Episode 495
September 19th, 2006 | Strip Archive
Here’s th’ latest episode. Trying a new technique for posting it here. Let’s see how it goes.
Here’s th’ latest episode. Trying a new technique for posting it here. Let’s see how it goes.
351 Responses to “Episode 495”
September 19th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Gulp. On all accounts.
September 19th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
As regards tech issues, the episode loaded beautifully and is big enough for me to read without my drugstore specs, so thanks!
September 19th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Re: tech, it loaded beautifully and LOOKS beautiful!
Re: Raf, he may be realizing that having his parents break up would not make him “normal”, nor would it immediately end the stress.
Altho now I’m having a vision of Gloria & Stella moving in with Clarice, Toni, & Raf. Which would be more crazy - a V between Clarice, Toni, and Gloria? Or Stella & Raf adjusting to being not-quite-siblings?
Re: Cynthia, love the coming out in the classroom
Re: Janis, whoa! Be careful there, dude!
September 19th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
I have been wondering, since the last strip, if Raffi will want to live with Clarice rather than Toni when the family splits — exploring the whole bond with the non-biological parent dynamic, and what that will mean to Toni.
September 19th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
It loaded perfectly! Thanks! I love the way the middle school lingo is so realistic! Middles school aged kids are so fragile and hard core at the same time. I agree with fjm…………Wow on all levels!
September 19th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
This is by far the best-looking and most earily readable web layout yet. Yay!
September 19th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Re: tech; loaded instantly (lovely, since we don’t have broadband); looks great.
Re: content; I’m in fjm; gulp, indeed. Do you have spies in middle school? The dialogue is spot-on.
September 19th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
This strip posted wonderfully.
I like that there’s less than smooth sailing in the current strip, makes for interesting tensions.
thanks!
September 19th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
“Gender and Society” is not one of the topics for which my local home school store provides curricula. Can you give a link to the one where Lois gets hers?
September 19th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
Great new format. Loaded instantly, perfectly legible.
As for content, gulp and wow indeed, and you must have spies in college classes as as well. Favorite detail : student passed out/asleep in third row. Beautifully captured, too, is how even the smart students turn abstract debate into personally relevant high drama. Sooo real, it’s scary.
Also love the way Cynthia remains true to herself. Not that I agree with her politics, but it’s great to see reflected in the strip that sexual orientation is only part of one’s identity, and coming out doesn’t turn everyone into a secular, left-wing, vegetarian feminist (unfortunately).
Well, we knew that; the strip is harldy short on diversity. But it must take a lot of imagination and courage to dare portray Cynthia sympathetically. She’s not a caricature; pretty impressive. Even worse: she’s so smart and articulate - aren’t you afraid you (or we) might be contaminated?
September 19th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
The new web-layout for the strip looks awesome! Great strip, as usual.. and I love the little details in the background, like the student snoring in the back of Ginger’s class!
September 19th, 2006 at 6:37 pm
I guess I have to revise this strip. Turns out the Michigan Womyn’s Fest has NOT rescinded its policy on transwomen after all. I based my info on an email I received, plus a press release I read on the Camp Trans site. But apparently there was some kind of misunderstanding. I’m trying to sort it out. THere’s some info here: http://www.ifge.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=275
Have any of you heard anything?
September 19th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
I *wondered* about that … also, have a great time on the book tour Alison. Politics and Prose is a wonderful place here in DC. I remember coming to a reading by you about 10 years ago at Lammas down in Dupont Circle…
September 19th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
I’ll sleep with cynthia…
September 19th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Brilliant!
Loaded fine for me the first time, too.
September 19th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
Alison, if you made a mistake based on an email you received, then maybe Lois did too! She could easily have assigned Janis an essay under the same misapprehension that you were.
I guess you can choose whether you’d rather fix the strip now, come back to the topic later (and acknowledge “Lois’s” error in-strip), or just let it go. (I’m sure we’ll all still love you whatver you choose…)
September 19th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Alison, I like the idea of Lois receiving the misinformation like you did and somehow weaving that into the next strip. Great idea Josiah!
September 19th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
I like that we’re starting to see Raffi’s interactions with his peers and not just his parents, I like that he and Stella still call each other by their dinosaur nicknames (I forget which strip it was, I know it was in ‘Sundry other Carbob Based Life Forms to Watch Out For.) Dunno if anyone else reads the webcomic Something Positive but it sort of reminds me of Davan and Aubrey still calling each other ‘Woogie’ and ‘Monkey Butter.’
September 19th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
It loaded very well. You should totally use this format from now on. The image specs are perfect- no side, scrolling needed. Yay!
And THANK YOU. I’ve been waiting and waiting to see more on the Cynthia and Ashley drama. And when did Janis get to be “almost 15″!? *sniffle* They do grow up so fast…
September 19th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
michfest clarification:
basically camp trans sends a little group of woman-identified trannies over to the ticket booth every year to attempt entry into the festival. they out themselves as MTF before asking for a ticket. every year the ticket-booth seller denies them entry until this last summer, when the seller sold them tickets without a problem. much rejoicing was had by all, until lisa rofel got wind of it and posted that ugly transphobic statement about all womyn-born blada blada blada (sorry but i think you can tell which side of the debate i’m on). hence the confusion.
i agree, since it was lots of confusion for everyone, that maybe janis can call lois out before the grand “street drugs” hormone revelation.
ps. excellent work as usual. heartfeelings.
September 20th, 2006 at 3:05 am
The little kids (who aren’t so little anymore) and the big kids break my heart. They are right on. When did Raffi get so big? and Janis….
Great strip and no tech issues with this one. Loaded perfectly.
So I was wondering, what became of Jezanna since she closed the bookstore? We saw her a while back helping to resettle refugees…but it’s been a long time. Can we see Jezanna & her girlfriend & dad again?
thanks as always for this wonderful & original piece of contemporary art.
September 20th, 2006 at 6:03 am
A clarification: Lisa Vogel (co-founder/producer Mich W’s Music Fest) is who sent out a statement re transgender (non) inclusion. Lisa Rofel — very different person — is a kick-ass anthropology prof at UC Santa Cruz.
September 20th, 2006 at 8:35 am
Wow! Talk about moving characters’ stories ahead after the concentration on Toni and Clarice and Mo and Sydney (hmmm…wonder if they will do any partner swapping along the lines of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice LOL!).
Raffi — I thought he seemed pretty clued in to the likely possibility that Toni and Clarice will split up…but it’s nice to see him talk about it without it being in the midst of the drama with his parents. And it’s nice to see that Stella and he still are friends…although I keep wondering if one day the dykes will have to deal with them dating (shades of Romeo and Juliet!).
Cynthia and Ashley — So things are status quo in their relationship, except Cynthia is being very open about their relationship (intentionally or unintentionally). Has Cynthia generally been out before now? I know that she talked about coming out to her family…as well as receiving static from fellow conservative Republicans on campus. But is this her first widespread coming out statement? And how will Ashley and Ginger react Could blasting someone about your sexual or not-so-sexual relationship in class violate the college’s sexual harassment rules? Imagine if Ashley brought Cynthia up on charges in student court, and Ginger was asked by both to testify!
Janis and Lois — Whoa! Taking street hormones could lead to a lot of personal and medical drama! I can’t wait to see what happens with this twist! Will Lois and Janis’ mother (who seems to have been absent for ages!) cave in to Janis’ demands, try to reason with her, or come down strong on her?
September 20th, 2006 at 9:10 am
I love that Raffi and Stella still use their little-kid pet names for each other. They can’t be tooooo adolescent, then, right? Adolescence….this will be an interesting topic to watch (read) in the next little while…..oy….
and yes, the formatting was great!
September 20th, 2006 at 9:45 am
LOVE the sleeping guy in the seventh panel. The art in that panel made me laugh out loud.
Well, gotta go teach now…
September 20th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Is there anyone else who’s really, really rubbed the wrong way by the term “outing oneself”? Especially since it has begun to replace “coming out”? I hear it a lot on our glb panels at the university here.
What bugs me about it is that it seems that the people who use it either are 1) losing the meaning of the outing controversies of the early 90s, or 2) regarding anyone who’s openly gay as a victim — in this case, victims of themselves? “I outed myself” manages to turn the act of asserting and affirming oneself, which I still see as a positive thing to do, into passivity and self-devaluation. (Ooooh, I would never have admitted to someone that I was, like, totally gay, but then I brutally dragged myself out of the closet in front of the whole world.)
Maybe it’s partly a generational thing, and I’m just replaying the role of the gayfolk of my parents’ generation who hated the word “gay.” And I know that with time, “outing oneself” will lose its history and become just another word. (Just as “coming out” has largely lost its original camp / debutante connotations.) But for now, for someone who’s lived through its history, it’s annoying as hell.
Great strip, by the way. We know that Cynthia is smart as a whip, as Samia put it. But she’s still a pig, trying to use Ashley to satisfy her own base sexual urges while pretending to be above them.
September 20th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
Love the school scenes, too! Do kids still use “Word up?” I think I used that in middle school, myself (80s).
Duncan - I use “coming out” - “outing oneself” sound very detached to me, but I came out in the late 90’s so maybe it is a generational thing, like you said.
I’ll be at Politics & Prose in DC on the 2nd!
September 20th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
I don’t think I’d call Cynthia a “pig”- she’s just young and still has a lot of religious programming to deal with.
I too sensed a possible budding middle school romance between Raffi and Stella. Especially now that both of their parents are splitting up. They’ll be leaning on each other more and more…
Good to see Lois too, nut how’s her love life?
I’ve got to admit I’ve been feeling slightly guilty all these weeks, getting all this wonderful stuff for free. Didn’t we discuss early on, paying some kind of fee, or subscription, or something? I know this is a little like that annoying girl in the back of the classroom, raising her hand and saying “Ms.Bechdel, you forgot to assign homework!”, but that’s the way I feel. Also, on a separate note, are the gay newspapers just not publishing ANY comics anymore, or is this just a regional thing? I live in Kansas City,and all of our papers (that are still in business) seem to be comic free.If this is so, it’s SO wrong!
Oh, and this format is great-like it so much better!
September 20th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
re. Cynthia
By attempting to censor class discussion and challenging Ginger’s authority to introduce the material she sees fit (common techniques of right wing students, btw), Cynthia is engaging in behavior that I would consider piggish. But maybe she can be excused on account of sexual frustration.
September 20th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Great format; opened easily for me, too.
Why are people so pedantic and self righteous about semantics? (Or anything else, for that matter?) Use the term you feel comfortable with and leave it at that.
Don’t left wing students also attempt to censor classs discussion and introduce the material they see fit? No one complained about Ginger’s introducing this topic or Ashley’s comment.
September 20th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Am I missing something? Why is Cynthia calling her professor “Ms.”?
(I notice this because my students often call me “Mrs.” -they are assuming - or “Ms.,” even when I give them the options of calling me “Dr.,” “Prof.,” or by my first name. It drives me nuts. With freshmen, it’s somewhat understandable, because all of this is new to them, but Cynthia knows better.)
September 20th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Ginger’s the teacher. She gets to set the topics and lesson plans. That’s part of the hierarchical structure of the classroom, and there’s no reason to complain about a student responding to a teacher’s question.
Although the real problem with Cynthia’s classroom behavior is not her continually challenging Ginger’s authority–that’s just tiresome (not on the strip’s part, but speaking as a teacher!)–it’s that it’s completely inappropriate for her to bring her personal romantic life into the public discussion like that, especially w/o Ashley’s consent. I hope Ginger smacks her down but good. Something like “Cynthia, this is neither the time nor the place for personal arguments or insults. Please behave more profesionally.”
September 20th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
“I notice this because my students often call me “Mrs.” -they are assuming - or “Ms.,” even when I give them the options of calling me “Dr.,” “Prof.,” or by my first name. It drives me nuts. With freshmen, it’s somewhat understandable, because all of this is new to them, but Cynthia knows better.”
As a college student myself (4th year) I admit that I am often confused as to how to adress professors. I think though it’s because they tend to be on the younger side and if it’s a small class with lots of discussion, I end up developing a friendly rapport with them so I feel weird calling them “Prof. Something-or-other” But I don’t think I’ve had any professors specificly say how we should adress them though, and in so many of my classes (especially cause I’ve taken lots of theater and art classes) it’s informal enough that most of the students call the teacher by their first names. Of course what I do is avoid directly adressing the professor in the first place:)
September 20th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
what a gr8 and appropriate and believable plot twist for Janis. good thinking.
September 20th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
WRT “outing yourself”, I think “coming out” is an intentional & dramatic act. Being “outed” means someone did it to you, you didn’t control it. I think Cynthia “outed herself” becuase she was getting upset & in the heat of the argument accidently said something she should *never* have said in the classroom. I thought it was a beautiful touch, because when you are in love for the first time, you *can* often forget there’s anyone there but you & your lover & accidently do inappropriate things (like er I started getting undressed in a clothes store once *outside* the changing room while talking to my partner.)
I think Prof. Jordon should be Prof. Jordon, or at groovier universities “Ginger”. But never “Ms.”, sounds likes she’s still a teaching assistant.
I think it’s OK for students to be informal with their profs so long as it’s *all* students (not just favorites) & *all* profs (not just female or young-looking ones).
September 20th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Shadocat:
Alison has a Paypal “donate” button on the website (to the right of her blog), so please let go of the guilt and send her some cash! Maybe she is trying the NPR approach to see how many of us give without prompting - avoid the pledge drive and keep the strip coming! I just hope that the newpapers that she sells it to are okay with the web-access we are all enjoying so much….
September 20th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
By the way, Alison, now that you’ve solved this technical hurdle
is there any way you could get your blog people to support threading on these comments? It’s kind of hard to follow 100 comments chatting about different things in a straight line. You know, like the Live Journal site has.
September 20th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
nice job. what happened to the global readership site map? I live overseas and am really psyched when a new location pops up. gives me a whole new outlook on certain countries, knowing that dykes to watch out for has had 1-9 hits in a one month period.
September 20th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Jonah (Janis) is such a collection of trans-fear cliches and stereotyping. It’s as if Allison is reading Newsweek and TIME magazine for her information on children with gender issues. There is nothing that comes out of his mouth that is not related to being transgender or being a vapid feminine airhead. It’s as if in becoming a straight girl he’s also turning retarded (which his mother has expressed her reservations about).
Most transgender teens have not had the kind of accepting lifestyle that Jonah has had (lesbian mother, home schooling, LBGTQ sleepaway camp, not living on the street or hustling) so why would he/she risk all of that? In addition, Jonah is extremely keen on researching transgender issues, so it’s doubtful she would take (mythical, especially for a fourteen year old) “street” hormones, knowing what he/she probably knows about how weak and dangerous they could be. But with this episode, it is revealed that Jonah is spoiled, as are all the children in DTWOF. Is this the result of these homosexual families, with all of their privileged upbringings and highly educated parents and open-minded communal households? Divorcee’s and chaotic lifestyles and coddled children?
September 20th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Uhh–what now?
September 20th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Right on.
September 20th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
A wonderful strip. Again, thank you so so much for your long support of transwomen in the dyke community!
And yes, everyone thought there really had been a breakthrough with MWMF. Two transwomen were able to present at the gate as transwomen and purchase tickets and enter the festival (where they were received with cheers). One even ran a workshop.
Fest seems to have changed in that they will no longer expel transwomen, even if they openly identify as such. But they will continue to state that women’s space doesn’t include transwomen and therefore that transwomen aren’t welcome. Except if you actually go in, because the anti-trans types have long since lost public support and most women are welcoming.
On street hormones, the easiest way for middle class transwomen and transgirls to obtain hormones without a scrip is through the internet. They’re safe and effective and nearly everyone knows what pharmacies are reputable (inhousepharmacy.com in particular). I work a lot with transkids on the internet and there are a lot of kids with hormone pills hidden under the mattress who are marking time until they’re 18 or go to college or like Janice hope their parents will change their minds.
September 20th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Camp Trans released the original press release stating that MWMF had recinded the WBW policy… the release was sent out with Lisa Vogel’s name and number at the top of it, so folks thought it was a MWMF press release.. MWMF has released this clarification that the WBW policy remains the intent of MWMF:
“Since 1976, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival has been created by and for womyn-born womyn, that is, womyn who were born as and have lived their entire life experience as womyn. Despite claims to the contrary by Camp Trans organizers, the Festival remains a rare and precious space intended for womyn-born womyn.”
The facts surrounding the interactions between WWTMC and Camp Trans organizers are as follows:
In the months preceding this year’s Festival, held August 8 – 13, there was communication between a Camp Trans organizer named Lorraine and Lisa Vogel. Letters from Lorraine continued during the Festival, when they were hand-delivered to the Festival’s front gate from Camp Trans, which takes place on Forest Service Land across from Festival property. On Tuesday, August 8th, Camp Trans organizers inquired at the Box Office about Festival admission. They were told that the Festival is intended for womyn-born womyn, and that those who seek to purchase tickets are asked to respect that intention. Camp Trans organizers left without purchasing tickets. They returned the next day and were given the same information.
On Wednesday, August 9th, Vogel sent a reply letter to Lorraine which stated in part:
“I deeply desire healing in our communities, and I can see and feel that you want that too. I would love for you and the other organizers of Camp Trans to find the place in your hearts and politics to support and honor space for womyn who have had the experience of being born and living their life as womyn. I ask that you respect that womon born womon is a valid and honorable gender identity. I also ask that you respect that womyn born womyn deeply need our space — as do all communities who create space to gather, whether that be womyn of color, trans womyn or trans men . . . I wish you well, I want healing, and I believe this is possible between our communities, but not at the expense of deeply needed space for womyn born womyn.”
Lorraine at that point chose to purchase a ticket. Vogel’s written request that Camp Trans organizers respect the Festival as womyn-born-woymn space was consistent with information provided to Camp Trans organizers who approached the Festival Box Office. “Does this represent a change in the Festival’s commitment to womyn-born womyn space? No.” says Vogel. “If a transwoman purchased a ticket, it represents nothing more than that womon choosing to disrespect the stated intention of this Festival.”
“As feminists, we call upon the transwomen’s community to help us maintain womyn only space, including spaces created by and for womyn-born womyn. As sisters in struggle, we call upon the transwomen’s community to meditate upon, recognize and respect the differences in our shared experiences and our group identities even as we stand shoulder to shoulder as women, and as members of the greater queer community. We once again ask the transwomen’s community to recognize that the need for a separate womyn-born womyn space does not stand at odds with recognizing the larger and beautiful diversity of our shared community.”
* * *
In an effort to build further understanding of the Festival’s perspective, answers are provided to questions raised by the recent Camp Trans press release (which contains misinformation):
Why would the Festival sell a ticket to an individual who is not a womon-born womon if the Festival is intended as a space created by and for womyn-born womyn? From its inception the Festival has been home to womyn who could be considered gender outlaws, either because of their sexual orientation (lesbian, bisexual, polyamorous, etc.) or their gender presentation (butch, bearded, androgynous, femme – and everything in between). Many womyn producing and attending the Michigan Festival are gender variant womyn. Many of the younger womyn consider themselves differently gendered, many of the older womyn consider themselves butch womyn, and the dialogue is alive and well on the Land as our generational mix continues to inform our ongoing understanding about gender identity and the range of what it means to be female. Michigan provides one of the safest places on the planet for womyn who live and present themselves to the world in the broadest range of gender expression. As Festival organizers, we refuse to question anyone’s gender. We instead ask that womon-born womon be respected as a valid gender identity, and that the broad queer and gender-diverse communities respect our commitment to one week each year for womyn-born womyn to gather.
Did the Festival previously refuse to sell tickets to transwomen? The Festival has consistently communicated our intention about who the Festival is created by and for. In 1999, Camp Trans protesters caused extensive disruption of the Festival, in which a male from Camp Trans publicly displayed male genitals in a common shower area and widespread disrespect of women’s space was voiced. The following year, our 25th anniversary, we issued a statement that we would not sell tickets to those entering for the purpose of disrupting the Festival. While this is widely pointed to by Camp Trans supporters as a “policy,” it was a situational response to the heated circumstances of 1999, intended to reassure the womyn who have attended for years that the Festival remained – as it does today – intended for womyn who were born as and have lived their entire life experience as womyn, despite the disrespect and intentional disruption Camp Trans initiated.
Is the Festival transphobic? We strongly assert there is nothing transphobic with choosing to spend one week with womyn who were born as, and have lived their lives as, womyn. It is a powerful, uncommon experience that womyn enjoy during this one week of living in the company of other womyn-born womyn. There are many opportunities in the world to share space with the entire queer community, and other spaces that welcome all who define themselves as female. Within the rich diversity now represented by the broader queer community, we believe there is room for all affinity groups to enjoy separate, self-determined, supportive space if they choose. Supporting womyn-born womyn space is no more inherently transphobic than supporting womyn of color space is racist. We believe that womyn-born womyn have a right to gather separately from the greater womyn’s community. We refuse to be forced into false dichotomies that equate being pro-womyn-born womyn space with being anti-trans; indeed, many of the womyn essential to the Michigan Festival are leaders and supporters of trans-solidarity work. The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival respects the transsexual community as integral members of the greater queer community. We call upon the transsexual community in turn to respect and support womyn-born womyn space and to recognize that a need for a separate womyn-born womyn space does not stand at odds with recognizing transwomen as part of the larger diversity of the womyn’s community.
What is Camp Trans? Camp Trans was first created in 1994 as a protest to the Festival as womyn-born womyn space. Camp Trans re-emerged in 1999 and has been held across the road from the Festival every year since. A small gathering of people who camp and hold workshops and a few performances on Forest Service land across the road, Camp Trans attempts to educate womyn who are attending the Festival about their point of view regarding trans inclusion at the Festival. At times they have advocated for the Festival to welcome anyone who, for whatever period of time, defines themselves as female, regardless of the sex they were born into. At other times, Camp Trans activists have advocated opening the Festival to all sexes and genders.
What is the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival? It is the largest and longest running womyn’s festival in the United States. Since the first Festival in 1976, tens of thousands of womyn from all corners of the world have made the pilgrimage to this square mile of land in Northern Michigan. The essence of the Festival is that it is one week a year that is by, for and about the glorious diversity of womyn-born womyn and we continue to stand by our labor of love to create this space. Our focus has not changed in the 31 years of our celebration and it remains fixed on the goal of providing a celebratory space for a shared womyn-born-womyn experience
September 20th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
By the way, I would disagree that most festie goers are anti WBW policy… there just has been no organized visible way to show support for WBW…
my understanding is that at 2007 fest womyn will wear red wrist bands, similar to the “YellowArmbands” group that wears yellow in support of trans-inclusion…..
dueling armbands should be entertaining….
September 20th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
I expect Lois to intervene somehow. For all her, uh, hobbies, Lois does know the boundaries of safe and responsible behavior.
On the technical side, this is the clearest online episode yet. The anti-aliasing is working just right.
September 20th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
I’m so disappointed that you were taken in by this ruse. WBW saying no just doesn’t work, I guess; just like in the rest of society.
Just another festie goer in favor of the WBW policy.
September 20th, 2006 at 9:43 pm
Far as I can tell, the main support for WBW (which has no actual meaning other than “not a tranny”, and as far as I can tell didn’t exist until Lisa Vogel needed an excuse for expelling a woman from the women’s music fest) is a bunch of transphobic malcontents that hang around the MichFest BB politics forum. More and more trans women are becoming visible in their communities, and as a result more and more cisgendered women are finding that these women, who MichFest and the WBW supporters try so desperately to paint as “other” really aren’t so different after all, so why shouldn’t they, as women, be allowed into this really awesome women’s space.
The answer of course, is Vogel & Co.’s transphobia, which even shouting “but I’m not transphobic, I just don’t want to be in contact with trannies” cannot hide.
September 20th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Raf and Stella dating? No way, they’re like brother and sister! The dinosaur nicknames are totally a sibling thing. However, I could see them growing closer over all the family drama they’re both experiencing, and then getting teased at school because they’re “in love,” and Raffi insisting that no they’re not, and then realizing that even though he really likes this girl, he doesn’t like her *that way* and then, despite his upbringing, having a little middle-schooler crisis over What Does That Mean. Ya know?
September 20th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
I support the festival policy. I believe that being born femle, being raised female, and staying female is a valid identity. Occasionally I want to spend time with my WBW sisters. The rest of the time I am perfectly happy spending my time with any and all people that identify as women. We are not all the same, really, and that’s okay. We all have a right to gather with others that share a common experience.
September 20th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
I am glad that you are now aware that you had misinformation regarding the Michfest policy and look forward to seeing how you handle this new knowledge. I realize it makes sense for Lois to refer to it as “anti-trans” given her character but I think it is unfair for you to portray the Festival this way without having a character who has attended for years and supports the fact that WBW and Trans Women are different (not better or worse) and that this is the one and only place and space left on the planet (for one week a year) that is attempting to be exclusively for women who were born as women and continue to live as women. Festival is about making space for a specific group of women - it is not about being anti-trans. I have attended for 16 years and need that space and time with others like me. The rest of the year I spend time with everyone that I love - including many, many men and trans folks. If you are going to represent “dykes” I think you need to represent those of us who have attended for years and not just the ones who have not attended and have jumped on the bandwagen to accuse Lisa V and those of us who support the policy and being anti-trans. This is a tough topic and I don’t envy your position but please educate yourself more about the history of the Festival and both sides of the issue, not just the so-called “anti-trans” view point of all of this. Thanks…
September 21st, 2006 at 1:09 am
Sorry to see you got taken in by the bogus press release too. I don’t know why transfolk seem to think everything has got to be about them, especially when it comes to women and our need for defining and defending a totally lifelong social, cultural, spiritual & physical reality that is not shared by others, no matter how much they want it. Do they really think that erasing, co-opting and colonising women’s spaces & lives will somehow make them ‘real’ women? They must because they seem to think that we’re standing in the way of that.
Yeah I’ll be sporting a red armband and red anything else I can get to wear. Hey, I live in Nebraska so that shouldn’t be hard!
September 21st, 2006 at 1:50 am
The most rediculous part of that letter IMHO is, “Supporting womyn-born womyn space is no more inherently transphobic than supporting womyn of color space is racist.”
you got your analagy all cock eyed, Lisa. Women of color, being an oppressed group within an oppressed group (that being women, if you’ll forgive the binarification of gender)have a lot more in common with transwomen (an oppressed group within an oppressed group [women]) So michagan trying to identify their WBW only policy with the oppression of my sisters of color doesn’t fly. the correct analogy would be:
oppressive white dominated space is to women of color only space as Michigan women’s festival is to letting transwomen in, gadammit.
Transwomen have the right to be respected and recognized as the women they are and let into the crappy festival if they want to go be nakid hippies in the woods.
oh and to Condi- her name is Janis, not Jonah, get with the program. She isn’t spoiled, she knows who she is, what she wants, and how to get it. Isn’t that something we normally applaud in a teenager? How many of y’all out there knew you were big homos by the time you were 14/15? I did. Janis knows she is a woman. maybe if her mom lets her on hormones, she’ll have lived enough of her life as a “wommyn” to be allowed into Michagan.
And by the way… just waht is lisa vogel’s definition of a “womyn” anyway? Is my friend who was born without a vaginal canal or uterus but has her ovaries and other female secondary sex charectaristics woman enough? Is my no-hormones, no surgery, breast binding friend who identifies as male and uses make hormones but hardly ever passes still a “wommyn”? What about my friend who outwardly appears male but has female reproductive insides and xx chromasomes? who gets to come in? My hella surgeried buddy who is so rediculously hairy and loves being male now? He was born a “womyn”. if he decided he was still a “woman” could he come in? what makes me a woman? is it because the people on the bus decide I am? What if they don’t? What if i get called sir? Why does gender have to be a binary, or a spectrum between a binary? in reality its a lot more magnificent and convoluted and complicated than that.
To Quinn- “I’m so disappointed that you were taken in by this ruse. WBW saying no just doesn’t work, I guess; just like in the rest of society.”
It seems like what you’re doing here is equating camp trans to “men” on the outside world who don’t listen when a “woman” says no. wow. thats some really harsh stuff and i think you need to check yourself. first off, umm who exactly are you calling men? transWOMEN? because if you just meant like how women of color get pissed when white women are blocvkign them from getting a piece of the pie (notice the correct analogy)then wouldn’t you agree its kind of fucked to keep saying no. and if you weren’t you just oughta crawl back in yr second wave cave until you get educated. Why should alison incorporate a WBW policy supported into the strip? She’s already got Cynthia to spout all the double speak conservative hate we need to deal with.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:53 am
I have incredibly mixed feelings about this topic. One the one hand, there are so many women at Michigan with such a variety of backgrounds that it seems as if being raised as a boy is just one more variation.
One the other hand, Kate Bornstein (MTF) once said she didn’t feel like either a man or a woman anymore, and as such didn’t feel she should intrude on Michigan. On the third hand, that’s just Kate’s experience.
My understanding is that many transwomen simply want to be seen as women and experience life as a woman (however one manages to define that) and where better to do that than at Michigan?
Still, isn’t it typically male to insist you are entitled to occupy any space you want? Yet, even as I write that, by “typically male,” don’t I mean typically “white, upper-middle class, able-bodied, U.S. male”? Or do men from every culture tend to dominate that culture?
When queer people insist that they are entitled to be in places that don’t always want them–army, clergy, schools, the NFL–I see that insistence as virtuous. So why do I have trouble when transfolk push for being included somewhere where an organizer doesn’t want them? Does it have to do with opressed peoples gnawing at each other instead of those truly in power?
I wonder if any Female to Male transmen have ever tried to gain access to an exclusively male event?
A Lesbian Quaker group I know of has come up with this compromise: they meet annually and every other year is open to transwomen. I guess that could be seen as balanced or only half as bigoted.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:53 am
oh, and sc, they are real women, whatever that is. they are becasue they say they are. and no amount of years of being forced into dresses or playing with barbies in you years before puberty make you more of a woman. They live as *WOMEN* and get all the shit for it that you do and all the joy too. they just had to fight for it more.
September 21st, 2006 at 2:39 am
I just wanted to take a moment to thank Deborah for pointing out the obvious to me (I had assumed the paypal was for books, art work, etc.) Doh! I will donate in a timely basis from this date on! (Well, okay starting Friday when I get paid)
Now I have two good excuses for not going to Michigan; A. I hate camping, and B. This stupid controversy.
What makes a soman, a woman? I have no uterous, ovaries, eggs or cervex. Am I still a woman? My friend Mimi had a double mascetomy, plus she’s missing all the same parts as I am-Is she still a women? My cousin Becky, was having minor surgery, and they found a little undescended testicle! So does that make her a man?
A fast food chiken commercial some time ago had a slogan that went something like this;”Parts Is Parts”. Now I am no academic like some of y’all, just a dumb ole girl from Missouri, but I see a lot of truth in that saying. Parts IS just parts really; what makes us wimmin, or womyn,, or womans, or even women lies deep in our hearts, our minds and our souls–not with the various plumbing and baby-makin’ parts that were dangling off us at out birth.
I believe in love, and when you tell other women that “you didn’t get your stuff the same way I did ” is just plain old bigotry, and there’s no love in that.Now I’ve said enough and i’m going to bed,,because dammit,it’s LATE!,late,,,zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
September 21st, 2006 at 4:09 am
Wow, this is getting to be the most educational thing I read on the internet.
I used to think having any woman-only clubs, meetings, whatever was fundamentally wrong. Fine to have meetings about feminism, but if you keep the guys out you are being as bad as they are.
Then I went to one and realized there were people in the room who would never have spoken in any other space (this was in Scotland, incidently.) I am now of mixed feelings about this, because I think it is important for everyone to have space in which they are safe.
I don’t see the big difference between banning men and banning transexuals. Both decisions are exclusive, and both give some people comfort. Men’s clubs were nice, comfortable & productive too but we have banned them because they were also the source of power and we have convinced the legal system that as such they were unfair. So my intellectual reaction is that it is hypocritical for us to ban others from our own meetings, given that we don’t let them ban us from theirs. But my gut reaction is that people should be free to make whatever associations they choose and find comfort where they can, and it is authoritarian and condescending to step in and tell them who they should & shouldn’t let in. And speaking of gut feelings, the response to seeing male genetalia is probably deeply hormonal and instinctive — people aren’t just upset because they haven’t freed their minds, they are upset because we are born animals and enculturated in a male society and there is no fast process of will that can change responses that result from these facts. Exposure is a form of sexual assault, and is illegal for good reason.
But probably my intellectual response is the right one.
September 21st, 2006 at 6:06 am
Personally, I find it ironic in the extreme that we find a group of women, most of whom fancy themselves some sort of feminists, telling an even more disempowered group to basically sit down, shut up and not demand equal treatment. To say nothing of accusing them of “mannish” behaviour, a charge originally levelled at feminists to keep them in *their* place. Note how Jaibe equates excluding men with excluding trans women, it’s telling of the mindset.
Let’s not even get into the idea of sending trans women to trans spaces and having a happy trans festival. Back to the kitchen, anyone?
The Master’s Tools, indeed.
September 21st, 2006 at 6:37 am
My bottom line was no one should exclude anyone, and that everything else is a slippery slope.
September 21st, 2006 at 6:58 am
My bottom line was no one should exclude anyone, but I also acknowledged & validated people’s desire for safe zones. I really don’t think quoting people out of context is an example of good behavior, nor is associating any one gender with niceness. Not that I can find any prior mention of “mannish” behavior in this discussion.
I actually expected to get flamed for criticising exposure, since people do that at ‘alternative’ stuff all the time & since it is also related to sexual liberation (but only indirectly to prejudices concerning sexual orientation). Honestly, I see multiple sides on that conflict too & would be interested in reading a discussion about it. But I didn’t expect to be flamed for having a posting inclusive of multiple points of view.
September 21st, 2006 at 7:21 am
“Camp Trans released the original press release stating that MWMF had recinded the WBW policy… the release was sent out with Lisa Vogel’s name and number at the top of it, so folks thought it was a MWMF press release”
That’s simply not true. The press release header reads:
Camp Trans Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 21, 2006
CONTACT: Emilia Lombardi, 412-480-4032; Bryn Kelly, 614-352-4782
http://www.camp-trans.org
——————————–
“Then I went to one and realized there were people in the room who would never have spoken in any other space (this was in Scotland, incidently.) I am now of mixed feelings about this, because I think it is important for everyone to have space in which they are safe.”
That’s exactly it and I know exactly how that feels. And as a transwoman, I need women only space just as much as any other woman. The lesbian community is my community, my home. And instead of being affirmed in that need, I’m told by one of the largest most definitive structures in lesbian society that I’m a “mutilated man” or “ugly monster”.
Those are quotations from the MWMF message board. You can find things like that there any day of the year, year after year after year. It’s very hard to believe that the festival isn’t transphobic when it continues to support hate speech like that. (And yes, the boards are moderated. Those who post hate speech are allowed to stay. Those challenging the transphobia have been removed from time to time.)
September 21st, 2006 at 7:22 am
If you are going to use analogies, consider the power base of the groups you are referring to. In our culture, there are certain groups who are target for oppression — target means there are institutional systems in place to maintain that oppression which are NOT equally applied to those who are non-target. The power does not flow equally in both directions. Thus, the notion of “reverse racism” is completely bogus. Women of color resisting exclusion from an all-white gathering is a target group resisting oppression; white women trying to gain entrance to a women of color only event is not the same because the power that is conferred upon white skin in our culture IS the issue here and the white women are non-target for that oppression. Thus, they are the group in power. A group of women of color deciding to meet exclusively with one another are NOT aiming racism at white women, because the women of color are TARGET for racism, i.e., they do not hold the power. Lisa Vogel’s analogy is apt because she is equating women of color (target for racism) with women who were raised as women (target for sexism). Women are target for woman-hating, a.k.a. sexism. Those who are raised women, who spent their childhoods as girls and grow up into women and retain that identity, have a qualitatively different experience with regard to being targeted for sexism and woman-hating than any other group. Period. It can’t be faked or denied. And if sometimes we want to meet together, to find out what that feels like without having another group’s definition imposed on us, it is not phobia or exclusion or oppressive, it is FOCUS. We are not holding the power around gender in this culture, and any group who says we do are engaging in the ever-popular “blame the women” game of sexism. Since its inception (and I was there at the beginning), men have been trying to get into Michigan, to keep it from occurring, to fly over/take photographs/arrest women on the roads/sneak in through the woods. The definition of “womyn-born womyn” has been there since the inception as well, it was not created recently (do your homework). The notion of what “parts” you have defining your womanhood is a red herring — it doesn’t matter if you have a uterus, what matters is did you grow up with female conditioning as a womyn-born woman? If you did, and you want to identify as such, then this is the festival for you (and you will be sold a ticket, no questions asked). If you did not, or if you do not identify as a woman now, why the hell would you want to intrude? Why all this focus and upset about women defining themselves? Why all the hateful language? This intimidation tactic is simply not working. Trashing the women who take the time to write on the Michigan bulletin boards is not working. Sending out fake, deliberately misinforming press releases is not working. If the goal is to open the gates of Michigan to anyone who walks up and pays admission (and there is no other way to practically apply the definition of “admit anyone who self-identifies as female, even if it has just been for ten minutes”), then that goal is in direct contradiction with the founding principle of Michigan and it’s not about oppression, phobia, or any other slam, it’s about one group deciding to revise the self-definition of a target group without that group’s consent. It is by definition going to fail — if you alter the founding principles of Michigan, it will no longer be Michigan. And if the principles were/are to afford women who have had female conditioning and chosen to continue to self-identify as female the chance to gather together away from OTHER attempts to define them and instead consider what their own self-definition looks like — then going against those principles is anti-feminist and ignoring the rights of any target group to resist the power-over behavior of those who are non-target for that particular oppression.
If you want to understand the complexities of target/non-target theory around oppression, check out the work of Ricky Sherover-Marcuse. It’s confusing in the U.S. because we have this myth of self-invention (especially around class) that is kept in place to keep us from understanding how oppression works. To use another analogy, if you were raised poor and are still living as a poor person, your class values and self-definition are going to be substantially different from someone who was raised with wealth and has now become poor, either by accident or design. We learned this class lesson the hard way during the 70s in the lesbian-feminist community, with downwardly-mobile women claiming to be “more working class” than women who really had been raised working class. It’s not about who wins the most-oppressed contest, it’s about how you were really raised and acknowledging the fact that conditioning is not shed overnight, it is not shed by acquiring a new wardrobe, and it is not altered just because you say so. It must be undone, step by step, to the same degree in which it was instilled in the first place. It takes a long time, it takes hard work, it takes living in a “nether zone” while you undo it, it takes honesty and not blaming others for how alone you feel, and it takes seeing a complicated truth. We don’t know how to do it around class, we don’t know how to do it around race, and we certainly don’t know how to do it around gender (and that if you choose to undo it at all, which is a choice people get to make for themselves without accusation as well). This argument about self-definition just proves how far we have to go.
September 21st, 2006 at 8:55 am
This is interesting, to say the least. To what extent does our history create us? Is there that big a gulf between the experience of women who are raised as female and women who are raised as male, but identify as female? Or women raised female who identify as male? Where do you draw the line?
Using the race analogy, when does a person of color qualify as a “person of color”? What if they can pass, what if they are passing? What if they pass not deliberately but based on other’s perceptions of them?
There are obviously quanitative differences in the experiences of women: differences of gender, class, religion, upbringing, sexual orientation, and color, to name but a few. My sister and I, of the same parents and raised in the same household, both “womyn-born-womyn”, are seen and treated by the world very differently based on our body types (ectomorph vs. meso/endomorph) - we had very different experiences of growing up, of dating, of what it means to be female. All of us do. As we also have great commonality in our experiences as women, a familiarity with experiences that men rarely seem to share.
Where you choose to draw the line depends on your point of view, how we choose to divide ourselves - by color? by class? by sexuality? by gender? by body type? All of these factor into our experiences, and into our access to the dominent power structure.
I understand the need and desire for ‘women only’ spaces, just as I understand the need and desire for ‘women of color only’ spaces, or ‘fat women only’ spaces, or ‘gay men only’ spaces; at the same time, I despair at the further division of our commonality.
September 21st, 2006 at 9:35 am
“If you are going to use analogies, consider the power base of the groups you are referring to.”
This is exactly right. So if you look at women as an oppressed group, it is not right to look at trans women as part of the dominant group, but rather as a “mid-way” in a sense. So a nearer analogy would be to the period where mixed-race children were not accepted by the white community or people of colour alike. This is particularly apt given that in both cases, the group is excluded both from the dominant *and* oppressed groups.
Not that I like that either, since it smacks of appropriation, although that doesn’t seem to bother Ms. Vogel in the least.
I’d rather be straightforward. Women are being excluded from a women’s festival because of something physical and out of their control, and a large structure of justifications have been created to maintain that status quo. Pretty simple, hm?
As to “womyn born womyn” as a term, does *anyone* have any information as to when it was coined? Given that prior to the “need” to exclude trans women, I would think the word “womyn” (or whatever spelling you prefer) would have been sufficient to separate you from men. Perhaps, if you don’t mind deferring to race analogies again, it’s like “white”, which has no real meaning beyond “not coloured”.
September 21st, 2006 at 9:50 am
I remember seeing the phrase in the first edition “Our Bodies, Ourselves”. I believe I saw it in the Dykes of Amerika chapter but I may be wrong. That was over 30 years ago.
Since I am trying to hurry off to work, let me throw this out there quickly. How do you think Mo or Lois or any of the DTWOF characters would respond to this thread?
September 21st, 2006 at 10:07 am
Hmm. I’ve been looking but I can’t find much about the phrase’s origins, and certainly nothing at all about it except in reference to trans exclusion.
Of course when you look at the phrase itself, it’s hard to imagine it means anything other than “not trans”, because being transsexual or intersexed are the only ways for a woman to be born (physically) anything but a woman. To differentiate from men, all a woman needs to identify as is “woman”, so unless there’s a “not-woman” sort of woman to differentiate from, the phrase is nothing short of bizarre.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:12 am
“If you are going to use analogies, consider the power base of the groups you are referring to”
Are you seriously claiming that transwomen are a socially empowered group discriminating and disempowering non-trans women?
Or are you just saying that you classify transwomen as part of the group men, not part of the group women?
You also make say “Since its inception (and I was there at the beginning), men have been trying to get into Michigan, to keep it from occurring”
Again, I’m not sure this has to do with what kind of women are welcome or not welcome.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:14 am
I’ve still got the venerable second edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves”, and (on an admittedly quick scan) I don’t see the phrase.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:59 am
on the first poster for the first michigan womyn’s music festival was the phrase: “for womyn born womyn, daughters of mothers…” or something along those lines. because womyn’s history is not readily found or documented (hmm…why is THAT?) you would have to go to the lesbian herstory archives in Brooklyn, or call them to confirm this. i have seen the poster, this much i know is true.
the phrase was not coined to specifically exclude transwomen, and to say that is simply wrong.
i don’t think anyone is claiming that transwomen are a socially empowered group.
i think that this conversation is impossible to have if the fluidity of privilege is not had. and if we don’t recognize what that looks like, the point and need for MWMF doesn’t make sense.
i’m black and i’m a dyke, and i’m jamaican-american so i won’t be appropriating anyone’s experience but my own when i say this. i was born in the US. my parents were born in jamaica. all of my early life was surrounded by jamaican people, eating jamaican food, etc. but i grew up surrounded by african-american people.
i was “black.”
just like all of us are “women.”
however, i’m jamaican-american. the reason i am is because that was the world i knew all of my life. that is a world that i was fluent in. i understand patois. i also “understand” black-english. and can go there. and express myself more readily through that.
if there was a moment when black people were gathering without non-black americans (and it has happened to me because there are different issues with blackness among our communities) i actually don’t get to be there. even though that is what i understand and that is where i grew up.
not being able to go to a black american only group doesn’t make me less black. it makes me not a black-american person.
same thing goes for light skinned black people and dark skinned black people. what does it mean to “pass”? what does it mean to have been able to go through the world sometimes being perceived as “white” as opposed to never having been seen as white as all? how does that affect how one is black?
doesn’t change that both light skinned and dark skinned black people are black. it just changes the way they get there. and, it changes who gets to gather with whom.
one thing it doesn’t change? that they aren’t white. and in their own ways they have to fight that struggle.
seems to me that being WBW is an identity. one separate from being a straight woman, some kinds of lesbian. its about people who recognize and see how being born as, raised as, and currently identify as a woman looks and feels in our particular society.
and it seems to me that until being born as, seen as and raised as a boy is NOT totally different from being born as, raised as, and seen as a girl, that is still a question we need to discuss.
unless people here are arguing that boys and girls in the world are treated absolutely the same? or white people and black people? or rich people and poor people?
we can’t erase difference because we didn’t identify with our differences.
i understand that being a transkid is about never feeling ok with how the kid was being viewed and treated and named by society. but isn’t it the fact of the treatment (the fact that people said “you are boy” this is what you should be/do/think) exactly what may lead to some empathy to what the “you are a girl” does on the other side? when your whole world becomes limited to “good girls don’t…”?
are we saying that too bad, so sad, but that women with a *particular* history of living in a body and being forced to be indoctrinated with “girl” in a way that was limiting and sexist shouldn’t matter?
its not just as easy as “bigots!” “discriminators!” if we are going to have this conversation, let’s talk about the entire landscape.
i don’t believe women no longer suffer from sexism yet, otherwise i would say that MWMF no longer needs to be. but until girls don’t have to suffer from sexism in our society, from the moment the doctor says “its a girl! put a garter on her head!” i think the space will be necessary.
and we will also need space for our greater WOMEN’S communities for all of us to try to make this world a better space.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:59 am
I don’t feel strongly about the exclusion issue, but I *do* feel strongly that the debate should be based on accurate information. Here is what we know:
1) Gender is not a continuum in the usual sense, like height or intelligence. The OVERWHELMING majority of people on the planet are unambiguously one or the other.
2) There are people who are not unambiguously one or the other — people with XXX or XXY chromosomes, or who got exposed to unusual levels of male or female hormones in utero, or whatever. BUT, their existence doesn’t mean that gender doesn’t exist, any more than a few ambidextrous people mean that being left- or right-handed is an illusion.
3) Gender, the concept, the idea that we carry in our heads, is NOT a cultural invention. We are biologically programmed to distinguish male and female. We are exquisitely sensitive to the most subtle cues of gender — tiny differences in bone structure, fat distribution, timbre (not just pitch) of the voice, the way the joints move, etc. These things leap out at us. This sensitivity is universal (occurs across all cultures) and is present from birth. People cannot learn to turn off their gender-detectors.
What does all this mean for the debate? I don’t know. But I feel strongly that the debate should appeal to the known facts, not ideologically driven assertions.
September 21st, 2006 at 11:47 am
“We are biologically programmed to distinguish male and female. We are exquisitely sensitive to the most subtle cues of gender — tiny differences in bone structure, fat distribution, timbre (not just pitch) of the voice, the way the joints move, etc. These things leap out at us.”
I had to laugh at this - I’ve not infrequently been perceived as male, which makes me wonder just how ‘exquisitely sensitive’ we really are to these differences. In Armenia, one of the most frequent questions I was asked (or overheard being asked about me) was: “Are you a boy or a girl?”
I didn’t wear the common Armenian gender markers for women (make-up, heels, skirts or dresses); I didn’t have stubble or an Adam’s apple; and people were confused. In the winter, I could understand it - I was muffled in layers of clothing (though I thought they’d figure it out after talking to me for a half hour - ah, timbre and pitch don’t fail me now! - but they didn’t)- but in my summer tank tops!? Ok, I’m small, but not *that* bloody small! And the whole issue of body build…
“Are you a boy or a girl?” and funniest of all, “It said it was a girl!*”
*In Armenian, there is no gendered third person pronoun - instead of ’she, he, or it’, you have ‘it’ (na). So, this really isn’t as funny as it sounds to American ears…
September 21st, 2006 at 12:01 pm
No MEN! past, present, or future!
Trans should go start their own festival.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:07 pm
meg — So your particular body build doesn’t strongly trigger people’s gender-detectors. This doesn’t contradict anything I said.
Actually, the fact that people are thrown by it, and work so hard to figure it out, just shows how accustomed we are to being able to tell automatically.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:28 pm
What are we afraid of? That a bunch of straight guys are going to throw on mummus(sp?), sneak in the festival, ogle, molest, and generally harrass the WBW there? Come’on! How are they not”safe” among trans women?
As far as build goes, my sister has a flat chest, no hips, and by the way, straight. She ia frequently mistaken for a man. That doesn’t make her one.
When I first started my lesbian life, after years of trying to be a straight married woman,I was told that I was not a “real” lesbian. Several womwn told me this-also that because I was not butch enough, etc. etc. Those people were wrong. I know who I am.
Those trans women know who they are. We have no right to discriminate against them as we were once disriminated against!
September 21st, 2006 at 12:32 pm
When a group starts insisting on the purity of its membership, I reach for my headphones.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:33 pm
“if we are going to have this conversation, let’s talk about the entire landscape.”
I like that statement.
WBW are oppressed because of their gender from birth, and are conditioned, to one degree or another, to take on a societally sanctioned oppressed role from that moment on.
MTF transexuals only take on the oppression of being a woman at some point in their transition. They did not grow up with this oppression.
MTF’s are oppressed by living in a culture that has very little understanding of what it means to be transexual.
WBW who chose to live their lives as women never experience the oppression of being transexual.
We are talking about two different groups who are oppressed in different ways. Neither group has the *lived* experience of what the other group has experienced and continues to experience.
I think there should be safe spaces for WBW and also for all people who identify as being a woman. I don’t know what the correct policy should be for any one particular space or event, such as the the MWMF. But this discussion is SO important, and each group will understand the other only after a listening to one another deeply and respectfully.
I am a white, straight, married woman (WBW). I once participated in a women’s group which was about half white, half African-American. There was one MTF woman in the group. This person’s race, class, educational level, and professional acheivement gave her a much higher societal status than anyone else in the group. Plus the fact that she’d lived most of her life as a male.
We wanted her with us, because she was someone we all liked. However, her presence did change the dynamic of the group, which made me uncomfortable. There was just a different quality of interaction whenever she came. We never talked about it in the group, and I think I personally would’ve been reluctant to express how I really felt about her presence (conflicted) because I would not have wanted to hurt the feelings of someone I cared about, and I would not have wanted to come across as transphobic.
I’m not saying my reaction was right or wrong. It’s simply how I experienced this particular women’s group. We never figured out how to make the space safe enough to talk about what it meant to have WBW and MTF women in the same women’s group together.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:51 pm
shadocat — did i miss someone saying they were afraid? i didn’t see that.
anonymous — thanks for what you have said here.
and maybe things were different when the transwoman came to your group because of your own transphobia. maybe not.
but my question is: how do we ever get anywhere on this subject if we don’t talk about what it means to be “perceived” as a white man? what it means to be “perceived” as a white woman? what it means to be “perceived” as a black man? and how that lived experience, the perception OUTSIDE OF YOUR head may influence the life you lead, your reactions, everything.
so yes, i appreciate you seeing that because i feel like that is the first thing that falls out of this conversation about the policy. and i think it has to be the first thing to get inside the discussion.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Speaking of perceptions, I’m finding myself a bit disturbed by something mentioned earlier by Maggie Jochild, who I hope doesn’t mind if I quote her.
“…conditioning is not shed overnight, it is not shed by acquiring a new wardrobe, and it is not altered just because you say so. It must be undone, step by step, to the same degree in which it was instilled in the first place.”
Following the debate on this issue, I see this sentiment on display fairly often, and it bothers me. The idea that transition is something done lightly, and in a superficial fashion, is a pervasive one. It’s also an inaccurate and ultimately damaging stereotype, painting transsexuals as little more than men flipping their gender orientation on a whim. The suggestion that transition is a frivolous, superficial act makes it much easier to dismiss transsexuals, a fact that I imagine would make it easier to justify trans exclusion.
What’s missing from the discussion seems to be any serious consideration that internally, MtF transsexuals are *not* men, and do not socialize well as men in the first place. This isn’t a case of a male putting on a dress, but more a woman who’s been forced into a mold that doesn’t fit attempting to break out of that. The experience is not the same, on a very deep level, and it would be well for opponents of trans inclusion to take this into consideration.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Kathyk it is true, the PR on the Camp Trans website has been appropriately altered… I have read the physical fax that came to my local GLBT organization….
***********
“Camp Trans released the original press release stating that MWMF had recinded the WBW policy… the release was sent out with Lisa Vogel’s name and number at the top of it, so folks thought it was a MWMF press release”
That’s simply not true. The press release header reads:
Camp Trans Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 21, 2006
CONTACT: Emilia Lombardi, 412-480-4032; Bryn Kelly, 614-352-4782
http://www.camp-trans.org
September 21st, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Kelseigh, I am willing practically to guarantee that Maggie wasn’t talking about transitioning, but rather about each of us divesting herself of the inexorabilities of societal conformity.
I hear what you are saying about the sort of “false” socialization you feel as a woman being treated like, “mistaken for,” if you will, a man by others. I feel a similar way insofar as I was always more or less in drag as a woman in society. The molds are similarly constrictive, not limited to transpeople by any stretch.
September 21st, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Oh, I don’t disagree with any of that, Anonymous. I’m not about to guess at Maggie’s (conscious) reasoning, but it’s a theme that comes up over and over and over again among those arguing against trans inclusion, which is why it bothered me.
As to the socialization, you’re right that strict gender roles aren’t good for anyone, but it’s a matter of degree, possibly even one of type. In the case of a transsexual, the gender role isn’t merely binding, it’s alien. Now when able to enter a more appropriate gender role (female, in the case of a MtF transsexual), that role may be merely binding, but at least it’s more appropriate, and by embracing feminism, as most transsexuals I’ve met have, we can *all* work towards making the gender roles work better.
September 21st, 2006 at 2:58 pm
“Kathyk it is true, the PR on the Camp Trans website has been appropriately altered… I have read the physical fax that came to my local GLBT organization….”
All I can say is that I am on the camp trans mailing list and I received one sent by Emilia to the list and it clearly identifies that the press release is from camp trans. And it clearly has the phone numbers of both Emilia and Brynn and not MWMFs.
You will also find the original press release posted on the day of release at http://www.michfest.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000885.html where it also clearly identifies who it is from.
There was no need for anyone to fake up a release because everyone believed the policy had been ended. We thought it was over and were looking forward to healing beginning. And the policy needs to end so we can start finding some healing. So people who think we’re all mincing makeup glopped and fashion obsessed “ugly monsters” can find out that we’re very much like all other women you might find at fest.
One of the things you might find out if this horrid nightmare for the womyn’s community ends is how the negative images of women made us feel as women when we were growing up.
September 21st, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Imogene dean,
No one stated the word afraid, nor did I ever say that was ever said. But the phrase I read over and over is “feeling safe”. If one is not feeling safe, than I assume one feels a “sense of fear”, or maybe just plain old being afraid. As in being afraid of that new Arabic family that just moved in down the street. Or being afraid of that group of black teenagers on the corner. Or being afraid of a bunch of trannies taking over and ruining are “girl’s only” clubhouse.No one else said afraid, But I sensed it.
September 21st, 2006 at 3:18 pm
the more I think about this, the more it seems to be, at its root, about *power*, and about who has access to that power. Or who had the ability to access that power.
In general, men are automatically given more authority than woman, in our society. Whites are given more than people of color. Money talks; while the experiences of poverty are often discounted.
Seen in this light, MTF transexuals can be seen as having had access to the dominant power structure, that sense of entitlement - whether or not they were grotesquely unhappy in their bodies and the gender role(s) imposed on them by society. They *passed*, or they could have. It could be argued that MTF transexuals grew up in that privilege - no matter how they may have felt, they had the keys to the kingdom of male power.
But, again, I find myself asking where do you draw the line? What about my friend’s partner, who grew up female, is female, but has had a double mastectomy and takes male hormones? CJ shares the experiences of growing up female… is undisputedly still female… and yet, and yet…
What about the power differentials between women of different classes or races? Do I have less in common with a MTF transexual of my same general background (class, education, race, and economic standing) than I do with a woman coming from an utterly different background? More?
If we hope to move beyond being primarily defined by our gender, can we afford to perpetuate a gender based definition?
I don’t have the answers, but they sure are interesting questions to think on!
September 21st, 2006 at 3:24 pm
I appreciate all the thinking and discussion going on in this thread, I really do. Want to start with that.
For me personally, as a white raised-poor woman-born woman who is now 51, I came up through the lesbian-feminist movement and have learned useful lessons. One analogy I go back to often is my experience as someone who was raised non-target in the area of race and of Christianity. I was raised Southern Baptist but rejected Christianity at age 13 (not just Christianity, but also deism for a long time). When I returned to believing in god, it was through Judaism. Most of my lovers and closest friends have been Jewish. Over the decades, I have come to think of myself as more Jewish than anything else. However, in 1982 when the first Jewish Feminist Conference in San Francisco was organized, I found myself to be considered a “non-Jew” by most of the women I knew and loved. My girlfriend at the time wanted me included in the conference, and was furious about it, but I had enough beloved friends look me in the eye and say “I love you, but you are not a Jew — not by my definition, not in the way I am” that I took a long, hard look at identity politics. If there is ONE member of a target group who does not want you in that group because she/he wants to deal, at that point in time, only with other members of the target group, then decency and respect demands that you find a way to be an ally instead of demanding inclusion. I “felt” like a Jew but that was based on MY interpretation of what being a Jew meant, not on the shared interpretation of all or most Jews.
Likewise, the construct of race is brutal for all who encounter it. It is brutally hard on white people. It is dehumanizing. But the experience for people of color comes with the additional experience of being target (which at times is a life-or-death issue, just as it is for women) and therefore my pain around racism is simply not close enough to give me the right to intrude on people of color space when they are choosing to gather on the issue. As a white ally working against racism, I have yet to meet a white person who says they “feel white”, grew up agreeing with the constructed identity or believing it was “normal”. In fact, we can seldom coherently talk about the experience of “whiteness” at all, not in the way various peoples of color have talked about their experience as target. This difficulty in comprehending the imposed gulf between our experiences I think carries over to gender — feeling “dysphoric” about your gender is common to all genders and does not mean you are “the wrong gender” in any way. You can choose that identity, if your wish, but in my experience being “female” was the “wrong gender” not because of biology but because of how the larger culture defined it. Rather than accept their definition, lesbian-feminism said a big fuck you and said “however I look or behave, that’s how a woman looks or behaves”. Ironically, the best lesson I got in this area was every year at Michigan, where the commonality of having been raised as girls, the breathing room of not having male definitions right up in our faces, gave us the chance to take a look at the incredible diversity and say “wow, women look like that?” and begin to focus not on the package but the internal conditioning. You can’t undo the conditioning until you know what it is. And you can’t know what it is if you don’t have the chance to disentangle it from male definitions of who we are. Every social group who is target for oppression and tackles self-definition uses separatism as one of their tools. It is not a “phase” that “clear thinkers” or a new generation moves beyond, it’s part of an ongoing process that will need to be available as long as targeting groups based on identity occurs.
It’s true that much targeting occurs around issues of appearance. But this is not universal, and the solution is never a change in appearance. While I know transfolk who have moved beyond the surgical solution facile answer, still, even in this comic strip (or perhaps especially here, because Alison is a visual artist, natch) what someone looks like becomes the defining element, and transition is considered/put forth by many as something that is like instant karma. You get the right to define it for yourself, of course, but others have the right to make their own definitions about their identity, and if their definition of “woman” conflicts with yours, you are not facing “exclusion”, you’re facing a profound difference of opinion that you need to respect as such because it is not coming from the non-target group at you, it is coming from the target group you hope to join.
It has been my experience that any time a woman who was raised as a woman and has chosen to retain that identity tries to express her discomfort at certain kinds of sharing with someone who is outside her chosen identity, she has been labeled as “oppressive” (it used to be by men; now it is some transfolk and other women-born women) because she is not “making it possible for us all to just be together”. Since one of the major pieces of conditioning expected in our culture of women is that we do all or most of the work of “making it possible for us all to just be together” without non-target groups feeling “bad”, then I have a strong visceral response to that expectation being laid at my doorstep. The lies and divisions that exist among us are not of my creation or perpetuation, but naming them and encouraging target groups to use various means of self-identification/self-exploration is not perpetuating the status quo. I don’t get to make that judgment call and neither do you. The slander aimed at women who raise this issue (which, again, I appreciate is NOT occurring to any major degree on this particular thread) has created a silence that is painful and not a sign of agreement. I have read treads on the CampTrans bulletin boards and at other sites (American Boi, FtM come to mind) where people compile “enemies lists” whose only names are those of lesbian-feminists; where the favorite epithet aimed at lesbians who want women-born-only women space is “fat” and “ugly”; and where no voice was ever raised in opposition to this kind of overt woman-hating. Again, the power dynamic is key: If a target group needs a place to discuss how they feel about the oppression of the non-target group (for instance, if working-class women want to discuss their feelings about middle and owning-class people), their language is not “hate speech” per se and does not fall into the same category as members of a non-target group writing/talking about the target group. Check the power flow. The Michigan bulletin boards are set up for women-born-women to discuss among themselves their feelings on various issues; if you hop onto those boards and you are NOT a member of that group, what do you think you should expect from the women having a discussion among themselves? Comparing this to the woman-hating on other threads being done among people who do not self-identify as women is disingenous, I think.
I am participating in the raising of a male child; his mother is a heterosexual drag king, so he has access to a wide spectrum of gender options. Still, when he began complaining that he didn’t like being a boy, our first response was not to find him hormones or a change of clothes. We asked him what he saw girls getting to have that he was not, and we began changing/continue to change his access to options so he doesn’t have to try to cram himself into a box. For me this was personally important because I am multiply disabled and experience disability as a medicalized oppression, and I know fucking well that Western medicine’s definition of bodies is criminally distorted, incomplete, and profit-driven. One of my disability is PCOS, which means I have a severe hormone imbalance. Guess what? They cannot treat it (except by surgical removal of my ovaries) because they don’t actually know what a normal hormone balance looks like. So when these same people being offering to tinker with our hormones to make us “male” or “female”, well, I am skeptical to say the least. I would, as a parent, never allow a child of mine to be given life-shortening chemicals in the name of somehow encouraging them to use this route as a means of altering others perception of them. I would instead fight for their right to be perceived as they wish to be perceived on a social basis. That’s my personal choice, not one I’m advocating for others, although as a parent I do have to make that kind of (adultist) decision for my child up to a certain age, just as I have to make decisions about surgeries and other invasive treatments.
Thanks for everyone’s attempt to discuss this without name-calling and for taking risks.
September 21st, 2006 at 3:26 pm
the fest is wbw-only.
the most obvious resolution to this cliffhanger is that lois and jasmine sit jonas down and help him find strength in his male body while also helping him understand that fest is not for him, but for us.
September 21st, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Absolutely. “Jonas, because you’ve chosen who you want to be, you are welcome neither here nor there.”
September 21st, 2006 at 4:07 pm
I’m so tired of this discussion, and still I can’t help but jump in.
I grew up at MWMF. Literally. All but 3 years of my life I have been there. It’s my home, and my heart, and what keeps me together the rest of the year.
This conversation, as I have heard it repeatedly for the last 10 years, just pisses me off. After this past summer especially, it has become so very clear that it’s not a discussion. Regardles of how many big words are used, or how eloquently people organize their rebuttle, it’s an argument. Two sides, neither actually lsitening to or absorbing what the other has to say. And of course there are exceptions, but among the thousands of people speaking to this I have seen/heard, they are few and far between. One major exception is Lisa Vogel, and it makes me SO sad to read people’s reactions to the MWMF press realease.
I have had a lot of personal struggle with the issue as well. I’m very strongly allied to many trans communities. But that does not necessarily mean that I support trans inclusion at the festival. Having been in women’s spaces that are trans inclusive, I have often felt my voice, and other women’s voices, drowned out by those of our FtM sisters. Because socialization DOES make a difference, regardless of how incredibly difficult it is to transition, to grow up uncomfortable in your body - a feeling every woman in the world knows quite well, to be outcast in a very unique way from the societal “norm.” But the thing is, there are MANY women-only spaces in the world, and many that are trans inclusive. So WHY ON EARTH is there so much fuss about Michigan?
September 21st, 2006 at 4:24 pm
I’m sorry, I’m such a simple soul. When I see a large group of women separating themselves from a small group of women, I tend to think of that as excluding the small group, rather than including the majority. I’m funny that way.
Maggie, I’m bothered by that whole last paragraph of yours, to be honest. It seems to be more of what I said earlier, chalking up transition as nothing serious, just a little discomfort with gender roles. Going by your words, which mirror a lot of those I’ve seen defending WBW policies, it seems you don’t really buy that transsexual women *are* women, just men who’d be perfectly happy to live as men if only the gender roles were more relaxed. Which, as a trans woman myself, I can honestly say is not the case.
You know, when someone says they need to separate for healing, I’ve got to wonder what they’re separating *from*. And taking a look at that pervasive attitude, it seems the answer is “men”, and transwomen are tossed into that category too, because in the end, we’re not seen as women. At least, not real ones.
I blame Janice Raymond. Or society. Whatever.
September 21st, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Honestly, anony, it’s not the festival per se as far as i’m concerned. It’s the subtle, virulent, but ultimately transphobic attitudes that underly the support given to the festival’s policy. Because they affect far more than the festival itself, being taken by others who want to keep trans women out of women’s spaces, and even in some cases domestic violence shelters and other needed services.
It’s about fighting, or at least exposing, phobic attitudes wherever they’re found. Michigan has become a lightning rod for this particular fight, but it could easily have been elsewhere.
September 21st, 2006 at 4:42 pm
Just once I wish I could post on this site w/o misspelling a word or making a typo. Maybe this will be the day??
I would think that if you are feeling dominated or controlled in a group that includes MtF trans persons,perhaps it is because you cannot bring yourself to see the person as anything other than “male”, therefore allowing yourself to be “dominated” by “him>”
As for Janis/Jonas; You can’t be serious! “you have
CHOSEN who you want to be? Learn to find strength in your male body? What a load of bullshit! Did you “choose” to be lesbian? I can’t imagine Lois saying such cruel words to a child she loves!!
September 21st, 2006 at 4:46 pm
If the above was about my post re Janis, I WAS being ironic.
September 21st, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Gosh! Bold moves here AB!!! (and the posting looks great, very legible)
I’m hoping that Janis was indulging in a little teenage melodrama when stating she’s taking street hormones. Due to the knowledge and connections she’s very likely gotten at Camp Ten Trees and on the internet, she would very likely know how to order them via the web. Indeed, for me, a simple googling came up with information as to where to get them (without prescription), dosages, administration, and cautions from informed trans users and/or physicians…
But I guess one question is how _would_ she pay for them? I don’t think she has a credit card, and Mom would certainly notice a few extra charges on _her_ account! And even if she has the money, and mailed out a money order, she would need a trusted confederate for a mailing address. Which she could have, after all, we only see brief snippets of her life in the strip.
And she might have a part-time job. And not nessesarily in sexwork. I can’t help thinking it might be, I mean, it looks like (on quick calculation) that anti-androgens could cost at least $100 a month. Whoo. It’s a pervasive stereotype that transwomen only do sexwork, but heck, that is for a reason - so few other jobs are open!
I’m all for _adults_ who are in these lines of work, (and I have some expensive dentistry-among other plusses- to show for my own lapdancing & handjob giving experiences!) But I hope to heck that Janis has been raking leaves or knitting or painting houses or babysitting or something, for her own sake, anyone under 25 is probably too young! OK, yes, I’m a bit ageist
It is a bit of a quandry - I’d love to see what DTWOF does with that topic. The work of selling sex… in all its complicated, so often ambivelent glory/horror/humor/grimness. Just the sort of thing that Alison Bechdel does so well!
But the stereotype of a `black tranniegirl prostitute’ is so previlent, and at the same time informed and nurturing depictions so rare… pretty much only seen in mass media, for example, as the victim of a crime. Well in short, I’d rather that Janis did not make the money thru sex - I want to see other images of how such a person can live, make a living, and thrive… How about it, AB
September 21st, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Maggie Jochild wrote:
“I am participating in the raising of a male child; his mother is a heterosexual drag king, so he has access to a wide spectrum of gender options. Still, when he began complaining that he didn’t like being a boy, our first response was not to find him hormones or a change of clothes. We asked him what he saw girls getting to have that he was not, and we began changing/continue to change his access to options so he doesn’t have to try to cram himself into a box. For me this was personally important because I am multiply disabled and experience disability as a medicalized oppression, and I know fucking well that Western medicine’s definition of bodies is criminally distorted, incomplete, and profit-driven.
…
So when these same people being offering to tinker with our hormones to make us “male” or “female”, well, I am skeptical to say the least. I would, as a parent, never allow a child of mine to be given life-shortening chemicals in the name of somehow encouraging them to use this route as a means of altering others perception of them. I would instead fight for their right to be perceived as they wish to be perceived on a social basis. That’s my personal choice, not one I’m advocating for others, although as a parent I do have to make that kind of (adultist) decision for my child up to a certain age, just as I have to make decisions about surgeries and other invasive treatments.”
Speaking as one of the most privileged transwomen I know (mostly because I had such totally, incredibly, amazingly supportive parents who loved me without condition or political agenda and who helped me with stuff like medical access I desperately wanted)…
::shiver & sympathy::
Maggie, I hope to god that child isn’t trans because if he turns out to really be a she, you’re going to have laid a worse mindf**k on her than even the christians do with various kinds of queer children.
This is what freaks me out about MichFest’s “inclusion of only WBW”… it’s not really just “a week in the woods”… it’s the maintenance (by *leftists* no less) of a system of meaning inscribed by outsiders on the bodies and choices of transfolk that hurt us when spread through the culture (into nooks and crannies of the culture, like parenting decisions and insurance coverage and on and on…) to mess with the lives of young people in need.
(And yay for hormones off the net for helping to balance the power equation. :-P)
September 21st, 2006 at 7:13 pm
SRT said:
“This is what freaks me out about MichFest’s “inclusion of only WBW”… it’s not really just “a week in the woods”… it’s the maintenance (by *leftists* no less) of a system of meaning inscribed by outsiders on the bodies and choices of transfolk that hurt us when spread through the culture (into nooks and crannies of the culture, like parenting decisions and insurance coverage and on and on…) to mess with the lives of young people in need.”
i’m not following how you get from MWMF to “inscribing meaning on the bodies of outsiders.”
it seems to me