“Lived experience fights dirty.”

(Title from the always fabulous Cat and Girl.)

I always miss out on getting in at the ground floor of controversy.

So, Jasper at jasperswardrobe makes a post on critiquing Brain Sex Activism (ie. woman’s brain in a man’s body), which is rather ill-advised. (Ze has since posted a clarification/apology, the following of which is equally as ill-advised.)

Lisa at Questioning Transphobia handles the heavy lifting of deconstructing the biased and fraudulent assumptions in hir’s post, and the comments are equally good.

So, then why mention it here? Because though Lisa is through in tackling the theory, she missed something that bothered both Ariel Silvera (who lives in Dublin) and I, though I as usual said it with far more swear words:

Ariel: hmm yeah
it’s the kind of thing that wrecks my head though because
well
it’s a very American argument in many ways. over here our community is small eough that while there are disagreements and some similar arguments, we can’t afford to be divided like that
f’rex, TENI defines “trans” as including genderqueer and intersex. in other words, TENI covers anyone who is not cisgender or not cissexual, full stop
Avery: Fuck, it ain’t just american, it’s Big City Queer
It’s the kind of shit that someone inoculated in a safe community can say

And I stand by that point. There’s  a reason I include “non-big-city Southern” in my profile–I am not one of the fortunate queers who lives among the many enlightened in a large city such as San Fransisco or even Large City One Hour Away. Yes, I’m in a college town, but once I leave the safe enclave of the university’s grounds, my very fragile ’safety and respect’ bubble bursts. And making one on the internet is equally as pointless. If an argument can’t stand up to harsh criticism, what’s the point of making it?

In my very real lived experience, I stand up for my identity, and I both demand and expect respect from my fellow students and co-workers. But I’m also not senselessly hostile. I recognize this shit is complex. I’m not interested in calling for everyone to relax and sing a gender kumbaya around the queer campfire. Anger and frustration is a legitimate response to dismissal of one’s legit identification.

But I’m well aware in my real life I cannot afford “to start making [myself] visible, and calling out Brain Sex Activists when they delegitimize [me]” with the polemic divisiveness Jasper’s tone implies is the only response. Whatever Jasper’s intentions, hir dialog is little more than the kind of self-congratulatory anger which breeds distance, not respect.

Such distance can be ill-afforded in areas with little-to-no queer presence. where I do not have the privilege of  an equal “face to face discussion, [where] I could have have found common ground with most everyone.”

No, I have the experience of talking at the uniformed over and over, and hoping for the millionth time I won’t have to answer the same questions–and living in fear that someone may bring up theoretical anger (that is, anger regarding theories) and throw it in my face to delegitimize me.

You can have your “brain-sex activism oppression”–I’ll be happy when people stop looking at me like a three-headed deer, or when I stop hearing stories about other local good ol’ transsexual folks being driven from their homes by harassment from their neighbors with no recourse. Or expectation of protection from the police.

Instead, I’ve learned how to have gutsy disagreements with folks while still working together for the common cause of equality.  I’ve learned that sometimes being right is less important than the great goal of equality. So no, it’s not that “this medium [, the Internet,] makes anger too easy.” It’s that the Internet makes it all-too-easy for one to indulge in the juxtaposition of, “Listen to what I say, but ignore what I do.”

The anger comes afterward.

Adventures in Gender

After today’s session with my therapist, it came to my attention that I had not yet shared the story of The Hustler Who Fails At Gender.

So, there is a local man who is known to go down to the local university hangout, The Strip, and run a “gas money” hustle. Though I knew of him, I had never actually been hustled. Last Sunday, I went out to get dinner before newspaper staff meeting/my birthday party. As I’m crossing the street, he calls out to me. I stop, thinking he wants to know the time. As soon as he says, “Ma’am,” he catches himself, stops, and says “Sir.” Then he changes again, calling me “ma’am,” but then comments after that that no woman would have my haircut (which is, admittedly, at the moment very scruffy).

Eventually he gets close enough and begins his hustle. I keep trying to get out of it, because this time he wants me to go with him, which is a big red flag. Throughout the conversation, he keeps switching honorifics, to the point of flat-out insulting me. Finally, he asks me, “What are you, a boy or girl?” I say rather stiffly that I identify as male. After which he laughs at me. Laughs at me and uses the presumably proper pronoun once or twice before switching back to feminine honorifics.

At this point, I rather rudely got rid of him (in itself unusual, because I’m very bad at being rude and usually try to at least provide some cash, as possibly unethical/unhelpful as that is), because dammit, it’s my birthday and you’re insulting me while attempting to hustle me for cash.

I have the best adventures.

Where You’d Least Expect Them

Trans people! In red states! Who’d have thunk it?

Well, I would, being one of them, though I am in a Deep South red state as opposed to a Midwest red state. I’ve long mulled over this, and how regions like mine get written off by other LGBT people. I originally had a much better post on this topic that got lost to a unexpected power outage. In the interest of starting a discussion, though, I’m going to instead repost a post I made elsewhere on the subject:

Though I grew up in it, the South and I do not get along very well; we are that couple who never seems to officially ‘get together,’ but have broken up more times than can be reasonably counted. Over time, I learned to hate the attitude while loving the scenery. I hate the fact 40% of my state voted to not remove language from the constitution barring interracial marriage. I hate the fact that it’s acceptable to waste public money on a “sackcloth and ashes prayer ceremony” to ‘pray away’ one of the worst murder rates in the nation. I hate the fact these attitudes fed my parents’ own bigotry. It’s easy to cultivate anger when you live among people who wish you’d fall off the planet.

But when I got a full ride to attend college down here, I took it. I knew I had to eventually move out of the South, one way to another, but if I could put student loans off for another 4 years I was willing to take the risk.

So when I see people say:

“It’s bigotry, what I feel about the south, absolutely. Fuck the south. I hope the red states get swept under a goddamn tidal wave and have to wonder just how much God truly loves the bible belt.”

I may just lose my temper a little bit. As a then-closeted (and unaware of my transness) student, what was I to do? Come out, risk being disowned, not take the money, and damn myself to struggle somewhere safe but poor? No, I took the money and am now locked in for at least another year and a half until I finish undergrad. I made my choice and face the consequences. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve the same respect every other student gets.

“They don’t know it is better in other places. Just move……..lots of places will embrace you!”

Fantastic! Will they pay to make up for the scholarship funds I’ve lost, the support network I’ve worked to build? No. Because it’s not really about my or any number of people’s daily realities; it’s about assuaging one’s personal guilt at the fact that some people still live mired in inequality and they’d rather not think about it. It’s an attitude that is just as old as Southern bigotry, if not older.

Yet if the South taught me to have anger at what cannot be changed, and it also taught me patience for what can. While I don’t expect miracles from the system, I will expect and demand respect regardless of where I’m living. And it can happen, slowly but surely. The strides may not be as drastic or photogenic, but every single one is crucially important. I will continue working for them as long as I live down here, and even after I don’t so one day that closeted kid can make their choice without having to consider the risk of living in fear.