Inclusion and Exclusion on the Gender Binary

I confess I've never wanted to attend the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. I thought about it briefly once and then learned there were group showers--I haven't had to deal with that experience since high school gym class and I was not about to sign up for it again. So this is from an outsider's perspective.

Apparently someone has a petition going to call for a musician boycott of the festival because the event is not trans-inclusive. The organizers are adamant that the festival is intentionally a space for "women born women."

I find this interesting for several reasons and there are several issues all tangled up:

Freedom of association (and not just as related to Congress)
On the one hand, I think people should be free to associate with whomever they like. Personally, if integration had required me to go to school with hostile people--or (say what?) send my precious child into such an environment--it would not have happened.  I have no desire to give my time, energy, or money to anyone who doesn't appreciate my humanity. There's a fiercely proud slice of my personality that believes that any space that doesn't welcome me, doesn't deserve me.

Freedom of speech (and not just as related to Congress)
At the same time, people should also be free to boycott or protest their exclusion, as they like. Particularly in cases when perhaps simply raising awareness of an issue would change how it's viewed. Until I read the organizer's letter on the topic, I hadn't known that trans women weren't considered "womyn" and part of the target audience of the festival.

"Women born women" as a Gender Identity
This idea is new to me. My gut reaction is that I was not born a woman, I was born female and I matured into my womanhood. Odd label aside, I'm not sure I'd consider this a "unique gender identity." And this is perhaps because these days I find myself in more spaces where the distinction is more likely to be femme/stud and not woman/man. So I now tend to think of gender expression as a huge component of gender identity and then I falter at how to read "women born women" other than as a way to tell trans women they are not "really" women who belong in women's spaces. Indeed many of the comments I read seemed very much related to the typical concerns that get trotted out in discussion of who gets to use what restroom.

Call it what it is
I wonder why the organization don't just rename the festival. Instead of saying it in footnotes (or actually: having the discussion in facebook pages outside of the main one), why not just call the festival Michigan Female-born Womyn's Music Festival? Then they could simply point to the sign and redirect those women who thought, as women, they might be long at the gathering. This would clarify: unless you were born with a vagina, this isn't your space. And then maybe supporters could stop attacking self-identified women,  calling them "men" and "he" and "him," simply because they want to participate in a so-called "women's event."

Privilege
I don't necessary have the highest levels of privilege and power in this society. But I am very aware of the privilege that comes with being cis-gendered/gender-conforming or whatever you want to call being born with a vagina and identifying as a "woman." Here's just a few:

• No one has ever challenged my right to use the women's bathroom
• I never had to think about when/if to reveal to anyone what genitalia I was born with or what genitalia I had. Or worry what would happen if they found out without my telling them.
• No one (okay, no reasonable person) will consider my not conforming to feminine ideals/stereotypes as valid reason to consider me not a woman.
• I can be rude/aggressive/just mean and no one is going to take that as proof that I'm not really a woman and am just proving my stored "male privilege."
• New revelations of about what genitalia I have now/had a birth is not going to lead to the loss of my housing or employment.

Here's a long list of privileges.

While I think, as I wrote, that people are free to associate with whomever they like, if we want to be conscious and connected, it is important for us to think about we are excluding and why--particularly in cases in which we are in the position of power and privilege (however unusual that may feel for us).

More on Gender

Yesterday's post was lazy, I admit. I didn't make any connections or delve deeper. It be's like that sometimes.

I could have elaborated and said that there have times that I've felt like an honorary boy in my family and described what that meant. I could have talked about the limits that rigid gender roles created in the family, for both women and men. I could have written about gender perks that I enjoy (like usually having a young brother step up to lift my old lady cart onto the bus for me when it's heavy with groceries). I could have shared that I have this longing to be a gender outlaw when I'm really fairly boring in my gender expression.

Since I didn't do any of that, in today's post, I am sharing some of other folks' work about people who are transgender because I started thinking that to talk about gender roles, maybe you need to look at the gender line and people who've seen both sides of it.

Daisy Hernández wrote a very interesting article titled "Becoming a Black Man." It actually includes perspectives from both transmen and transwomen, as well as sharing snippets from individuals who are part of a few other communities of color. The bulk of the story does focus on the words of Black transmen.

Louis Mitchell described how he has had to change since transitioning:

Before transitioning, Mitchell recalls being “cavalier and reckless” about what he did in public and about his interactions with police officers. “I didn’t think about it so much,” he says about cops. “At some point they would find out I was female” and that would diffuse the situation. Now, Mitchell finds that he doesn’t engage in small transgressions like jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk. “I never know if they’re just waiting for something to happen to roll up, and I do not want find myself in custody. That would be just precarious and dangerous in so many ways.”

In the article, Monica Roberts shared that in addition to no longer being viewed as a "suspect," she has felt more powerful in the community:

Her father, a local radio commentator, tried to groom Roberts for leadership as his eldest child. Yet, it was only after transitioning that Roberts felt able to take on such a leadership role. Perhaps it was due to the toll that living in the “tranny closet” had taken on her self-esteem. But Roberts also noticed a difference in the responses she received from other people to her leadership as a Black woman. She got positive reactions, she says, “because I was basically doing the traditional work of Black women in the community in terms of uplifting the race.”

The following is the trailer for "still black," a documentary about Black transmen.



The blog post Trans Woman of Color Erasure & Objectification makes the point that transwomen of color are doing a lot of important work, though that might not be the impression you get if your only exposure is from the mainstream media. Another blog post, America’s Undeclared War On African American Trans Women, observes that Black transgender women are a target and that the violence is minimzed by the press and law enforcement.

Life is a many gendered thing

My family believes in gender roles. Strongly. Which you think would be a little difficult to do since we are a family of primarily women, but nevertheless true.

The Mucha (my absolutely adorable one and only nephew) is not even two years old yet. Countless times I've heard my grandmother remark "That's the boy in him" when he's done something. He throws his blocks around? "That's the boy in him." If you leave him in a queen size bed, he will have touched every square inch of it before morning. Why, you ask? "That's the boy in him." He pulls the folded laundry off the couch? "That's the boy in him." Really? Now, when the girls in my generation, say, ran around, talking to everybody and trying to take things away from people like my nephew does, no one said "That's the girl in them." Likely, they were labeled busybodies and everyone wished that they would just sit still. The Mucha sleeps much like I used to, yet all I remember is having people shake their heads and tell me how I slept wild.

This all annoys me to no end. I do not appreciate his world being circumscribed. I just don't.

Gender is a strange thing. Based on the appearance of their external genitalia we create these ideas of how babies should be and reinforce and shape their behavior accordingly. I want there to be a world where he feels that being a dainty ballerina is as possible as growling football player (okay, I'd prefer he not set himself up for bodily harm...but theoretically I mean). I'd like the gender police to leave folk alone.

The Bougie Princess of America (that would be The Mucha's mother...I swear I heard her call herself that once. I think she thinks it's a good thing), I'm pretty sure, has never mowed her lawn. She has no idea what yard tools are in her garage. She thinks this is The Way It Is Supposed To Be. Sometimes Princess worries me.

Unfortunately for the dear Mucha, this is not just confined to our family. We are but a symptom of the larger society. Good luck, child.