Off the top, let me acknowledge that there is disagreement between various factions on the importance of civility. I hope that I have conveyed that I am in favor of it. One of the purposes of this diary is to promote some civility, in a philosophical vein.
It may be that in my writing travels, travails, and educational efforts, I may have ignited or sparked the desire of someone else to write about trans issues. If that has indeed happened, then part of my purpose in life has been served.
But I would be less than observant of the duties that purpose imposes if I did not include the caveats.
 C. Jacob Hale |
Once upon a time a transman friend of mine named Jacob Hale, currently a faculty member in Queer Studies and Philosophy at Cal State – Northridge, composed a list of…
I reproduce this list here hoping that those who wish to engage transpeople through commentary in our diaries might consider the appropriate adaptations of these rules to that mode of intellectual exchange.
I also hope to generate less contentious behavior then there has been in recent discussion of transfolk and our rights. Please understand that when you comment on a diary, you are writing. Hopefully you will seek to apply at least some of the following.
On with the rules.
1. Approach the topic with a sense of humility: you are not the experts about transsexuals, transsexuality, transsexualism, or trans __. Transpeople are.
It is sometimes heartening to see non-trans people attempting to explain to other non-trans people what transgender and/or transsexuality is about, but when it comes to a point of an actual transperson joining the conversation, dogmatically defending your opinion of who we are likely becomes inappropriate.
2. Interrogate your own subject position: the ways in which you have power that we don’t (including powers of access, juridical power, institutional power, material power, power of intelligible subjectivity), the ways in which this affects what you see and what you say, what your interests and stakes are in forming your initial interest, and what your interests and stakes are in what you see and say as you continue your work.
The above rule, of course, applies to writing about any non-dominant peoples. Colonization can take many forms.
3. Beware of replicating the following discursive movement (which Sandy Stone articulates in The Empire Strikes Back, and reminds us is familiar from other colonial discourses): Initial fascination with the exotic; denial of subjectivity, lack of access to dominant discourse; followed by a species of rehabilitation.
Understanding what this is about requires the reading of some feminist diatribes against the existence of transwomen in general and in women’s space in particular. Included in that are writings by Mary Daly, Janice Raymond, and Bernice Hausman (my review of her book is towards the bottom of that page. It is rather lengthy. That may compensate for the relative lack of my own writing in this piece.). More up-to-date efforts may be found at femonade.
4. Don’t erase our voices by ignoring what we say and write, through gross misrepresentation (ala Hausman, re: Sandy Stone and Kate Bornstein), by denying us our academic credentials if we have them (Raymond and Hausman), or by insisting that we must have academic credentials if we are to be taken seriously (multitudes).
5. Be aware that our words are very often part of conversations we’re having within our communities, and that we may be participating in overlapping conversations within multiple communities, e.g., our trans communities, our scholarly communities (both interdisciplinary ones and those that are disciplinarily bounded), feminist communities, queer communities, communities of color. Be aware of these conversations, our places within them, and our places within community and power structures. Otherwise, you won’t understand our words.
That’s a little harsh. You may understand the words…but not understand their context. It is tiring having to constantly try to explain that context, but we…at least I…try to make that effort. Often the effort takes the form of parenthetical statements or the use of ellipsis. Some people don’t like the use of that in modern communication. Asking us to cease using the aside in order to personalize…or sometimes depersonalize a statement, but almost always to contextualize it…is tantamount to asking a transperson not to be a transperson. Clue: What we put in the asides is often the more important part of the communication. We expect that to be read.
6. Don’t totalize us, don’t represent us or our discourses as monolithic or univocal; look carefully at each use of ‘the’, and at plurals.
I may be the most vocal transsexual person at this site, but I am by no means the only one. What I try to convey is my experience, my observations, and my conclusions. When I use plurals to discuss transpeople in general, it is with much trepidation and usually a lot of forethought.
7. Don’t uncritically quote non-transsexual “experts,” e.g., Harry Benjamin, Robert Stoller, Leslie Lothstein, Janice Raymond, Virgina Prince, Marjorie Garber. Apply the same critical acumen to their writings as you would to anyone else.
Being someone who has chosen to make a career out of studying and writing about us is not the same as being one of us.
8. Start with the following as, minimally, a working hypothesis that you would be loathe to abandon: “Transsexual lives are lived, hence livable” (as Naomi Scheman put it in Queering the Center by Centering the Queer (Google Books)).
If you start trying to tell me about how I live my life and I tell you that you are in error, choose to believe me.
9. When you’re talking about male-to-female transsexual discourses, phenomena, experiences, lives, subjectivities, embodiments, etc., make that explicit and keep making it explicit throughout; stating it once or twice is not sufficient to undermine paradigmaticity. Don’t toss in occasional references to female-to-male transsexual discourses, phenomena, experiences, lives, subjectivities, embodiments, etc., without asking what purposes those references serve you and whether or not those purposes are legitimate.
I struggle with this. I do write about transmen from time to time. But I full well understand that I have as much understanding of their lives as a cis-gendered woman has of mine (i.e. a non-trans woman should be able to comprehend the woman part of transwoman, but probably will struggle with the trans part. Similarly, I may understand the trans part of being a transman…and even to a certain extent the man part, since I have lived part of my life as a man…but I will always fail to understand the totality of what it means to be a transman). I rely on visits from transmen members in the comments of my diaries to correct any misstatements I have made.
10. Be aware that if you judge us with reference to your political agenda (or agendas) taken as the measure or standard, especially without even asking if your agenda(s) might conflict with ours and might not automatically take precedence over ours, that it’s equally legitimate (or illegitimate, as the case may be) for us to use our political agenda(s) as measures by which to judge you and your work.
I don’t think I can expand upon that.
11. Focus on: What does looking at transsexual people, transsexuality, transsexualism, or transsexual ___ tell you about yourself, not what does it tell you about trans.
We do, after all, tell you about ourselves and our experiences in the attempt to develop some kind of empathy in you, some firing of your mirror neurons. The best response is often for you to look in the mirror before responding to what we have said.
12. Ask yourself if you can travel in our trans worlds. If not, you probably don’t get what we’re talking about. Remember that we live most of our lives in non-transsexual worlds, so we probably do get what you’re talking about.
You may understand our words, but you will be lacking in some of the denotations and connotations those words evoke in us.
13. Don’t imagine that you can write about the trope of transsexuality, the figure of the transsexual, transsexual discourse/s, or transsexual subject positions without writing about transsexual subjectivities, lives, experiences, and embodiments. Ask yourself: what relations hold between these categorial constructions, thus what implications hold between what you write about one and what you don’t write about another.
That is, what you choose not to say…or give short shrift to…may be as important as what you choose to emphasize.
14. Don’t imagine that there is only one trope of transsexuality, only one figure of “the” transsexual, or only one transsexual discourse at any one temporal and cultural location.
Indeed, many of us would ask you not to use the word transsexual as a noun, but as the adjective it quite transparently is.
15. If we attend to your work closely enough to engage in angry, detailed criticism, don’t take this as a rejection, crankiness, disordered ranting and raving, or the effects of testosterone poisoning. It’s a gift. (And it’s praise: there must be something we value about you to bother to engage you, especially since such engagement is often painful, as well as time-consuming, for us.)
If I spend hours in a back-and-forth with you, it is because I think you can be rescued from whatever foolishness I perceive in your position. I am seeking to extend your education. But nobody can teach people who do not wish to learn.
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…is almost guaranteed to not be a show stopper. But constantly floating on the surface doesn’t necessarily advance the cause.
The hope is, I would hope it is obvious, to get people to think before they express their opinions.
Ben Folds
are rules I am not used to having followed for the non-trans gay community though they may be applicable to the gay community as well.
This for example:
No one or very few people would pay any attention to this rule if the word “Gay and Lesbian” were substituted for “Transexuals”. The arrogance I find on places like Daily Kos is extreme; every dismissive straight person and even some “supportive” people come across as if they’re experts on the subject of our lives.
In fact every one of these rules or almost every one could be applied to gay and lesbian lives as well.
At bottom, what it appears to mean is “approach people whose lives and cultures and viewpoints you may not understand with a modicum of humility and respect”.
I hardly disagree — but I will point out, we don’t even get this as teh ghey, to say nothing of the transsexual. I try to use respectful words at all times and understand I have little idea what it must be like to be gender variant inasmuch as I may understand what it’s like to be gay.