New blog, last night, and fighting for trans rights.

Today, I was made aware of a wonderful new blog called "Keeping It Pink". The blog is written by someone on the trans spectrum and is all about how great it is to be trans. Winter, the writer, talks about how there are lots of negative blogs out there about how hard it is sometimes to be trans, I would say mine is one of them, and thats needed and understandable, because sometimes being trans just sucks and is hard, but being trans is also wonderful a lot of times and we have fun and good lives too. The blog is absolutely wonderful, here is a link to the blog for those of you that would like to read it: http://keepingitpink.blogspot.com/ I agree with Winter. There is something that is pretty fucking amazing about being trans. We have such an unique perspective on the world in terms of gender. We notice things, think about things, talk about things that cisgender people just don't talk about and just don't do. Also, as Winter points out, being cisgender seems pretty boring to me at times.

Overall I do enjoy being a transwoman. I think there are things that extremely empowering about being trans. For starters, for those of us who transition, we get to choose our own names. Seriously, how fucking awesome is it to be able to name yourself? Granted, lots of us go by what our parents would have named us had we been assigned correctly the first time, I did, but not all of us do. In the end it is our choice and there is something amazing about that. Since a lot of us know what it is like to be perceived, and even live, as the opposite gender, in our crap binary system, we are able to view sexism, the binary and other things in a totally different light than most, that is pretty fucking cool in my opinion at least. Lastly, I think most of us agree that our lives as transwomen, transmen, genderqueer, genderfluid, and everyone else on the trans spectrum, would agree that our lives are better as trans than they were when pretending to be something we weren't.

Sometimes, like a lot of us do, I wish I was a ciswoman, but I'll take being a transwoman over living as a cismale any day of the week! I hated being seen as cismale it wasn't me. At my core I am female there is just no getting around that. If that means that people hate me for me than so be it. I would rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not. So my trans sisters and brothers and everyone else in between be proud. Love being trans, because really it is a beautiful being trans and I wouldn't change it for the world.

Now you might be asking "Madwomyn? What has changed in your life that makes you feel this way?" I'll tell you, its because I finally feel like I have a sense of community. Last night I went out to a transwoman's meeting in my home town and it was so wonderful! The meeting started at 6:30 and ended at like 11, 5 hours of transwomen, 6 of us in total, just talking about things. Sometimes the conversation were random and not about trans issues per se, but was just everyday conversation that friends have. It was nice to not feel like I was the only one in the room going through the bullshit that trans people have to put up with on a daily bases and not have to explain the basics about being trans. It was a night where I didn't feel so alone like I do when I go to most places. A sense of community is something I have been searching for a long time and I am finally starting to feel like I have it.

Meeting more transwomen and really connecting with them was just awesome. Don't get me wrong, I love my cis friends to death, but its nice to go some place where I don't have to explain things and don't have to educate. I felt like a person for the first time in a long time, oh how I have missed that feeling. Just awesome. I got the number of one them so we could stay in contact outside of the meeting. Slowly, but surely, I am making a community for myself and that is awesome and exciting and just amazing. I am very happy right now.

Now, I am going to end on a decision that I have made in light of recent events. So, as I have talked about before on this blog, it upsets me greatly that trans rights are often shoved aside in favor of fighting for LGB rights and recently this happened yet again. Saturday DADT, Don't Ask Don't Tell, was repealed which I am very happy for, but I am rather upset with how my supposed LGB allies seemed to give up on fighting for trans rights too.

All summer every LGB group was saying how we have to pass a Trans-Inclusive ENDA NOW and then when the going got tough, in part because of the elections, they just seemed to give up on it in favor of repealing DADT something that would only affect cisgender LGB, really LG, people without putting any pressure to make it so that trans people can also serve openly in the army. Trans people are once again left behind and I am told "Now, on to trans rights!" well quite frankly, I am sick of it!I am tired of being left behind and expected to fight for LGB rights when they don't do the same for me. Tired of getting treated like a "lesser" woman by my LGB "allies" because I am trans.

This relationship has got to end the way it is, because honestly I am sick of it and so are lots of other trans people. I have come to the conclusion that I need to stop fighting for people who continually do this. I'm talking about groups and people like the HRC, Barney the fuck head Frank, and people who fought so hard to repeal DADT at the expense of passing a Trans-Inclusive ENDA, because it was "easier" to do. Getting equality for LGB people at the expense of their trans sisters and brothers and everyone else, is progress of a few while stepping on others. If that is progressing, I'll pass thanks. Once again Trans people get the shaft when the going gets tough. Well, I'm done. I am going to fight for transgender rights and not for a LGB community that doesn't want to fight for me. I am more than willing to fight along side people and groups in the LGB community that are pissed about it too and want to fight for trans rights, but the rest wont get my support anymore.

Sorry, to end on a downer, but this has been something that has been on my mind for awhile and I wanted to get it out. The picture below shows how I feel about this in a nutshell.



Bye for now!

I am not yours to claim.

http://www.questioningtransphobia.com/?p=3310
http://takingsteps.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-cartography-and-dissection.html

(Two blogs that inspired me to write this. Also some of the same ideas come from there.)

Cis people make the rules.

Cis people decide what definitions we use to call ourselves. Take for example the metaphor of someone being "trapped in the wrong body" that metaphor was used in order for us to explain to our cis brothers and sisters in a way that THEY would understand. I'm equally guilty of using this when I first came out to my dad and my friends. The problem is that that metaphor makes it seem like there is something fundamentally wrong with our bodies and/or that it is someone else's completely. While it maybe true that for a lot of transwomyn and transmen that their bodies don't fit who they, that does not mean that they are "wrong" in anyway. We change them in order to feel more comfortable with who we are, we are not FIXING them, changing them yes, but that isn't the same thing as fixing them. The definitions that cis society puts on our bodies are wrong.

Cisgender individuals decide from the very beginning who we are in terms of gender. We come out of the womb and the doctors declare "Its a boy" or "Its a girl" depending on what we have between our legs. From then on we are expected to act like what cis society has determined for us. For a young girl who is trans (ie a transwoman) she is given to the boys and they are told "do with her what you will/make a MAN out of this/do what you have to do, its only natural if she screams." Any cis girl put in that situation people would freak out and want to throw the bastard in prison, but when the child is trans, that is what is to be expected and even the right thing to do.

Trans people have no agency to combat this. A lot of the time that little girl has no support, even from family, and so she faces these horrors alone with no one to help her. Even if the girl is lucky enough to have supportive parents and families, she still faces a world that may not respect that. A school refuses her access to the girls bathroom, because the cisgirls freak out and they never take into consideration that if that little girl walks into the boys bathroom dressed as she wants to be that she risks getting harassed and even beaten up by the boys in there. Our voices are never taken into consideration about anything.

We are the monsters of society and like any good monster, we aren't the main point of the story, but just a plot point. We are the thing that a "real" person, i.e. a cisgender person, discovers like and an explorer "discovering" some new country. Well, I've go news for ya, I was already here. I am not yours to discover and I am not yours to claim. You have no right to treat me as if I am some knew found discovery because I am not. I was already here damnit! And this is my life, my world, my reality and you have no right to make claims on it!

We are the monsters that stand between the heroes and heroines and glory. No one ever thinks to stop and ask the monster in stories how they were feeling or why they are doing the things that they do, to do so would be taboo. Maybe the monster would was put into a situation in society where they had to do what they did to survive, but no, no one cares about that. Maybe the monster was that way because society treated them so badly that they felt like they had no other choice. Or maybe, just maybe, that supposed monster wasn't actually a monster, but just a misunderstood being who happened to be different. No one stops to ask that question, its only afterwards that that people realize that.

Feminists have often said in defense of Roe V Wade that the government should keep their laws off their bodies. In that same light I think its time for cisgender people keep their labels, their claims, their ideas, OFF our bodies. We are not yours to claim and how about instead of labeling us you have a discussion with us about who we are and how we identify? Take all your cisnormative/ciscentric assumptions and throw them out the window, because you know what? I'm not the one who is wrong your assumptions and labels are.

Until this happens, I will be the thing that goes bump in the night for a lot of people. I will be the angry transwoman who is often called a bitch. I will wear that label with fucking pride because I am not the one in the wrong here. Cause when society backs you into a corner, you have two options either crumble and let society beat you or come out fighting and right now to quote Julia Serano "I'm just desperate enough to come out fighting!"