I thought it was settled
Nov. 20th, 2010 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rozk(One or two of you may have seen an earlier version of this post which I deleted by accident)
I had pretty much made up my mind about the t-word.
After all, a huge majority of the trans community - including a lot of younger people - have decided that the word is hate speech, that it is unacceptable in any context, not just as a shout in the street, or a smear in the press, or something said on television. I never felt that strongly - of my four and a half decades in the community, it has only been in the last decade or less that I was ever made to think of it as an insult, rather than as a diminutive that could be used positively or negatively. I intervened in recent controversies because of matters of fact and accusations of untruth in a matter in which I, by dint of being around still, could speak for people who are in some cases a quarter of a century dead. I feel no tie to the word sufficient to make me oppose a clear consensus who are a lot more upset by it than I am.
This is why, though I love Kate Bornstein as a dear friend, I told her the other night that she should bow to popular pressure in this matter, even though I deprecate the attacks on her. I am not going to the stake for a word I don't especially like, even though I have felt bullied by some people's tone on this, especially when they seemed to be telling me that I could not have had experiences I had decades ago.
However, experience is all.
This afternoon, the London TDOR ceremony was incredibly powerful and moving. I got to do my poem - there was some wonderful music - the reading of the names was so affecting that the readers broke down a few times, especially when they got to the toddler in the USA murdered for not being butch enough.
A singer came on at the end - she is wonderful and a friend and I am not going to drag her name into it so that people who were not there can vilify her. She sang 'Good to Mother' and 'Changes' and a version of the old Peggy Lee song 'Woman' rewritten as 'Tranny'. One or two people may have been outraged, but most of the sixty or so people present were cheering, laughing and beating out the rhythm on our desks. There were tears of joy where a few minutes before there had just been tears.
So maybe it does depend on context after all. Maybe in the right context it can be life-affirming. That's what I experienced anyway.
Now shoot me
Later There is a point here which I had to think about during the comments, which is that my assumption that there is in fact a huge majority against the word because a lot of people in the blogosphere say that there is, is not a correct one. Actually, I don't know what the community thinks - I know the very varying views of my friends, and what I had come to think.
I unequivocally withdraw any talk of a majority - I genuinely do not know whether there is one or not. There clearly wasn't yesterday.
On a broader point, we need to beware - and I take my own position in this very self critically - of establishing orthodoxy through online communication. Apart from anything else, itis so very easy to be persuaded not that something is necessarily true, but that it might well be true, and that all the cool kids are saying it is.
I had pretty much made up my mind about the t-word.
After all, a huge majority of the trans community - including a lot of younger people - have decided that the word is hate speech, that it is unacceptable in any context, not just as a shout in the street, or a smear in the press, or something said on television. I never felt that strongly - of my four and a half decades in the community, it has only been in the last decade or less that I was ever made to think of it as an insult, rather than as a diminutive that could be used positively or negatively. I intervened in recent controversies because of matters of fact and accusations of untruth in a matter in which I, by dint of being around still, could speak for people who are in some cases a quarter of a century dead. I feel no tie to the word sufficient to make me oppose a clear consensus who are a lot more upset by it than I am.
This is why, though I love Kate Bornstein as a dear friend, I told her the other night that she should bow to popular pressure in this matter, even though I deprecate the attacks on her. I am not going to the stake for a word I don't especially like, even though I have felt bullied by some people's tone on this, especially when they seemed to be telling me that I could not have had experiences I had decades ago.
However, experience is all.
This afternoon, the London TDOR ceremony was incredibly powerful and moving. I got to do my poem - there was some wonderful music - the reading of the names was so affecting that the readers broke down a few times, especially when they got to the toddler in the USA murdered for not being butch enough.
A singer came on at the end - she is wonderful and a friend and I am not going to drag her name into it so that people who were not there can vilify her. She sang 'Good to Mother' and 'Changes' and a version of the old Peggy Lee song 'Woman' rewritten as 'Tranny'. One or two people may have been outraged, but most of the sixty or so people present were cheering, laughing and beating out the rhythm on our desks. There were tears of joy where a few minutes before there had just been tears.
So maybe it does depend on context after all. Maybe in the right context it can be life-affirming. That's what I experienced anyway.
Now shoot me
Later There is a point here which I had to think about during the comments, which is that my assumption that there is in fact a huge majority against the word because a lot of people in the blogosphere say that there is, is not a correct one. Actually, I don't know what the community thinks - I know the very varying views of my friends, and what I had come to think.
I unequivocally withdraw any talk of a majority - I genuinely do not know whether there is one or not. There clearly wasn't yesterday.
On a broader point, we need to beware - and I take my own position in this very self critically - of establishing orthodoxy through online communication. Apart from anything else, itis so very easy to be persuaded not that something is necessarily true, but that it might well be true, and that all the cool kids are saying it is.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-21 12:37 pm (UTC)"While the t-word makes me physically squirm with discomfort, if a TS/TG woman wishes to reclaim it for herself, that is her prerogative and I will respect her decision to use it about herself."..."See Tobi Hill-Meyer's 2008 critique Is 'Tranny' Offensive? to understand why I use a descriptor as specific as 'TS/TG woman' in the paragraph above"
Tobi Hill-Meyer (http://nodesignation.com/?p=32) says:
"The issue of reclaiming the term is further complicated, though. You see, while I have been discussing the impact the term has had on trans people, the reality is that it is trans women who have most directly targeted by it. Trans men have been comparably invisible in the sex and porn industries, and the trans men porn that exists today is almost exclusively produced by trans men. Yet a significant portion, arguably a majority, of the effort to reclaim the term has been made by trans men. Usually by trans men who are not familiar with the negative history of the term, let alone having been subjected to it’s sting themselves.
It is difficult to know what to think about that gender breakdown. When I run into a group of trans men who frequently use the term, I am not sure whether to thank them for creating community use of a new and positive meaning behind the term, or to criticize them for their insensitivity and lack of awareness of how the term might hold a lot of trauma for those of us who have been the direct targets of its use."
---
When reading your post, I therefore felt that it was implied that it is the prerogative of a TS/TG woman to reclaim "tranny" on a personal level if she desires, but not a trans man or otherwise FtM spectrum individual. Several other people felt similarly upon reading the post.
I find this troubling when many trans guys I know are regularly called "trannies" by bigots and wish to reclaim the term on a personal level in the light of this.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-21 01:05 pm (UTC)However, if other people choose to use it for themselves, then that it is their prerogative.
In return, I ask that other people respect my wish that they don't use the word about me.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-21 01:16 pm (UTC)By meaning that you experience extreme discomfort in a room of other trans people who are happy about a particular use of it, what you are doing is refusing to be part of a community that does that because of the implication that if you are there, you are condoning it.
No one is making you use it. but you are effectively demanding - 'don't use the word about me that no one in a community of which you are part use it positively about themselves as a part of that community. That's clearly your position from your tweets - 'How could anyone think this is a good idea?'
Since people have been criticizing Kate for putting her own views ahead of some sort of assumed general will of the trans community, isn't it a bit ironic to set your own individual feelings in this debate ahead of the clear feelings of an actual manifestation of trans community?
Especially when, as it happens, the occasion was a release of positive emotion at the end of a herrowing ceremony. You didn't let yourself get that release and you are implicitly blaming everyone who did.