Feminism

A Campaign Promise

~ Cheryl

As you may have noticed, I think that civil rights for trans people are very important. Apparently I am not alone. A Rethuglican candidate for Secretary of State in Michigan thinks that they are so important that he has put in his manifesto a promise to ensure that no disgusting pervos get any civil rights in the state should he get to run it. Monica Roberts has more.

To a certain extent you can count having come to the attention of the enemy as a success. In this particular case, however, I think what is more interesting is the tactics. Few things make the Rethuglicans happier than seeing various minority groups fighting viciously between themselves for a seat at the table that they are never going to get. This, I am fairly sure, is a deliberate attempt to sow discord, both of the racial sort that we saw over Prop. 8, and between members of the LGBT community.

By the way, if anyone was interested in the questions raised by my gender in sport post, you might like to check out this post (and the interestingly named Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies) and this one from Andrea James at Boing!Boing!

Double Standards

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

A couple of days ago I noticed this piece of idiocy. You don’t need to click through. It is a classic “blame the victim” piece in which an arrogant male explains (in simple words so that the stupid women will be able to understand) that there would be no sexism if only women were properly assertive like men are.

Just in case anyone hasn’t been paying attention, the massive logical flaw in this argument is that while being assertive is expected behavior in men, and something they are praised for, assertiveness in women is generally decried and women who try to be assertive get labeled “bitch”, “pushy”, “shrill” and any number of other put-downs.

The reason I bring this up is that dana boyd has been discussing it here, and she adds something else to the mix:

There’s nothing that upsets me more than deception. As a teenager, I had my world spun apart by lies. So you’re not going to find me engaged in trickery. But what I’ve found is that people interpret my assertiveness as dishonesty and this still baffles me. It’s as though, because I’m a woman, if I don’t apologize for every thought I have and I’m proven wrong, I must’ve been lying because I convinced someone of an untruth. Confidence, when misinterpreted, can be interpreted all sorts of problematic ways.

Dishonest as well? I don’t think I have ever noticed that, but somehow it doesn’t surprise me. Yet another reason to stop talking about things that matter to me, I guess. I should just leave all the talking to Kevin because people will believe him.

Gender in Sport: A New Pressure Group

~ Cheryl

News has come across my desk of a new pressure group that aims to redefine the way that sporting authorities look at gender. It is headed by the openly trans Canadian cyclist, Kristin Worley. The long term aim of the group is to move sport away from division by the artificial, socially-determined category of gender and towards a definition based the abilities of the athletes. Apparently the paralympics work this way — there are different categories of competition based on the level of disadvantage that the athlete’s condition confers.

Somehow I suspect that this will be a very long-term project, but I definitely agree that it is crazy that some accidents of birth are treated as allowable, even though they confer great advantage, while others, because they cause the athlete’s gender to be called into question, result not only in sporting sanctions but public humiliation. If Worley and her colleagues can do something to prevent further occurrences of the sort of treatment meted out to Caster Semenya and Santhi Soundarajan that will be a very good thing.

Tired of These Stupid “Jokes”

~ Cheryl ~ 14 Comments

No sooner had I managed to calm down after the David Letterman nonsense that I discover that it has become the fashion amongst left-wing Americans to “joke” about how Anne Coulter is “really” a man.

And then I saw this, in which Stephen Fry joins the ranks of gay men who demand our support when one of them gets attacked but is only too eager to dump on the trannys when the mood takes him because “everyone knows” that trannys are pathetic scum who deserve to be laughed at.

Let’s get this very clear, people.

1. Every time you make a joke about how someone born female is “really” a man you are reinforcing the idea that trans women are something shameful. It is like kids in a school yard yelling “spastic” at the current target of the bullies.

2. Every time you describe trans women as “deceptive” you are denying their gender identity and their right to live as they feel appropriate. You are also making it harder for them to get access to jobs, health care and so on. You are labeling them as inherently dishonest.

3. Every time you describe trans women as deceptive sexual predators you are reinforcing the myth that trans people only do what they do in order to satisfy perverted sexual desires.

4. Every time you advise men to be wary of being “deceived” by trans women you are providing support for the “trans panic” excuse for murdering trans women. This is no different from the “gay panic” defense for murdering gay people, which is still being used today.

5. Every time you attack trans people but actually only attack trans women you are reinforcing the idea that for a woman to want to live as a man is a natural and understandable ambition but for a man to want to live as a woman is somehow shameful and degrading.

Really, I’m all for having a sense of humor, but it is not necessary to be cruel in order to be funny. Humor should not depend on belittling someone other than yourself who you think is unable to fight back.

Reading with Blinkers

~ Cheryl

I’ve mostly avoided the current rash of blogosphere discussion about bias against women writers because I have pretty much said everything I think needs saying. However, via a tweet from SF Signal I came across an article in the Washington Post that I thought worth quoting. The article is by Julianna Baggott, but the most interesting bit is where she quotes someone else:

Playwright Julia Jordan pointed me toward a recent study about perceptions of male and female playwrights that showed that plays with female protagonists were the most devalued in blind readings. “The exact same play that had a female protagonist was rated far higher when the readers thought it had a male author,” Jordan said. “In fact, one of the questions on the blind survey was about the characters ‘likability,’and the exact same female character, same lines, same pagination, when written by a man was exceeding likable, when written by a woman was deemed extremely unlikable.”

My guess is that if you had suggested to the people in the survey that they might be biased in their attitudes towards male and female authors they would have firmly denied any such thing. Nevertheless, the bias is there, and deeply ingrained. It won’t be easy to root out, because it touches way more than just books.

Shades of Identity

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The latest edition of Christine Burns’ Just Plain Sense podcast series takes a fascinating look at a new exhibition that has opened in London at the Wellcome Collection. Part of The Identity Project, the exhibition looks at eight different people as a means of illustrating different aspects of identity. The people covered include:

  • Samuel Pepys, whose identity is shown to be re-interpreted by the editors of each subsequent edition of his famous diaries;
  • Alec Jeffreys, the inventor of DNA fingerprinting who tried to trace his own ancestry to the notorious Judge Jeffreys and ended up finding ancestors from Mali instead;
  • Claude Cahun, a Jewish-French lesbian artist who ran a campaign of subversion during the Nazi occupation of Jersey; and
  • April Ashley, one the first people to undergo gender reassignment surgery.

I’m certainly going to find time to see the exhibition while it is on. I’ll be interested to see how well it manages to walk the fine line between allowing people to express their identity as they wish and pigeonholing them because of that identity.

Two Small Victories

~ Cheryl

Here are a couple of bits of UK news to be happy about.

Firstly the proposed law that would have required anyone working with children, for no matter how little time, to be put through a vetting process, is to be eased. It will now apply only to people who work with kids about once a month. This means it will not apply to writers who come to a school to read from their work, unless they do so very regularly. Score one for Philip Pullman. It also presumably no longer applies to people who run child care at conventions, again unless they do so very regularly. Much relief all around.

Meanwhile the European Commission has decided that the UK Government’s proposed “Equality” Bill, which in several places is essentially a charter to discriminate, is in contravention of EU directives on workplace discrimination. The Guardian’s report notes that, “the UK is the only European country to have failed to implement two key EU directives on discrimination.” Those EU directives date all the way back to 2002. Hopefully someone in Westminster is suitably embarrassed.

From Minnie to Mickey

~ Cheryl

Here’s one that deserves a post of its own. Some scientists in Heidelberg have been doing some fairly awful things to lady mice, but their results are very interesting. The story revolves around a sneaky gene called FOXL2. If you turn it off before birth then the mice’s ovaries do not develop properly, but if you turn it off in adult female mice their ovaries suddenly start pumping out testosterone just like good like testes.

Nature has a good overview of the research. The Independent is somewhat over the top in claiming that this explains everything from bearded ladies to transsexuals, but the paper did have a very good headline while I have shamelessly stolen. Also it is true to say that this is yet another nail in the coffin of the ridiculous idea that everything about one’s sex and gender is fixed from conception by one’s chromosomes.

Possibly the most interesting thing about the research, especially if you are a lesbian or a feminist science fiction writer, is the prospect that the modified ovaries might actually be able to produce sperm. Yes, that’s right, you might be able to take a normal adult woman, tweak the genes in her ovaries, and make her produce sperm. If you could do it without subjecting her to all of that testosterone, so much the better, assuming that she’s happy as a woman. The technique might also one day provide an interesting option for female-to-male transsexuals because they could make their own testosterone.

Cold, Tired & Grumpy

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Yes, I’m back in England, how did you guess?

I’ll be less cold when I’m less exhausted, and hopefully then I’ll be less grumpy. And maybe I’ll have fewer things to be grumpy about.

Grump source #1 most of you will be familiar with by now as it has been all over our corner of the Twittersphere today. But for the benefit of those of you who shun such spaces here’s Cory with the tale of how author Peter Watts was beaten, arrested and charged with assault while driving home to Canada from the USA. Scalzi has the same story with some news about fund raising efforts, while Patrick muses on some of the issues raised by the incident and Emma Bull has a good rant. Peter’s version of the incident is here (though it may not stay there because if I was his lawyer I’d be advising him to say nothing at all).

I’ve never actually met Peter Watts, though I’m sure we have been at the same convention from time to time. However, I have a great deal of sympathy with his plight as that so easily could have been me. Fortunately I have learned to cringe well when being bullied by border guards. Even so this year I ended up spending over $2000 and a great deal of time and worry trying to get a visa I was told to apply for but which I didn’t need and never had any chance of getting. Peter’s case, if it does come to trial, will cost him a lot more than that. Please help him out if you can.

Grump reason #2 is an article in the local paper here about how a transvestite who got tired on the way home, parked his car and fell asleep was found by the police, arrested and sentenced to jail time for “a serious sexual offence”, i.e. wearing women’s clothes. Other material in the article suggested that the person in question had what we Brits call “previous”, some of which may have genuinely been of a more serious nature. However, the article clearly gave the impression that men dressed in women’s clothes were likely to harm others and deserved both jail time and being placed on a register of sex offenders.

Reason #3 has me so angry that I’m going to allow myself some cooling off time before writing about it. I was going to direct you to Roz but apparently she’s doing the same thing. More bad temper tomorrow, I’m afraid.

Two Deaths

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

It has not been a good week for people dying.

Despite having been around UK fandom for 25 years or so, I never got to know Rob Holdstock very well. I have, however, read many of his books, and I continue to maintain that Mythago Wood is one of the finest fantasy books ever written. On the few occasions our paths crossed he always struck me as a very amiable man. Today’s Guardian has a tribute to him. Obituaries will doubtless follow. E coli is a nasty little bug. My uncle had a serious infection earlier this year, but fortunately he survived. Rob was not so lucky. Best wishes to all of my friends who knew him much better than I did.

In contrast I never met Mike Penner at all, but his transition to Christine Daniels, and subsequent reversion back to Mike, while working as a sports writer at the LA Times made headlines the world over. Life in the media spotlight is never easy, especially when you are there for a reason that causes you to be a target for hatred and ridicule. If, as the LA police currently suspect, Penner’s death turns out to be a suicide, it will be by no means the first occasion on which person unhappy with their gender has taken their own life. A recent EU study found that around 30% of adult trans people surveyed had attempted suicide at least once.

Penner’s motivations are now beyond our ken, but if you would like to get some idea of the pressures on trans people I recommend this article by a relatively successful trans woman: concert pianist Sara Davis Buechner.

On a slightly happier note, Pink News reports that the Irish Green Party is to introduce trans rights legislation to the Dail shortly. It is about time. Ireland is rather behind most of Western Europe in this area. Finna Fail is apparently opposing the move on the grounds that, “some people may try to change their gender in order to seek more financial entitlements, such as welfare payments.” So, read what Ms. Buechner has to say about the life of people post-transition, and then tell me how many people you think will opt for a sex change in the hope of getting a few Euros a week more in welfare payments.

Some Trans Linkage

~ Cheryl

As a follow-up to Friday’s Transgender Day of Remembrance post, here are a few links for your consideration.

Firstly Feministing reminds us that alongside the horrific murders we need to remember that trans people are much more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

If anyone would like examples of the sort of hatred directed at trans people, Roz has links to a couple of supposed “feminist” web sites.

In Twitter today I got asked to publicize this call for action on the UK’s supposed “Equality” Bill. That, you may remember, is the bill over which the EU kicked the UK’s butt because Gordon & Co had written in provisions allowing people to be exempt from the duties of the bill if they claimed that their religion required them to be homophobic.

However, the religious exemption and the trans issues raised by the call to action linked to above are just the tip of the iceberg as far as trans issues in this bill are concerned. I refer you to Christine Burns and the Press for Change submission to Parliament.

Those posts date back to June, but as far as I know the government has refused to budge on any of PFC’s complaints. Bear in mind here that the UK’s Gender Recognition Act of 2004 gives trans people who have passed through all of the required hoops full recognition in their new gender: birth certificate and all. However, the Equality Bill specifically creates “single sex services” and “genuine occupational requirements” which would allow vendors and employers to discriminate against trans people, even if they have a Gender Recognition Certificate. For example, the “Equality” Bill would change UK law to make it legal for a clothes store to ban trans women from women’s changing rooms, for a restaurant to ban trans women from women’s restrooms, and for any company with a sufficiently inventive HR department to refuse to employ trans people.

Oddly enough, the same government has also established an Equality and Human Rights Commission whose job it is to, “protect, enforce and promote equality across the seven “protected” grounds – age, disability, gender, race, religion and belief, sexual orientation and gender reassignment.” Some of the work it has done on trans issues has been very good. However, today the government announced the appointment of 10 new Commissioners. Not one of them has any interest in or experience of trans issues, and the press release by Harriet Harman (Minister for Women and Equality) omitted any mention of EHRC’s duties regarding gender reassignment.

Sorry if this comes across a little ranty, but it is all rather depressing, especially in view of the strong probability that the UK will soon have a Tory government whose behavior towards trans people is likely to be much, much worse.

Link Salad for Second Breakfast

~ Cheryl

Kevin and I are both very tired this morning. We have no idea why. However, breakfast and caffeine should fix that. In the meantime, in the great hobbit tradition of Second Breakfast, I offer up a big plate of link salad.

A Terminology Question

~ Cheryl ~ 18 Comments

I’m working on my paper for ICFA next year and I have a question about terminology I’d like help with. As all knowledge is contained in the blogosphere I’m hoping that someone will have an answer for me.

The terms “sexual preference” and “sexual orientation” are generally understood to mean whether one is gay/lesbian, bi or straight. The object of one’s attraction can be assumed from one’s own sex.

However, in a trans context, particularly in a science-fictional trans context where sex changes are common, this gets more complicated. So I need a way of distinguishing the nature of one’s sexuality (i.e. is one G/L, B or straight) from the object of one’s attraction (i.e. is one attracted to men or women or both). “Bi”, I think, does duty is both cases. But if, say, a gay man becomes a lesbian woman, is that preserving sexual orientation or changing it? The person is still G/L, but the object of attraction has changed.

For the benefit of those thinking ahead, yes, I am trying to find words to explain the daftness of Steel Beach.

SF Studies Special

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

I should really be reading novels, but I have been distracted by the latest issue of the academic journal, Science Fiction Studies. It is a special issue on “Science Fiction and Sexuality”. Most of the material is fairly sense, but there’s also a symposium comprising a bunch of short essays (and in some cases rants) by well known writers and academics, including Nicola Griffith and Farah Mendlesohn. You can find that online here, together with the abstracts for the papers in this issue. Academics can be a dry lot at times, but they have wide-ranging interests. The paper titles include things like: “Technofetishism and the Uncanny Desires of A.S.F.R. (alt.sex.fetish.robots)” and “Kill the Bugger: Ender’s Game and the Question of Heteronormativity”.

I am mildly annoyed that if I had been able to attend ICFA last year my paper from there might have had a chance to be in this issue, but at least I should get a chance to present it next year.

Male Violence: The White Ribbon Campaign

~ Cheryl ~ 11 Comments

Over the last couple of days various blogs I read have been commenting on the issue of violence against women. Here are David Moles and Kameron Hurley.

While I agree with Kameron that we women need to take responsibility for our own safety, and can’t expect someone else to “save” us from violent men, I’d be pretty damned annoyed if men continued to maintain that it wasn’t their problem. Thankfully, not all of them do.

My friend Christine Burns has made a couple of posts about the White Ribbon Campaign, an organization run by men and dedicated to opposing violence against women. There’s a brief video statement by the organization’s UK Director, Chris Green, here, and a longer audio interview with him here. More information is available on the White Ribbon UK web site.

The White Ribbon Campaign was founded in Canada and the Canadian web site is here. There are also organizations in several other countries, for example Australia and Finland. As far as I can see, there is not specific White Ribbon affiliate in the USA, though several similar organizations exists.

So come on boys, what are you waiting for? Take responsibility.

Operation: Sex Change

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

You what?

Well, November 20th will see the 11th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), dedicated to remembering those people who have been murdered in the past year simply because someone disapproved of their gender presentation. In view of this, some folks at Bekhsoos (described as “a queer arab magazine”) have started Operation: Sex change on Facebook.

The idea is very simple. To support the campaign, all you have to do is change your gender on Facebook. I’ve done it. It didn’t hurt. You don’t need to change your profile picture or anything if you don’t want to. (Indeed, it may freak people out more if you do not.) But hopefully other people will notice, and that will bring TDOR to the attention of more people. And just maybe we’ll have fewer people to remember next year.

More on Hormonal Pollutants

~ Cheryl

There’s an article just gone up in The Guardian about the presence of anti-androgens and estrogen-like substances in common household goods. This being science journalism in a popular newspaper I’m a little skeptical, and I’ll try to find the EU report on which it is based. However, this paragraph did catch my eye:

Research has suggested that male foetuses around 8-12 weeks after conception can be effectively demasculinised by exposure to such chemicals.

Just in case anyone needs reminding, our understanding about how the physical and psychological aspects of gender develop is very poor, and if that process is being disrupted it becomes even more important that we move beyond the simplistic, and in many cases cruel, straitjacket of a binary gender system.

Unclear on the Concept

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Today’s best daft news story (with thanks to Caitlin R. Kiernan) is about the mythical “lesbian city” in Sweden. It is daft enough that anyone should believe that the Swedish government has managed to keep a city of 25,000 people secret for over 150 years. But why, oh why, do large numbers of men want to travel there?