheese, The Infamous Berlin Speech that actually makes me a little teary:

Thanks to Matt for sending that to me. Now for the pictures. The Berliner Dom:



Berliner Dom, originally uploaded by JillNic83.

More pictures and commentary below the fold. The full set is here.

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I Miss Seattle



View, originally uploaded by JillNic83.

The Times author actually did pretty well for himself, although I can’t believe he didn’t comment on Seattle coffee. At least he ate some quality salmon and sampled the food from Wild Ginger. My favorite Seattle restaurant that he missed: Kisaku, an amazing sushi place near Greenlake. But please, wait until after I leave Seattle for NY on Jan. 8th before you go there (or go before Christmas) — I’d like to be able to get a table.

Where are you from / where do you live and what are your local faves?

Soviet Capital

The irony here is so sweet:

Empowered by an oil boom that pushed the country’s trade surplus past $94 billion this year, Russia has been flexing its muscles abroad. At home, meanwhile, young and trendy Muscovites are in the throes of nostalgia for the staples of Soviet childhoods, relics of a time when the U.S.S.R. was at the height of superpower status.

That may explain why one of the most popular fashion designers this fall is Denis Simachev, who is selling overcoats fastened with hammer-and-sickle buttons, gold jewelry minted to look like Soviet kopecks and shirts festooned with the Soviet coat of arms, complete with embroidered ears of wheat.

“People in their 30s see these kinds of symbols as reminders of happy memories, like going to pioneer camp where they lived together, ate breakfast together and played sports,” said Mr. Simachev, 33, who wears his hair in a Samurai-style ponytail. He insists he is no Communist — for one thing, his overcoats sell for about $2,100 and his T-shirts for about $600. His boutique is sandwiched between Hermès and Burberry stores on a pedestrian lane, Stoleshnikov, that is one of the capital’s most expensive shopping streets.

U.S.S.R. clothing selling for thousands of dollars on a Moscow street between Hermes and Burberry. Can you hear Stalin rolling in his grave?

It’s not something you grow out of

Shark-Fu* has a post up at Shakesville and at Angry Black Bitch with a very important reminder:

A bitch was pleased to read that Senator Clinton would increase funding into autism research and education, but I’d like to see some of that money go to adult autistics too.

Oh, I know that the press is in love with autism right now because the revised spectrum has resulted in a better understanding of just how common an autism diagnosis is. But the press has failed…horribly…to point out that autism is not a childhood illness just because symptoms appear when a person is a child.

Autistics grow up. Education is great and more funding will certainly help the many families who can not afford programs that will help their child become an adult who can participate in society. But autistics grow up and that 1 in 150 estimated figure should be a warning bell to policy makers that major funding increases in adult care and job training programs are needed now and sure as shit will be needed in a few years.

So go forth and fund research for a cure and research into treatments. I hope all the candidates intend to fund education and expand the availability of those programs to all families. But all y’all need to know that the thousands of autistic adults who woke up autistic today and will, by the grace of God, wake up autistic tomorrow need a commitment to healthcare, job training, work programs and residential care.

I’ll say it one more time…autistics grow up.

It’s true, and it’s something all too many people forget. My nephew has autism, and I know my sister worries about how he’s going to function as an adult — will he live on his own? Will he be able to work? Given how difficult it’s been to get necessary services and accommodations from a school system required by law to provide them, what’s going to happen when he leaves school?

Read the whole thing.

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* Is that the best handle or what?

The Colonial Sex Trade

Apparently middle-aged and older white women are traveling to Kenya in order to have sex with young local men.

“This is what is sold to tourists by tourism companies — a kind of return to a colonial past, where white women are served, serviced, and pampered by black minions,” said Nottinghan University’s Davidson.

And where black men are accessories for consumption, kind of like the beaded African necklaces the women take back home.

At one club, a group of about 25 dancing men — most of them Joseph look-alikes — edge closer and closer to a crowd of more than a dozen white women, all in their autumn years.

“It’s not love, obviously. I didn’t come here looking for a husband,” Bethan said over a pounding beat from the speakers.

“It’s a social arrangement. I buy him a nice shirt and we go out for dinner. For as long as he stays with me he doesn’t pay for anything, and I get what I want — a good time. How is that different from a man buying a young girl dinner?”

I’m not going to even touch that first paragraph, I just wanted to point it out and ask: Did he really say what I think he said?

As for the rest of it, does anyone really doubt that it’s an exploitative relationship when an older man in a position of extreme social power, by virtue of his wealth and his race, purchases sexual favors from a young girl who is relatively powerless? I certainly can’t fault the young women and men who accept the offers of food, money and a good time in exchange for sex; I’m certain that there are a number of them who make that choice consensually and uncoercedly.* But this just seems a little too much like a white person’s exotic jungle fantasy for me to shrug it off as acceptable, just so long as everyone consents.

When men pay women for sex, it violates our notions of female sexual propriety and a whole lot of people fly off the handle — not at the men, of course, because they’re men and they’re expected to want sex all the time, but at the wicked, tempting whores who enable and encourage them. When women pay for sex, it’s cute — even when they’re buying it in a context fraught with imbalanced power dynamics and an ugly racist history (not to mention an ugly racist present). It’s cute partly because it’s apparently only “old” women who pay for sex, and they’re paying dark-skinned men from far-away lands; in other words, it’s not particularly threatening to the dominant power structures.

People are not souvenir beads; they are not exotic pets to experiment with on vacation. I’m not against sex work, and I’m not suggesting that the men discussed in this article have no agency. But I am suggesting that it’s impossible to divorce this scenario from a history of racism, colonialism, and the use of black bodies for the pleasure and service of white people.

And then there’s this context:

These same beaches have long been notorious for attracting another type of sex tourists — those who abuse children.

As many as 15,000 girls in four coastal districts — about a third of all 12-18 year-olds girls there — are involved in casual sex for cash, a joint study by Kenya’s government and U.N. children’s charity UNICEF reported late last year.

Up to 3,000 more girls and boys are in full-time sex work, it said, some paid for the “most horrific and abnormal acts”.

Thanks to MissSarajevo for the link.

*I don’t think that’s a word, but I think it should be, so I’m using it.

Privatizing Marriage

As usual, I am with Stephanie Coontz. If you aren’t familiar with Coontz, get thyself to Amazon, because she is an incredible social historian and feminist commentator. And go read her article. A teaser:

Perhaps it’s time to revert to a much older marital tradition. Let churches decide which marriages they deem “licit.” But let couples — gay or straight — decide if they want the legal protections and obligations of a committed relationship.

What do conservatives spend their time thinking about?

Amanda sends on this post, which provides Conservapedia’s most-viewed articles list:

1. Main Page‎ [1,897,388]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,488,013]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [516,193]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [416,767]
5. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [387,438]
6. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [328,045]
7. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [325,547]
8. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [314,076]
9. Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [262,015]
10. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [249,14]

And just when I thought I couldn’t laugh any harder, I find this gem in the comments:

I don’t want to stand in denial of equal rights and all of that PC stuff but then again I do object to enrolling my five year old in the gay straight alliance. If you are going to promote something as beneficial to all of mankind than you best not attempt to shove it up my ass like it or not. That kind of thing sort of like, well, breeds contempt and reactionary behaviors.

And here I thought shoving things up my ass would breed Gay Bowel Syndrome,* not contempt and reactionary behaviors. If only my mandatory pre-school GSA had set me straight!

Transgender Privilege

Don’t you hate it when those selfish trans people have the audacity to recognize that trans people are regularly discriminated against, assaulted and even killed? Self-identified radical feminist Heart writes:

“My gut, experience, knowledge tell me that the group of persons which will receive the absolute least sympathy and concern is female persons. We are trafficked, prostituted, enslaved, raped, all of the time by all sorts of men, ho hum, no big deal. But if it’s a boy or a transgender person, suddenly that’s a whole nother level.”

I actually had to stand up, walk away from my computer, and take a lap around my apartment before coming back calm enough to post this. When upper-class, young, attractive white women are kidnapped or killed, it’s the #1 story on Fox news. If you are seriously under the impression that the general public has unlimited sympathy for transgender people and absolutely none for wealthy white people, then your head is so far up your ass I’m not even sure where to start with you. Now, I hear Heart on her wish that women’s lives were more valued — but the fact is, some women’s lives are valued. A lot. There is a definite hierarchy to whose lives are important, and I guarantee that women like Laci Peterson, Natalee Holloway, and myself are more than a few rungs higher than a whole lot of people of color, disabled people, sex workers, transgender people, queer people, non-Christian people, non-American people, immigrant people. Of course, our lives are valued in part for their role in the male-savior narrative which requires that we remain delicate and vulnerable, and how “valuable” such a place in that narrative actually is may be up for discussion, but it’s still a sign of social privilege. Yes, women as a group face oppressions, but we don’t all face the same ones, and we don’t all face them to the same degree and in the same way.

And to add insult to injury, Heart posted her comment on Transgender Day of Remembrance.