This is not a trans woman

Gibsonesque

Elsewhere on the web a somatically-male, self-styled artist and gender activist who identifies as a non-passing, non-transitioning, no-electrolysis transwoman makes a series of deliberately provocative statements; not the least of which is the eyebrow-raising assertion that SRS and HRT for transsexual women are merely forms of body modification of no greater significance than tattoos and piercings.

Leaving aside this embarrassing display of a combination of ignorance and insensitivity, for some reason the phrase “body modification” reminded me of an idea developed by William Gibson in his science fiction short story Johnny Mnemonic. The story contained a description of what would surely be a more extreme form of body modification than anything the self-identified authentic woman could imagine in her wildest flights of fancy – more extreme than major abdominal surgery; more extreme, even, than getting your ears pierced.

The concept involved the progenitor – a data trafficker – undergoing surgery to have a data storage system implanted in his head. A variation on the theme appeared in other works of fiction written by Mr Gibson, in which people have data ports implanted in the sides of their necks, wet-wired to their brains. The idea being that you would be able to plug in various hardware chips, each with a dedicated function – perhaps as a way of transferring large amounts of data, or maybe augmenting certain aspects of your knowledge for use in specific, short-term circumstances. So, for example, you would be able to plug in a chess grand master’s chip and you would know all the rules and moves of the game. Or a language chip to enable you to speak fluent Spanish, or French, or English. When you’re done, you take out the chip and the knowledge just fades away.

I always imagined the data port implant would look something like a USB port on a computer. And in the same way I can now plug in my USB memory stick and access my blog backup, or the latest post I’m working on, or my resumé, the wetware chip would plug into the port in the side of my neck, and (presumably) it would contain some sort of executable file. (I assume it would be a read-only (ROM) chip too, to avoid computer virus infections).

Of course there are scary real world implications for this so-called cybernetic surgery – in addition to a covert means of unauthorised data exchange (as in Johnny Mnemonic), the potential for mind control really is disturbing (who would write the content of the ROM chips? How would you know a chip was what it claimed to be?) – But hey, this is cyberpunk science fiction, right?

Hmm, maybe so. Or maybe a shiny new future of truly mind-blowing body modifications is nearer then even the most progressive gender activist in the whole of California could imagine:

(Curtsey to Josie for tweeting the YT link)

Real Bras™? They’re not for trans women…

On a slightly less surreal, but possibly more absurd note than the trainwreck that is VWHC’s trans exclusionary policy comes this report in the Vancouver (where else?) section of Xtra West (link here).

See, us trans women, we’re so speshul™ that we even get our own speshul™ underwear now.

So, assuming that you’ve been able to find a pharmacist who’s been willing to sell you your prescribed hormones, you may well find that sooner or later you’ll need to buy a bra. Isn’t nature wonderful? Now, I don’t know about anybody else, but I usually buy mine from the lingerie department of a certain well-known high street chain store. They’re nothing speshul™, nothing fancy, just plain ol’ common-or-garden everyday bras like a lot of women wear.

Mistake! Apparently, what I should have been doing, is buying bras that are “specifically designed for transitioning women”.

They will hold the girls in place while offering the right amount of support and comfort in a beautiful black lace package.

Don’t they look just like Real Bras™ that Real Women™ might wear in Real Life™? And you get to out yourself as trans when you go shopping for them!

Fantastic…

Now, if someone would be kind enough to write me a suitably sarcastic closing paragraph containing the words ‘trans misogynistic’ and ‘cissexist’, I’d be very grateful. I have this overwhelming urge to go and put a few more dents in my forehead…

Trix in the mix

Hurrah for brainiak boffins! Not content with building full body scanners which can undress us from a safe distance, now – according to the New Scientist (link here) – two scientists have found a way to “switch the apparent gender of volunteers talking to each other through video conference software”.

Volunteers were asked to chat to one another in a video conference, but did not know if the face they saw was really that of the person they were talking with – or indeed if the other volunteer was seeing their own true face.

The results suggest that our body language during conversation is more reactive to that of others than it is to their physical appearance, says [computer scientist Barry-John] Theobald. “We’ve shown you can present a female as herself or as a male, and the other participant’s behaviour doesn’t change,” he says. The results will soon be published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Next, the team plans to use the system to test the effects of changing someone’s race instead of their gender.

It’s unclear whether there’s a genderqueer option or if choices are limited to the traditional gender binary.

PowerPoint presentations will never seem the same again.