Feeding the troll, part 2

My old friend Butterflywings – whose attempts at internet trolling I wrote about here – has submitted a couple of comments to my previous post. They have absolutely no relevance to that piece, of course, although in their own little way they’re really quite priceless, so I thought I’d share them here instead: transphobic hate speech of this calibre needs to put into the public domain so everyone can see it.

I’m not going to bother applying the pink sparklehammer of deconstruction to them; they speak for themselves. It is worth noting, though, that these are the words of a cis woman feminist. This, as they say, is what a feminist looks like.

Author : Butterflywings
E-mail : youthinkimtellingyou@yahoo.com
URL :
Comment:
Fuck you, little child. Your attempts to smear me all over the Internet are hilariously pathetic. You’re the one that hangs out in little cliques of people who agree with you.
Accuse me of trolling? Now I am. No point having a debate with morons, after all.

Author : Butterflywings
E-mail : likeintellingyou@hotmail.com
URL :
Comment:
You think you’re so great, don’t you? You realise everyone is laughing at you? I could demolish your pathetic attempt to argue against my arguments if I could be bothered, but frankly, posting links that agree with you…isn’t argument. Trannies are a bit thick, aren’t they.

It’s like waking up to find small piles of very smelly cat poo dotted around the place.

Time for some music, I think.

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Related post:

• Zen and the art of internet trolling (March 29, 2010)

Ungendering and the fine art of inflicting papercuts

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve pointed out how trans women are ungendered as a way of Othering us and denying our identities. I’ve talked about how it happens as a very common form of street harassment (link here) and it feels like I’ve talked about it just about every time I’ve quoted the mass media in their reporting of trans issues.

So it’s interesting to read on the Reuters blog (link here) some readers’ reactions to the organisation’s ungendering of Brenda, the trans woman recently murdered as part of an attempted cover-up of a political scandal in Italy (links here and here).

The wrong pronoun?

Transsexual in Italian political scandal murdered

ROME (Reuters) – A Brazilian transsexual caught up in a scandal which prompted the resignation of a senior Italian politician — the center-left governor of Lazio region, which includes Rome — was found burned to death in his home Friday.

As well as the deliberate misuse of a male pronoun in the original post quoted above, I’m uncomfortable with the use of the word transsexual as a noun – but I realise also that opinion on this is divided. So I simply point it out without further comment.

And the quoted responses? Hmm. Well, at least they’re speaking out on behalf of trans women – and yes, I am grateful for that – although I’m sorry to say that I have issues with the terminology used by the first of the three commenters, Nicole:

I find it shocking that in this day and age, you still refer to a male-to-female transsexual as a “he”. I find this both old fashioned and disrespectful to the person you are reporting about.

Whether she was a prostitute or not, she was presenting herself as a female – likely because that’s what she felt she was. Most publications in the US honor this nowadays. You should, too!

“Male-to-female” is a problematic term as it assumes transsexual women like me once were male and that – presumably by transitioning – we somehow became female. I understand the constructivist argument at the back of it, but on a personal level? I don’t think I ever considered myself male. Cis society may have (else why was I male assigned at birth?) – but as far as I’m concerned, it’s simply the case that my brain was expecting a differently-configured body.

I’ve mentioned above my discomfort with the use of the word transsexual as a noun, not an adjective, but for clarity: I think it’s cissexist. The subtext is that our self-identification as women is unacceptable because our genders don’t correlate with the sex we were assigned at birth; therefore the speaker feels entitled not to use the noun woman about us. The fact is that I am a woman, I am transsexual, and I am a transsexual woman.

The second and third comments by Chancellor and Liz respectively really hit the nail on the head:

I honestly expected better from Reuters as a major news organization.

I’m astonished that Reuters of all organizations could do this.

An editor responded with this:

A number of readers objected to our choice of pronouns. In the past we have used “she” to describe her, and we will do so in future stories

Apart from being left wondering who decided to switch to incorrect pronoun use (and why) it remains the case that despite the reputation of any news organisation, despite its size, despite its market share or its demographic, its reports are only as trustworthy as the journalists who produce them. And as long as those journalists choose to ignore even their employer’s own style guide (which is, admittedly, a long way from perfect), then these cissexist slurs will continue to be repeated, with no regard to the effect they have on those of us who don’t have the advantage of cis privilege to shield us. On their own, these may seem like minor points to some, I know that; but the cumulative effect is another matter. As a friend of mine says, “Every day brings a thousand papercuts” – and from where I sit, that pretty much sums it up.

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Previous related posts:

• Out, damn’d spot! (November 23, 2009)
• How many more of us must die? (November 20, 2009)

This is not a trans woman

Reclaim The Night (For Cis Women Only) and the London Cis Feminist Network

My previous post (link here) has drawn me into looking further back along the organisational chain of command, and the results are as depressing and predictable as one might expect; as much for the failure of would-be allies as for the actual transphobia of the organisers.

Reclaim The Night and Feminism in London are both organised by the London Feminist Network and one commonality in all their literature is the use of the trans exclusionary phrase “women only”.

The problem arises because the term is grounded in the use of the long-established trope which states that transsexual women are “not really women” – hence my assertion that the phrase women only is trans exclusionary. The definition is essentialist in meaning as it infers that one can only be “born a woman” (and never “become a woman”, to paraphrase de Beauvoir), and in so doing it denies not only the existence and agency of transsexual women and transsexual men, but also the potential for change itself. Thus women comes to mean cis women, just as surely as women only means cis women only. The biological determinism underpinning this rationale ensures that these definitions become permanent, unquestionable, immutable dogma.

However, it also results in the anomalous situation we now see in the cases of both Feminism In London and Reclaim The Night where transsexual men (“really women”) will be welcomed to these events, at the same time as transsexual women (“really men”) will be excluded. The bias in favour of transsexual men not only makes use of one of the most offensive manifestations of transphobia – ungendering us – but silences and further marginalises transsexual women in the process: it is divisive too. At the same time, it reinforces the male/female binary which, in their next breath, those same cis women feminists will tell you they are committed to destroying – because, they reason, gender isn’t really absolute, determined by one’s genital configuration at birth, it is in fact a completely malleable, socially constructed concept.

But regardless of the contorted and contradictory logic employed by LFN to exclude transsexual women, it’s interesting to note how the cis women feminist organisers then go on to avoid being called on their hidden transphobia by saying nothing explicitly about who is included in, and who is excluded from, the term women only. Their cis women feminist supporters at these events, who blithely go along with this hypocrisy by telling themselves that if transsexual women aren’t explicitly excluded then they must be implicitly included, are therefore not only complicit in the silencing of transsexual women, but their complacency allows the organisers to manipulate and exploit them in pursuit of this hidden transphobic agenda.

Which brings me to the real question: who decided this? How many people were responsible for implementing this trans exclusionary policy – and would they have been successful if the majority not been so apathetic? In a situation like this, saying nothing is no different to actively supporting the bigots. And given that transsexual women are highly unlikely to have access to the decision-making process, it falls to those cis women feminists who call themselves allies to take a stand on our behalf.

No more excuses, my sisters.

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Cross-posted at Harlot’s Parlour