on being gwyneth

“You’re interfering with my fabulosity and specialness, you poser.”

Sorry. You don’t own genderfucking, nor “breaking the binary,” nor even the identity. Read up on some anthropology, if not recent queer history.

“You’re not genderqueer, so you’ve got no right to speak.”

Oh? And just how would you know, little Miss Thing?

I live on the fringes of a community that has internalized identity politics to the point where your politics defines your identity. If, within a given subgroup, your ideological gestures fall short of local requirements, the very first thing that comes under scrutiny is your legitimacy, not only as a fellow traveler, but as a kind of person.

And the tool they use to police these boundaries is language. Every exchange is a question of control, and even topics that allegedly are not about specifying who is and is not a tribe member turn out to be little else, in-group and out-group language and supposedly unique concerns strictly circumscribing a territory defended at first by glib condescension – so much lazy reliance on rote phrases – then by shunning and hostility.

Among the less-committed, thoroughgoing leftists have a reputation for being control-freaks… an attitude that confuses and even enrages those of us on the left who believe we actually seek freedom, not constraint. But the longer I am in contact with a certain strain of ideologically-determined, discourse-enforcing, self-limiting boundary maintenance, the more I sort of get the point.

The reduction of self to the suffering object, sometimes with the goal of enhancing (especially moral) credibility in a peer group.

It’s a pathology. You get shat on enough, wearing shit on your head becomes a claim to identity.

Genderqueer assholes and crossdressing tourists who can’t inhabit the transsexual mind and so it doesn’t exist.

Identity police, the doglike keepers of the narrative, ill-informed, ill-willed and belligerent.

And in the middle, borrowed repetitious rhetoric, leftist mad libs in lieu of critical, independent thought.

The valorizing of obvious psychosis, let batshit reign because fierce is cool and it serves the purpose.

And there’s only one kind of transsexual isn’t there – yours, and culture and self-knowledge and even the right to be *un*certain be damned, we’re all just women, right, because what could possibly worse than to be *actually trans*, the thing itself, and that there be a world for that.

And I didn’t transition to conform to your certainties, your ideologies, your exacting critera of what makes a good ally, woman, person.

Your rationales as thin as your skins are thick, as rice paper while you hold your torches at the ready and just go ahead and

Burn.

any argument that transpeople ought not to exist – all such arguments – are the same argument.

buying into any part of one, buys into the whole.

just because some part is advanced by someone you may otherwise wish to find affinity with – or worse, purchase the good graces of – does not mean that it has any more merit. it’s still the same essential erasure.

we won’t end gender oppression by ending gender. and those who most strenuously call for it, on the grounds that it “reinforces the binary” (and who object to the idea of “transgender” on the same grounds), want only to establish their own binary: themselves and everyone else. they want gender for their own, and are quite happy to express it, play with it… and most importantly, make choices based on it.

i like gender, and i want more of it, not less. i want more butch and fey, more straight and gay, more of just about every damned thing expressed to its fullest potential by everyone. differences are interesting and beautiful, and the fact that differences are employed as an excuse for oppression is a stupid reason to eliminate the differences themselves.

who cares if it’s binary, or trinary, or wildly multivariate? the fact is that the greater portion of the culture will always tend toward a pair of generally recognizable categories, and for perfectly good reasons. the point is not to erase those categories – and the identities of the people who are quite comfortable with them – but to make room for the variances within and between and outside, and to keep teaching people that it needn’t all be expressed in power relations and dominance games… and most importantly, that variance isn’t deviance.

i ran the DOR here in DC for a few years. took it from a small circle of middle-aged white transwomen huddled around candles in dupont circle to a larger, much more comprehensive event first at the Capitol and then on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial.

after i quit – i had some personal stuff to deal with, as well as some lasting internal issues regarding the event itself – it languished for a year and then was taken up by the local TPOC communities. it’s a very different thing now, to which i don’t feel as connected, but that’s even appropriate. they are the actual majority here, but more importantly they are the people most at risk here, the ones who actually die.

the DOR is not a fucking PR event. it’s about who we *are*, and the price we pay for it, not about who we ought to be just to be known as human.

the HRC is cordially invited to go fuck themselves.

excellent. something new for the paleofeminists to freak out about: tomboy fashion.

as long as people look good in this, there will be no “end of gender.”

alison looks killer in this kind of thing.

do the math.

after years of careful observation and thoughtful consideration, i’ve come to the conclusion that there is a simple taxonomy for trans people:

Obviously Demented Assholes (ODAs)
and
Everyone Else

this taxonomy has a number of advantages. first, it is universal: it cuts equally across all other boundaries and classifications. TGs, TVs, CDs, TSs, AGPs, WBTs, etc… all have their full share of ODAs.

second, it’s parsimonious: there are no subcategories or partials. you cannot say “well, i may be an asshole but i’m not demented,” nor can you say “i may be a demented asshole but it’s really not all that obvious.” no. an ODA is an ODA, complete.

by the same token, if one is not an ODA, then they are simply EE, without any need whatsoever for further parsing.

further, the language is crystal clear, with no ambiguity. there is no possible argument over the usages of “sex” and “gender.” no outmoded references to virginia prince. no arbitrary distinctions based on unreliable psychology or unreplicated experiment. the only possible point of debate is whether Asshole refers to an actual sphincter or a slang metaphor, but anyone who would take up such an argument self-reveals as ODA. QED.

finally, the taxonomy is home-grown, without any imposition of external authority, manufactured pathologies or prejudicial categories. ODAness is achieved, not born, and we know it when we see it.

please wash regularly. you may be sitting next to an Obviously Demented Asshole right now.