As Twitter followers might have noticed, last night I got very angry about a couple of things. One of those was over a book, and the issues involved are so complex and so personal that it will take me several days to process things and get to the point where I can explain why I found it so offensive. The other issue is rather more straightforward, and involves a skeleton.
Many of you will have seen the news reports. For the benefit of those of you who haven’t, here’s a link: Telegraph.
And for the benefit of those who can’t be bothered to click through, the short version is that some archaeologists working in Prague discovered a male skeleton in amongst a group of female-only burials, and allegedly concluded that they had found a “gay cavemanâ€.
The society that made the burials made a very clear point of interring males and females separately, and burying them in different ways. The individual in question must therefore have been recognized by that society as female, even though the skeleton appears to be biologically male.
This in itself is not unusual. There are many well documented instances of people, in cultures that are not monotheist and patriarchal, who opt to live in a gender role different from that of their biological sex. Pacific Islanders and the native peoples of North America both exhibit this type of behavior, so there’s no reason to suppose that people in Eastern Europe 5,000 years ago might not do so as well.
I hesitate to blame the archaeologists for what followed, because journalists do not always quote honestly. The Telegraph piece I linked to has Kamila Remisova Vesinova saying:
“Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual,”
But the Montréal Gazette quotes her as follows:
“So we think, based on data, that it could be a member of a so-called third gender, which were people either with different sexual orientation or transsexuals or just people who identified themselves differently from the rest of the society.”
What is the difference between these statements? The Telegraph implies that “homosexual†and “transsexual†are types of “sexual orientationâ€, but the gazette quote suggests that Vesinova understands the difference.
Now think about the gay men you know. Are they the sort of guys who would want to get buried amongst the girls? Some may, but many would not, because one of the things that marks them out as gay men is their wholehearted acceptance of the fact that they are men. Some may play with gender presentation, but most gay men do not live their lives as women. Trans women, on the other hand, do just that.
So given our understanding (and bear in mind that 5,000 years ago notions of what it means to be “gay†or “trans†may have been very different, or non-existent) this person was probably a trans woman. The Telegraph, however, conflates “gay†and “transâ€, and then uses this to suggest that the buried person was gay. (Let’s pass on the fact that the term “caveman†is entirely inappropriate for a mere 5,000 years ago in Europe.)
But surely this is a minor distinction? Why am I so cranky about it? Aren’t trans people part of that LGBT group anyway? They are all the same, right?
Well, not exactly. LGB and T people are united in being looked down upon by idiots like Telegraph journalists, but there is a significant different. Being L, G or B is all about who you like to have sex with. Being T is all about who you are. Trans people can come in all shades of sexual orientation, but that has nothing to do with their being trans.
Or, to put it another way, I don’t live my life as a woman just so that I can fuck men. Really. There are easier ways, that involve a lot less pain, expense and discrimination.
The trouble is that the psychiatrists and loony politicians who despise trans people have latched onto the sexual orientation thing. The official line from the psychiatrists is that trans people do what they do in order to satisfy some deep-seated sexual urge. Because, you know, to some psychiatrists anything that anyone does has to have something to do with sex.
What does this mean for trans people? It means that their entire lives are defined as a sexual act. When I get dressed in the morning, it’s not because I’d be cold and embarrassed without doing so, it is supposedly because I am sexually aroused by wearing women’s clothes. If I go to the hairdresser, it is supposedly because I am sexually aroused by having my hair styled in a feminine manner. When I go to the bathroom, its not because I need a pee, it is supposedly because I want to rape someone’s wife or daughter while wearing women’s clothes.
All this sex gets terribly tiring.
And also very frustrating, because it really isn’t much fun to be constantly told that you don’t know your own mind, and everything you feel about yourself is a lie you have concocted to cover up a powerful sexual perversion. Not to mention being constantly told that I am “really†a man.
Most of the time this washes over me. It is a dull background drone of derision emanating from right wing politicians, psychiatrists, religious leaders and hard-line feminists. And many people do know the difference. When the story first broke I saw several tweets pointing out how stupid it was. But yesterday we had the same story being pushed by Dr. Ruth, who represents herself as an expert on issues of sexuality and really ought to know better (or should at least pick people to run her Twitter account who know better). And her opinion, of course, get’s accepted as authoritative by a whole bunch of people, and so the nonsense grows.
Really, painting the Forth Bridge is easy compared to trans rights education.
Still, can’t give up, have to keep trying. After all, I’m supposedly only doing this because I get sexual gratification from it, so it must be fun, right?
I think you are right to be upset and to express that anger with the stupidity of Telegraph- journalism. It must be painful for you to feel the need to speak out in this fashion, but only be refusing to accept the sensationalized media-ideas thrown around, by calling attention to the reality of trans-gender lives and motivations can any progress be made.
I’m proud to call you my friend and proud of your courage.
Thank you!
Ah, the Telegraph: bastion of respectability for those who’d be embarrassed to be caught reading the Daily Fail. It sounds like the Torygraph journalist has decided that pushing their political agenda (“social conservatism FTW! Strictly defined gender roles and sexualities with no flexibility, since as we all know, ‘male and female God created them’ can only be interpreted in one way!”) is more important than accurately reporting the remarks of the archaeologist, let alone dealing with this thing the rest of the world (“woolly liberals”, “perverts”) like to think of as historical fact.
I can at least somewhat empathise with how you feel about this… it seems both to be sullying history with a horrific political agenda and sexualising everything about the trans identity which, as anyone with any sensitivity or knowledge of the issue knows, it is most definitely not; sex, gender, sexuality. Unfortunately for the Torygraph’s worldview, reality says these are different things, linked perhaps, but not the same!
(I say this as a Grauniad reader…)
In fairness to the Torygraph, they were not the only ones. The Fail ran with the same story, but I absolutely refuse to link to them.
Also I expect that of them. I don’t expect people like Dr. Ruth to get these things wrong, or, for that matter, the Huffington Post.
Y’know, I wish it weren’t the responsibility of the non-heterocis to explain to (certain elements of) the heterocis population that the nonheterocis population are ALSO perfectly normal human beings. Being the majority doesn’t define “normality”, it just means majority, and those are very different things.
Really, really wishing the media would start to pick up on the REAL facts of the nonheterocis population, and forget Freud’s sex-obsession. As a (dead, white, European!) man once said, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”, and all of the time, a trans person is transgender, not trying to get their damn rocks off.
Apparently, I breastfeed my child for my own sexual gratification. So you, know, word.
Can’t help wondering why we don’t hear more Harry Met Sally sound effects all over the place, really…
*sigh* Yes, of course you do. Why didn’t I think of that?
Too busy orgasming everywhere I imagine.
We have actually had mothers reported to Child Protection for sexual abuse, for breastfeeding.
And we’ve had some Child Protection social workers, start proceedings…
We have some severe body issues in our culture, that’s for sure.
Sadly this does not surprise me.
Kudos to you for the courage to speak out – I tend to accept everyone as they present themselves and have never found need to question that – but I know from being an outspoken woman of Jewish descent that there are far too many people that don’t.
And wait – sex abuse for BREAST FEEDING???
I was thinking the Caveman might be entirely the right word for describing the journalist at the Telegraph 🙂
Unfortunately, Sean, I think you’re right. That leaves open the question of what to cal the Neanderthals who write for the Daily Smear
Must be fun? Well, you might just be a masochist, you never know… 🙂
Serious response: Most of these stories I’ve seen on this are a variation on the second article. While I wish the first couple of papers could have not jumped to conclusions, I’m glad to see plenty of others helping to get the correction out there. In recent months it sees like Big Media has become much more willing to run the “whoa, that’s not what we meant” sort of story.
The stuff in the Telegraph is not only loathsome, it’s stupid. When I was in graduate school, one of my friends was studying classical archeology, and she tried to explain proper process to me this way:
You discover a sealed cave in which there are thirty posts set up with bear skulls on them. The bear skulls are smeared with red ochre. What do you know?
Me (hesitating and trying to sound serious and intelligent and make NO ASSUMPTIONS): You have found a site with ritual significance of some kind.
Her: No. There are thirty posts set up in a cave. The posts have bear skulls on them. The bear skulls are smeared with red ochre. And without additional information, you will never know anything else.
In order to get from the evidence of one male skeleton among many female skeletons to assertions about anyone’s sexual identity, the number of assumptions you have to make is almost overwhelming. And the asuumptions certainly say more about those assuming than about the culture doing the burying. I wonder if a female skeleton in the male burial site would occasion the same rush to interpret (or merely cue the theme song to “Where the Boys Are”).
The confusion between sexual orientation and gender identity never makes any sense to me. It’s a category error that suggests a perceptual handicap, though. Do you suppose these people really don’t know the difference between who they are and who they want?