WTF, Bilerico?

I really like the Bilerico project--it's a great place for queer and trans folks and their allies to meet and discuss things. And it's never shied away from controversy.

Bilerico recently added a new contributor, Ronald Gold, and reading his biography he's just the kind of person you want to have there--a long time gay activist, one of the founders of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and a man who was instrumental in getting homosexuality removed from the DSM.

So it's an enormous disappointment to read his first post, officially titled "'No' to the notion of transgender" but if you look at the url it must have been called "Transgender: a disease that doesn't exist" at some point. And, well, let's see if you, Gentle Reader, can understand why I was shocked to see it on Bilerico:

What is transgender? Well, there are two sorts who seem to be covered by the name, the drag kings and queens so good at portraying cartoon imitations of straight people, and transsexuals, the folks who report that from an early age they've felt themselves trapped in the wrong bodies. Despite the equipment they were born with that belies their assertions, they say they are really men or really women.

 Holy fuck. Did I just read that at a queer site? Seriously? Please tell me this is some kind of horrid fundamentalist satire...

I recall reading something by Jan Morris in which it seemed that he thought he needed a sex change because he wanted men to hold doors open for him and kiss him goodbye at train stations. For starters, I'd have told him that I've had these nice things happen to me and I've still got my pecker.

Oh ye ghods.

Oh, but he isn't prejudiced against trans folk! See, this is how he ends the piece:

Perhaps it isn't needless to say that a No to the notion of transgender does not excuse discrimination against cross-dressers or post-op "transsexuals" in employment, housing and public accommodation; and I strongly support legislation that would forbid it. I would, however, get after the doctors - the psychiatrists who use a phony medical model to invent a disease that doesn't exist, and the surgeons who use such spurious diagnoses to mutilate the bodies of the deluded.

 See? I just think you're deluded, C.L.--but that's no reason for people to be cruel to you. That is, for levels of cruelty beyond calling you a man and a "transsexual."

If I was to be charitable (I am reliably informed that for some reason December is a month we're supposed to do so, here in Merka; the media says so), I guess I could scratch out some kind of "hmm, he's really against gender essentialism, which I'm down with so...win?" Except, oddly enough, as I write this he's sharing the front page with Autumn Sandeen, the transgender barista from Pam's House Blend, and whom I'm sure enjoys having her identity crumpled up in front of her eyes and tossed away.

I just...can't understand why this of all things should be the first post this guy makes at Bilerico. Didn't somebody tell him there are actual trans people who visit? Or even, you know, write stuff there? Holy cow.

Grumble...gotta write that "how to take an ally to task" post that everybody is writing nowadays...sheesh.

Kapo

I am a racist.

That declaration is the sort of thing that usually brings friends sputtering to your defense. "But Cat, you've dated people of color, some of your best friends, and you voted for Obama!" Which is true, but doesn't do a whole lot to defeat my original point.

Which is that, I am a racist.

I'm also an imperialist. A colonialist. Certainly a classist and probably a capitalist.

I'm not generally cognizant of any of this. But occasionally an incident throws this into focus. For me, it was this comment I wrote. You can go follow the link to find it; I have just enough vanity to not put it on the front page.

But the fact is, I wrote something that was racist and imperialist and I need to own up to that, and to own the privilege that let me think something like that was in any way appropriate. And own up to the fact that the only reason I've become chagrined enough to write about this incident is that I pissed off somebody who'd had this blog recommended to her. Only to be completely and finally turned away by what I wrote.

In other words, I was so blind to my privilege that it took that kind of embarrassment to make me notice it.

It seems useless to deny the fact of my racism. Every day I walk through the streets of the Great American Metropolis and I see the color of the skin of the people in suits heading downtown and the color of the skin of the people who are making deliveries or running deli counters, and I can see the relative worth placed on each. And every day I accept that, buy my paper at the deli, and move on to more important things, like who won the baseball game.

Likewise it is useless to deny the fact of my imperialism, not when I wear clothes made halfway around the world by impoverished people, people who had their wealth and resources stripped away by the wealthier countries, people locked into a cycle of poverty and slavery in all but name by the continued exploitation of them by those nations. I see this every day but am content to pay $8 for my tee shirts and move on to the comics section.

Sure, I try to be a good progressive. I try to speak out against open expressions of racism. I have been fortunate enough to know many people of color in my life, which leaves me less sheltered than most people of my (suburban, white, middle-class) background. I believe in all the Right Causes and critique all sorts of forms of oppression.

None of that changes the fact that I am part of a vast web of privileges that systematically elevates me by virtue of a few accidents of birth while at the same time debasing billions who don't share those features.

That I am trapped in the system as much as they are does not change one whit the fact that I have much the better position.

I write a lot here about feminism and sexism, and transness and transphobia. This is because these are the things that are important to me; sexism and transphobia are the prejudices that single me out. So it's fitting that I should be loudest in my opposition to them.

But what I have learned as I've been writing this blog, as I have grappled with the issues raised both here and in my life, as I've struggled to learn and understand more about feminism and how I can live a life that is concordant with it, is that my personal oppressions are not enough. That it is the whole system of oppressions that needs to be fought against.

There is a reason I prefer to use the term kyriarchy over patriarchy, cisarchy, or any number of other dominations. That's because I see them all as part of the same system: that kyriarchy describes the multivalent oppressive nature of human society. We are locked into it by the relative comfort of our privileges over others, which palliates our own lack of privilege compared to some. To confront real liberation would mean to seek to destroy the whole system of privilege itself, to voluntarily renounce and repudiate one's own privilege--to rip down the whole structure of oppression that has dominated human society since the Agricultural Revolution.

Too much to ask? Maybe. But it would seem to me that at the very least this process can begin with digging into my own privileges, to expose them to the light so that they stop being the invisible shackles that keep me tied to the ediface of oppression; that by recognizing them, I can find a way to be less invested in the struggle to maintain my own place. Because make no mistake: ultimately this system leads only to tyranny, the constant struggle of all against all that maintains the majority of the human race in suffering.

And it's a small thing, oh such a small and insignificant thing to do. If I weren't such a coward, if I weren't so deeply co-opted by kyriarchy, I could do more. I have to trust that it might help, though. I have to trust that in time greater things can become available to me.

But what I can't do is not keep pressing forward. Because anything is better than remaining a racist.


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In the spirit of making some feeble amends, some links Google Reader served up to me on some uplifiting things happening in India recently:

Duniyalive.com » Gay community stages rally in Bhubaneswar

Riot of colours at Delhi's second gay pride march

India's transgender strive for rights | GlobalPost

Chennai turns up to support gay march