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raybearI have become recently obsessed with the song "The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia". Its not like I wasn't familiar with this song before, but I don't know, it came up randomly on my ipod the other day and hearing Vicki Lawrence sing "that's one body that won't be found" kinda creeps me out in this way where I feel elated. Like watching a horror movie. So it's been on repeat.
I survived my 15 miles of bike riding yesterday, but my body is a little sore today and a little extra angry because of the whole "you were just sick" thing. So I'm maybe glad that it's Saturday and cold and grey because the temptation to go outside is not there. I have spent my morning puttering, including futzing with my new cell phone that came in the mail (free fancy upgrade!). Luckily, I don't have to send out the hangdog e-mail asking for people's numbers, because I was able to transfer them all myself. Actually, I even have an extra SIM card, because the first phone was defective and when they sent a second one, they sent a second card that I didn't need. I think it's ridiculous how cell phone companies try to charge these exhorbitant prices in some cases, but then throw isht at people for free at other times (i.e. contract renewals). I mean, my defective phone is still sitting in my house and I"m waiting on a return label, but the last time this happened, no return label was ever sent and I was never charged for the extra phone. Whatever, another thing on the list of random bogus capitalist things in this world.
The recent talk regarding the Gendercator film made me dig out the book "Lesbians Talk Transgender" which made me realize, um, this belongs to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
saltjam. (I will gladly give this back to you!) But anyway, I haven't read the book in years and its pretty thin, maybe I will read it again out of curiosity to see how it holds up, what I will remember. I don't think about 'trans stuff' very often and I realize this is maybe not the best way for me to be, because that means when it comes up, it seems more loaded than maybe it has to be. I think it was just this cycle of: talking/thinking about it too much -> feeling constantly burnt out -> deciding to indulge in the luxury that non-trans people have everyday and not think/talk about it (aka 'be stealth'), though really, I'm never completely. But then I realized wait, I don't think non-trans people shouldn't think about these things. This doesn't mean I'm going to work on Tuesday and outing myself to all my co-workers at a corporate law firm, cause that isht would be exhausting and tedious. I just mean, with myself. And you know, in my livejournal.
Sometimes I think my framing is just different so it makes it hard to every properly engage with people, even people I love. Like, the question of surgery and physically altering my body, and why trans surgeries are different than 'cosmetic' surgeries, because the way women who want to have breast implants talk about their sense of self uses some of the same language. And I'm like, ok, sure, but it's different. To me, it feels like someone is pushing me to have a philosophical argument about differentiating between snakes and alligators, and why one must justify occupying a different niche than the other. My brain just sort of TILTs and I'm like 'huh?' These are two completely different issues and categories of experience, and yes, perhaps there is overlap, because they both related to body and self-esteem and trauma (to a degree) and why society needs to judge and control bodies, but, still, so far apart in my brain. (I'm just articulating how I do this, its explaining a lot of my behavior and thought patterns.)
Now the butch/trans thing doesn't feel this way, exactly. But there is an element where its framed in my mind as "they are two different things and it's not causal." I'm not saying the feelings of being threatened are not real -- they are very real, they feel true, they are upsetting to our framings and challenging our lens. But feelings are real for being feelings, and not necessarily because of the rational ideas they are automatically connected to. So I think about, ok, what ARE they connected to? Do they have to be connected to this? Who told me they have to be connected this way? Why do I assume that its objective and true? That's my general process when I'm breaking down anything: I do it with race all the time, I do it with spiritual concepts all the time, I do it with my writing process, I go to therapy to do it with my internal processes.
Last night I was thinking, that actually, yes, transgender ideas and actions moving into the mainstream DO (threaten to) lower the number of butch women. The concept of butch dykes is, in many ways, reliant on a binary system. It is saying (in an extremely simplistic and reductionist way): male-born men act within category A, female-born women act within category B, so butch are female-born women who have sex with women and act within category A. It is reliant on this binary. If tomorrow, I snapped my fingers and the universal tradition for men became having long hair and wearing pink skirts and having women open the door for them, would then the category of what is 'butch' remain static? Or would it adopt this new standard of the binary? Which is more important -- the actions themselves, or the sense of othering? These are pithy examples, just for me to show what exactly binary means in real-life everyday societal actions and pressure and expectations.
My next thought is that lowering numbers is also not the same as endangering or extinction. I think in the context of a binary, there are fewer choices of what space to occupy. So this category of 'butch' housed lots of people who didn't exactly fit perfectly, but they fit better there then elsewhere. So, if you are someone who sees transgender as simply being a way of sliding along the binary scale with the help of a doctor's prescription, then all those ideas of defecting, betraying, abandoning, buying into heteronormative ideals -- these feelings are real and 'true'. But if transgender is about eradicating the binary, even for example, making it about three things, not two, then yes, in simple math terms, you will lose numbers. The pie chart that was previously divided in half, is divided in thirds. Etc. etc.
So, if the binary is gone, the handy category definition of butch is not only challenged, it's sort of been absolutely pulled out from under people. Some people find this absolutely freeing, because there are now more categories to exist in (or move around to on a daily basis). Some find it hugely upsetting. Some find it both at the same time or different times. And yes, I can see that this would be a time when people want to reconsider, rethink, redefine what their individual identities (and community identities) mean. What is butch? Why is there butch? How do we support and find community in butch identities, not just a movement but as individuals who want validation of their existence? And in that process, its easy to look over at transmen and see simliarities and try to connect the two. It's human nature in some ways, even more so in our current culture. We constantly analogize and compare and hate feeling out of control. Its like marriage. Straights saying 'gay marriage threatens the institution of marriage" and you know what? I think they're right. I genuinely believe they feel threatened (I do not believe they ARE threatened) because it's making them have to look to themselves and figure it out on their own, not just based on what they're not. Its like when I talk about being nonmonog/poly and people get really upset, because its challenging their monogamous relationship. Even though my personal sex life is doing nothing to their personal sex life. It just feels that way because of our framing. And what's wrong with feelings? Nothing until you start linking them automatically to rational ideas that seem perfectly objective because they are unexamined. And then, at all costs, prioritizing rational thought at being superior to emotional experience. Even though our emotional experience is what got us all into this mess. And by 'mess', I mean, you know, living.
On some random few and far between occasion, I would totally buy Catherine Crouch a beer and listen to everything she is feeling and help her separate out how my life is a completely different animal species that doesn't apply to our experience and connect over the ways we have both had to exist in a binary and what to do about it. On 99.5% of days, though, I'm perfectly happy to have lots of butch women in my life who are thinking all these things out, who support trans as much as they support their own identities, and they can do it for me. So I can resume my own duties: challenging straight men's assumptions that women having sex with each is for their benfit. It's all about having each other's back, right?
I survived my 15 miles of bike riding yesterday, but my body is a little sore today and a little extra angry because of the whole "you were just sick" thing. So I'm maybe glad that it's Saturday and cold and grey because the temptation to go outside is not there. I have spent my morning puttering, including futzing with my new cell phone that came in the mail (free fancy upgrade!). Luckily, I don't have to send out the hangdog e-mail asking for people's numbers, because I was able to transfer them all myself. Actually, I even have an extra SIM card, because the first phone was defective and when they sent a second one, they sent a second card that I didn't need. I think it's ridiculous how cell phone companies try to charge these exhorbitant prices in some cases, but then throw isht at people for free at other times (i.e. contract renewals). I mean, my defective phone is still sitting in my house and I"m waiting on a return label, but the last time this happened, no return label was ever sent and I was never charged for the extra phone. Whatever, another thing on the list of random bogus capitalist things in this world.
The recent talk regarding the Gendercator film made me dig out the book "Lesbians Talk Transgender" which made me realize, um, this belongs to
saltjam. (I will gladly give this back to you!) But anyway, I haven't read the book in years and its pretty thin, maybe I will read it again out of curiosity to see how it holds up, what I will remember. I don't think about 'trans stuff' very often and I realize this is maybe not the best way for me to be, because that means when it comes up, it seems more loaded than maybe it has to be. I think it was just this cycle of: talking/thinking about it too much -> feeling constantly burnt out -> deciding to indulge in the luxury that non-trans people have everyday and not think/talk about it (aka 'be stealth'), though really, I'm never completely. But then I realized wait, I don't think non-trans people shouldn't think about these things. This doesn't mean I'm going to work on Tuesday and outing myself to all my co-workers at a corporate law firm, cause that isht would be exhausting and tedious. I just mean, with myself. And you know, in my livejournal.Sometimes I think my framing is just different so it makes it hard to every properly engage with people, even people I love. Like, the question of surgery and physically altering my body, and why trans surgeries are different than 'cosmetic' surgeries, because the way women who want to have breast implants talk about their sense of self uses some of the same language. And I'm like, ok, sure, but it's different. To me, it feels like someone is pushing me to have a philosophical argument about differentiating between snakes and alligators, and why one must justify occupying a different niche than the other. My brain just sort of TILTs and I'm like 'huh?' These are two completely different issues and categories of experience, and yes, perhaps there is overlap, because they both related to body and self-esteem and trauma (to a degree) and why society needs to judge and control bodies, but, still, so far apart in my brain. (I'm just articulating how I do this, its explaining a lot of my behavior and thought patterns.)
Now the butch/trans thing doesn't feel this way, exactly. But there is an element where its framed in my mind as "they are two different things and it's not causal." I'm not saying the feelings of being threatened are not real -- they are very real, they feel true, they are upsetting to our framings and challenging our lens. But feelings are real for being feelings, and not necessarily because of the rational ideas they are automatically connected to. So I think about, ok, what ARE they connected to? Do they have to be connected to this? Who told me they have to be connected this way? Why do I assume that its objective and true? That's my general process when I'm breaking down anything: I do it with race all the time, I do it with spiritual concepts all the time, I do it with my writing process, I go to therapy to do it with my internal processes.
Last night I was thinking, that actually, yes, transgender ideas and actions moving into the mainstream DO (threaten to) lower the number of butch women. The concept of butch dykes is, in many ways, reliant on a binary system. It is saying (in an extremely simplistic and reductionist way): male-born men act within category A, female-born women act within category B, so butch are female-born women who have sex with women and act within category A. It is reliant on this binary. If tomorrow, I snapped my fingers and the universal tradition for men became having long hair and wearing pink skirts and having women open the door for them, would then the category of what is 'butch' remain static? Or would it adopt this new standard of the binary? Which is more important -- the actions themselves, or the sense of othering? These are pithy examples, just for me to show what exactly binary means in real-life everyday societal actions and pressure and expectations.
My next thought is that lowering numbers is also not the same as endangering or extinction. I think in the context of a binary, there are fewer choices of what space to occupy. So this category of 'butch' housed lots of people who didn't exactly fit perfectly, but they fit better there then elsewhere. So, if you are someone who sees transgender as simply being a way of sliding along the binary scale with the help of a doctor's prescription, then all those ideas of defecting, betraying, abandoning, buying into heteronormative ideals -- these feelings are real and 'true'. But if transgender is about eradicating the binary, even for example, making it about three things, not two, then yes, in simple math terms, you will lose numbers. The pie chart that was previously divided in half, is divided in thirds. Etc. etc.
So, if the binary is gone, the handy category definition of butch is not only challenged, it's sort of been absolutely pulled out from under people. Some people find this absolutely freeing, because there are now more categories to exist in (or move around to on a daily basis). Some find it hugely upsetting. Some find it both at the same time or different times. And yes, I can see that this would be a time when people want to reconsider, rethink, redefine what their individual identities (and community identities) mean. What is butch? Why is there butch? How do we support and find community in butch identities, not just a movement but as individuals who want validation of their existence? And in that process, its easy to look over at transmen and see simliarities and try to connect the two. It's human nature in some ways, even more so in our current culture. We constantly analogize and compare and hate feeling out of control. Its like marriage. Straights saying 'gay marriage threatens the institution of marriage" and you know what? I think they're right. I genuinely believe they feel threatened (I do not believe they ARE threatened) because it's making them have to look to themselves and figure it out on their own, not just based on what they're not. Its like when I talk about being nonmonog/poly and people get really upset, because its challenging their monogamous relationship. Even though my personal sex life is doing nothing to their personal sex life. It just feels that way because of our framing. And what's wrong with feelings? Nothing until you start linking them automatically to rational ideas that seem perfectly objective because they are unexamined. And then, at all costs, prioritizing rational thought at being superior to emotional experience. Even though our emotional experience is what got us all into this mess. And by 'mess', I mean, you know, living.
On some random few and far between occasion, I would totally buy Catherine Crouch a beer and listen to everything she is feeling and help her separate out how my life is a completely different animal species that doesn't apply to our experience and connect over the ways we have both had to exist in a binary and what to do about it. On 99.5% of days, though, I'm perfectly happy to have lots of butch women in my life who are thinking all these things out, who support trans as much as they support their own identities, and they can do it for me. So I can resume my own duties: challenging straight men's assumptions that women having sex with each is for their benfit. It's all about having each other's back, right?
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 05:40 pm (UTC)I'm kidding. She is friends with many people I know, I do not think she is a bad person, but I do think she is engaging in some 'bad' actions. Just like, you know, the rest of humanity. But that doesn't mean I won't call people on it!
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 05:44 pm (UTC)http://www.catherinecrouch.com/mainwebsite_html/filmsDetail.php?pageID=gendercator
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:18 pm (UTC)And she seems to be ignoring that lots of those lesbian feminists from the 70s were very anti-butch. As they saw butches and femmes as upholding the gender binary they wanted to destroy.
Ah, how times have changed!
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:28 pm (UTC)with the Michigan thing, that would be a perfect venue to have a real pick-apart, talk-everything-out, re-evaluation on this issue. because not everyone who attends Michigan is transphobic -- lots of people have complicated relationships to the event, and i would never just lump everyone who attends together into the same idealogical boat.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 05:42 pm (UTC)I agree that the binary (good word, BTW) concept of gender is truly annoying in our culture especially. Men are men, act this way; women are women; act that way. Television "documentaries" feed trash research to the public at large who have been taught to believe any shite they see on TV since age 0. "Men like to be in groups, don't face each other in conversation; women like to deal one-on-one, prefer face-to-face engagement. Hmmm... I'm not exactly Butch Butch here, but I'm not fay either, and I prefer one-on-one, face-to-face engagement. I guess I'm abnormal. That means bad, because they never tell you on those shows that folks that don't fit the norm are okay, just different. They just tell you they're different from everyone else without saying, "But it's okay," or they don't say anything about them at all!
As for the poly v. mono concept, you're hugely right in that folks have been inbred to believe "1+1=2—The End!" which is just one reason why straights can't keep their marriages together. By telling mainstream folks that you don't have just one "friend" or sex partner, they're all like, "That's so unfair, so I'm not going to like those people that do that. I mean, I have to stay with just one person." Um, no. No, you don't. You can if you want, but why, if you're not happy? And who's to say that the person you're with is not a terrific partner and your best friend, but not able to satisfy your need for poetry or watching crappy kung-fu movies or having multiple orgasms? No one person can do all that for everyone; why not have someone else to do it for you? And why is it so threatening, if you're still going to continue doing all the things you have been doing with your "primary" partner?
Wow this is babble. Anyway, I wanted to tell you I took a peek at some earlier blog entries of yours (as we discussed) and got a better idea of what you've been going through. Thanks for sharing it with me.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 06:53 pm (UTC)I don't think it's babble, I think your thoughts are pretty interesting. I'm intrigued by the thought of open relationships but think I'm way too jealous to do something like that. I like the idea of "if my primary partner doesn't give me multiple orgasms, why shouldn't I seek them elsewhere?" but wouldn't like being on the other end of that, the one defined as "not able to give multiple orgasms." I guess I applaud people who can make open relationships work, it must take a hell of a lot more honesty than most people are able to muster. Though I find that if I'm really in love, my energies do naturally focus on one person and everyone else pales in comparison. Unless that's just infatuation that wears off. I get crushes often and can sustain several simultaneously, but I rarely fall in love. Meh, what do I know...
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 06:06 pm (UTC)Also, forgive me for being "unsolicited advice from internet strangers" man, but do you know
Because you should.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 06:47 pm (UTC)I actually had a brief conversation about the relationship between transmen and butch women with a friend of mine last night and so its interesting that you brought this up today as I very very rarely examine my relationship to the transmen in my life as someone who presents as a butch lesbian.
I feel like there is a point where when every girl you've dated in seven years has started dating transmen or men exclusively after your relationship where you really have to question where you fall in lines between butch and transgendered, but mostly, you just wish transmen would stop stealing all the honies.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:10 pm (UTC)Also,
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 07:17 pm (UTC)Your ex-girlfriend is totally not at my house right now. Not at all. I don't even know what you're talking about. I mean...how would you even know about my stealing your ex...we've been very discreet...I mean no one knows that I stole your ex...um...oops. Forget that last part...was that my outside voice?
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 06:50 pm (UTC)But mostly, the reason why I have no sympathy for the "where have all the butches gone, long time passing" choruses from lesbian nation is because in my experience the people who are singing this tune are all middle class. The middle class never really had butches in the first place. Butch/Femme is a working class cultural phenomenon. In San Francisco all sort of middle class lebians moaned and moaned this nostalgic fantasy that they never had. When I was in the Army there were butches everywhere...as a matter of fact, almost everyone was butch...except the officers (traditionally from the middle classes..they tended to work the typical middle class andro/professional thing).
And then lastly, if there were a bunch of people who were trans and suffering from body dysphoria but lived butch because that was their only option...then realized they could be happy people instead once the option of transitioning became known to them...why begrudge them happiness just because you want to date them as unhappy, body dysphoric "butches." That seems selfish. I've seen too many femme lesbians who find body dysphoria attractive and don't want to date butches who are happy with their bodies...they want to date butches who are really closeted transmen and are really uncomfortable. Not cool.
By the way, I don't have the Vicki Lawrence version of "Nights"...I only have the Reba version...maybe I'll have to acqure the Vicki Lawrence....
miscellany.
Date: 2007-05-27 09:14 pm (UTC)I always have a personal wreslting match about if I should see films that I know I have a huge critique of going in. Because maybe I'm trying to talk and examine, but maybe I'm trying to prove myself right, which is nothing that I need to be up to. Tangentally, I feel the same way about that book "full frontal feminism," about which there is currently some online debate.
About having each other's backs. I don't know why it continues to surprise me that the rather clear idea that denial of anyone's right to existence/bodily autonomy is an erasure of everyone else's right to exist/bodily autonomy. I mean, I know why, but still.
Surgery is disruptive also because it reveals the unnaturalness of eveyone's body. This is one of the reasons why people make the argument that transition "isn't natural" or is the extreme end of the scale. It makes people nervous to think that they're products of technology (I mean technonlogy in a broadly defined way).
Also, the concept of transgender man exists on a binary too. The same binary as butch dyke. The binary of man/woman. Which doesn't mean that transgender men or butch dykes actually exist in this binary in reality. Neither do cisgender men or femme dykes or anyone else. It's writen on us and perpetuated by us to various degrees. I don't think the burden of disrupting gender binary should fall on the shoulders of any group in particular. Tangentally, it always makes me nervous when people start talking about transgender people as being particularly interested in disrupting the gender binary. Lots aren't. Of course, the converse conversation makes me nervous (transgender people exist to perpetuate the gender binary) too.