The F-Word Blog
11th International Transgender Day Of Remembrance, 20th November 2009
By Helen G | 20 November 2009, 08:07
For many trans people, life is not easy. Nobody said it would be. But being trans is not something we choose and as a consequence transitioning may not be optional either. For some of us it’s something which we must do if we are to stand any chance of managing our gender dissonance, of reducing it to a level where we can function in the same way as any other member of mainstream cis society.
To quote Andrea Dworkin in Woman Hating:
Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency as a transsexual.
For many of us, our focus is finding ways to overcome that state of emergency: we transition to survive. We are not here to provide entertainment for cis people, nor to be the subject of cis centred academic theories. We cannot be socialised into being cis; neither can being trans be beaten out of us. We may not choose to be trans, but we are here, and we are trying to make our way in a world where we face prejudice and discrimination, bigotry, hatred and violence from cis people on a daily basis.
Yes, our journey is hard, but there are good things, too. We find others like ourselves and learn that we are not alone. We make new friends, trans and cis. We learn to face and overcome challenges and obstacles we never knew we’d face, and find strengths we never knew we had. We change, we develop and we become the people we always knew we were.
Or at least, some of us do.
Some - like the more than 160 trans people mentioned in the recent report of the TGEU’s Trans Murder Monitoring Project - don’t make it through. They are the ones we remember today: those members of my community who weren’t allowed to grow and blossom or find their true selves and who were murdered at the rate of three a week, every week.
Today, 20th November 2009, is the 11th International Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). It is a day when we remember that every day, all over the world, thousands of trans people are excluded, persecuted, hated, mistreated, subject to aggression and routinely murdered or driven to suicide because of our so-called differences from other members of mainstream cis society. A system which tolerates and accommodates such hatred, prejudice and bigotry is unacceptable, and must be fought without concession, in the name of its past and present victims, and also in the name of its victims to come.
There are numerous events and vigils being held worldwide to mark this year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance - many are listed on the TDOR website (link here) and I would urge anyone - trans or cis - who is able to attend any of these events to do so. Perhaps I may see some of you at the London event tomorrow (Saturday 21st November).
But regardless of anything else, today of all days, please spare a thought for those of my community whose lives have been sacrificed to transphobic bigotry and violence - and maybe ask yourself how anyone who believes in the basic principles of feminism can help us work towards ending transphobic hate crimes like this and this.
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(Cross-posted at Bird of Paradox)
A Tweet Too Far?
By Philippa Willitts | 19 November 2009, 18:53
As an avid tweeter, I’m not sure how I missed this story when it actually happened, but I became aware of it about a week ago.
Penelope Trunk, a woman in America, was widely condemned after sending the following tweet:
I’m in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there’s a f**ked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.
The main criticisms aimed against her seemed to be that:
1. it was insensitive to those who had had miscarriages and were devastated about it,
2. that it was an inappropriately detailed message, which her many followers did not want to read, and
3. that she was heartless and abortions are bad.
I think these are all different points, and the former certainly has more validity as a criticism. A miscarriage can be an utterly awful experience for a woman who wants the baby. And indeed women who aren’t sure. There is huge grief, loss, fear and hopelessness. Penelope Trunk herself has experienced such a miscarriage, and said on her blog
there are many women who want the baby and have a miscarriage. I was one of them. I cried for days. I get it.
In a blog post at the time, she said
I am four months pregnant. But the baby is dead, inside me, and must be removed. I am devastated. I always knew this could happen, in the back of my mind. But you are never prepared for something like this to happen.
This is not a heartless woman talking! In defending her tweet, she says,
To all of you who said I should not be happy about having a miscarriage: You are the ones short on empathy. Any woman who is pregnant but wishes she weren’t would of course be grateful when she has a miscarriage. […]But if you have ever had an abortion, which I have, you would know that a miscarriage is preferable to an abortion. Even the Pope would agree with that.
It is clearly a difficult area to negotiate. Some women are devastated at miscarriages, others are relieved. I suspect that very few women who are relieved feel able to speak out about this, their fears confirmed by the attacks on Ms Trunk.
But if you have just miscarried a wanted child, I can only imagine how awful it would be to have read it.
On to point 2, it was detail that people did not want to know, it was gory and personal, and who wants to hear the details of that?
This is where I defend Ms Trunk absolutely. Women’s bodily functions are normal and natural, not dirty and shameful. I talk openly about my periods, about the joys of using washable sanitary towels, and about having endometriosis and PCOS and the problems that come with that. About spending 4 days of each cycle in agony and unable to move. About the amount of blood that comes out.
As a teenager I was as coy about it as everyone else my age was. But then after several years of medical tests, investigations, interventions and surgery, I realised that it was ridiculous that I was not supposed to talk about *that*, whereas if the problems I was experiencing were in most other parts of my body, people would not shrink away from hearing the details.
For centuries, women have been taught that their periods, along with other ‘women’s things’ should be kept quiet. And why should they? One of my favourite things is reading feminist radical menstruation writings and looking round the Museum of Menstruation site. Partly because I like breaking patriarchy’s rules, and partly because it is fascinating.
I have no doubt that while some people would prefer I kept it all quiet, I have every right to talk about bleeding, and I will continue to do so.
Why, then, should Ms Trunk *not* talk about her miscarriage? If I want women to be free to talk about periods, breastfeeding, childbirth, and other ‘women-only’ subjects, so we all know we are not alone, then miscarriage must come into that too. She should not have to keep it quiet in order to not offend the sensibilities of delicate men who are reading. Miscarriage is a fact of life, and it is often painful and messy and emotional. And the more women feel able to discuss it, the less isolated and alone other women will feel, whether the miscarriage is, to them, a relief or a profound loss.
The third point is perhaps the most enraging. How dare she feel relief at miscarrying? How dare she be planning an abortion at all? How dare she complain about abortion provision?
I’m not going to use this post to argue about why women deserve ultimate control over their own bodies. But we do. I hope I’m preaching to the converted, but if not, the debate occurs in so many places that it should not be necessary here.
Ms Trunk’s situation does, of course, brings up issues of access to abortion. For a woman to have to be relieved to miscarry, because getting an abortion is so fraught with difficulties, is a really appalling situation.
I will not condem Penelope Trunk for sending that message. Not at all. At worst, it was perhaps insensitive, but this is a woman who was miscarrying in the middle of a board meeting. She might have been relieved, but it would nonetheless have been a difficult, awkward and painful situation. Sometimes women need to stop putting everyone else first and express themselves as they need to.
She had every right to feel relieved when she realised what was happening, and she should never made to feel shame at feeling that, nor should she be, or feel, silenced by others who find it distasteful.
Her body was going through something that millions of women experience. Some of those women are devastated, others are ambivalent, and some are glad. Some, like Penelope Trunk herself, miscarry more than once and feel very differently about each instance. And this is all common.
I recommend this post on the subject at DoubleX. She says,
not talking about a miscarriage or an abortion—or all the complicated feelings that can get rolled up in both—because it’s just too personal is fine. But not talking about it because no one else ever talks about it—so maybe we’re just not supposed too—is not.
We need the freedom to discuss the things we need to discuss, to continue the work of the feminist health collectives of the 70s and truly liberate ourselves.
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New feature: A gude cause maks a strong arm
By Jess McCabe | 18 November 2009, 21:49
Wisrutta Atthakor reports back from the Gude Cause march through Edinburgh, 100 years to the day since Scottish suffragettes took to the city’s streets
On Saturday 10 October, thousands of women, children and men took to the streets of Edinburgh to re-enact the women’s suffrage movement procession that took place along Princes Street a century ago to the day.
The original demonstration took place on Princes Street, Edinburgh’s main commercial thoroughfare, which looks onto Princes Street Gardens and Edinburgh Castle beyond. However, due to ongoing tram-works in the city’s centre, the 21st century recreation of the iconic historical movement was not able to retrace the original route, which was a real shame, but unfortunately an unavoidable one. Instead, the march, starting at Bruntsfield Links, wove through the Old Town past the City Chambers on the Royal Mile to terminate atop Calton Hill, where a rally of speeches, music and singing took place.
Click here to read on and comment
Transcribers wanted
By Holly Combe | 18 November 2009, 21:36
As part of the ongoing initiative to make this site more widely accessible, we are looking for volunteers to transcribe videos and provide subtitles.
While researching recent posts on accessibility, we’ve followed up one potential lead so far and are looking to get a team together so that not all the work piles up on one person during times when several posts that day simultaneously need transcription or detailed picture descriptions.
Do you know anyone with skills or knowledge that could help us with this?
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New feature: Bright Star and women in film
By Jess McCabe | 18 November 2009, 15:16
Producer Jan Chapman spoke to Jess McCabe by phone from Sydney about women in the film industry - and her latest movie Bright Star
We have two problems when it comes to representations of women in film: not enough films which treat women as subject not object, and not enough women making films. It’s not a hard and fast rule that the two are related: one of my favourite films that Jan Chapman has produced is Lantana, a thoroughly intelligent film with three dimensional female characters directed and written by men.
Still, here in the UK only 6% of film directors and 12% of screenwriters are women, according to Birds Eye View. A San Diago State University’s Center for Study of Women in TV and Film study found that the picture is not so different in Hollywood. Only 9% of directors are women, 12% of screenwriters and 17% of editors. Producers appear to be slightly more representative - women make up 23% of all producers and 16% of executive producers - as well as 44% of production supervisors.
We are also in a situation where the stories we see told at the cinema turn the focus constantly on men, with female characters mostly acting as adjuncts, plot devices to demonstrate something about the male lead or eye candy.
I couldn’t, therefore, pass up the opportunity of speaking to Australian film producer Jan Chapman, given her long - and successful - career in the film industry. Chapman often works with one of the world’s highest-profile directors who happens to be female, Jane Campion of The Piano and Holy Smoke among other films (Interestingly, in Chapman’s early career this included working with the Sydney Co-Op and women’s film collectives, according to an interview with Senses of Cinema a few years ago.)
Click here to read on and comment
New feature: Gender and sentencing
By Jess McCabe | 18 November 2009, 15:13
Are the scales of justice in alignment? Rachel Thwaites looks at how women and men are so often treated differently by the system if they commit violent crimes
When discussing a recent high profile child abuse case on The Ten O’Clock News on the BBC, anchor George Alagiah asked if it was more shocking and more “disgusting” because women were involved in the abuse of these children. The reporter covering the case agreed, stating that there are more women involved in abusing children than the public might think: 25% of cases, he informed us. This small discussion struck me immediately. Gendered preconceptions were shifting the focus of the report away from the crime itself to the gender of those involved and saying a lot about society’s deep-rooted beliefs about appropriate gendered behaviour for women and men. In cases of violence of any kind (I’m using ‘violence’ in its broadest sense to mean all forms of physical, mental and emotional abuse) the issue of gender can play a large role in the court process and media reporting of the case. The law should be genderless, but once faced with the decidedly human situation of the courtroom, ideas about gender roles begin to impact on juries, the media, public reaction and the very sentences dolled out.
We have a belief within our society that women care. I mean ‘care’ in two senses: caring for other people and caring about other people. Parenting or caring for elderly or other dependent relatives within the home, or the paid work of nurse, social worker or teacher is all seen as ‘women’s work’. The archetypal woman should be predisposed to care, her ‘natural’ femininity making her willing to work hard to nurture and protect those around her and, importantly, prevent her from being able to harm anyone, particularly children. If a woman does act to harm another person she has transgressed the natural order and will be judged accordingly as something less than a ‘normal’, ‘proper’ woman.
Click here to read on and comment
TDOR photo exhibition, Brighton, 19-21 November
By Helen G | 17 November 2009, 10:30
From Thursday 19 November to Saturday 21 November, in the Entrance Foyer of the Jubilee Library in Brighton, there will be a public exhibition of photos of some of the people who have been killed in the last year. Some tributes will be on display with an explanation of what the Transgender Day of Remembrance is for, and its history.
There will also be a book of condolence for Andrea Waddell, who was recently murderd in Brighton.
Additionally, I have added to the Events page (link here) the details of some other events scheduled in the UK to mark the Transgender Day of Remembrance. I hope to see some of you at the London event on Saturday.
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