DTWOF episode #524
March 18th, 2008 | Strip Archive
Please don’t let this distract you from your article-writing and ad-composing for The Daily Distress!
Please don’t let this distract you from your article-writing and ad-composing for The Daily Distress!
181 Responses to “DTWOF episode #524”
March 18th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Uhh…oops. Janis’s shirt isn’t colored in the “you did it” panel. Hmmm. It’s much easier to point this out than fix it.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
She’s wearing mood clothes!
March 18th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I say she had just put on her jacket in between screaming things, in preparation for storming out the door.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Aren’t you glad you caught it first!!
(everyone else is at their typewriter…uhm, computer, writing an article or designing an ad… how many pages is that mock newspaper gonna be??)
March 18th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Love Janis’s reaction. I teach high school kids for a living and I recognise the strength of emotion immediately. She also has a point. Parents are invariably better at wanting their children to be like them than allowing the kids to do what they used to do themselves. The argument is as hollow as ever. Perfection, AB, again! Never mind the shirt.
March 18th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
There was a huge article in the NYTimes mag about traditionally women’s colleges being a haven for trans this is uncannily apt, but trans in high school? Admittedly Janis was trans in kindergarten…
March 18th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Well, shiite Alison - at CC we were complaining about Snuffy Smith’s weird hat coloring the other week, which was antithetical to the point of said cartoon.
The shirt color here has nothing to do with the joke(s), so do carry on without worry! : )
March 18th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Janice and Clarice would be the worst thing ever!
March 18th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Oh, wait, I don’t mean Janice (or even Janis)… what is Janis’ mum’s name?
March 18th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
“but trans in high school?”
i was trans in high school. granted, i didn’t tell anyone, but i can’t even imagine what hearing a trans speaker would have done for my self-esteem.
I support Janis in this endeavor.
also, i got something different out of that article than you did. but, i guess that’s outside the scope of this discussion. (:
March 18th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Jasmine is Janis’s mother. That was a mistake, giving them both J names, but water under the bridge now
Yeah, you should check out the NYT mag article on trans men at women’s colleges, “When Girls Will Be Boys.” It struck me as fairly good.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I love this latest installment. It’s nice to get a bit more focus on Lois, Janice and Jasmine. And it’s really sweet to see how Clarice can talk all about how she’s enjoying the break from parenting and then can’t stop herself from leaping to being a parental figure in the argument with Janice and Jasmine.
I think Janice should totally speak at high schools. With heavily armed guards in tow, mind you.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I love how the strip always feels so grounded in physical reality, right down to the tiniest detail. The “*SNEP*” of the cell phone closing was a spot on sound effect.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Jasmine has a very real fear for her child’s safety. It will be difficult to put that aside and support Janis in her need to reach out to others struggling with transgender issues.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Heh. I remember the first time I ever did a classroom workshop. One of the other people doing it was this fourteen-year-old kid — he was younger than the kids we were addressing, and to top it off it was a school for kids in difficulty (usually with the law).
March 18th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Ok. I don’t want anyone to jump down my throat about this, as it is a genuine question. At the root of the question might be some unacknowledged “transphobia” or something, but well, enough disclaimer…
Is being trans a medical issue? I know once upon a time being homosexual was medicalised and considered a disorder. We now generally agree that it isn’t something that needs to be diagnosed, treated or cured. IS the same thing to be said about being trans? In practice or in theory?
March 18th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
The NYT article was fascinating, though it left me wondering…. Would an MTF trans student ever be accepted to a women’s college? It would be great for Janis to go to some place like Smith or Barnard (bracketing the cost issues). Someone who’s been transitioning for four years would be pretty much woman identified by the time she reached 18. On a side note: while there are still quite a few women’s colleges around, there are almost no men’s colleges, aside from a few very religious schools, or ones that are so closely aligned to a women’s college (Morehouse, Hobart) that they’re practically co-ed. Why do you suppose that is?
March 18th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
I wonder when the time is come for Sparrow to fall for motherhood via remote.
March 18th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
That’s a common problem, with FtMs being accepted into “women’s” communities and MtFs being excluded. I believe it’s disrespectful and shows no understanding of transgender people. “Oh, you FtMs may look like men, but we know you’re really still women, so that’s ok; you can still hang out with us. And you MtFs think you’re women, but you were born with penises! Icky! You’re not allowed here!” Whether you’re the one being included or excluded, it’s disrespectful. We’ve got to get past that to a point where we accept that a person’s chosen gender IS their real gender.
March 18th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Some thoughts—
At Smith (and other women’s colleges) the people in question entered as women then transitioned.
Also, some trans folk see themselves as neither men or women. So it’s complicated.
As far as all-women colleges, I think because women face discrimination because of our sex, we see benefits in being in an all-female environment. (Similar to historically Black colleges?) Both my nieces went to all-women schools. One is straight and one is gay.
A year or two on this blog there was a huge discussion on trans acceptance and identification.
March 18th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I notice the Obama signs are on the left side of the sidewalk and the Hillary signs on the right. I would reverse that, though Darwin knows neither of them is genuinely progressive or left of center. I’ll just pretend the signs were arranged as seen from the house.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith JcH: If I can’t have Big Al, gimme Little John!
March 18th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I don’t think male-identified ftms (aka trans men, such as myself) should go to women’s colleges. I think it’s a slightly different story for female-assigned people who don’t identify within the gender binary–which is a definition that also works for some ftm-spectrum folks. i know, it can be confusing.
Women’s colleges will generally let enroll anyone who is “legally female” (though that’s not as pat a definition as it sounds, since there are many aspects of “legal” gender) so a transitioned trans women could conceivably enroll.
“Is being trans a medical issue?”
I consider my transsexuality something I am treating medically. It differs from homosexually because being gay doesn’t *need* treatment, and on the other hand many trans people do. I needed treatment to masculinize my body.
also, there’s no need to put transphobia in “quotes”. It definitely exists.
March 18th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
“At Smith (and other women’s colleges) the people in question entered as women then transitioned.”
In the article that’s being referenced, young trans men are starting at women’s colleges already male-identified, some of them undergoing physical transition concurrent with beginning college (at a single-sex college). that’s just weird to me.
March 18th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I’m guessing that an MTF student, especially one post- or mid-transition, could be seriously considered at a women’s college. I know of at least one openly intersexed person who attended a women’s college (the person had always lived as a woman). Does anyone know of an MTF student attending a women’s college?
March 18th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Off topic re: the strip: With regard to transitioned/transitioning FTMs at women’s colleges, Julia Serano (who I think is brilliant, but that’s yet another topic) has written a comment about the problem of FTMs claiming access to women’s spaces, and what it means for MTFs: Having it both ways
On topic re: the strip: what’s with the sultry, shady glance at Jasmine from Clarice?? For everyone’s sake, I hope Clarice isn’t thinking what it looks like she’s thinking…
March 18th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Oh, kellan, I think Clarice is thinking what you think she’s thinking.
March 18th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I don’t know, kellan, I read Clarice’s look in the third-from-last panel as being an “ugh, fighting! these people are all crazy” look shared with Lois. Lois and Clarice have their eyeballs pointed at each other.
March 18th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Well, as a gay male born in 1939 I am a bit of an outsider here, in
spite of being a camp follower of my fellow Oberlin graduate Alison.
I do happen to live a block from the Smith campus, so I know all
too well the mix of people who congregate there, some of whom
are quite hard to identify by “gender” at first sight. I’m only
grateful that the cultural world of the US is starting to change,
even if too late for my generation.
March 18th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I went to Barnard ages ago and I don’t think there were any trans people there (this was the late 1970s). I think it was just not viewed as an option due to cost and absence of reliable, safe and accessible medical procedures. Personally, I spent much of my time taking classes at Columbia College and would not really care who is in the classroom. I think the true sticky wicket is sharing a bedroom with someone, which is understandable.
My own take is the real value in same sex education is to get them apart for a few years so the kids don’t distract each other from the subject matter. They kinda get a clue once they’ve passed 17.
(By the way - I am running into that 15 seconds - “slow down cowboy” message. Anyone else getting that?)
March 18th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I was at Columbia, and at Barnard there were a coupla trans guys who were my friends in ‘04 and ‘05. They had to challenge the policy, so they were probably the pioneers. But they felt hella inspired by Dean Spade.
March 18th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Cat Pimp,
Concerning your post… except at Smith, maybe 60% of the women’s are bi or lesbian, so there’s lots of distraction.
I didn’t go to an all-women’s college, but I imagine that it gives women the chance to take more leadership positions within the school, not to have to compete with men for the profs attention (some profs discriminate against women in the classroom), and reduces the temptation (expectation?) to play dumb around the guys. I don’t know if that’s a problem in college as much as middle school and junior high.
I’d love to hear from women who went to all-women’s colleges or high schools. Wonder if the experience is different for straight women than for lesbians.
March 18th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
I don’t see Clarice as jumping into the Mom’s role with Janis. She made a comment to Sparrow about someone they both know and care about. She was not telling Janis she supported her, nor was she making suggestions to Jasmine or Lois about dealing with the situation. It was Jasmine who jumped to claim Clarice as an ally against Lois, who clearly had a different opinion. Clarice can’t escape being pulled into nuclear family traumas no matter where she goes– which, by the way, is how I saw her facial expression in the last panel.
Great strip, as usual! Don’t freak about the shirt, AB, though when I do that in a cartoon I draw, I freak just the same, and I’m the merest amateur.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith Floss Forbes: If you don’t know the tune, sing tenor.
March 18th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Y’know, the same hate-crime death mentioned in this strip is what finally inspired me to give up on _Lavender_, the Twin Citie’s gay rag, for good. In an (utterly detestable) article on the killing, the writer/editors managed to betray both their blinding whiteness (speculating on whether the killing would have been so nonchalantly received if it had been a white student killing a black classmate for using “black slang”), and their obsequious dedication to heteronormativity. What the article literally said was that the kid should have been directed to a guidance counselor, who should have told him that his cross dressing was putting him in danger. So, uh, the kid brought it on himself for preferring Hello Kitty to Abercrombie? I remember when _Lavender_ was OK (as in, when they carried DTWOF!) but now they just plain suck.
March 18th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Sex? Drugs? Neither. Both!
I love that word play! Great work.
March 18th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
can someone please give a web address for the recent New york times article on transgender mentioned earlier in this thread? Tried to find it, with no luck
March 18th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
When Girls Will Be Boys
A caveat: in the opinion of many (both trans and non-trans people), this article is hugely problematic, for several reasons. These include the wish of women at women’s institutions not to have to share their bedroom with someone who uses masculine pronouns and identifies as a man; the fact that the media focus on FTMs at women’s colleges encourages people to think of trans men as not “real men” because of the way some FTMs are shown as continuing to claim access to women’s spaces; and the continuing invisibility of trans people in the media who aren’t a) young, FTM, and adorably gender-binary-smashing about it or b) murdered.
March 18th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
I think the divide among the characters has to do with being the parent of a teenager. It is just amazing how this strip captures the paralyzing fear associated with the mysteries of what goes on in and around high school. Scary stuff!
March 18th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
“I support Janis in this endeavor.”
“It would be great for Janis to go to some place like Smith or Barnard (bracketing the cost issues).”
These are cartoon characters (very good cartoon characters, not real people…
March 18th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Ellen O: I may not be historically straight, but I am a bisexual woman in a committed relationship with a man - and I attended an all-women high school in the heart of the South. Having graduated nearly ten years ago, I can attest to the fact that many of the alumni friends and acquaintances I know are strong-willed, assertive, and outspoken professionals. Some of whom have come out as lesbians in the years since graduation, and at least one close friend is in the middle stages of his transition to becoming male.
Of course, I can only write from my personal experience, but I think it is necessary to mention the exceedingly sheltered environment of my all-female high school, not because of the fact that it was all women, but because gender-specific grade-school learning environments are usually private and very expensive, so, unless you’re someone like me, who happened to get in by the grace of a massive scholarship, most of the students were born into rich, white, conservative families. Granted, my school was pretty close to the buckle of the Bible Belt, but I think, on the whole, this is true. Suffice it to say, its hard to remove enough variables to be empirical about my experience.
I do know, however, that while it was an excellent facility for institutional learning ad platonic female-solidarity, it was NOT a comfortable forum for lesbian experimentation, let alone transgender experimentation, perhaps to a greater extent because of the peer stigma amongst surrounding co-ed high schools that we were either “prudes, sluts, or dykes.” In a way, it made it harder all around to experiment sexually, with other women, men, or simply oneself. It took college for many of us to crack the subtle heteronormative teaching of that school.
March 18th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
“These are cartoon characters (very good cartoon characters, not real people…”
hey now. i have a degree in English. that’s an entire academic field devoted to the study of (mostly) fiction.
so what of it?
March 18th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
ps. sorry for such a long response.
i didn’t realize how big it was until i posted it!
March 18th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
I have a degree in English as well. But I don’t relate to Mrs Dalloway as if she were real… just saying I don’t see how one can “support” a fictional character’s fictional choices or worry about a fictional character’s fictional monetary restraints.
March 18th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
It would be interesting to find out just what percentage of Alison Bechdel fans are English scholars. I too have an English degree! (and totally understand getting way too attached to fictional characters…)
March 18th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Mabel:There is a “Gender Dysphoria” diagnosis in the DSM-IV that could be and is applied to transpeople. If you want to include legal hormones and surgeries in your transition, it is nessesary (in most places in the USA)to get yrself diagnosed as this particular kind of “crazy” in order to get “treatment.”
Personally I think that’s busted. Being trans is not an illness.
Kellan, thanks for that Julia Serrano (who *is* totally brilliant)article. I think it is right on.
Has everyone Julia’s book “whipping girl?”
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/605663.Whipping_Girl_A_Transsexual_Woman_on_Sexism_and_the_Scapegoating_of_Femininity
and why are you all not my friends on goodreads?
check my post all the way at the bottom here: http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/from-the-archives#more-549
March 18th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
anonymous.. are you not familiar with the concept of “fanboys”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanboy#Comic_Book
ignoring the obvious vagueries of gender here, most people on this blog are hella DTWOF fanboys. Every comic has em.
at least we don’t demand porn… oh wait.
March 18th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Lois’s expressions are priceless.
March 18th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Whaddaya mean “these aren’t real people?”
Nooooooo!
March 18th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
My problem with the NY Times article, which is being touted on a lot of blogs as “exemplary”, is that (as alichatty mentioned) it focuses on the financially privileged and elite approach to gender definition. After mentioning that the interview subject couldn’t get his surgery okayed by insurance, it blithely says he paid for it privately. While attending an extremely expensive college.
But that’s the way class gets ignored (or treated as a moral failing, if you’re not rich) in our current empire in steep decline.
As someone who, while still a teenager in the very early 1970s, served on a speaker’s bureau at community colleges about being a lesbian, I can relate to the physical risks of being out as non-male, non-het (which IS the deviant gender in our world). Many, many of my out women friends, including my lover, were raped and beaten up during that time period. I believe the violence against women who defy the wider cultural definition of woman (which includes being sexually accessible to men) from that era and, frankly, in most places in the world today is equal to the violence against trans by any definition, in part because the definitions overlap. What we re-named “woman” as dykes in 1971 is virtually identical to a lot of self-defined young tranny women today.
However, what’s missing from this analysis is not that Jasmine is the single mother of a single child who is trans, or female, but that her child is black. Black kids are exponentially more at risk than white kids, and Jasmine is well aware of it. Furthermore, until recently, her child was a black boy, the most at risk group in America. Given that reality, I’d support her decision because it would be ignorant of me to presume I knew better. And it’s relevant that the other black person in the room “gets it”, too.
March 18th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Kellan — thanks for the interesting link (to the juliaserano piece on LJ). Another women’s college graduate here, who knows several transmen who didn’t start transitioning until during or even after their college experience… and yeah, having students who don’t identify as “women” is a problem for a number of reasons. I don’t know what the solution to the problem is (I think it should definitely include MTF’s)… but I definitely share the discomfort with FTMs acting entitled to womanspace.
I know that this can be read as transphobic, which is something that I try to catch and correct in myself. But it’s a real issue: if you’re making a clubhouse for women, and someone says “I’m not actually a woman, but…” when does what follows that “but” become a reasonable ground to exclude someone? When does having someone who strives to be read “male” in a womanspace make that space less safe for women?
March 18th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Women’s colleges accept transwomen who are “legally female” and can prove it in some way.
Being “legally female” most of the time means that you have to have surgery and hormones. (which is wrong, in a moral sense.)
March 18th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Jay, you said, “I don’t think male-identified ftms (aka trans men, such as myself) should go to women’s colleges.”
As an ftm considering transition while attending a women’s college, I’m curious as to why.
I love my profs and I’m getting a first-rate education and building my self-esteem. Why should I give this up?
March 18th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
brava, Maggie. Thank you.
DeLand, I read the same Lavender piece and could. not. believe.
or didn’t want to. Classism and racism are alive and well in the Lavender world.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
…and whatever the term is for judging queer youth by their fashion. victimblaming for not being butch/straight-acting? obviously, I am no English professor. neither did I make it through women’s studies.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
“Jay, you said, ‘I don’t think male-identified ftms (aka trans men, such as myself) should go to women’s colleges.’
As an ftm considering transition while attending a women’s college, I’m curious as to why.
I love my profs and I’m getting a first-rate education and building my self-esteem. Why should I give this up?”
Well, only you know if you are male-identified. But if you are, regardless of physical transition plans, you are essentially using your legal sex to trump the wishes of those women who wanted to attend a women-only college. also, your response is really entitled. you might want to check that. you seriously can get a first rate education and build your self esteem at any number of other elite institutions for the privileged. i find this whole argument mildly solipsistic. Please read that Julia Serano essay linked above. Your choices do not only affect you.
LTR, I hear you. People who live and want to be recognized as men have no place in women’s space, such as it exists. They are not only going against what they are saying to be true about themselves, they are going against the intentions of the space. And they are damaging the perceptions of trans women, as well. You are not being transphobic.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
please note that i’m trying very hard to differentiate male-identified ftm spectrum folks from genderqueer or other non-binary identified ftm spectrum folks. i think it’s important to acknowledge the breadth of the range of trans identities.
March 18th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
i don’t mean to jump in on something that I admittedly know little about, but I can’t help but open my big mouth:
it seems that those of you who would oust either a ftm or a mtf are underestimating the complexity of that self-identification. its a slow and tremendously psychologically taxing transition.
and if we women, who, in general, spend a lot more time thinking and talking about issues of gender than men do can’t allow ftms in our spaces, where are they to go? why isn’t this such a big deal in the male gay community?
and its not as if a switch is being flipped, thereby erasing this person’s entire personal history as a woman. its not as though he hasn’t experienced what its like to be a woman in society.
it seems kind of elitist and unfair to oust anyone who even partially identifies as a woman from women’s spaces, particularly anyone who is so personally tormented with their own identity that they need to transform their body through expensive medications and surgeries…
March 18th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
I apologize if this has been addressed in other posts, but I’m confused about Jasmine’s response to the query “Sex or drugs?” (when she says “Both.”) How is joining a queer speaker’s bureau about drugs? Is that an allusion to artificial hormones?
March 18th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
BrooklynPhil –
It’s not about the act of having sex or about using illegal drugs (that’s the “neither”). It is about sex as in fe/male and drugs as in hormones (that the “both.”)
Pretty darn clever of Alison, isn’t it?
March 19th, 2008 at 12:25 am
My school is not “elite” nor am I economically priviledged. I am in this college because they gave me a scholarship and grant to help me pay. As an independent adult, I am paying for school through student loans.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:44 am
“it seems kind of elitist and unfair to oust anyone who even partially identifies as a woman from women’s spaces, particularly anyone who is so personally tormented with their own identity that they need to transform their body through expensive medications and surgeries…”
this is not talking about ousting anyone that “even partially” identifies as a woman. this is discussion around whether men who call themselves men and either live as men or plan to, belong in women’s spaces. given that i am a transsexual man, this topic is very interesting and important to me. i don’t want my “women’s history” (presumptuous, isn’t it) to grant me access into space where I don’t belong.
and i am but one trans person, but let me assure you that I am not at all “personally tormented” with “my own identity”. the torment was having to live as something i am not. it really was and is that simple. and actually, my HRT is about $35 for a 5 months supply.
March 19th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Jay, I find your views refreshing. Maggie, I was pained to know that your lover was among the many lesbian feminists in the 70s who was raped and assaulted for coming/speaking out.
***
Everyone, how on earth do y’all find the time for three ongoing DTWOF blog conversations plus Daily Distress articles & ads all at the same time??? Should I write a personal ad for a drop-in support group for DTWOF blog addicts, er, I mean, fanboys, who can’t get their work/family/sex/lives/pets/food needs, etc. taken care of due to the lure of the DTWOF blog? Yowsa.
March 19th, 2008 at 4:44 am
a few thoughts… mabel, some people consider trans a medical issue, as queerness was once seen. this viewpoint is maybe useful to some people but to me it’s pathologizing.
one thing that really got me about that nyt article was the section where they were interviewing someone who “eschewed pronouns,” and then referred to hir as “she”.
my vote on clarice’s face in the last strip is an apologetic face at clarice.
another great strip!
March 19th, 2008 at 5:41 am
To be honest, being a bi FTM myself, I don’t get why any trans guy would want to join a woman’s only college. It just immediately makes me think of an Animal House sketch with a guy in drag sneaking into the woman’s locker rooms and making out with the lesbains. It just seems a bad joke and no one would take your transition seriously. Fair enough if you’re someone who deep down doesn’t really have any gender identity, and is a real ‘hir’ or whatever the lingo is, but why would a run-of-the-mill transguy want to spend his time completely surrounded by women?
Wait a sec…
Loved the comic.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:39 am
Hail Eris!
I only graduated high school, Alichatty, but I rather suspect I could still nail a Master’s in English Lit. in just a few years, if I honestly thought it worth the trouble — I was tested at a “Grade 16″ reading level in Grade 7 (I’m 38 now) — but my financial situation makes any thought of college/uni laughable, as it is. Even if I got a break on tuition, by some miracle, the list of required books I’d need to buy would still be enough to force me to a near-starvation diet. I don’t tend to rely on convenient miracles, especially not for things I don’t really need. Feh.
Incidentally, I’m also trans (MTF), though the aforementioned situation also makes that irrelevant, since my provincial government (BC) doesn’t include SRS on the list of medical procedures paid for under the Medical Services Plan (MSP) [thank you Gordon Campbell (and cronies) you steaming POS]. They’re “cosmetic surgeries”, you see — not essential for life. Not like I *need* to be the woman on the outside that I am on the inside, or anything. Not like I have days when not being a woman makes me want to scream, or take up political assassination, you know. Anyway.
Snarky
March 19th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Hail Eris!
…Sorry if that got a bit OT, there. Not to mention OTT.
Snarky
March 19th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Ellen O., when I was at Smith it was more like 30% (according to many student surveys in methods classes - the only research done on the matter as of the early 00’s). 60% is a large proportion, even for Smith or Northampton.
The FTMs at a women’s college question is certainly a sticky wicket. I think there’s a lot to be debated about it, but I for one am not comfortable telling someone who may have gotten their best deal financial aid-wise at a women’s college that they have to go somewhere else. This is not in response to the article, btw, it is in response to what it costs to go to college and the opportunities presented by a fat financial aid package.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:01 am
This is completely off the topic of the current strip. I am an intermittent lurker. The other night, in one of those “totally random yet clear thinking while wide awake in the middle of the night” episodes, I realized what I miss about the strip–I miss the bookstore! The bookstore was both a character in itself, in some sense; it was also a community setting where anyone could and did walk onstage at any time.
Much as I love Lois and Sparrow and JR and even Stuart (I identify with his humorless earnest-ness) and now Ginger and the others who show up at the house, I am a little bored with them!
I wonder about Jezanna and her girlfriend and Albert and his girlfriend; I wonder about Thea; I miss the references to current teen and 20-something culture the interns brought with them.
Is there some other public space that can serve the function that Madwimmin’s served in the strip?
March 19th, 2008 at 9:04 am
oops, I meant to say Clarice where I said Ginger above.
March 19th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Snarky– Sorry to hear that Campbell et. al are getting you down. Here in Ontario you can’t even get the “sex letter” on your driver’s license switched without irreversible surgery. Also not covered, if I’m correct. (Which I might not be, since I don’t need to switch the “sex letter” on my driver’s license.)
How can our so-called universal health care system say no to such a basic (not to mention safety-related) human right?
March 19th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Anonymous: To say we “support” such-and-such character doing X or Y or Z is shorthand. It means that we would support a storyline in which our illustrious illustrator Alison chose to move the plot in that direction.
March 19th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Mannn, Clarice should watch out with that ‘parenting by remote’ thing. When Raffi gets old enough to be resentful (or stops trying to escape reality through the wonders of pot), he’s going to give her hell for it. While I can empathize with the relief she feels at getting a breather from the situation at home, this is more of the same for her. I wish she could just be present, if only for Raffi’s sake.
Gah. Too much treating cartoon characters like real people, methinks.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Butch Fatale, I’m currently a senior at Smith, where the debate about transfolk is still alive and well. I also read the NYT article, and, while aware of its shortcomings, found it to be one of the more competently written and respectful articles out there.
I’m firmly in the camp of “all transfolk belong at women’s colleges, if they want to be there.” I see this as falling within the boundaries of what a women’s college - an institution designed to nurture and educate those whose gender made it impossible for them to be treated fairly or seriously elsewhere.
Finally, I’d like to point out that most transmen who come out at women’s colleges had no idea they were trans until long after they got there. My boss at Smith, the director of institutional diversity, gets hundreds of angry phone calls after every Thanksgiving and Christmas, from parents demanding to know what “you’ve done with our daughters.” Lots of us come out in one way or another over that first school break.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
grammatical typo *falling in the boundaries of what a woman’s college is*
March 19th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I may be totally wrong on this, but don’t most transgendered people know VERY EARLY that something is wrong? Unlike gay/lesbian/bi folks who may (or may not, some know early on) experiment with several varieties before settling into their role, I think transgendered people are often the boy on the playground playing with barbies, or the girl being told she is in the wrong bathroom until she is about 25. In which case, I agree with Jay…if one identitfies as male, why would they want to go to an all female college?
March 19th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Hear hear, Chris. I realize that I probably should have bitched directly to _Lavender_ about that article, but I thought I stood a better chance of reading an intelligent, well-argued series of posts here.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
ksbel6: Not all transpeople follow the same path, nor do people necessarily know about the possibility of transgender in highschool.
It’s not always an easy or obvious decision, either.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I’m not suggesting that the decision to change would be easy, that would be incredibly difficult…shaking the entire history of the family, etc. It just seems like they are all quoted as saying something along the lines of knowing they were in the wrong body since they could remember.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
So sad to see Clarice falling into the absent parent routine out of convenience. She’s never been the greatest mom in the world, but I didn’t expect her to fall out so quickly, especially at a time when Raf seems to need her influence most.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Knowing you are in the wrong body as long as you can remember, and realizing that this is not just the way it is (and how it has to be) — that there is support out there and that changing is a possibility — are different processes.
The empowerment process to transition is just that, a process. Many of us reach adulthood before we go “ah-ha!” and put all the pieces together for ourselves identity-wise. I imagine this is what is happening to transfolks at women’s colleges. Once away from home, childhood, and adolescence, they start to move closer to their truer identities.
And as far as I know, transfolks are not “shaking the entire history of the family, etc.” they are integrating their past, present, and future, like many of us. Even if they did not feel they were in the right gender for their entire past, they aren’t shaking it off like something that didn’t exist.
As a non-transperson, though, I’d be happily corrected.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I liked that AB bothered to put the little bus vehicle ID numbers detail on there.
I was struck somehow by the way a bus rider gets exhaust fumes to remind her of the carbon footprint, while a car rider doesn’t. That’s ironic, since a single car to transport one person around causes more emissions per rider (I assume).
March 19th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
That’s quite curious, I’m also an English scholar… I have a degree in English Philology.
March 19th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I had a friend who was at Bryn Mawr and transferred to Warren Wilson (co-ed)after coming out as trans and beginning hormones.
I agree with most of what Jayinchicago says about transmen checking their priveledge and opting out of sapce designated for a gender they don’t identify as. I also agree with him in that the complexities of gender as a non-binary thing often make that confusing and blurry. Not all transpeople feel that they are the “opposite” gender than the one they were assigned at birth. I’m one of those people. As someone who identifies as “Genderqueer” but has no plans to use either hormones or surgery, I often have the privilege of not having to come out to anyone. The times when I pass as male are rare enough that I often use “women’s spaces” such as bathrooms, because they are safer for me. There are no “Nerdy Pirate” spaces that I know of. (if you know of one, can I come visit?)
It would be nice if trans’ colleges existed, but they don’t. Women’s colleges exist as alternatives to spaces that may be multi-gendered spaces(nominally, or in actuality)but may have too “dudely” an energy for many women to feel comfortable, safe, or like they are getting the most out of their experience there. Many of these women’s spaces are expanding to include transpeople of all flavours in their definition of space and in some instances (attempts at paralell festivals to MWMF come to mind) transfolks are making their own spaces. I used to volunteer at a bike shop where we taught people how to fix their own bicycles. 4 years ago some of us noticed that certain people weren’t using the shop because they felt uncomfortable and intimidated by the “bike dude” atmosphere. A couple people would only come on nights when they knew that I or one of 2 female identified people would be working. So we started a women and trans only night. It’s been a success.
I really don’t want to re-open the MWMF argument so i want to say that i understand the plurality of opinions on this issue, but I really think that women’s spaces should be opened to trans people of all design. I want to ad the caveat here that transmen who identify as male and want to live as male should really consider their own priveledge, power, and position in the world and not take advantage of these spaces, even as they are open to them.
March 19th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
I’m ftm and I went to a women’s college. No, I didn’t know at age 5. Or age 15. Or age 25, although I’d begun to suspect by then.
Going to a women’s college was great for me. Because there wasn’t gender pressure like there was in high school. I wasn’t expected to be girly. I’m glad I went. Some of my classmates began to transition while enrolled. Some, like me, didn’t start until later.
While I don’t currently ID as a woman, I’ve had the negative oppressions related to being read as a woman AND I’ve had the oppressions related to being gender variant. When patriarchy tells you that you can’t possibly succeed in math or technology (because you’re a girl), they don’t both to first find out if you really ID as a girl, they just say you suck. Studies show that butch women actually get this more, not less, because they threaten the idea of male dominance. So pre-ftms get this double.
When patriarchy gives encouragement to the schemes and dreams of boys, they don’t bother trying to figure out which girls might turn out to be boys, they just tell everyone they think is a girl to dream smaller.
When patriarchy constructs gender as a binary of winner/loser, good/bad, male/female (to paraphrase Helène Cixous), they don’t excuse people who don’t fit on their assigned side.
What is the POINT of women’s space? It’s for people on the losing side of the binary to band together and fight for their rights. Well, I’ve been on the losing side for most of my life.
Certainly, I’m not going to spend time in transphobic women’s spaces or places where I’m not welcome. Honestly, I don’t know how male privilege will change this for me. I’ve only started to pass recently. It is really a different experience being treated as a straight white guy than a butch dyke. I mean, I knew intellectually, but I had no idea. This makes me want to fight more for feminism, not less.
I went to Mills College. We took anybody “legally female.” Because around half of our students were 25 or over, this has probably including mtfs. We also had an mtf on faculty in the math department.
. . . In that nyt article, the one guy that started at the women’s college after he started T probably didn’t belong there. He was 18. He was probably trying to make his parents happy. It’s a well known fact that 18 year old boys are kind of stupid. So was this one. It makes me uncomfortable that he’s some kind of symbol. I wish his story was seen as just his story and not some larger narrative for all trans guys.
And also, I mean, c’mon, how many of us were insufferable when we first came out as dykes? Rainbow shit everywhere? Capitl-P Pride? Super adamant and annoying. It’s part of being young.
March 19th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
ksbel6: For a lot of trans people, if you don’t say that you knew since age 2, you’re not going to get hormones. For a lot of trans people, you have to SAY you want surgery even if you don’t, or you’re not going to get hormones.
I feel very lucky that I didn’t have to lie.
As for medicalizing the issue: starting hormones without a doctor involved is a bad idea. But the baggage associated with medicalization is optional. Getting eyegalsses without an optomotrist is a bad idea too, but we don’t talk about a stigma for eyecare, nor do we restrict it only to people who would be unable to drive without glasses. The baggage associated with trans issues comes out of prejudice, plain and simple.
I’d like to see hormones for anybody who asks for them. I’d like to see the end to even having a “legal sex”. People don’t have a legal race. They don’t have a legal religion. Why not just have them self-report when it’s time to collect statistics? The only use I can see for giving people a legal sex is to discriminate in marriage or to try to find somebody (wanted, missing person, etc (again, why not just ask which to use?)).
Sorry for going on and on and on about this. I’m just coming out and starting transition and am totally in the rainbow shit everywhere phase.
Also, I love DTOWF and have since I was a young dyke.
March 19th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Pope Snarky said: “I only graduated high school…”
Make that “I only graduated from high school…”, or if you want to be truly anal-retentive, “I only was graduated from high school…” The school graduates the student; the student does not graduate the school. (Only here can one make a comment like this and be seen not as grossly rude but as sharing tips with a fellow-fanatic. Forgive me, O Pope!)
Not an English major, just a geographer and amateur language nerd.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith Arthur Pinero: Where there is tea, there is hope.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Les, folks in the US don’t have legal religions, but it’s documented by plenty of European governments.
I’m glad to see so many gender variant and trans folks talking about their experiences & opinions on here. It is, of course, the only antidote to totalizing statements about what ______ want/are like/experience/think. I’m also excited to see a fellow Smithie on here, DaneGreat. As I recall, this time during my senior year was when the graduation panic started to set in. Resist!
I haven’t been able to bring myself to read the article, but now I’ll have to because you’ve all piqued my interest.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
I’ve felt like I was in the wrong body for as long as I can remember. But changing gender was too big a step. I concluded it makes more sense to work towards eliminating gender roles altogether (or trying to ignore them) than redoing one’s body. But how to accomplish this? It looked like it was starting to happen in the 70s, but then reversed course. The whole issue makes me crazy, the way the fashion industry dictates femininity/masculinity, and the way we buy it. Women will wear the most impractical clothes imaginable while men’s clothes get progressively baggier and more comfortable. Gender roles seem to be here to stay…vive la difference and all that. One reason I enjoyed Juno-the-movie so much was not just her attitude but her attire. Probably seen as a boyish phase to most viewers, but to my mind revolutionary. In these post-modern times there is choice, not like heaven-forbid the 50s. Of course the issue goes way beyond clothing: how you carry yourself, present yourself, how you sit, how you do everything, basically. Choosing to change genders means adopting all the opposite roles and ways of being, rather than eliminating them. But… we have to live in the times to which we’re born and go with the identities that feel right. I don’t mean to judge folks here — I’m really sorry if it sounds that way. After all, had I been born a little (okay, a lot) later I may well have taken that path.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Hail Eris!
Jana: ;-{P}
Snarky
March 19th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Hail Eris!
If I’d woken up to the fact of my inner woman at the same time as I did my bisexuality (in 1990 — and I literally woke up to it, too, in the middle of the night — I can be thick…), I’d have transitioned before Gordogekko and his band of cutthroats took over in Victoria, but instead, I’m stuck with Liberals-in-name-only for years to come, before I can even think about it, in more than a wishful sense. Yeah, I’ve been mentally kicking myself for quite awhile.
Snarky
March 19th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Snarky! You’re in B.C.! I’m a border town kid from way-back.
Hiya, neighbor!
JcH
Seattle
March 19th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
So does anyone feel Jasmine’s sense of terror for her child here? It’s the only reason she doesn’t want Janis to do the speakers gig. Are we Mom’s to bear this alone? No words to assure her that ‘the family’ will, of course, watch out for Janis, even if they have to do it incognito?
March 19th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Hail Eris!
Hiya, Jana! I’ve always lived in Greater Van, too — born in the City of Vancouver, for that matter — and live out in the ‘burbs, now. One of a very few…
I understand Jasmine’s terror, yes, Bell, but I also get Janis’ need to stand up and claim her own identity as Spartacus. I didn’t get a chance to have that issue (or the bi issue) in high school, due to being a thickie about them into my twenties, but I _was_ still one of the biggest nerds in my class, due to my taking up reading big-time in Grade 2. I was into sf by Grade 4, so I caught all kinds of hell for that alone. Encountering homo-, bi- and transphobia would merely have been “MOTSS” for me, really.
Snarky
March 19th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Les, please don’t apologize for “going on and on” (although I love your description of the “rainbow shit everywhere” phase). I found all your comments insightful and thought-provoking. I particularly appreciated “the point of women’s space …” being “for people on the losing side of the binary to band together and fight for their rights.” I have a feeling I’m going to be quoting this often, it’s such a perfect crystallization of a whole politics.
Appreciations to everyone contributing to this topic — much food for political rumination here. I always learn something on this blog.
March 19th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Les said: “…Super adamant and annoying. It’s part of being young.” Cool that AB has captured that with Janis. It’s Janis’s right to go through that rite of passage like all of us did, as Les reminds. And it’s our job to make sure she’s safe doing so.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Hail Eris!
ready2agitate said: “And it’s our job to make sure she’s safe doing so.”
Well, our job to make sure the Janises of the world are safe doing so, anyway…;-{P}
Snarky
March 20th, 2008 at 12:51 am
les said:
“When patriarchy tells you that you can’t possibly succeed in math or technology (because you’re a girl), they don’t both to first find out if you really ID as a girl, they just say you suck. Studies show that butch women actually get this more, not less, because they threaten the idea of male dominance. So pre-ftms get this double.”
First, you are assuming that all “pre-ftms” were butch women, which isn’t at all true. Secondly, I feel like I didn’t pick up as much female socialization as other female-assigned people because, while i didn’t allow myself to identify as a boy for years after it was clear “something” was going on, i also disregarded a lot of messages society gives to women. I just knew they didn’t apply to me. So in my particular case, I don’t think I experienced sexism in the same way as a female-identifying female-assigned person. This is part of why, by my own ethics, i avoid women (and women and trans) space.
I don’t discount your opinions and experiences. I just bristle at all the generalizations.
KC in SD said:
“Of course the issue goes way beyond clothing: how you carry yourself, present yourself, how you sit, how you do everything, basically. Choosing to change genders means adopting all the opposite roles and ways of being, rather than eliminating them.”
First off, I didn’t choose to ‘change genders’ as you put it. I accepted that I was male and needed to have my body match my self-image for my mental health and continued good functioning.
I also reject your idea that transitioning means adopting all the opposite roles and ways of being, rather than eliminating them. First, I think expecting *more* out of trans people than you would out of anyone else is transphobic, and if that word doesn’t do it for you, than to put it another way: trans people shouldn’t be expected to be the engines of gender binary smashing–at least not any more than anyone else should be. i know that’s hard for people who have thought about transitioning and have rejected it for various reasons to accept. but i believe we are in this together and i am totally willing to work in solidarity to create non-coercive and non-punitive genders. but at the same time, that means that i have the freedom to sculpt and change my body as I see fit, for my well-being. i will only be allied to a movement that accepts that i know best for myself and my body.
secondly, and sorry for the longwinded hooha, many trans people transition (or not) and have complicated relationships to their “new” bodies and social roles. though i am masculine and increasingly “male-bodied” i can think critically about what it means to be a man, and i chose not to replicate parts of american maleness that i find unsavory. i don’t like this idea that trans people are too duped or stupid to not be able to react to coercive binary gender in exactly the same ways we did pre-transition. i didn’t let living as female dictate my social gender; i’m not going to as a male either.
while i don’t mind these kind of discussions and actually love being able to clarify and defend my positions, i get a little tired of the binary-transsexuals-as-scapegoats trope.
are non-transsexuals who generally fit into binary gender exempt from this kind of criticism?
March 20th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Jay, I agree with your account of sexism…I was told for the first time that I was good at math when I was very young and was encouraged by all of my math teachers all the way through school to get a math degree (which I did with very little trouble…the masters in math was much more difficult so I ended up switching half way through and my masters is actually in education). Most of those teachers were men.
Also, I really appreciate you information. You are very well informed and it is great of you to share your experiences.
March 20th, 2008 at 11:01 am
I’m curious to hear what people think about the intersection of feminism and transgender issues. KC said that in hir case, eliminating gender roles felt like a better direction to go than changing hir gender. That’s always seemed to me what feminism was about, eliminating gender roles.
Are their places that gender elimination and blurring can take us that feminism cannot?
March 20th, 2008 at 11:36 am
The article gave me a good laugh about how feminine & “girls-with-pearls” the Barnard women are.
In 1963 I was accepted to Barnard from an upper middle class public high school in San Antonio. I was scared to go~didn’t think I was smart enough, plus I was determined to suppress my bi side by having a steady boyfriend at O.U. whom I’d never get to see if I went that far away. My father was all for Barnard, but my mother wanted me to have a social/sorority life elsewhere.
When I visited Barnard, I experienced huge culture shock: the filthy dorm rooms, the dirty hair, the slovenly clothing! I decided to go to SMU and when Barnard wrote to ask why I turned them down, I said that the girls didn’t take pride in their personal appearance!
I’ll bet that letter is still passed around the Admissions Office!
March 20th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I REALLY appreciate how much care folks in this discussion are taking to define their terms. It’s been my conviction for a long time that the arguments arising in our community over this (and other) issues are, to some degree, the result of two different interpretations of the same terms, without recognizing or respecting such. Honestly, I can’t thank you enough. And particular thanks to JayinChicago for clarity and respect.
I’m listening. And learning.
Though not always agreeing, and that’s fine. The only difference I want to point out at the moment is that my definition of women’s colleges (or girls’ schools) would not be that they MUST fill the role of sanctuary for anyone who does not fit the default “normal” for gender (which is a straight male who passes as such). I think it’s legitimate for anyone in a target group for oppression to define themselves and choose their focus, temporarily or long-term.
The analogy would be: Do the traditionally African-American colleges in the U.S. have an obligation to accept any person of color, anyone who is target for racism, and develop programs to meet their needs as well as a strictly African-American culture and curriculum? While I can see that other target groups for racism do not have the same access to a focused education offered black kids by the likes of Spelman, etc., I think the onus for creating those outlets falls on those of us who are non-target for racism (whites) rather than the one group who has managed to create a network of colleges of color.
And, in particular, whenever I hear the idea that it is, once again, up to women to make sure everybody crapped on by woman-hating feels better, I have an emotional rejection of of being saddled with that burden without my consent. I want the chance to give consent. I mean, the fact is, woman-hating lays waste to everything it touches, including boys and men raised with the toxicity of masculinity. Not to the same degree or in the same ways, but when the song says “The rising of the women means the rising of the race” (human race, for clarification), I’ve always believed it. I’m in this for us all. But I get to choose where my energy goes.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
wow! i just dropped by to read the new comic (another great one btw!-the facial expressions really are immaculate…) and wound up spending about an hour reading articles and comments! In a way, I am more excited about the productive and enlightening debate elicited by the NYT article than the piece itself. Maggie, I totally appreciate your comparison to racially defined spaces, and the concern for providing “sanctuary for anyone who does not fit the default ‘normal’ for gender.” That’s a great point. Also, Jay, your insight and explanations have been tremendously valid (and patient
). I can’t really contribute my own opinion yet (I am a student at a public university which only recently instituted a Women’s Studies Major - yay! - so we’re excited if anyone is interested in gender issues), but I will be forwarding this discussion on to the members of my Rhetorics of Embodiment class for further debate.
Thanks for all the brain food!
March 20th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Butch Fatale: Yeah, and European religion registries were really helpful to Nazis when they were tying to figure out who to deport. Which is why they’re now completely illegal in France. (France doesn’t even collect anonymous census data on religion, which I think might be going too far.) Also, many European countries are still legally Christian or Catholic. Like England, Denmark and Austria. (I find it especially alarming that Austria has an official religion). In the last three years,, I’ve lived in France, the Netherlands and Britain and usually try to take some sort of trip on every longish school break, so I’ve been around a lot of western Europe recently. I used to think Europe was really enlightened on things like secularism. They’re not. Well, France is. But I think given Europe’s relative recent history they should REALLY drop the legal religion ting. Germany still does this too! they collect tithes on behalf of churches. Their state should stay the hell out of policing religions! Why not quit being gender police too?
jayinchicago: sorry for saying that all ftms were butch before they were ftm. You’re totally right and I should have known better.
I want to assert, though, that while you, happily, were able to not internalize negative messages about women and girls, the external pressures of these might have still applied. I mean, I don’t know you, so it’s possible you had a really progressive, wonderful childhood. I was always being told I couldn’t be a boyscout. I couldn’t be an altar boy. I couldn’t play football. I couldn’t stay out too late, etc etc etc.
My dad taught me how to solder and repair electronic things because I begged him to, but he made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anyone that he had. Meanwhile, my brother was encouraged to build all kinds of things and got tools as gifts. I got hair dryers.
Unfortunately, I DID internalize all these things. (Alas, it’s part of why I spent so very many years questioning. Am I really trans or do I just still want to be an altar boy? haha. It made things especially confusing for me.) But even if I hadn’t, I was still experiencing patriarchy trying to lower my horizons. I learned fewer skills when I was a kid because of this.
KC in SD: I HATE American men’s fashions. Whoever came up with the idea that sloppiness equals masculinity is a bad person.
Maggie Jochild: I would find it problematic if a historically black college had a policy against admitting certain minorities, like “no asians” or, maybe worse, if they had some sort of test for who was black enough. I’ve seen that dynamic in undergraduate student politics and it’s really ugly.
To me it seems really obvious that most people who want to go to women’s colleges would see themselves as some kind of woman or female, at least when they started. An ftm who saw themselves as 100% male would feel out of place. He would find his assertions of 100% male masculinity constantly contradicted by his environment. Then, when he graduated, his transcripts and whatnot will list a women’s college. He can never be stealth. He has to come out to everybody whenever they ask about where he went to school. (Or lie.) He has to come out when interviewing for jobs. It’s a hassle that I think most would chose to avoid. The guy in the NYT article is an exception to this rule, but he ended up transferring, which was probably a good choice for him.
“it is, once again, up to women to make sure everybody crapped on by woman-hating feels better” . . . well this assumes that all trans-masculine spectrum people are coming in from outside demanding you comfort them. But many don’t come from outside. I’ve marched for choice and done clinic defense, even though I was fairly certain I would never need an abortion. I’ve done activism for women’s rights (and TG rights). I’m sorry you feel the way that you do because I thought we were all in this together and have given a lot of energy to feminism and will continue to do so. I don’t do it because I’m some super enlightened liberal guy (ugh, they drive me crazy) but because I see my survival as intrinsically linked to yours. The kind of society in which women prosper also tends to be good for trans folks and vice versa. Do I have to now leave all the clubs I joined when I was still thinking of myself as a woman? Have those affiliations become false as I’ve changed? Have I re-written my past?
But I mean, I can’t say that I see masculinity as toxic. I see the circumscribing of roles based on genitals as toxic. Is that what you mean? Do you think butch dykes are toxic or is it only toxic when it’s heteronormative?
As to smashing gender: most people like having a gender. Heck, most people are internally compelled to have a gender. There’s nothing wrong with liking pink and sewing or liking math and the guitar. The problem is when patriarchy asserts that you can’t both like sewing and math or your genitals compel you into a certain set of tastes. Most everybody would keep some gender even if it was optional. That’s fine. But let’s stop seeing only two categories with one of them branded inferior. And for Christ’s sake, biology is NOT destiny! It’s not even immutable! This is the 21st century, we can be whatever we want!
March 20th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Such an informative, and civilized discussion! Not one, alas, in which I feel qualified to participate, but congratulations to all involved!
March 20th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Oh man, Les, I did not mean to imply it was positive to have to register your religion. Thank you for your extended response, as it filled in with actual information what I was trying to refer to (in an unfairly short-hand way). Germany is progressive in a lot of ways, and France is certainly not a paragon of all things free-thinking. I really find the yearning for western europe-style living among some progressives frustrating for exactly this reason. We are different countries with different histories, which leads to a lot of differences. To put it in a rather trite way. While there’s a lot to be admired in Germany’s post-WWII history, it certainly shouldn’t be looked to as an overall model. Particularly if we’re talking about racism and immigration politics, we don’t necessarily want to look to France and Germany for lessons on how to handle it better than we do.
As to the discussion of whether one should change one’s sex or change society (which I’ve heard many times, and frequently from my mother, who was far more masculine when she was growning up than I was), I see that as a false dichotomy. The choice of whether to pursue a medical avenue to make right what feels wrong is not capitulation to the patriarchy. The idea that being FTM or MTF somehow puts you on the side of the powers that be ignores the extent to which transgendered persons are devalued medically, legally and socially, and it designates socially accepted genders as somehow false or anti-revolutionary/anti-feminist/anti-queer. It is not the proportionally few people who are able to afford the means to legally and medically transition who are responsible for oppressive gender roles, and it is not feminine women and masculine men of any medical status or identity who enforce those roles by their adherence to them. It’s the system which values and rewards certain identities and behaviors above others which keeps us all under threat, even those it seems to benefit.
March 20th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Addendum:
I meant to say in my last comment that my mother was a far more masculine girl when she was growing up than I was when i was going up. I did not mean to imply some sort of temporal rift whereby we had simultaneous childhoods.
Les, I just went back and read the rest of your long and wonderful comment. I appreciate your addressing the question of why a transman would be interested in attending a women’s college.
I’d also like to ask if we could examine the question of safety and sanctuary. The question of how male identified folks in women’s spaces imperils the safety of those women has been brought up, and I’d like to know what people mean by that. My girlfriend and I were harassed in college — by women. My choices around my body, identity, how much to drink and what I was comfortable with physically and with whom were all put down, belittled and marginalized or ignored by women. I know I have an instinctive feeling of needing to protect myself around large groups of guys, or even sometimes one guy, so I’m not questioning whether the presense of men often makes women feel unsafe. I’m questioning the implication that being around only women is safe. I can tell you that if all the other masculine folks at Smith had left I would have felt incredibly unsafe.
March 20th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Les, I was talking specifically about admission to women-only colleges, not “all the clubs” you’ve belonged to. Don’t set up a straw man, here, in order to assume a division I’m not stating.
If you identify as woman, then surely you at least comprehend (although you may not agree) that a founding principle of feminism is that female conditioning differs markedly from male conditioning, one aspect of which is that females are responsible for the emotional well-being of everyone, themselves and males. I was pointing out that the expectation that females assume the job of ensuring the emotional well-being of ANYONE who is feeling excluded from the patriarchy is sexist, and encouraging us to place that responsibility on those who actually hold the power — which, if you identify as male, IS you.
I think it’s legitimate for a black university to limit enrollment to blacks only. I don’t think it’s racist for groups who are target for racism to define their own race. They don’t hold the institutional power — whites do.
It’s about the power, not the visible differences.
To clarify my terminology: I’m not an essentialist. I do not believe that gender behavior (or brain structure), sexual orientation, race, class, or masculinity/femininity exist biologically in a meaningful or demonstrable way. I believe they are all constructs which vary from culture to culture and era to era, and that (in part) the advocacy of them as biologically determined DOES feed the status quo power structure, which is patriarchal and white supremicist. I don’t think human liberation will occur until all these cultural constructs are recognized and respected as choices, without power being assigned to one group or another — and I believe when that occurs, most people will not choose identities that in any way resemble what we gather together as identities today.
And — I believe that some identities (white, “upper class”, masculine/feminine) are so dependent on oppressive ideology and segregation for their definition that they are beyond rehabilitation. Which is not to say we should give up being white, for instance — just recognize it’s a meaningless category as we’ve defined it, based on putting everyone else into the “other” box, hoarding resources, living in denial/confusion, colonizing the planet, and claiming biology where none exists. Once you undo those lies, the “race” itself vanishes and you can think flexibly.
So, when I use these terms, that’s what I mean. I understand we don’t agree. We can work in alliance where we do agree.
March 20th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Butch Fatale, yeah, I noticed the safety issue had been brought up, too. I think it’s not addressable — I can’t actually make someone else “feel” anything. I can insure actual safety of others, to some extent, but that won’t necessarily mean they “feel” it. Which has led us astray for 30 years.
Rather, I think the only goal we CAN achieve (aside from actual safety, of course) is relative freedom from male conditioning in a learning environment: The opportunity for those raised with female conditioning to find out what that means free from the constant defining of female which comes from males, and, hopefully, to sort out which pieces are human, which pieces are not. Female-on-female mistreatment exists and damages us all. But it does not actually carry the weight of 3000 years of patriarchy behind it, and being able to make that distinction turns out to be critical for a long of girls/women to come into their own power.
March 20th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I think that female/female mistreatment does indeed carry that weight. If men have the power, and women gain power by the men who deem them worthy, then other women are the enemy. The threat of non-conforming women is always responded to not just by men but also other women.
So if you’re invested in people socialized as women being in an environment focused on providing a space relatively detatched from patriarchical values (which in my experience is a debatable description of a women’s college, but I think not an uncommon one), why the objection to FTMs at a women’s college?
March 20th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I’m turning off the italics I so thoughtlessly left on, sorry. And — I’d like to debate the question, Butch Fatale, but I’m going to leave room for others to speak here. Not abandoning you or the issue, just sitting out for a bit.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I think it’s legitimate for anyone in a target group for oppression to define themselves and choose their focus, temporarily or long-term.
whenever I hear the idea that it is, once again, up to women to make sure everybody crapped on by woman-hating feels better, I have an emotional rejection of of being saddled with that burden without my consent.
YES. Especially the second paragraph - that whole line of thinking that ends of making me feel like this: “Yes, of course, welcome to the comfort of my bosom! It’s here for you, whether I want you there or not, I have absolutely no say in it! My rights to privacy, bodily and psychological boundaries are moot! I am woman, I must comfort!” Blechh.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
That’s fine Maggie, but I want to point something out. I see you mentioning something about dykes in the 70s’ definition of women being the same as “tranny women” today. And I don’t know what you’re getting at there, but I want to make sure we’re clear that transwomen are women who were raised as boys, and transmen are men who were raised as girls. Whether they themselves agreed with that social assessment is a different question of course, but I’ve seen a lot of confusion around this in other places and I want to make sure it’s not happening here. If, in fact, the women you knew back then had a definition of woman broad enough to encompass transwomen, brava, that wasn’t and still is not a common view.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Wow, great discussion!
Butch Fatale said “I’d also like to ask if we could examine the question of safety and sanctuary. The question of how male identified folks in women’s spaces imperils the safety of those women has been brought up, and I’d like to know what people mean by that. My girlfriend and I were harassed in college — by women”
I don’t know if Butch Fatale would agree or not with my opinion on this, so I don’t want to use his quote to make my point. I’ll just use it as a starting point.
I have always had a problem with Women-only spaces. (Full Disclosure, I am a bi, biologically born woman who has always identified as female, albeit fairly butch, just so you know my perspective/limitations/biases). While I agree that patriarchal society is unsafe for women, individual men are not all unsafe, nor are individual women all safe.
Being in a woman - only space does not mean you will not be criticized, judged, stereotyped, emotionally (or physically) abused. Whenever you have a group of people who identify similarly (by sex, race, religion), you breed identity politics, that insidious and hateful tendency for some people of that group to try to control the rest of the group by defining what that group is, thinks, feels, or represents.
Women of color have been legitimately complaining about the Feminist movement since the dawn of time. Feminists have been complaining about other Feminists regarding the “porn is evil vs. don’t control my body or sex choices” debate. Men of color have been understanding upset about the racism in the gay men’s movement. Every time a group gets together, somehow they manage to oppress their own.
Given that history, I don’t see how it is possible to draw a bright line in the sand and say that women-born-women make a space safe and trans women make a space unsafe. I’m white myself, but I certainly can imagine a situation where a woman of color gets more support, safety, and alliance from a particular trans woman than from a particular white woman-born-woman. It all depends on the person.
Interestingly enough, being white, I cannot bring myself to apply this same logic to the TBC (traditional black colleges), like Morehouse, etc. Maybe I just feel like too much of an outsider to make that pronouncement, or maybe I just worry about any lingering racism I have.
PS - Can someone let me know if there is a better/less offensive term than “woman-born-woman” for non-trans women? I have no idea of good terminology for us that isn’t insulting to trans people.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
The German state collects thithes for the roman-catholic and the lutheran-protestant church, and - as far as I know - none else. These two large christian denominations are treated unfairly well by German laws. I have great hopes that some islamic group will sue for equality and then these laws will be thrown out at last.
Though the both catholic and protestant churches will really have a crisis if they suddenly have to depend on their members giving freely (and not with their tax).And that would create a lot of problems in the social services sector. Even now, they are reducing their activities like German-as-a-foreign-language courses and other socially important tasks.
But though it may seem strange to someone from the US to find your faith a thing dealt with in tax forms, in my view, the churches have less influence than in the US.
Anyone trying to teach the bible in biology class is seen as a rabid maniac and won’t be teaching long.
On the other hand, I found it rather frightening that laws forbidding the tshador for teachers allow the nuns habit (not to mention the wired Supreme Court decision that the crucifixes in bavarian schools are not really a form of faith-statement and therefore are still allowed).
But anyway, asking which country is better or more advanced really is the wrong question. Looking at how things are done elsewhere can be an eye-opener,sure. But if there were a perfect country, we would have already all moved there.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Non-trans women works. I’ve also heard female-assigned (birth sex assignment based on genitals), and cissexual women.
What’s kind of funny is we are getting back to this comic, in some ways. Janis is getting a girlhood. Janis is getting female socialization. What if Janis (regardless of surgical status) wanted to go to, let’s say, Smith? What if Janis needed to (god forbid) utilize resources for women such as women only sexual assault support? Is she different because she is transitioning so young?
I don’t like reliance on the female socialization part of female birth sex assignment to be the marker of what makes a woman a woman, or what doesn’t. what it really does is underline and support the idea that sex=birth genitals. I know it would pain some people to think about, but if we are saying gender is based on birth sex assignment in our society, and then we are separating people into immutable groups based on gender (which came from birth sex assignment), we are basically back at gender=birth sex assignment.
March 20th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Hail Eris!
OK, for some reason, I’ve been italicised, but wev, it’s no big. Anyway: I think female-on-female mistreatment *comes from* patriarchy, because some women think they can “please” said patriarchy by mistreating other women, but instead, they’re selling out for the proverbial mess o’ pottage, since the best they can hope for is a condescending pat on the head, from unenlightened men, and disgust from men who reject the patriarchy. OTOH, in places where patriarchy’s power is weak, those women who would be sell-outs elsewhere become powermongers instead, whether they’re head bully or Mother Superior. True, that means it’s more a matter of opportunism, but patriarchy affects the form of that mistreatment, twists it into a tool for its own use. I guess by “comes from patriarchy”, I mean the sort of mistreament we usually see in places where men have total dominance over women, such as certain portions of Asia and Africa. The female-on-female mistreament there is entirely of the “sell-out” variety, and has been for so long, it’s practically considered “tradition”. *Cultural* tradition, even. But no one has a claim on that. Man’s inhumanity to man is rivalled only by woman’s inhumanity to woman…and eclipsed only by man’s inhumanity to woman.
Snarky
March 20th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Hail Eris!
Yay, the italics went away…Hey, CJ, does that mean wearing an upside-down crucifix isn’t a problem? ;-{P}
Snarky
March 20th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
A quick plug - if you haven’t heard of them already, check out the folk/bluegrass group Coyote Grace. One of the members is a transman; his song “Ghost Boy” speaks of reconciling his “f past” with his “m present.”
March 20th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Oops … sorry, there was meant to be a link there”
http://www.coyotegrace.com
March 20th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I read about / hear about / think about violence against lgbt & gender nonconforming kids all the time. You’d think I’d be less affected by the Lawrence King tragedy, but I tear up every fucking time I come across it. It’s just so horrible…
Thanks for putting it in the strip, Alison; altho it makes me feel sad, it also feels makes me feel good that it’s more of a solid part of our shared history…
March 21st, 2008 at 9:23 am
Maggie Jochild: I’m an alum of a women’s college. Now I’m ftm. This isn’t a strawman for me, but actually a set of questions I’m trying to navigate as I start my transition.
(Just for clarity: Anybody that says that mtfs don’t belong in women’s spaces is transphobic and is a bad person. Mtfs are women, of course they being in women’s spaces. Anybody who thinks that mtfs have privilege compared to cis women needs to spend 5 minutes looking at statistics for unemployment, and violence.)
One serious very difficult thing for me, when I started realizing that Iding as a woman wasn’t working for me, is that suddenly a lot of people said things like, “those who actually hold the power — which, if you identify as male, IS you.” Whoah, there! Everybody who saw me walking down the street or talked to me didn’t see me as some sort of power holder. They saw me as a butch dyke. It’s like assholes in hardware stores suddenly started being civil to me because they could somehow sense that I held power. All of the sudden, I lose access to all the alternate spaces set up to help non-powerholders like myself, but I don’t get any actual power. So I was still experiencing the direct effects of sexism. I was experiencing queerphobia. But I’m the patriarchy, so no support for me from anybody.
In what way does it advance feminism to kick the newly out transguy out into the cold? Transition is not an instant process. It’s not a sudden binary opposition. I didn’t wake up one day and find out I was the patriarchy. I wasn’t coming in from the outside demanding support. I was an insider trying too figure out how to gracefully leave. With the exception of the occasional subject of a New York Times article, the vast majority of ftms at women’s colleges were not trans when they entered.
You could argue now, that I’m starting to pass reliably, that I hold some power in patriarchy. And I can say that it’s actually shocking how different it is going from being read as a butch dyke to a straight guy. I don’t want to minimize the change in casual encounters, nor their importance on one’s psyche. Sustained interactions, though, I’m one of the power holders only as long as I stay stealth. I’ve changed from a visible to an invisible minority. All I can say about it is that it’s weird and new to me.
I want to point out, also, that all this stuff about patriarchy and gender politics is really external to why people transition. Mtfs don’t want to be victims of patriarchy any more than ftms are primarily motivated by a desire to seize power. And, again, for me these aren’t abstract, academic questions. I have strong solidarity with my sisters. If there hadn’t been this terrible power dynamic hanging over, I would have transitioned years earlier.
March 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am
Hail Eris!
Patriarchy (and gender politics, to some extent) still affects our _ability_ to transition, though — it’s literally preventing me from doing so here in B.C., for example. Plus, as long as I’m wearing a masculine appearance (which is as long as I’m unable to find decent women’s clothing for a low-income transgirl who prefers black and is heavily (financially) dependent on a father who was abusive (physically, verbally, and emotionally) in younger years (and displayed a certain amount of homophobia, long before that moment of waking-up to realisation)), I’m presumed to be as much a part of the patriarchy as you, Les — the same patriarchy which gave subtle support to, frex, Brandon Teena’s killers. I have no desire to _be_ part of that, which is one minor ingredient in my stew of reasons for wanting to transition. Since I’ve always been something of an outsider — in a “special class” (Grades 1-4), a heavy reader, a gamer, an sf fan, a comic book fan, a nerd who actually read ahead in science textbooks, a geek dancing by him(her…)self at sock hops — one more layer of freakishness is not in and of itself worrisome to me. My drunk driver of a premier, however, is quite another matter — he embodies patriarchy if anyone does. Mind you, the whole ancestral McGill-Campbell enmity (going back over 260 years now — he lives down to his ancestors, BTW) might be an element there, too.;-{P}
Snarky
March 21st, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I’m afraid I didn’t take the time to read this whole thread, but I read the top and the bottom (oooh…) and can offer one comment. I went to a women’s college about 15 years ago now, and we had at least one MtF student there. It was difficult for her, including getting some rather clueless health care from the studnt health center, but many of us in the bi/lesbian “group” worked to support and accept her, with varying success. I think the fact that she was a little older than most of the students probably helped her to stay calm through some of the storms. I was certainly confused about the whole thing, but preferred to err on the side of acceptance. I liked her personally, so I do sometimes wonder what my attitude would have been like if I’d thought she was a jerk…
March 21st, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Ooh! Exciting new posts!
Jen in CA — I don’t take offense at male pronouns, but I use female pronouns. And I don’t disagree with your point, but to be clear about what I was talking about, the women in question were queer, and often former partners or friends. Of course there are any number of ways that people are awful to one another, and when they keep people feeling that they can’t trust others, the system (the capitalist machine, which serves only itself) wins, and the community in question loses.
And also, I think we need to recall that community defined spaces are different from accredited colleges and universities, which must abide by certain federal and state laws which are not community defined. I take issue with comparing women’s colleges with HBCUs for several reasons. One being that while the black experience seems to be the go-to comparison in certain circles these days, race and sex, gender and/or sexuality are different and are treated and experienced differently. The other, pertinent in this particular case: HBCUs do not bar non-black applicants from admission.
March 21st, 2008 at 3:25 pm
> Hey, CJ, does that mean wearing an upside-down crucifix
> isn’t a problem? ;-{P
Well, I don’t thinks its a smart move in the outback of bavaria - allegedly, there are still catholic priests around that go for exorcism, though that may be a roumor - but in the cities, there’s no problem with that. And it’s certainly no reason to be fired as a teacher or civil servant. (Though if you exhibt certain behaviuor like beliving in ghosts and acting on that belief, that will get you a nice stay in a closed institution).
Don’t think most people over here associate anything with upside down crosses anayway.