National Poetry Month

In case you haven't been aware for the last five days, today is the sixth day of national poetry month.  I have to say, I like a fair amount of poetry and I hate it when people claim to dislike it categorically .  To me, that's like saying you hate all vegetables when you've only ever had peas and carrots.  There is Swiss chard, broccoli and many a variety of pepper, ya know?  There are ee cummings, Ben Lerner, and Matthea Harvey (in case you hated Shelley, Chaucer, and Shakespeare in high school.)  I like poetry because of, well, the poetic license.  You don't have to describe something like you would for a detective's report or a scientists observation.  A good metaphor is a beautiful lie or even an ugly one that tells more Truth than the truth, and I like that.  I'm blunt and I'm a Virgo, but that doesn't mean I'm always such a literal motherfella every moment of the day.  Poetry is unshackled and unshackling. 

Some of my favorite kind  poetry has rhythm and often assonance but not rhyme, which is pretty common in slam poetry, so for today I'm posting one of my all time favorite slams, performed by two women speaking as the internal and outward voices of a trans man, often in perfect unison.  Incidentally, if you've ever tried to perfect a vocalization like that, you can appreciate the unbelievable amount of work that went into this perforance, to say nothing of the unbelievable emotional rawness of it. 



I used to get great praise from teachers for my poetry; now I'm out of the habit and I feel like I'm writing complete shit.  But, I am writing again, precisely because it's National Poetry Month, which lots of Twitterers have turned into national poetry *writing* month.  I'm a lot more prepared to commit to a poem a day than I was to commit to writing a 50,000 word novel in November for National Novel Writing Month and I think the practice of writing whether I feel "inspired" or not is an excellent one.  Creativity is a discipline which requires regular practice like anything else and I don't really care that I'm writing shit.  It feels like turning water on in a summer home; it comes out it nasty rusty spurts until it gets flowing again.  There's no other way to get it flowing than to just do it.  Perhaps some of you will participate, or interact with others on Twitter tracking their month with the #NaPoWriMo hashtag.

Cheers, and happy reading, writing and watching
Xoxo
Pistol

Judith Butler gave me gender euphoria & all I got was this lousy blog post.

I just had one of those "Eureka!" moments when something you've been mulling over for years shifts in a big way.  It's like the first time I understood the double slit experiment in particle physics.  It was so simple and yet so difficult, like a yoga pose that you can't seem to muscle in to.  There's all this work that you have to do - it's action, it's yang energy, it's whatever you want to call it - but what's important to not lose sight of is that all of that outward force is just to make you strong and flexible enough to achieve the pose by submission.  Suddenly you fall into it rather than shove into it.

I'm in the process of the most intensive research and thesis writing of my life. I'm exploring femininst theories of transsexual women's experiences and the way that these theories are reflected in medicine, psychology, and society, as well as trans women's theorization and explanation of their own experiences.   I was skimming a scholarly article and came across a quote from Judith Butler, whose work I intend to analyze, but which I have not yet read or frankly even accessed from the library.  The quote, from her 1990 book "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity," argues that gender overwrites sex and is as follows (as quoted by Schrock, Reid, & Boyd in Gender and Society, Vol 19, No 3):  "perhaps is was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all'."  Now this is only a fragment, and it's presented in a paragraph that looks at a number of Butler's ideas and presents partial quotations.  Therefore, I should point out that my response isn't so much to the article or to Butler's idea which seems a bit out of context, though I can't be sure without the original text.  The point is more about what this triggered for me.

I was momentarily, for less time than it takes a thought to fully form, apoplectic.  First of all, the sex/gender difference has taken years to establish and articulate from Harry Benjamin, M.D. using them interchangably in his landmark "The Transsexual Phenomenon," to post modern sex/gender/sexuality and/or feminist theorists differenting between the two.  Basically, that sex is body and that gender is socialized performance of behaviors attributed two which of the two versions of socially accepted bodies we live in.  The idea that a post-modern feminist would come and say that there's not only no difference but that it's all about gender would seem to invalidate transsesxual experience because one can choose to embody different gendered behaviors without transitioning one's physical sex.  However, I 1) don't think that's what she meant and 2) at least for the moment don't care because that's when it hit me:

THERE IS NO GENDER.  Not in any concrete, measurable way.  There are behaviors we've arbitrarily classified as masculine and feminine and then arbitrarily attached to male and female bodies, respectively.  Sure, gender is still a useful term because it describes a set of behaviors that have significance in our culture.  But this doesn't happen in other instances.  For example, there is no linguistic way to describe the set of expected behaviors attached to race, yet these clearly exist (basically as racism and racist stereotypes).  I've had articulate African American friends with advanced degrees told to stop "acting white."  If their peers were telling how to act based on their biological sex, we'd refer to those behaviors as gender, but here it's based on race and called....nothing.  (Clearly it's also fucked up.  The idea that there's a way to act white, or male...back to the apoplectic place I go.)  There is no word, which is odd because essential differences in mental and physical capacities based on race were in play  and shaping the law up until my parent's generation (and sadly linger in lots of places today).  Still, there is no way to describe the set of behaviors expected from a group based on a born trait of race, while we describe the gendered behaviors of a born sex.

This would have flown right past me years back when my understanding of sex and transsexuality was rooted in a patriarchally enforced binary sex system where it was natural for girls to be feminine and boys to be masculine.  My first encounters with gender non-conformist transsexual people was substantially more confusing than gender non-conformist people who maintained their birth sex.  Something along the lines of "why become a woman if you want to be a butch woman?  Why not be a man?"  I learned to unravel sex and gender, and even view both as continuims or dimmer switches rather than a binary variable.  But tonight, I moved from "We're born with a physical and a mental sex which may or may not align, as well as a gender which is seperate" to "we're born with a physical and mental sex that may or may not align, and then we behave."   The idea that gender is socially created and performed is one I've believed all along, but I couldn't see the forest through the trees.  I thought we had a *real gender* somewhere deep inside and had to learn to express it.  I think there's just a real *person* that we have to learn to express, and may struggle to do so when it flies in the face of convention, and that goes far, far beyond gender.

Still, as long as we're in a world where we're expected to choose I'll fall in line.  As I said earlier this week, *my* gender....is glamour.  ;D

xoxo
your hairy, Virgo, masculine-bodied, gender-transcended Transit Faerie,
Pistol

A More Radical TransTuesday Post - Eradicating the Binary from my Life

In last week's post I talked about the ways in which I came to have a rudimentary understanding of the world of transsexuality, but my journey through sex and gender certainly didn't end there, nor can I imagine it ending in my lifetime. It seemed that not long after I was able to put my head around transitioning from one discrete sex to another, there were suddenly new options to understand. There were transgender folks who didn't necessarily feel the need to transition their sex to transition their gender, or to transgress gender entirely. There were folks who were genderqueer, whatever that was. There was the fabulous Kate Bornstein, writing "I know I'm not a Man...and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman, either. The trouble is' we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other."

Aside #1 - I've chatted with Kate on Twitter, met her in person, seen her perform in a theater, seen her perform in a book store, and shared a wildly cool dinner with her and some other lovely Twitterati and assorted geeks. Additionally, she once saved my ass whilst stranded in Manhattan waiting for a call time and directed me to some cool museums. Her fabulosity has been confirmed, reconfirmed by independent lab analysis, notarized and announced publicly, here and many other places as well. So huzzah to her books, lectures and performances that have given so many the reassurance that they weren't alone and the bravery to transition.

Aside #2 - Yep, all quotes from books and names of books/films are going to link you directly to buying said items from Giovanni's Room which you should run, not walk, to do. They are the oldest independently owned queer bookstore on the east coast and recently had to replace a structural wall to the tune of $50,000 so they need your support more than ever. Please shop there for Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Michaelmas, any Pagan holidays whose names I haven't learned yet because I've been lazy, and pretty much any holiday, rainy day or Tuesday that you can think of. Do it!

Back to our regularly scheduled blog: Here are a short list of things that helped me leap from "Yes, there are two genders/sexes and sometimes people are born in the wrong one" to "There are many sexes in nature, although all but the predominant two are considered pathologies in most cultures. There are as many genders as there are people, it's all a social construct, and people are WAY TO FREAKING UPTIGHT about deviating from the predominant two in almost every culture I'm aware of."

1. Watching more of those programs on Discovery Health, I discovered intersexed people. They'd pretty much all had surgery performed on them at an age long before they could consent of even express what sex or gender they felt like they might be, and were none to pleased about it. My initial thought was "they ought to wait until at least puberty and then let them pick one, with of course "one" being one of two options. It was a process of years and bits of information here and there before I realized that some people might be more than fine with living as a third, fourth, or fifth sex beyond M or F.

2. I saw a documentary on Kinsey. A lot of science focuses on either/or, mainly because it's easier to teach than "maybe," "nuance," or "depending on fetal conditions, resource availability, or diet," etc. We learned Mendelian genetics in high school. Peas were smooth or wrinkled, yellow or green, dwarf or tall, in a regular predictable pattern. We didn't learn about genetic aspects with multiple gene influences, gene expression inhibited by environmental factors, etc. We certainly didn't examine sex and gender: an almost unintelligible ballet of infinite genetic, hormonal, environmental and societal influences. So yeah, Kinsey. He looked at some insects and saw thousands of iterations of variation on one attribute and thought, hmm, maybe nature is not so often down with either/or. I can dig it.

3. Yet another Discovery Health special. This one included a FTM trans guy who was at that point pre-transition and performing as a drag king. However, unlike every other Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, butch cowboy/mechanic/miscellaneous male archetype drag king that I've ever seen, this dude was, a huge, flaming QUEEN. Now there's gender confusion, or at least it was confusing at the time. I could handle changing your sex, and being queer myself I understood people who were gay after transition. (It still astounds me how many people vaguely get both gay & trans but then say "but if you're going to sleep with women, why not stay a guy?! But of course, sex and sexual attraction of nothing to do with one another.) Alright, so I've got all that, but a person born female who wants to become a feminine gay man, lisping and swishing in a boa? That was a big leap. I'd already disconnected penises and vaginas from man and woman and already realized there were other options for genitalia anyway, but now to disconnect masculinity from man and femininity from woman? It was a big pill to swallow, which if you've ever met my inconsistently moderately butch, mostly flitting self, is deliciously ironic.

4. I read GENDERqUEER, an anthology edited by Joan Nestle, Clare Howell and Riki Wilchins. You should read it to. It is full of great stories, trans history, and ideas that will so liberate you from so many "shoulds" and "ought to bes" that I'm sure it's terrifying and fabulous and just will send gooesbumps right up and down your spine. Go read it! After, of course, you've bought it from Giovanni's Room! ;D

That's one blog for me, one brief summation of my losing the idea of binary gender for you. If I left something out or you having something to add, a question, something you'd like me to address with regard to gender - please leave it is a comment and I'd be happy to respond in next week's post! Until then, happy TransTuesday!

For Twitter's TransTuesday, A Blog

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't have some awareness of transsexuality. My cousin Erica is a male to female (MTF) transsexual person. (Aside: Some people just say "a transsexual," including some trans people that I know, but in the same way I wouldn't say "a black" or "a gay" I will generally use transsexual as an adjective that modifies an aspect of a person's humanity rather than as a noun.) She is a somewhat distant cousin from me and her immediate family wasn't initially so accepting so I never met her until another cousin's 90th birthday just a few years ago. I don't know exactly how to describe the ways I heard about her talked about other than to say that she was the butt of some jokes except that everyone is the butt of some jokes and embarrassed stories in my family so it didn't seem malicious even if it wasn't optimal. Additionally, I was so fascinated by the idea of someone that would change their sex that I didn't really care what anyone else thought. I just wanted to meet her for as long as I can remember.

The other way in which I became aware of transsexuality was through programs on the topic on Discovery Health that I watched in high school. They were typically told as biopics on individuals, more often MTF than FTM, that were altering their sex through some combination of hormones, SRS , nd lessons on how to appropriately modify their voices and body movements. To me, this was a pretty straight forward thing. My understanding was that they were people who felt that they were born with the wrong bodies and they took action to rectify their spirit with their body. It wasn't my experience but it wasn't hard to understand. One program even discussed a study on the post-mortem study of the brains of 6 transsexual women demonstrating that a substructure of their hypothalamus called the BSTc was the same size of that typically seen in people born female. There was debate over whether this was a born variation that explained these women's transsexuality or whether it was a result of hormone therapy, but it seemed possible that there was a simple biological explanation for their transssexuality. It didn't seem like the kind of thing that should invite vitriol and even hate crimes to me. I never understood that.

That was a great primer for me, but there was a lot not being answered. Were the little boys who wanted to play with dolls longing for that because it was inherently a girl thing to do, or because that's what girls were doing and they knew they wanted to be girls? Where was nature in nurture in gendered behavior. Beyond that, there was a whole lot more learning to get me from that limited-but-valuable understanding of being transsexual and transgender to the gender queer, gender fucked, gender what/what gender? place that I live today. But that is all for another blog on another #transtuesday.