fair
So I want you to imagine something. It's going to be pretty awful, and it's probably going to be a trigger for some people. If that's a risk you don't feel up for, take care of yourself and stop now.
The first thing you need to understand is that masculinity, maleness, is inculcated and enforced with violence. It's either actual violence, or the threat of violence, or the implied threat of violence. Constantly. It's how men and boys are taught to train each other into maleness. This is true even at a very, very young age; go to a kindergarten playground, and you will see little boys shaping each others' masculinity, according to the rules they're taught by older boys and by grown men, with violence. It starts very early.
Take a little girl and throw her into that group of boys. Leave her with them and only the instruction, "Do whatever you want with her. Shape her into whatever you want to. Your scalpel is violence." Just sit with that for a minute. The image of handing a little girl who doesn't understand the world yet to a group of boys who are given carte blanche to use violence to shape her into whatever they think is appropriate.
It's a horrifying image. It's hideous and disturbing and wrong and it makes my flesh crawl thinking about it. And that's the way we, as a society, ought to react; if something like this scenario went public, there would be newspaper headlines.
It happens every day. Every hour. But while decent people automatically find this scenario a yawning, shocking evil when the little girl we envision is cissexual, this is considered the normal and proper way to treat a little girl who's trans. I knew I was a girl that early; I was kicked out of preschool for refusing to admit that I was a boy. And then they handed that little girl to the boys for the next fifteen years and said, "Do what you want with her. We will look the other way or cheer you on as you turn her into whatever you want to. Your scalpel is violence. It's only proper if she screams."
This is a horrifying story. This is the kind of story that, when you really look at it, represents the kind of abuse that the average person would respond to with, "Lock that sick bastard away and throw away the key." If it's a cissexual little girl. If she's trans, it's things running as they ought to be. There is no censure. There is applause.
This is one of the revealed, naked faces of oppression: if it were done to the privileged person, it would be considered abuse. If it's done to the marginalized person, it's the status quo. But it's not only that. It's not only about oppression; it's about how and why we internalize oppression.
This is a horrifying story. It's the kind of story that threatens to break your mind if it's your story. And you have to protect yourself somehow. You have to hold yourself together. You have to make it make sense. Because a world where that can be done to a little child who never did anything to anyone, who's not even old enough to understand why she's being hurt this way even by her parents until nowhere is ever safe, that's not an okay world. That's not a world I think a lot of us, including me, are strong enough to hold as true. So we defend ourselves by believing what it tells us.
I let the world tell me lies. I let myself believe that I was so bad and wrong and monstrous that I deserved what I got, that I even let someone rape me just because I was so desperately craving to be touched at all, because even abuse was more closeness than I felt I deserved. I let myself absorb the idea that I was completely delusional, and that all my knowledge about myself was false twitchings of a sick mind, because the alternative to that painful lie, the lie that I was a monster living in a fantasy world who was inherently freakish and unlovable? The alternative was worse. The alternative was that I didn't deserve it, I wasn't disgusting and unworthy of love, that I was a child put in an abusive situation and forced to stay there for no good reason. I wasn't strong enough to let that be true, as a child. I wasn't strong enough to let that be true as a teenager who couldn't sleep, who worked out on a punching bag every day after school until her hands bled, who spent every day thinking of newer, cleaner exits from living. I wasn't strong enough to let that be true as a college student who was fetishized and mocked and treated as a contaminated, essentially pornographic animate sex toy unworthy of any kind of closeness that didn't have the tinge of "dirty" and "perverted" seeping into it, who couldn't hug people or say "I love you" without fear that it would be considered creepy.
I wasn't strong enough to accept the truth of how strong I was. Acknowledging and owning my vast strength meant acknowledging that I was holding up something very heavy all the time, that I had been through hardship and not just normal life, the natural order of things. What I wasn't strong enough to accept was that I was a good kid, a strong kid, a brave kid, because that meant admitting that I was going through something that required virtue, strength, and courage, something that would make an inspiring TV movie about human resilience if it were happening to a person considered real by her society. Accepting that I was okay, that I was even beautiful, meant admitting that what I went through at school and at home, rather than being normal and good, was a horrorshow.
So I bought the lie instead. I let them convince me for a large swath of my adolescence that I was, really, a boy. The idea disgusted and horrified me, but not as much as the truth, that I was right, that I was trustworthy to myself, that it wasn't my fault. It was better to live in a world where I was a boy--or even a boy who wanted to be a woman someday--and had lived a normal life, than a world where I was a girl who was systematically stripped of her sense of self, subjective reality, and personhood, subjected to near-constant violence or its threat, and treated as a contaminated, dirty thing. The lie--even the lie of "boy who wants to be a girl" or "woman in a man's body," as though my body was someone else's--as skin-crawlingly painful as it was, was nowhere near as painful as the truth of being a girl trying to find her way to womanhood and living through this on the way.
This is how we internalize the lies. This is how we accept the yoke of oppression. By living in a world where the truth that we are beautiful and worthy and lovable is even more painful to accept than the lie that we are none of these things, because all sense of fairness or order vanishes when you look the truth in the eye. If we are beautiful, we are in a world that does not care about our beauty, and even grinds it in the mud. If we are strong, we are living in a world so heavy that it saps our strength until we are tired all the time. If we are ourselves, we are living in a world that systematically strips away our selfhood like roast chicken scraped from the bone.
Until we are strong enough to look this in the eye and fight it, to stand up and fight and make the part of the world we stand on more okay no matter how hard it is or what it takes--until we are so very strong that we remember we are strong, and beautiful, and true, worthy of no end of love, no matter what--it's just too much to bear. So we accept false stories instead, about how we're dirty and ugly and weak and unlovable. We have to. I had to.
I am writing this down because I know that in an hour, or a day, or a week, I will be listening to the lies again for a while. How else do you live? How do you go on in the world without accepting that the injustice is just, or not your problem, just a little, just for now? How can you walk in a world where the truth is true instead of breaking down and crying? So we internalize the lies for a while in order to let things make enough sense to get through the day. Gravity pulls comfortingly down. The alternative, the raw, vulnerable, pulsing truth can only be taken in doses, even if they're bigger doses every day. It's so hard to just let it be real. How can you let it be real? How can you really pull off the lid and look down into that darkness and let the truth--that you live in a world where you're not considered fully real, fully human, and that if you were considered real, what was done to you would be considered unacceptable, retch-inducing, but you're not and it isn't?
You have to tell yourself the stories. Just for now. Just until you're strong enough to bear the weight of the truth and see with clear eyes, if you ever get that strong. Just until you are so full of overwhelming bravery and power that you can finally insist that you are lovable and loved, that you deserve it in every cell of you, that beauty shines through you as a conflagration of glory. When you stand there, blazing in your awful wonder, you can move the whole world. You just have to get through the pain of knowing that you are true, that you know, that you are everything you will ever need to be.
It hurts to say this and it hurts to hear: you are lovable. So am I. The chasm between that truth and the world we allow ourselves to live in every day is deep and dark, but it is still the truth and always will be.
You are everything you ever hoped you would be, and I love you. When you are strong enough, please, shine.
The first thing you need to understand is that masculinity, maleness, is inculcated and enforced with violence. It's either actual violence, or the threat of violence, or the implied threat of violence. Constantly. It's how men and boys are taught to train each other into maleness. This is true even at a very, very young age; go to a kindergarten playground, and you will see little boys shaping each others' masculinity, according to the rules they're taught by older boys and by grown men, with violence. It starts very early.
Take a little girl and throw her into that group of boys. Leave her with them and only the instruction, "Do whatever you want with her. Shape her into whatever you want to. Your scalpel is violence." Just sit with that for a minute. The image of handing a little girl who doesn't understand the world yet to a group of boys who are given carte blanche to use violence to shape her into whatever they think is appropriate.
It's a horrifying image. It's hideous and disturbing and wrong and it makes my flesh crawl thinking about it. And that's the way we, as a society, ought to react; if something like this scenario went public, there would be newspaper headlines.
It happens every day. Every hour. But while decent people automatically find this scenario a yawning, shocking evil when the little girl we envision is cissexual, this is considered the normal and proper way to treat a little girl who's trans. I knew I was a girl that early; I was kicked out of preschool for refusing to admit that I was a boy. And then they handed that little girl to the boys for the next fifteen years and said, "Do what you want with her. We will look the other way or cheer you on as you turn her into whatever you want to. Your scalpel is violence. It's only proper if she screams."
This is a horrifying story. This is the kind of story that, when you really look at it, represents the kind of abuse that the average person would respond to with, "Lock that sick bastard away and throw away the key." If it's a cissexual little girl. If she's trans, it's things running as they ought to be. There is no censure. There is applause.
This is one of the revealed, naked faces of oppression: if it were done to the privileged person, it would be considered abuse. If it's done to the marginalized person, it's the status quo. But it's not only that. It's not only about oppression; it's about how and why we internalize oppression.
This is a horrifying story. It's the kind of story that threatens to break your mind if it's your story. And you have to protect yourself somehow. You have to hold yourself together. You have to make it make sense. Because a world where that can be done to a little child who never did anything to anyone, who's not even old enough to understand why she's being hurt this way even by her parents until nowhere is ever safe, that's not an okay world. That's not a world I think a lot of us, including me, are strong enough to hold as true. So we defend ourselves by believing what it tells us.
I let the world tell me lies. I let myself believe that I was so bad and wrong and monstrous that I deserved what I got, that I even let someone rape me just because I was so desperately craving to be touched at all, because even abuse was more closeness than I felt I deserved. I let myself absorb the idea that I was completely delusional, and that all my knowledge about myself was false twitchings of a sick mind, because the alternative to that painful lie, the lie that I was a monster living in a fantasy world who was inherently freakish and unlovable? The alternative was worse. The alternative was that I didn't deserve it, I wasn't disgusting and unworthy of love, that I was a child put in an abusive situation and forced to stay there for no good reason. I wasn't strong enough to let that be true, as a child. I wasn't strong enough to let that be true as a teenager who couldn't sleep, who worked out on a punching bag every day after school until her hands bled, who spent every day thinking of newer, cleaner exits from living. I wasn't strong enough to let that be true as a college student who was fetishized and mocked and treated as a contaminated, essentially pornographic animate sex toy unworthy of any kind of closeness that didn't have the tinge of "dirty" and "perverted" seeping into it, who couldn't hug people or say "I love you" without fear that it would be considered creepy.
I wasn't strong enough to accept the truth of how strong I was. Acknowledging and owning my vast strength meant acknowledging that I was holding up something very heavy all the time, that I had been through hardship and not just normal life, the natural order of things. What I wasn't strong enough to accept was that I was a good kid, a strong kid, a brave kid, because that meant admitting that I was going through something that required virtue, strength, and courage, something that would make an inspiring TV movie about human resilience if it were happening to a person considered real by her society. Accepting that I was okay, that I was even beautiful, meant admitting that what I went through at school and at home, rather than being normal and good, was a horrorshow.
So I bought the lie instead. I let them convince me for a large swath of my adolescence that I was, really, a boy. The idea disgusted and horrified me, but not as much as the truth, that I was right, that I was trustworthy to myself, that it wasn't my fault. It was better to live in a world where I was a boy--or even a boy who wanted to be a woman someday--and had lived a normal life, than a world where I was a girl who was systematically stripped of her sense of self, subjective reality, and personhood, subjected to near-constant violence or its threat, and treated as a contaminated, dirty thing. The lie--even the lie of "boy who wants to be a girl" or "woman in a man's body," as though my body was someone else's--as skin-crawlingly painful as it was, was nowhere near as painful as the truth of being a girl trying to find her way to womanhood and living through this on the way.
This is how we internalize the lies. This is how we accept the yoke of oppression. By living in a world where the truth that we are beautiful and worthy and lovable is even more painful to accept than the lie that we are none of these things, because all sense of fairness or order vanishes when you look the truth in the eye. If we are beautiful, we are in a world that does not care about our beauty, and even grinds it in the mud. If we are strong, we are living in a world so heavy that it saps our strength until we are tired all the time. If we are ourselves, we are living in a world that systematically strips away our selfhood like roast chicken scraped from the bone.
Until we are strong enough to look this in the eye and fight it, to stand up and fight and make the part of the world we stand on more okay no matter how hard it is or what it takes--until we are so very strong that we remember we are strong, and beautiful, and true, worthy of no end of love, no matter what--it's just too much to bear. So we accept false stories instead, about how we're dirty and ugly and weak and unlovable. We have to. I had to.
I am writing this down because I know that in an hour, or a day, or a week, I will be listening to the lies again for a while. How else do you live? How do you go on in the world without accepting that the injustice is just, or not your problem, just a little, just for now? How can you walk in a world where the truth is true instead of breaking down and crying? So we internalize the lies for a while in order to let things make enough sense to get through the day. Gravity pulls comfortingly down. The alternative, the raw, vulnerable, pulsing truth can only be taken in doses, even if they're bigger doses every day. It's so hard to just let it be real. How can you let it be real? How can you really pull off the lid and look down into that darkness and let the truth--that you live in a world where you're not considered fully real, fully human, and that if you were considered real, what was done to you would be considered unacceptable, retch-inducing, but you're not and it isn't?
You have to tell yourself the stories. Just for now. Just until you're strong enough to bear the weight of the truth and see with clear eyes, if you ever get that strong. Just until you are so full of overwhelming bravery and power that you can finally insist that you are lovable and loved, that you deserve it in every cell of you, that beauty shines through you as a conflagration of glory. When you stand there, blazing in your awful wonder, you can move the whole world. You just have to get through the pain of knowing that you are true, that you know, that you are everything you will ever need to be.
It hurts to say this and it hurts to hear: you are lovable. So am I. The chasm between that truth and the world we allow ourselves to live in every day is deep and dark, but it is still the truth and always will be.
You are everything you ever hoped you would be, and I love you. When you are strong enough, please, shine.
Labels: affirming flame, monstrous, turning points
posted by little light | 6:10 PM
130 Comments:
This is a thing that needed to be said, and you said it beautifully.
It occurs to me, reading this, that so much of our educational system--not just the schools but the entirety of what the Science of Discworld books refer to as our culture's "make a human kit"--is based on attempts to erase unacceptable identities.
And the more I read about their experiences, the more it seems to me that transpeople have some of the least acceptable identities out there, the ones which normal society deems most in need of erasing.
I've only experienced fragments of this kind of erasing--because as a child my emotions and reactions fell visibly outside the realm of the normal--but even that sticks with me.
When I was in first grade, I'd argue with the teacher past the point where a neurotypical child would know when to back down, and she'd keep at it, and I'd keep at it, and I'd start to get hysterical. When that happened, she'd send me behind a screen set up in the corner of the room until I calmed down. I had to cry myself out there, away from the real children, until I was ready to present myself as one of them again. If my crying still became enough of a disruption to their experience, I'd be sent to the principal.
It's one of those memories I can't shake. I think there's a pattern there.
Good stuff.
Feeling lovable and rage seem to go hand in hand. Once I realised that I really am a human being and human rights apply to me, too, I found this huge sea of rage inside me. I find the rage part much harder to handle than seeing the world for what it is, but it does seem an unavoidable consequence of feeling loved - and relatively safe.
thanks for this.
infinite love to you.
that was fantastic ll.
Thank you. I don't know that I can say much more than that. Thank you. I've linked to this post and even included an excerpt.
Thank you.
That was jarring and beautiful, Little Light.
Like cartografia said, it's hard to come to terms with the rage.
It's also hard to come to terms with a lack of trust and a sense of isolation that so often accompanies such rage. It's so easy to fall into a "I hate the world" state of mind after acknowledging the scope of the social forces behind this kind of abuse.
This has been one of the most trying and difficult struggles I've experienced as a trans person. I'm coping by doing my best to recognize the connection I feel with all living things, even human beings. Some days are more difficult than others.
thank you for this.
your writing is amazing. seriously. Each time I come here when my RSS feed pings me and I think, yes. Of all the people that I read online day after day, your words stay with me, haunt me, remind me.
Thank you so much. This is beautiful.
this is heart stopping amazing! thank you thank you thank you...
and of course may we use this for ravens eye?
pretty please?
I think, in speaking the truth for trans people, you have spoken the truth for every marginalized person in the world. Thank you. Truth and beauty are hard to come by sometimes, and you have presented a treasure chest of both.
...fuck.
I think annwyd has a point too: it's a distillation of the most brutal elements of the systematic "molding" that is arguably at its nadir in the toxic greenhouse that is our school system, but by no means is limited to it.
I'm so sorry.
It's funny; I always "got" that business about how fear of the feminine/female was a big taboo for boys at some instinctive level; it was always something I was fascinated by (and often pissed off about).
Powerful. My heart goes out.
Thank you. I'd like to write something about how Islamaphobic atheism has made me unable to protest the abuse within Islam that did happen and the racism of western progressivism, but I don't want to warp the thread. You are a brave person.
Here's the thing: throwing any child to the gender-enforcers is wrong. It's as wrong to throw female children into groups that will enforce femininity as it is to throw male children into groups that will enforce masculinity. So, what happened to you isn't wrong because you think you're a girl. It's wrong because gender itself is a tool of oppression/privilege.
So, your wishing for the experience of having been publicly assigned to the femininity-enforcing group, rather than to the masculinity-enforcing group, is not an expression of desired freedom from oppression. It's an expression of the desire to have undergone the oppressive socialization reserved for those considered FEMALE, rather than to have undergone the privileging socialization reserved for those considered male.
This is obviously problematic from a feminist stand-point.
Margie
So, your wishing for the experience of having been publicly assigned to the femininity-enforcing group, rather than to the masculinity-enforcing group, is not an expression of desired freedom from oppression. It's an expression of the desire to have undergone the oppressive socialization reserved for those considered FEMALE, rather than to have undergone the privileging socialization reserved for those considered male.
This is obviously problematic from a feminist stand-point.
Say LL were a cissexual lesbian woman who wrote about how when she was a little girl, her peer group was encouraged to brutalize her and assault her to teach her heterosexuality. Say she wrote a pretty wrenching essay about the details of that abuse, and how it made her feel. Say it included stuff like rape.
Would you come swanning in here to tell her that it was inappropriate for her to see herself as less fortunate than all her straight girl classmates? Would you use words like "problematic" to police her reaction to that abuse and her feelings about it after a few years? Even though--so far as I can tell--she didn't actually say she wanted to be a girl like every other girl, or that things would have been just fine if she'd been on the right side of the line?
And would you argue that she had lived a privileged childhood because she was brutalized for slightly different reasons than said straight girl counterparts? That it's better to be queerbashed than date raped? Would you tell her to count her blessings?
Because that would be problematic. From just about any standpoint.
--piny
***Would you come swanning in here to tell her that it was inappropriate for her to see herself as less fortunate than all her straight girl classmates? ***
Well, no, of course not. A female lesbian-identified woman undergoing the exact same oppressive, forced feminine heteronormativity as a heterosexual-identified woman actually IS suffering intersectional layering of oppressions intended for female people. Likewise, as a black female person laboring under the exact same beauty standards as white women suffer an additional oppression than the white women do.
In other words, some female people do actually enjoy privileges over other female people, even while remaining oppressed as female people.
What that has to do with whether or not female people have privilege, EVER, over male people AS FEMALE PEOPLE, as a RESULT OF THEIR FEMALENESS, though, I have no idea. Maybe you can explain that to me, piny?
I'm just going to hold to truth, Margie, and say this:
I'm sincerely sorry that you seem to have missed the point, and I'm even sorrier that you've had to close yourself off from so much compassion in order to make it in this world, which is not kind.
I hope someday that it changes for you, and I do wish you the best.
Go in peace.
Sajia, I appreciate your impulse, and I will be looking forward to reading what you write when and where you choose to do so.
Little light, you can either address the fact that women and girls ALSO are molded/mutilated into femininity BY MALES, just like males are molded/mutilated into masculinity, or you can stop pretending as if you're being truthful rather than misdirecting.
Margie
Margie,
I never denied it, and in fact have spoken to the matter in other places than this post before. It's like you said, "also," not "but." The two wrongs can coexist, and the fights against both must coexist.
I'm not misdirecting. I'm just not going in the direction you seem to want me to, and I'm not taking the bait of your implication that I'm not what I say I am. I've stopped playing pretend and I've stopped conceding that I should.
Again, I wish you the very best. Please don't trigger my readers by escalating this into an argument.
***It's like you said, "also," not "but." The two wrongs can coexist, and the fights against both must coexist.***
OK, either both males and females are socialized under gendered expectations, due to a patriarchal system designed to benefit MALES, whether they feel like males or not. That's what I'm arguing.
OR males who feel like females are OPPRESSED and moreso than actual females even BECAUSE they didn't get the oppressive socialization reserved for females, and instead got the privileging socialization that's reserved for males. When I say that masculinity is a privileged socialization, I'm not talking about intra-sex privilege (ie, males over other males, or females over other females); I'm talking about sexism - the fact that masculinity is privileged over femininity, which is used to privilege males over females. You seem to be arguing, however, that males who wish they were female being socialized to be masculine actually makes them MORE oppressed than females being socialized into that second-class status by birth-injustice. That's what I disagree with.
If my saying that is traumatizing for your readers, perhaps they don't have as much empathy with actual female people as they like to think they do.
Margie
PS - All the best to you, too.
MargarentJamison--
Little light, you can either address the fact that women and girls ALSO are molded/mutilated into femininity BY MALES, just like males are molded/mutilated into masculinity, or you can stop pretending as if you're being truthful rather than misdirecting.
is anyone suggesting that the above isn't so? that gender enforcement and policing doesn't always hurts it's victims?
of course not. and if you read the rest of little light's work, you would know that she's addressed this in other places. frankly, it's a thing we can take as a given in this kind of space.
you're missing the point. little light is writing about *her* experience. and it WAS wrong because she was a girl being thrown in with the boys, and policed violently. it's also wrong because gender policing is an oppressive tool of the patriarchy. it's also wrong because our culture uses violence to police masculinity, and that hurts and has repercussions for people of all genders.
and yes, absolutely, femininity is policed in fucked up ways too, but that's not what little light is talking about here. do you cover every aspect of gender oppression every time you discuss it?
little light writing about her experience here does not diminish or negate anyone else's experience of gender oppression. if you'd really read the post, you'd see how she is talking broadly about oppression in addition to her personal experiences. how oppressed groups and individuals learn to internalize those lies to survive. no one is being excluded-- if anything, little light has managed to write a beautiful piece that any marginalized person could relate to, without appropriating experiences that aren't hers.
I think where you're missing the point is in that the group of boys little light got thrown to to have his gender policed as a little boy is the same group of boys the girls are thrown to to have their femininity policed.
Her experience was not that of being a girl thrown to the boys. It was that of being a boy thrown to the boys.
Margie
Word to the boorish:
When someone has said "Go in peace," they have also said "Go."
Please go now.
Well, just say you want me to leave because you don't want to hear a female-focused opinion, then. Don't pretend as if you want me to go "in peace." My peace is dependent upon not having the female (ie, not male, never male) experience trampled on an appropriated.
Margie
margaretjamison--
little light was not a little boy. she was a little girl.
and your comments are incredibly disrespectful, hurtful and transmisogynistic.
please, go away.
I don't care to deny your experience either. I'm sure it was terrible to have masculinity forced on you.
That doesn't make you female. And it doesn't make it the same as, and certainly not WORSE THAN, having femininity (ie, second-class status) forced on you by virtue of your unalterable femaleness.
Censor me if you like.
Margie
She was a little/young MALE person. I honestly don't care whether or not the word 'boy' is used or not, but that's generally the English word for young males.
You are welcome to your disagreement, of course. I don't really hold out hope that my arguing with you will cause you to agree with me. You are welcome to believe that this is because I can't make a valid argument. We're just clearly not being productive for each other here, and you don't sound inclined to listen to a word I say if I don't concede that I'm somehow actually a man or that my experience was what you say it was.
I don't diminish you. I'm not taking anything away from you. And in the end, this wasn't about you.
I'm going to be out of town for the weekend, and I will be screening comments. I have only once refused to approve comments on this blog, and that was for a rape apologist almost two years ago, but I'm not really interested in approving any more comments that actively demean and deny people's identities. You are welcome to call this censorship if you like, but I'm not keeping you from saying what you want to say anywhere but this very specific place.
Take care.
***You are welcome to call this censorship if you like, but I'm not keeping you from saying what you want to say anywhere but this very specific place.***
Just don't pretend as if your refusal to publish radical feminist perspectives has anything to do with the pursuit of truth and beauty. It has to do with the continuation of the sublimation of the female experience to the male one.
Just don't pretend as if your refusal to publish radical feminist perspectives has anything to do with the pursuit of truth and beauty. It has to do with the continuation of the sublimation of the female experience to the male one.
I think you mean "subjugation."
Your perspective was welcomed here and--yes--published, until the point where you refused to stop insulting and demeaning me and many of the people reading here.
For whatever reason you chose to make this about you and your politics, for whatever reason you seem to feel that respecting me does you harm or that my perspective existing in my own space or anywhere must be stopped at all costs, I simply don't have the energy today to deal with the way you're splashing your privilege all over the place.
You're done here. I hope you got what you wanted out of this interaction.
Oh noes. A misogynist removed from a blog for spouting anti-woman bullshit. Won't someone stand up for the poor, oppressed misogynists?! When does their truth and beauty get to shine?!?!?!
Sigh.
The gender police have come for us, and we have said, "I don't subscribe to your religion" and closed the front door on their pamphlets. Sadly, they turn away, shaking their heads at the behaviour of the damned, and go looking for another door to pound on and innocents to abuse with their message of salvation.
*ignores troll*
"It hurts to say this and it hurts to hear: you are lovable. So am I. The chasm between that truth and the world we allow ourselves to live in every day is deep and dark, but it is still the truth and always will be."
LL, this is amazing!
I think this post, like your skin and scales one, is something I need to bookmark for when my depression is really bad...
Because I love your posts. You speak truth about the world, yet despite the darkness of the world...your posts shine of hope and joy.
Little Light, this post moved me to tears. You write so eloquently, so beautifully, about this experience. It resonated with me so much that I cried, but these were not tears of sadness only (though surely there was sadness because of the trauma we must endure) but also of joy. Joy that you have found the courage to share your experience; joy that I was able to see myself in your writing and know that I am not alone. Thank you, deeply, for having the courage to write this.
To Margaret: First of all, I must say that your writing also moved me to tears. As I read the comment section, I kept crying, but these were tears of pain. Being touched by such hatred, fear and ignorance is a painful thing. I am saddened and a little appalled by your inability to find the common struggle of your fellow human beings. Your lack of compassion is frightening.
But further, I believe it is you who have missed an important truth. There is more to what makes us male or female than our bodies, or what we are assigned at birth. You are still relying on the essentialist notion that male and female are innate characteristics that are biologically innate. This is not true. There are probably many complicated factors in how we become gendered subjects; in how we learn to think of ourselves as male or female or something else. Sex is also a social construction, and how our sex is constructed impacts how we are gendered, by ourselves and by others. Clearly our bodies do play an important role in how we come to understand ourselves as gendered within a system that assigns genders to certain bodies.
But it is not the only factor - for whatever reason, there *are* those of us who, despite being assigned one sex/gender, identify as something else. And yes, this is probably due to the fact that we live in a gendered culture that socially constructs us all as male or female and rigidly polices those barriers.
But this does not change how real we experience our gender, how fundamental it is to our experience of being humans and bodies in this world. I did not "choose" to be female; I simply *am* female. I don't know why or how it happened, but I cannot deny it and I cannot change this anymore than you can. Just because my body is a certain configuration, or I was assigned one way, does not make me any less of a woman or any less female. I experience myself as female; and I will not listen to another person tell me I am wrong. Whether it's the result of living in a gendered world or not, this IS who I am.
LL is writing (beautifully) about the painful experience of being a female-identified person who is assigned male and socialized that way. It is a special kind of evil that clearly remains invisible to you because of your own relative privilege and inability to see past essentialist conceptions of sex/gender. You have, presumably, been assigned female and always identified as female. You do not know what it is like to be gendered as something other than that you were assigned, and no one is saying your experience is invalid or that sexist oppression does not exist. We are merely saying that sexism and gender roles hurt all of us regardless of whether our gender identity is constructed as congruent with our assigned sex or as something else. Just because our gender identity is constructed, and just because someone's experience of being gendered turns out not to conform to YOUR expectations for what makes us gendered, does not make our experience any less valid or true or compelling. Those of us who are gendered as something incongruent with the gender we were assigned (that is, trans people) can still recognize that the experience of being gendered is a social construction, but that doesn't make the way we experience our bodies as being gendered any less real for us.
And yes, we face special kinds of oppression (which LL writes about so well), and that is no more or less important than the kinds of oppression experienced by cissexual/cisgendered women. We cannot change the way we have been gendered, because we experience our gendered selves as female just as powerfully as you and other cis women do. You are privileged because we live in a world which not only privileges men, but also privileges people whose experience of being gendered aligns with the gender they are expected to be. That doesn't diminish your very real, valid experience of oppression. I hope that someday you will see this, and begin to view all people who are gendered as female as potential allies in feminist struggle, whether they were assigned female at birth or not and will work in solidarity with us to fight against the gendered oppression which affect all of us.
I'm sorry to rant like this and to distract from the truly beautiful piece you have created, LL. I was moved to speak my truth. Justifying my existence becomes tiring though, because I must do it everyday. Not just to others, but to myself as well - because, as you point out, so many of us internalize the same kinds of messages that Margaret has perpetuated. And these are the same messages that devalue our lives, remove our humanity, Other us and make us targets for violence and hatred. I hope that someday Margaret will also see that she is contributing to rather than diminishing the amount of violence in this world toward her fellow women. But until then, I'm glad we trans folks at least have each other to look after. Thanks again.
LL,
Thank you for writing this.
I have a lot of anger about this - a lot. I resent the hell out of my parents for this. I found out after I started transitioning that they knew.
When I've tried to describe this anger in the past, I've been told that "They didn't know the right thing to do," or "the world wouldn't be accepting" or some other apologist nonsense, that my anger isn't valid because they only did what they thought was best.
But they didn't. They did what they thought was socially acceptable and I still carry the scars.
What the hell is wrong with some people? First Blanche and now this Margaret creep. Sleep well, Maggie: you just wielded that same scalpel. It was an excellent demonstration of exactly what's in the piece: LL shines, some fuckhead like you comes along to try to put her firmly back in her place.
I'd stand blocking the hate like the people with wings at Fred Phelps demos if I could. In a virtual space, I'll just say: ban away, delete if you want to, we're here for you.
"It hurts to say this and it hurts to hear: you are lovable. So am I. The chasm between that truth and the world we allow ourselves to live in every day is deep and dark, but it is still the truth and always will be."
Yes.
Oh, and LL, many sympathies for this radical feminist trying to appropriate your space for cis struggles. Whenever our voices get too loud, they come around to put us in our place.
It's a tiresome pattern, though. One that needs to be disrupted. Margie's just a cog in cissexist, transphobic society, playing out the mandates against us as if it were a monologue in a play - she's not talking to us, but at us. :(
I'm glad you nipped her comments when you did. She'd no doubt be telling us all we're insane, or panicking about the ev0l organ-harvesting white trans women of the future in no time.
I think Dave Chapelle made a joke about seeing racism so blatant, so flagrant that your reaction is "This must be a movie, because this is too ridiculous to be real." That's my reaction to Margie's transphobia, every time I see it - at this point, at least three times too many.
I think the irony here is that the animosity expressed by Margaret is most likely the product of a lifetime of hurt and abuse, which stems from essentially the same forces that make trans folk’s lives hell.
Unless a society firmly polices the borders of its various caste systems and actively maintains the subordinate status of its lower castes, the associated power structure can’t be maintained. Transphobia, transmisogyny, misogyny, homophobia: ultimately, they all stem from the tendency of a society to police sex and gender categories and their associated power relations.
It’s all too easy to allow the hurt and abuse that is inherent in this mess to isolate us from each other. It’s all too easy to allow our damage and our pain to lead us to view our neighbors, who might be just as hurt and abused, as someone to be feared, shunned and controlled. While succumbing to these forces is understandable, it deepens our contribution to the larger problem.
Thanks again, little light, for your writing. It carries themes that are widely applicable to other struggles. It’s my hope that at least some cissexual/cisgender people will read this essay, look deep within their lives, and see their own struggles reflected in your words.
I take it that Margaret Jamison has departed. I wanted to address her, though, so this post is addressed to her and those of a like mind:
You have definitely stated that you consider masculine socialization to be privileged, as opposed to oppressive socialization of females. What you are ignoring is that male socialization is experienced as oppressive by those who are not male-identified.
I add my voice to Little Light's to tell you that when I was considered to be a boy, cut off from all that was associated with little girls, I experienced torment. Whatever privileges or advantages were supposed to go with masculine training; I missed them. I wished only to be taken for the girl I was.
And when I was accepted as a girl, because I had been allowed to wear a dress or grow my hair and use barrettes, I was not disillusioned. I was happy and comfortable. I felt free. I don't expect that a real boy would have similar feelings. My gender identity was what made the difference, and my experiences are real in spite whatever political construction you want to layer over them.
And my voice cannot be dismissed as male. I was born female. My body conforms to the female standard in every way. I was raised as a female, except for those times that the short hair and boy's clothes chosen for me by my parents were read in a way that did not allow for female socialization - by other children, by caregivers, by random adults. They couldn't see the vagina beneath my clothes. My genitals did not determine my experiences. As Little Light has eloquently shown, they did not necessarily dictate my identity, either.
If you can't listen to Little Light because of your perceptions of her gender, can you listen to me? Or will you disregard this woman's voice as well?
I just really, really want to give you a hug right now. I'm sorry I have nothing more useful to say, though...
And good lord, can't the virulently transphobic radfems at least keep the cruelty and bigotry in their own blogs?
i thought i'd commented on this to tell you how amazing it was, but i guess not, so here we are: this is amazing.
whoa so that last comment was before i read the comment thread. i think you & others have everything covered, but now, well, what the above commenter said about wanting to give you a hug.
I want to comment on this, but compared to what you've said, anything I could say would sound horridly illiterate.
So I'll just say, thank you for writing this. It was a bit upsetting to read, but it was all true and familiar. It needed to be said.
I cannot believe that Margaret has effectively been silenced here for merely pointing out some valid views.
I am a woman born trans, however, to try and suggest that I was still a girl when I was younger is just utterly ridiculous. Whether I felt I should have been a girl is not the same as having been raised as a girl.
And to suggest that somehow, 'being a girl' is really about wearing dresses, or socialising with other girls over boys is simply buying into gender contruction of patriarchal societies.
I can empathise totally with your post littlelight, but at the same time, I am continually appalled at the silencing of radfem women.
My experiences are a far cry from yours - I've been very privileged in my life. And yet, when I read your writing here, it's like crawling into your skin and seeing the world through the same veil of scintillating pain and beauty that you do. I thank you for that. You are amazing.
Jane,
Margaret has in no way been silenced. She has the run of the Internet, and has simply been asked, after ignoring multiple warnings to stop insulting and demeaning me and my commenters and readers without saying anything new, not to comment here any more. And other than spamming me with dictionary definitions of "sublimate," she hasn't tried.
I'm not silencing her. I haven't gone to her blog to harass her for her views--including the post she set up specifically to mock and deride me, where she is calling me fraudulent and currently cheering on commenters full of such cartoonish hate as to suggest that trans women's real goal is to steal cis women's organs--an opinion she herself has expressed elsewhere, if I recall.
I'm not going into her space to argue with her--or in any of the other spaces she frequents, where she's perfectly free to say whatever she pleases. I'm not asking the Michfest board, which has linked here today, to stop talking about me, let alone in the worst terms imaginable as some of them are. I'm not doing anything except choosing not to allow one radical feminist to express increasingly abusive "views" in my own space, where I am not obligated to advertise hate speech. You're welcome to go to her place and see what she has to say, and I'm not stopping her in any way. Radical feminists have been welcome here before, and this is the first time I've ever banned a commenter--because she, specifically, is just repeating herself plus increasingly abusive language, while refusing to abide by my request to discourse civilly.
Calling this silencing is like calling asking a person shrieking obscenities on your front porch to please back up and go do it outside the bounds of your front yard silencing.
And if you think this post is in any way about wearing dresses defining womanhood, Jane, I'm sorry to say you seem to have missed the point, too.
Can I make a request that we try not to center people who only come in here to disrupt and insult? There are just better things to talk about, everyone.
For instance, someone expressed the concern that this post is about saying boys are inherently violent, or that a system that shapes them violently isn't problematic. And I don't think it's so--I think this system is harmful for everyone, including boys, and that they are taught to treat each other this way in a really unfortunate cycle, something I hope we can stop. There's no way we're going to solve gendered problems without addressing the ways that young boys are taught to be men; maleness isn't evil, but allowing children to be hurt until they learn to hurt others may just be. We can do better for our children, trans and cis, male and female and gender non-conforming. We'll end up with healthier adults better able to tackle their adult problems.
And can I simply say?
The fact that every time I assert my perspective, or that I have a valid perspective that isn't inherently fraudulent, malevolent, or delusional, this is what happens, and it's instructive. Pay attention, everyone, to what happens when someone like me dares to use words like "truth" and "beauty" or is so presumptuous as to reach toward something sacred (http://takingsteps.blogspot.com/2007/01/seam-of-skin-and-scales.html, anyone?)--a bunch of people feel the need to show up and remind me of my place.
If that doesn't prove my point here for you, I'm pretty sure it's because you agree with that notion of where I belong and what I am.
Cheers.
I am appalled at the idea that anyone should feel obligated to coddle any radfem who tries to silence any trans woman.
And that's what Margaret came here to do - that's what she intended by posting on her own blog, to silence little light, to tell her what she's allowed to write, and what she's not allowed to write.
That shouldn't be acceptable. Isn't acceptable.
The radfem trolls seem to come here to bask in the pain of others. They are sanctimonious in their hypocrisy. They give loud public declarations of their own oppression, while their first instinct when they notice someone on a lower rung of the ladder to themselves is to stamp on their fingers, and claim they are being silenced and oppressed by their chosen victim's cries of pain.
In their comments, those such as Margaret Jamison demonstrate that they are, in essence, no different to those they profess to oppose. They have become what they hate.
I think it is relevant that the woman who posted a link to the Michfest boards posted it to support you, LL.
LL,
Thank you for this post.
This post is amazing, little light. What I find problematic here is Margaret Jamison's apparent conviction that she has the Final and One True Word about your life experiences. To the extent that she is impervious to the deep pain that you discuss here and is unable even to muster any compassion given your descriptions of abuse and rape.
I also see the same sort of thing happening in the Alas thread, though under the guise of some kind of commitment to objective truth. I don't know if I know exactly how to put this, but... It's almost as if... Okay, I'm recognizing this only because I know I've been guilty of the same thing. But I feel like there's a dissonance happening. Some of the cis people commenting over there seem unable to access the kind of pain you discuss, so there's a dissonance (maybe even despite the best intentions of some), and... Once again, it seems like your pain is being minimized in an effort to center cis experiences. Or that you're expected to discuss your experiences in language that cis people can automatically relate to and/or recognize from experience.
I think there's a lot of socialized sexism in what you describe. As a girl, I was never abused for being perceived as tomboyish. But I think that has something to do with the fact that boys are socially cast as inherently superior to girls--and also that cis kids are privileged in this respect. It seems *natural* to sexist- and cissexist-socialized kids sometimes that tomboyish girls want to do "boy things." But besides that, there's a great deal of cissexism involved (that is, tomboyish cis girls are probably a lot less likely to suffer childhood abuse at the hands of bullies than trans kids.). But as a trans girl, your experience was one of repeated attempts to crush your identity. Cis kids do *not* experience this kind of thing along the axis of gender identity, and the constant refrain of "I didn't experience it this way" over there seems...troubling to me. No, *I* didn't have these experiences either, but that's because I'm cis, damnit--and not because your experiences need to be questioned for possible falsifiability. I think that's something that tends to happen with privilege. In the same way, white folks who point out that "*I* didn't experience my hometown as racist" have a tendency to think that they should be able to recognize descriptions of racism *from experience* and are too often taken seriously when we say, "Well, I didn't observe racism in that experience, so it must not exist." It's like.. Cis people aren't the arbiters of the Truth of Trans Children's Experiences, just like we can't be the arbiters of what "counts" as racism. And I think... We (speaking of myself as a cis white person, but also of some others in comments threads)... Well, when we feel the compulsion to do that, we ought to have the decency to step back, STFU, and deal with that instinctive impulse to *make sure that we are always centered in every conversation damnnit.* Particularly when someone is writing from such a deep place of pain as to include childhood experiences of violence and abuse, it's really offensive to start rationalizing about how "I didn't really experience that, and I was a tomboy." That's just not right. And no cis woman would be questioned in this way for speaking of gendered violence in childhood. I am sorry that this shit keeps coming up.
LL,
thats a beautiful and important message.
I'd just typed a pretty long comment, and then it got erased because I logged into blogger. So, here is the condensed version:
I think this is beautiful post. Thank you for writing it.
More substantively, though, I think there are some parallels between what Margaret Jamison has done here and what is happening over at Alas (I have not had the misfortune of reading the Michfest boards, but probably there too).
No matter what (and across a wide range of political viewpoints), it seems to be taken as unproblematic to center cis points of view on your experiences because cis points of view must always be validated. No matter that you're specifically writing about experiences that cis people do not have, there still seems to be this instinctive impulse to center cis experience. From Margaret Jamison's fear that your identity destabilizes the ontological stability of her own (to the point that she litters your place with transphobic hate speech) to the cis commenters at Alas who engage in the constant refrain of "that wasn't my experience as a child." The latter statement, of course, often compounded by, "And I was a tomboy, so I understand about the socialization of boys."
I mean, here's the thing. I was sometimes a bit of a tomboy. I was also a cis girl. I could not with any credibility make claims about the socialization of boys w/r/t gender variance of any kind--and most certainly not when it comes to the socialization of boys with regard to trans girls. I neither (1) had personal experience with this kind of abuse *or* (2) had the political consciousness or wherewithal to judge its ubiquity in society at large. So, it seems ridiculous for a cis person to come along and question your biographical account on the basis of *not recognizing* your experience. Why *would* we recognize it when we were socialized in the same sort of cissexist way (and have always been privileged as cis people because of cissexism)?
Since you do open this up to broader discussions of oppression, I did want to say... I do think there are some parallels in how privilege is operating here and how it operates along other axes of oppression. Among other examples, for instance, I'm thinking of the times in which I've seen white people taken seriously when we say things like, "Well, I didn't observe racism in my hometown, so my hometown wasn't racist." I mean, among other things, how could we really *know* that for sure? And why do people feel so free to say, "Well, I think you may be *biased* as a POC," whereas white people are never told we're "unfairly biased" (or ignorant) because we're white. Our views are "normalized," more likely to be cast as "objective" and as "scientifically true."
So, in thinking about the responses I've seen to your post, my feeling is that... First, there is a lot of dissonance at work. Cis people are reading this and feeling alarmed because we cannot automatically relate to your experience. Since our perspectives are dominant and normalized, we have the misguided view sometimes that we *should* be able to recognize any and all experiences. We take our view as some kind of "God's eye view" (that's Donna Harraway) and arbiter about what is true of human experience, and when those assumptions are disrupted... We tend to freak out because the premise of our subjectivity (one that's founded largely on the assumption of our ability to be objective--as well as to know and understand every knowledge that there is to know about the world) is called into question. Well, the defensive responses certainly betray a serious sense of entitlement: "What??? How dare *you* tell *me* that I can't understand and objectively evaluate your experiences on the basis of my own? After all, I'm a radfem (in the case of Margaret Jamison)/ progressive liberal (in the case of several people at Alas).
I think the liberal view that I'm thinking about w/r/t Alas is probably the most pervasive out in the world (just in the sense that we live in a liberal republican society, and not a radfem one). After all, liberalism erases all "differences," and there is a presumption of equality. That is... The same "God's eye view" that allows a white person to get away with saying "I'm colorblind" with a straight face seems to be a similar move to the one that's happening here: "This wasn't my experience, and as Arbiter of the True, let me tell you where you got your own discussion of your pain and oppression wrong." Or, in circles less committed to progressive standards: "I think you might be *unfairly biased* about this because you're trans" (the assumption being, of course, that the cissexist account of your story could represent some kind of "objective truth.").
And there's a fair amount of entitlement in all of this, eh? I'm starting to think... I mean, so I've certainly fucked up in this kind of way, but here's the thing.... When cis people start to feel this instinctive urge to center *our own experiences* to the point of drowning out a story of emotional trauma and abuse... When we begin to do this *even though* we are demonstrating an extreme dissonance with the profound pain being expressed... When we can only think to engage with narratives like yours by calling the veracity of your claims into question under the guise of "objective truth"... Honestly? We ought to STFU, stop ourselves from centering our own experiences, recognize what we're doing, and deal with our blind spots without inflicting pain on marginalized people.
And that's something that progressive folks claim to understand, but it seems to come up over and over again when it comes to trans oppression and racial oppression. No, we're not the arbiters of What is True about your experiences, damnnit, and it sickens me to see that happening to such an amazing post in such a systematic way.
(didn't turn out to be condensed after all.)
Yeah, I'm gonna second Little Light, again: even besides the extra special fucked-uppedness of Margaret trying to gaslight LL on her own blog post about how frigging abusive it is to be gender-gaslit, no, for the quintillionth time, it is not -silencing- to disallow whoever the hell you want to disallow from commenting on your own damn blog.
We have freedom of assembly. This does not mean that if I have an open house party, and some random person comes in and starts abusing me and my other guests and vomiting on the carpet, I am interfering with her freedom when I evict her from my house. She can go throw up on her own carpet. Or she can go to Speaker's Corner or wherever, and throw up there; or at anywhere else that's all like "sure! that's not vomit! we value your contributions!" It's really fairly straightforward.
per what Kristin's saying: Nezua's "seeing eye frog" also comes to mind.
and I agree that the conversation about harmfulness of male socialization -to men- is also an important one.
part of the reason i got so frustrated with sites like Feminist Critics (besides the more obnoxious MRA factor, obviously) was that it kept seeming like they were -almost- getting there and yet...
Socialization of girls to be girls is pretty brutal, too.
I do not understand what the competition I see in some comments is about, really ... the "I was more oppressed than you" thing so many people seem to be shouting ... ?
Isn't the key here not just male vs female but also about being either/both or in between or something, and not being neurotypical, and having to negotiate all of this? Doesn't that add a whole new layer of complexity to the everyday violence of inculcating gender roles?
It doesn't seem to me that the key is being blind to privilege and wanting to impersonate or usurp a more-oppressed identity. It's got to be more complicated than that. And on a practical level I doubt many people would go to the work of transitioning just for that.
A really incredibly beautiful post.
A female friend of mine, who is trans, was subjected to the same thing. In her country town all-male school she endured a shocking level of very real violence that was ignored by everyone. Ignored especially by those supposed to protect her - her teachers, her family. Her collarbone, to name one injury, was broken at school and nobody listened. It was never set properly.
It's maddening. It's the kind of madness that makes the inside of my skull itch with the desire to somehow make it unreal or else I don't know what I'm going to do with this anger and disgust and I'm only an ally. I've only had to watch this done to my friends. To live this experience, well words simply fail me. But this isn't my place to have words.
On a more personal and tangenital note, the climax of this post spoke to me as I identify with those feelings of self-hatred and unlovableness and ugliness for many reasons different to yours. And you're right... you're right so much that imagining a world where one is loveable and beautiful and worth more than that shit is so damn hard sometimes. I wish I knew how to find love for myself.
Your experience is not mine, but I am in empathy with some of what you say.
And after having read the comments thread... LL, you are one classy lady, with a patience in a league of its own.
Talk of the Devil and here I am.
Belledame:
part of the reason i got so frustrated with sites like Feminist Critics ... was that it kept seeming like they were -almost- getting there and yet...
Funny, that's what I feel about you.
and I agree that the conversation about harmfulness of male socialization -to men- is also an important one.
The point that you've all missed, that you always all miss, is that the way feminists frame the issue is harmful to harmed men. Now, if we could have a conversation about that without everything men have to say on it being dismissed out of hand - and to little light's credit, her responses on Toy Soldiers appear to indicate that she's willing to do this - then maybe we could make some progress toward a framing and a discussion that doesn't harm us.
But not in this thread, obviously.
Little Light, this is amazing and speaks to so much from my history. Thank you
Littlelight,
I love this post. I actually read it a few days ago, but I had to take a little while to process what you wrote. It really brought up some painful memories of my childhood. I don't want to de-center this post because it really does need to be about YOUR experiences. Cisgendered-women can create our/their own blogs. I think that you were extremely gracious with Margaret, considering the fact that you even allowed her to link and comment here in the first place. I know some people who wouldn't even let assholes like that make a single comment on their blog and even that wouldn't be silencing.
Now, I'm going to bow out and listen. Sometimes cisgendered-women can benefit from doing that.
This was a fantastic post, little light.
Margaret: No one was saying that the sexism and violence experienced by cissexual women is somehow okay or that it is non-existent or that it isn't institutionally supported.
Unfortunately, you've missed the point of the post: that, far from trans women having the privileged existence you seem to think we have, violence against trans women is, in so many ways, institutionalized and socially condoned in a way that it never is against cissexual women.
So, shut the fuck up. Not everything is about you, you self-absorbed little prick.
I, however, am not nearly as classy and patient as little light, whom I find incredibly insightful and most delightful.
And I am very tired of this separatist/trans thing.
Little Light, thank you for a beautiful post that resonates and teaches.
Is it ok if I ask some questions out of ignorance and naivity?
Is it ok to say that I felt your post more keenly because some emotional elements of it, like believing the lies is easier than the truth, is familiar to me, albeit in a different and less severe situation, and that recognition made the post more meaningful to me? Or is that making it about me? Does it sound horribly cynical that your gift for communicating your emotional experiences that could be shared by others, albeit with different causes, makes your message more comprehensible?
I'm horribly aware that there's a lot I don't understand, and I don't know when my priviledge is getting in the way, but I want to say thank you for communicating something I know I will never fully understand, but due to you have a better idea about than before.
I'd love to learn more about trans people's experience in childhood - any tips on good sources of info?
It's absolutely okay to bring those things up, mentalbunny. I'm glad you find what I write meaningful to you, and I appreciate your candor and openness toward listening and learning. If I only hoped to invoke feelings or understanding in people just like me, I'd be writing for a very small audience indeed.
Does anyone have good resource suggestions to offer for learning about trans childhood? I know there's not much, but it might be helpful to make a list here for anyone who wants to help change situations like the one I've described above.
I just want to say, generally, thank you for the support and kind words, everyone. There is a lot of vulnerability in writing this sort of thing, and a lot of exhaustion in dealing, again, with people who see vulnerability as a sign of weakness and not as a sign of strength.
I didn't center the concerns of cis men or cis women, which always upsets a lot of people--it's gotten me in a pretty impressive crossfire between MRAs and radical feminists, among others--but I really do appreciate the diverse group of people who've come here willing to listen, talk, and take me on my own terms here. This post was about me, in its way, but it was for anyone who found it resonant and meaningful.
For instance, someone expressed the concern that this post is about saying boys are inherently violent, or that a system that shapes them violently isn't problematic. And I don't think it's so--I think this system is harmful for everyone, including boys, and that they are taught to treat each other this way in a really unfortunate cycle, something I hope we can stop.
I agree that this is a major issue that really concerns me. I agree that women's policing of other young women can be just as viscious, and I think both sets of policing continue into adulthood and become codified into police and political violence against people who don't "fit" for whatever reason.
I also think this ties into, in both childhood and adulthood, the awareness of and use of power (including violence). How do we chose to use our influence/ability? Do we pull things sideways into an area and framing we feel comfortable with? How do people respond to that and does the frame shift? I think a lot of those power dynamics appeared and happened in the comment thread and that they appear in comment threads everywhere centered on who controls the discourse and who controls the power.
Thank you, deeply, for this post Little Light. I don't have words to express how impressed I am at your willingness to share the honesty of your life.
Not like you need someone else to say it, but thank you. Thank you for writing. Thank you for being eloquent and compassionate. Thank you for making me cry at work. Thank you.
What if there were a sort of being who was made to detect wrongness in interaction with others?
What if that function required willingness?
What if that being were placed into a context where deception/lies is not only widespread, but core to the functioning of the larger context/system (core systemically and core for the members to get through the day)
What if that being made specifically to detect wrongness feels deception/lies as horrifically painful wrongness, and there is not only little will for this correction, but active resistance?
Every day I carry the understanding that what I know of what I am (of which this description only has the "least crazy" parts) may in fact be just crazy. Every day and every moment I have to make the decision of what I will trust.
No one reading this will have any idea what I mean. Another problem is with how words function here.
If I function as what I am, I get "backlash."
For this, there is no solution in accepting myself or loving myself, since what I am made for only exists in the interaction. There is no individual self. Tried that and failed, because it doesn't really exist in what I am. That solution of identity doesn't work for one who only actually exists in interaction.
I write this knowing no one reading will have any idea what I am saying. What I am does not exist here.
And so this thing about trusting or not trusting what I know in a world where what I am does not exist ... huge huge daily struggle.
And in the WTF is this person saying about this post? category -- For me this post says a lot. Thank you.
And the backlash/response you get -- yes it is instructive as you point out.
little light... this is your blog, for your experiences, your perspective, your catharsis, your whatever... why SHOULD you centre the needs of cis men and women?
And I say that as a cis woman.
So I am glad you're continually apalled at the silencing of radfeminist women
who seek to INSULT LL ON HER BLOG
And to suggest that somehow, 'being a girl' is really about wearing dresses, or socialising with other girls over boys is simply buying into gender contruction of patriarchal societies.
Becuase LL actually mentions anything about dfresses and not
ohh
a HEART RENDING MOVING CHRONICLE OF HE ROWN LIFE
which because it doesn't MATCH YOUR THEORY on how she shoudl have felt she should
well what should she do
that doesn't effectively boil down to BE SOMEONE WHO SHE'S NOT TO PLEASE PEOPLE WHO DON'T GIVE A DAMN
or that talking about her own life in her own space IS A PROBLEM
Hi little light, I left you a comment on Toy Soldiers. I hope that it makes some sense.
I would have preferred to reply to this in the Alas thread, where you posted it, but I'm banned there:
little light said:
Of course the system does harm to boys and men, but it does more harm to girls and women. Of course the system harms cissexual and cisgender people, but it does more harm to trans people. The boys around me were shaped and restricted by violence, and that’s not okay. But I didn’t watch them having their entire sense of subjective reality systematically stripped away, which is a whole ‘nother ballgame. I didn’t watch them get told they were delusional so many times that they had to accept it in order to hold together some semblance of selfhood. And as abusive as the system for them was, because it was accepted as a longstanding status quo by nearby adults, there were failsafes for them that didn’t exist for a person not considered real or valid.
Does that make sense?
It makes sense. It just doesn't match my reality. "Entire sense of subjective reality systematically stripped away"? So utter and complete was the destruction wrought on me by my late teens that I could do nothing but writhe and rave in sheer agony for the next decade. "Told me that I'm delusional"? Feminists do that every time they declare that my life has been one of unmitigated gender-privilege. Failsafes? What failsafes? I was told very clearly that I had to protect myself, and here's how... The trouble is, everything they advised me to do made it worse. And that made me even more a failure.
I totally accept that it's worse for trans than for cis in the sense that it's typical if not universal for trans to experience this level of destruction, while most cis do not. I do not accept that it's worse for females than males. I've seen no evidence that this is true, and I could make the same argument that you did: I didn't see the girls being destroyed the way I was. I think both arguments say more about what we didn't see than about what actually happened.
Neither am I saying that it's worse for males than females. I agree with Ampersand when he said "I actually don’t think that “just as much” — or “worse,” or “better” — comparisons are actually very useful." Hear, hear, and thank you, Ampersand, for saying that.
Quote from HughRistik's link:
Little light: ...I mean no offense, but this is not about you or your needs.
Well. That does lay it out explicitly, doesn't it? That there's no room on little light's blog for little light? That her post should occasion discussion of views she neither endorses nor even mentions?
Deja vu. As commonplace as it is, it never stops being eerie.
I'm thinking of timberwraith's comment about how hurt drives all this. And about how that engine starts to running: there's a behavior pattern we adopt ("we" as in people. Me. You. Us.) when our very last crumb's been snatched out of our hand. How every other crumb starts to doppelganger the one we don't have. Which behavior, to be fair, isn't utterly outre - those crumbs do all share a common property: "We don't have it!"
Not outre at all. Nor is it comfortable to refuse the crumbless. Nor should it be.
Doesn't "crumbless" rankle? I'd bet it does. I'd bet it rankles like:
"You gave a trigger warning and then triggered me - manage my triggers!"
"Your experiences are about you and they mustn't be!"
"Your views are just like child abuse!"
"You robbed my uterus!"
Silly, crumbless words. Coming from a place of pain that isn't silly at all.
Of course, I myself don't blog. Nor do I have much faith that sharing won't be interpreted as an invitation to pistols at dawn in a world too shriveled for all of us. But not everyone agrees.
Thank you for not being me, little light. And for speaking your own words and your own peace. I'm glad we don't agree.
first i want to say that, little light, this article means a hell of a lot to me (as does all of your writing).
and as to the latest comments from hughristik and daran:
oy gevalt, the steady drumbeat of white/cis people coming onto the blog of a trans woman of color to try silence her on *her own blog* and tell her that the white / cis / menz need for unruffled feathers is more important than her need for survival just never stops, does it?
or what blackamazon said.
Well. That does lay it out explicitly, doesn't it? That there's no room on little light's blog for little light?
No, that's not what was meant at all.
That her post should occasion discussion of views she neither endorses nor even mentions?
You put us in an invidious position. Either we respond here, in which case we appropriate a portion of little light's space for our own purpose, or we do not, in which case we have no reply in the place it was made to a comment which is clearly about us.
Imagine, if you will, that little light happened upon a post or comment on someone else's blog which, though peripheral to the topic of of the post, stereotyped transpeople in a hurtful and harmful way. Would you then fault her for writing a post on her own blog about how this affected her and other transpeople?
Now suppose the author come by at her invitation to say that, no that wasn't what he meant, what he meant was this... And then expressed views about transpeople that were sensitive and nuanced. Would that invalidate her concerns about what he had said in the first place?
The second paragraph in the little light's post isn't about her. It's a depiction of masculinity that presents it as tainted by violence. That's a stereotype that hurts and harms non-violent men, particularly those who were victimised by the very same schoolyard dynamics that little light was talking about.
We all accept that she didn't mean it that way. But that doesn't undo the harm. It wouldn't undo the harm if she deleted or rewrote the paragraph. It wouldn't undo the harm if she'd never written it in the first place, because it's a universal stereotype, and she cannot erase it from the world.
That's what we mean when we say that it isn't about her.
Derailing, derailing, derailing, Daran.
"Non-Violent" men - the fact such a thing has to be qualified indicates to me a conscious choice to not be violent.
As a cis woman who has to fear the violence of men due to the way they are raised, I'm with little light all the way on this one.
Furthermore, little light was speaking AS A WOMAN about her experience AS A GIRL and being "thrown to the wolves" because she didn't look like all the other little girls and society's rigid gender constructs couldn't handle that.
Daran, all you demonstrate by making it all about you (it's not and never will be) is your ignorance as to the horrendous level of violence trans children frequently encounter.
You cannot possibly begin to understand. Masculinity as tainted by violence does affect cismen yes. But that should be all the more reason for you to see the validity in what little light is saying.
But of course you can't... it has to be all about you, all the time.
You put us in an invidious position.
Which us? Do you really want replies to a plurality of blogs as though they were a monolithic unity? I'll probably fail - but I'll try.
If you're genuinely unsure whether or not it's alright to comment, and you can't glean such from what's already posted, why don't you ask? Seriously. Resolve that moral dilemma in one swell foop. It's often a great way to let someone know you're interested in conversation rather than swashing a monologue. If you're not speaking from entitlement, you can ask.
I'm going to have to decline your invitation to consider an airy web of hypothetical analogies. Because they aren't what's happening here. Because this is a real story about real people. Because when you soft-focus into an abstract thought experiment, what people have actually said blurs and slips out of your field of view - and what people have actually said is even a bone of contention. Let's not.
I am however going to ask you to choose: intent matters, or intent does not matter. Choose only one and abide by your decision. You've considerable leeway to decide how it matters (if you so choose) - but be consistent. If your comment that "No, that's not what was meant at all." is intended to exculpate, or explain, or mean anything whatsoever then you may not also say "We all accept that she didn't mean it that way. But that doesn't undo the harm." Intent matters or it doesn't; choose one and only one, or you're applying a double standard - and none too subtly.
In the spirit of involving all of you and not making it personal, I'm rereading TS's posts at Toy Soldiers now. I should remark that his statement "Generally, I avoid reading personal accounts because I do not think they should be dissected and I doubt that if I disagreed with something stated in an account that I could avoid doing so." is a wise. Judging only from his posts there, he's done so consistently - with one exception. May I reframe that as a consistent record of not dissecting the personal accounts of men (as worthy of respect), and an equally consistent record of dissecting the personal accounts of women (as a golden opportunity to critique some ideology)? Perhaps someone had better reframe it! Double standard, none too subtle.
These are not coincidental. Not isolated. Not anomalous. And not unnoticed.
It wouldn't undo the harm if she'd never written it in the first place,
Let's accept, pari passu, that your post "isn't about her", that you just adorned its title with her name for no reason. Let's also accept that a post entitled A Little Light also isn't about her and is just name-dropping for no reason. I would not have guessed, but fine. With that in mind, what is it you want, Daran?
Whether she writes or doesn't write she causes harm, apparently. It's inappropriate if she "discusses boys’ experiences" because she's not one, and it's inappropriate if she discusses "violence be[ing] perpetrated on a particular person" because that erases boys' experiences? Can't talk about it, can't not talk about it, can't acknowledge hurt feelings, can't apologize. What's left to say?
When MargaretJamison says your very existence has "trampled on an[sic] appropriated" her, how should you respond? The rage and pain motivating that comment is valid, the b-movie specter of Invasion of the Uterus Snatchers is risible and unfounded, and the only answer that satisfies all of her requirements is to stop existing. No.
When TS says your "perception and presentation of masculinity and boys and men are just as harmful as the things that were done to you," how should you respond? The hurt motivating that comment is valid, the blunt equation of a "perspective" with rape and violence is risible and unfounded, and the only way to stop abusing is to stop breathing because nothing you say or do ameliorates? No.
There's nothing novel in any of that. Most of the people reading here have heard it altogether too often. Most of the people reading here have heard that talking in their own space wrongs others in an irrevocable way. Most of the people reading here have heard that what they are harms others in an unallayable way. Most of the people reading here have learned from bitter experience that someone who claims "what you are hurts me" means to do some dirty work.
People who post here, by the way. Not handy levers for you to use against feminism or kyriarchy or what your bête noire might be.
This sludge geysers predictably out every time someone sticks her head out from underfoot. There's a shower of stale poison lurking for anyone who shows some strength, and darts of blame for anyone who shows some compassion. There's a whole line of people who've bought tickets to see a scapegoat and are eager to critique someone's enforced performance in that role.
We're canceling that show today, Daran. No.
QUOTE "As a cis woman who has to fear the violence of men due to the way they are raised, I'm with little light all the way on this one."
So it's all about who, Garbo? Amazing that you can tell one person off in one paragraph about making it all about him, then go any make it all about yourself.
It's not about cis-women and their fears here. It's about LL's experiences.
That's right, folks; not only do I want to carve out uteruses and abuse young boys due to my simultaneous hatred of cis women (as a man!) and cis men (as a woman!), I am--I'm sorry, I just had to approve it--responsible for the worldwide financial crisis.
Mama told me there'd be days like this...
Stop your assassinating Archduke Ferdinand this instant!
This post retrospectively caused Hurricane Katrina, the cancellation of Firefly, new Coke, the stock market crash of 1929 and the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in 410.
Little Light looked at one of my cows funny, and now it gives less milk.
I'm just saying.
"This post retrospectively caused Hurricane Katrina, the cancellation of Firefly, new Coke, the stock market crash of 1929 and the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in 410."
I always knew Little Light had some powerful fucking magic.
So, how many childhood accounts of trans women have you read, Duran? I’m just curious, because you seem to be missing a crucial point. Physical and emotional abuse by male peers is a fairly common experience of growing up on the trans feminine spectrum. This isn’t a stereotype: it’s a problem that needs a solution. You can argue with that all you want, but right now, at this juncture history, that’s simply where the chips fall.
I also have to say that when you are at the bottom of the social pecking order, you pretty much wind up subjected to violence for many of your peers. It’s not just a few bad apples making your life miserable. It comes from all over the place. The kind of abuse I was subjected to when I was growing up was severe enough that I didn’t learn to trust men until I was well into my twenties. I’m still not entirely comfortable with men and I’m now 40. So, yes, the violence is that bad.
Now the funny thing is, you can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats is most marginalized members. The further outside the norm you are, the more obvious the nature of the penalties become for violating a set of norms. If you violate the norms a little bit, it’s no biggie: the response is often mild. If you violate those norms a lot, you are going to endure much heavier penalties. Pretty straight forward, no?
So, there’s continuum in operation here. If you occasionally violate common notions of masculinity, you’ll get teased a little bit, but as long as you learn to fall in line, things are going to be fine. If, you persistently violate a whole medley of common notions of masculinity, there’s a pretty good chance you are going to get beaten into compliance—literally. Hence, the threat of violence is a part of the construction of masculinity and this is made obvious by the fact that it’s meted out to the worst offenders. When you couple that with the fact that it’s boys inflicting those penalties upon male peers, you then get the linkage behind the notion that boys enforce and shape the masculinity of others via violence. The threat is always there for the worst offenders, and thus, it creates a limit as to how far the average boy will push the envelope.
Now, I don’t think that makes boys and men evil, and I don’t think that violence is inherently a part of being male. (Although ironically, some of the biggest arguments I had over the notion of innate male violence has been with men.) Nor do I think that all men and boys are violent. However, I do think it implies that society constructs currently masculinity in incredibly messed up ways. I also think it implies a collective responsibility to bring a lot more sanity into the way we raise boys.
Changing how masculinity is imaged and constructed in society can be done in a lot of ways. Certainly, challenging individual people on their own messed up notions of masculinity is a great way to start. Having spent my childhood being treated like crap by my male peers, I’ve had a vested interest in being a part of this process. Shining a spotlight on the kind of violence that I and little light endured is a crucial part of the process. Shining a spotlight on the linkage between masculinity and violence that we see in the media, dysfunctional schools, and common child rearing practices is crucial as well. On the other hand, challenging a trans woman’s experiences with the f*d up way society enforces masculinity isn’t one of them.
Don’t you realize that trashing someone’s experience with abuse in the name of your own cause—even if it is a good cause—is great way to generate animosity? If you really want to make boys’ lives more livable, you should try another strategy because this one isn’t going to work. It’s just going to piss people off and they won’t bother listening to you.
OMG, Little Light - you caused Firefly to be canceled?
I'm ok with the rest and the loss of my uterus (it stops bleeding sometime soon, right?) but I'm afraid if you led to the end of Firefly we just can't be friends anymore. 8(
Blu: I'll accept I wasn't clear in expressing myself. I was extremely frustrated when I commented.
What I mean by my comment was that as a woman I perhaps have a perspective of male violence that is different to Daran's and more in line with little light's because of the reality of women's lives (trans and cis) being so often touched by this violence.
I by no means equate the two - the sort of violence and abuse trans women are subjected to at the hands of men is a vitally important and separate issue that is tolerated in many, many instances and even seen as appropriate, as little light's post demonstrates.
And yes - I think as a woman I see this differently to how Daran does and I think that has to do with me being a woman and my own reality requiring an awareness of male violence.
I'm not playing the Oppression Olympics. I have defended at several points this is LL's blog to write as she pleases. When I talk about my experience as a cis woman, I am speaking in solidarity to indicate that while I can never, ever, ever know LL's experience, I am in empathy.
Well I can certainly say that kindergartens and other schools from Sydney, up the Coast past Newcastle, in the bush of the Central West and New England regions of News South Wales Australia are all filled with a masculinity built on male violence. Or at least were when I went to them.
Besides... it's not only USA childrens tv shows where a boy ends up in womens clothes and the laugh-track kicks in!
Violently (physicaly but most often emotionally violent) Masculinising culture is pervasive thoughout the media.
The gentle, caring, effeminate non-violent male is still rarely lauded isn't he.
My experiences were of strongly enforced masculine stereotypes. Of me, the assault victim, being sent to the school counsellor rather than the perpetrators who physically attacked me. The counsellor tried to encourage me to play violent contact team sports, to read less in public, to discuss cars, to hide my intellect and feellings, to be more like those who attacked me so that I would not be encouraging them by being different and standing out.
Yes, there is a violent enforcing of musculinity. And the system enables and protects that. And previous victims of the system try and get others to comply with it either out of concern for the new victims further suffering if they defy the masculine social order or out of a need to validate their own submission to it and collaboration with it.
Those are my experiences and observations at least.
Battybattybats said:
The gentle, caring, effeminate non-violent male is still rarely lauded isn't he.
Ain’t that the truth. It would be spectacular to see that change.
I’m a forty year old woman, I haven’t identified as a guy since I was seventeen, and yet, I still accept that there is an intersection between my experiences as a child and the experiences of other feminine/effeminate male children. I recently attended a seminar on gender here in the Twin Cities and I was struck by the similarities between my experiences as a child on the trans feminine spectrum and the childhood experiences of some of the gay men in the room who grew up as feminine/effeminate boys. That may be a no-brainer for some, but for most of my life, I’ve been primarily attracted to women, so my contact with queer men has been limited. While some trans women do have close ties with the queer male community, my closest ties have been with queer and straight women.
Regardless of whether a person is a male crossdresser, a genderqueer person assigned male at birth, a queer man, a trans woman, or simply a gentle, caring, effeminate non-violent male, I’d wager a large sum of cash on the notion that we all share common experiences with the violent enforcement of masculinity. That’s not to say that we don’t face our own separate issues in how we deal with gender. In spite of our differences—and they are many—we’ve all been shoved through a kind of social meat grinder that demands conformity to masculinity or else. I can’t speak for other trans women, but that’s certainly enough common ground for me.
Wouldn’t it be wild if we could overcome our differences and work toward dismantling the way masculinity is constructed and enforced? Wouldn’t it be wild if that effort could work in coalition with cis and trans women who are working toward dismantling the way gender is constructed and enforced for women? If we really want to make an effective, wide-ranging effort toward fixing these problems, I suspect that’s what it’s going to take. We’ve all been kicked around by this system, and clearly, it isn’t working for us. What have we got to loose?
I wonder if we substituted "little, unique human being" for "boy" or "girl" and looked at the brutalization of little, unique children, in general, would that help all sides understand each other better?
I can't criticise any more, since by continuing to respond I'm making it about you and Daran just as much as either of you were.
And I sympathise completely about your frustration - I probably wouldn't have said anything to you except I had just read the entire thread and was also frustrated.
QUOTE "the sort of violence and abuse trans women are subjected to at the hands of men is a vitally important and separate issue that is tolerated in many, many instances and even seen as appropriate,"
This. You're definitely right.
Comparisons can be made between different experiences for both trans and cis of both genders, that is not wrong - but it is never the same.
It's not about gender though, or whether you identify as trans or cis. It's about what happened in LL's life.
My experience was not the same as LL's. I was able to pass as a boy, and I learned that I had to fast and I learned hard.* In fact, my experience was less similar to LL's than either yours or Daran's, though my circumstances were more similar than either of you.
Given that, and this link:
http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2007/03/20/bullying/
Your comments "I perhaps have a perspective of male violence that is different to Daran's and more in line with little light's" and "And yes - I think as a woman I see this differently to how Daran does and I think that has to do with me being a woman and my own reality requiring an awareness of male violence" look pretty wrong.
I cannot (and would never) speak for your experience, but neither do I think you should speak for Daran's experience, unless you know something of it.
(I see you qualified your statements with 'perhaps' and 'I think' and I appreciate that you weren't completely defining his experiences)
Nor do I think either of you are relevant when you talk to much about your cis experiences as analogous.
I do think that I am a hypocrite though, for complaining about diverting from discussion of the OP, then writing a post that discusses Garbo in Paint and Daran more than Light. Sorry.
* This worked well enough to divert the boys who were violent to me, and the girls who rejected me, but in the long run made things very hard later on. Possibly not to be recommended.
This is incredibly beautiful. Thank you.
1. I was never kicked out of preschool. I knew—in preschool—that there are some things you do not say. I was taught early; I was a quick learner. Some nights, I can't do anything but lie in bed. Unlearning.
(There's another way of unlearning. Also happens in bed. Much more enjoyable. Shinier, we might say.)
2. It is utterly fascinating to me that so many people—so many with the best kind of intentions, and so many with the other kind—manage to reduce every fragment of our experience to the particular arrangement of a half-pound of flesh. Because, obviously, that's the thing that's hurting us. Our own bodies. What else could it possibly be?
3. steal cis women's organs
…om nom nom…
I wonder if we substituted "little, unique human being" for "boy" or "girl" and looked at the brutalization of little, unique children, in general, would that help all sides understand each other better?
That's not the story she wrote, you might have noticed. The reason that's not the story she wrote—I hazard a guess—is because that wasn't her experience. Gender, in her experience, had an effect.
LL, I am truly impressed with your original post. There's not much I can say about it that you've not said better.
As for the comments. I have been too struck of late with the need of others to say "yes, but."
The oppression sweepstakes should maybe be put aside at times. I'm sure there's more than enough to be divided amongst ourselves.
What you wrote I honor, deeply. And what matters, LL, is that your pain here is the focus. My pain is my own, but it has no place when you've written so well about your own.
Thank you for writing this.
There's been a fair amount of controversy on this thread over linking boyhood masculinity and violence. As I've mentioned earlier in the thread, I found that linkage to hold true in my experiences, as well.
I pretty much viewed myself as a boy until I was 17. So, I'm guessing that I embraced masculinity during my childhood in ways that run deeper than many of other trans women. If y'all have an interest, there's a post up at my blog about my experiences.
This has been sitting in my google reader for a while because of the trigger warning. I came back to it after reading some of the discussions on Feministe about the boycott from voz.
I'm very glad I took the time to read it. It was an amazingly powerful story, primarily because it felt like a very honest expression of your experience and feelings. I was honored that you shared that for others to read and very moved by the stories you shared. Thank you for allowing me to learn from your experience.
I'm also very glad I saw the comments thread, to show me privilege I hadn't realized I had - I've never seen comments so eager to tell the author how she should have experienced her own life. Seeing such a vigorous effort to silence and deny your experiences made me think I never would have shared anything personal if I thought I'd get a response like that. Another layer of cis privilege to examine.
Thank you.
This is an amazing, powerful and moving post.
LL, I'm in awe of your voice, your grace and your incredible patience.
Thank you.
I didn't know enough to know I was trans, growing up - but I know what this is like, and I needed to remember that just because I feel sick and wrong sometimes when I try to be who I want to be, it's only how I was raised, not who I am, that makes me feel like that. Sometimes it's hard to tell. My experiences are a lot like Timberwraith's, and people don't get that being okay with being a boy when you're younger doesn't mean you'll be okay with it forever, and it's ... it's just hard, sometimes, to be what I want myself to be when I've spent so long not being that.
I'm sorry the cissies are trying to take your own comments section over from you and make it a place even you can't fit.
But I'm glad you wrote this because I needed it.
-T.
This...is amazing. Thank you for being so candid. I wish I could offer more interesting commentary...but you kind of said it all so well.
I am completely in awe of you, LL.
Not only did you tell a painful story so beautifully that I burst into tears, you responded to disgusting idiots with grace and class.
I am a ciswoman. You are the incredible, strong, beautiful woman I want to be. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing this.
thank you. thank you. thank you.
LL, what a moving and well-written essay!
You are more patient than I am with rude comment writers.
Why bother reading a person's memories of growing up if you aren't interested in seeing things through their eyes for a while? The whole point of reading a memoir is to see how someone ELSE remembers, feels, understands THEIR own life. I (white cis woman) don't know what it feels like to be transgendered, or black, or an immigrant, or a boy, or straight, or sexually abused as a child, or have a fatwa on my life, or bear a child.... I may or may not agree with their conclusions about "society", based solely on their subjective experiences. I will not dispute their accounts of their feelings or memories of feelings (as long as there is some internal consistency and no obvious gain from false presentation, eg, a convicted criminal feigning repentance during sentencing or parole review).
Some of the persistently rude comment writers are hurting too much to see past their own noses, some rude ones are simply being bullies for their own amusement.
Thank you so much for writing this. It is beautiful and articulate, and I must remember to show it to my girlfriend.
People like maggie never cease to amaze me, and never cease to give feminism a bad name. What about the truly radical, truly revolutionary, truly feminist idea that all people are, in fact, people? Every person regardless of race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, or what have you is a human being deserving of respect and love.
Little light, before I even got to the end of your post, your words brought forth in me a quote I've clung to for a long while now:
When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat them down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.You shine so well, little light. You inspire me to look for the rains.
J7sue> Lots of echoes for me as a trans woman in this LL, ty.
I wanted to say about the violence. I was never bullied at school. I hated conforming to societies construction of masculinity, but I did it because the price, as I saw it, was payable. Part of the price was suppressed fury at just about everybody for forcing me into this space/ role I didn't want to be in - I went to an all boys (except me) boarding school, and I was pretty, but I was never even approached by any of the gays.... That fury must have shown through. I'm not sure if it was better, because eventually I included myself in it, and that took a long time to get over.
Little Light, your writing is beautiful and inspiring.
Magaret, woman to woman,
Show some compassion and leave your grandstanding at the door,
numbnuts.
Thank you for writing this, and for handling all the crap (from both sides) so incredibly well.
I recognize I'm terribly late to the party by commenting here now, but I just wanted to say that this is pretty much my favorite blog post ever, anywhere, on the entire internet. It gives a voice to a deep part of my experience that I'd never seen expressed before, and I come back to reread it regularly. Thank you!
I, too, am very late to the "comment party" but wanted to say "thank you" for this beautiful, touching post, for sharing so much of yourself in a way that can resonate with so many.
Parts of this very powerful post made me think of an equally powerful video entitled "Being an Unperson." This video was made by a woman who has several different disabilities, including autism, so it reflects a disability experience rather than a trans experience. So it's not exactly the same in certain important ways. But at least for me, at a certain emotional level, there were similarities as well.
If you're interested, the video "Being an Unperson" is at http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=223
I'm a trans woman and survivor of other forms of abuse as well. I've been searching for the words to explain why the treatment I received as a trans girl was abuse right alongside the other forms. You articulated exactly what I've been feeling. This is how it is.
I just came across this, little light. Beautiful. Your account connected very deeply with me. Thank you.
Grace
Wow, Had I known blogger could get this interesting I'd post more often. Before my true ignorance is displayed in my old blog posts let me just say that what little light has posted here is not the only thing in the universe in regards to gender. Also little light if you read this send me some sort of note because you've at the very least earned a free a warm blanket and a cup of hot chocolate from me.
This is one of the most beautiful things it's ever been my good fortune to encounter.
Little Light, you are a beautiful person and I can't begin to say thank you for sharing what you have shared and the impact it's had on me.
<3
Society really needs to change. However to do that individuals need to change and re-shape society. Unfortunately there isn't enough individuals willing to fight to help re-shape society. I don't think any child of any gender (born or identified as) should be conformed to gender roles. Actually let's correct that shall we. I don't think any PERSON should be conformed to any gender roles. I personally know two transgendered women. They are more woman than some of the natural born women I know. And I admire the strength it takes to be accepting enough of yourself to say "this is what I am regardless of what I look like" even if only to yourself. I just wish more people were raised like I was to look at the person. Not their skin colour, or their gender, or their sexuality. But the person behind all of that. Also, I don't think people and society should advocate the "boys will be boys" sentiment. It's wrong on so many levels. I think I've just reached a new level of respect for people and their differences no matter what they are.
Thank you so much for this. Infinite love goes out to you.
And I'm going to keep loving the people I love because of WHO they are. Not what they are. And I'm sharing this with everyone else I know so that it opens some eyes.
Hi,
This is to LittleLight.
I'm currently having counselling to straighten out in my head where I want to go with my gender identity etc. I'm fairly certain that I'm female identified though. Reading this, I realised it was something I wanted to show my counsellor, as a way of expressing how I feel, and to be able to talk about the feelings I have when reading this. With your permission, I'd like to make a copy to show them, is that ok?
Thanks. :)
Yes, of course, Anonymous. I'm glad to have been a help to you. Good luck in counseling--having help and someone to talk to is so important!--and with figuring out what you need to shine in this world. Be kind to yourself, okay?
This helped me a lot...
I just wanted to let you know.
Noelle
Dear MRAs: "inculcated" means "instilled or taught." You cannot inculcate something that is inherent. The use of the word "inculcated" means explicitly that violence is not inherent to men and boys, but is coercively taught to them, to their detriment.
Honestly, guys, we went over this years ago, and the misunderstanding seems willful at this point.
I can't possibly articulate what this post meant to me, so I'll just say thank you.
A year after the last comment, and LL's original post is still having a profoundly good impact on the lives of marginalized people, including myself.
Children are brutal in their reinforcing of gender roles and cis gender identities. And they keep up that brutality well into adulthood, only this time they've learned to intellectualize and call it "radical feminism". It's still the same hate, under a different name, and with a set of very reductionist underlying assumptions about what it means to have certain genitalia. Sad that she cannot see that her viewpoints are doing violence to women. That in my experience, some cis male misogynists actually respect radical feminists for being so vocal about their anti-trans sentiments.
I hope that Margaret has learned to let go of her hate for transwomen. Maybe she will realize one day that she is the one robbing another woman of her right to tell her own experiences of girlhood without interference from hateful, biologically reductionist arguments.
Being socialized female sucks, and like it or not, LL was socialized female, because she is female. She internalized the hateful messages about women as well as the even more hateful messages about transwomen. She suffered that socialization completely alone, without ever having being given the opportunity to form bonds and attachments with other girls that could have given her context, support, and a frame of reference for her identity. Margaret does not understand that aloneness in the same way a transwoman does. Margaret has the benefit of belonging, effortlessly, to a community of women who will never question her femaleness or her experiences as a woman. For her to come on this wonderful blog and start spewing hate is really sickening. Margaret, if you want to help women, you will also have to help transwomen. Also, lots of ciswomen haven't got uteri, and some trans men do. Biology does not your gender make. That's the same message little boys get- having a penis makes them men, and gives them the right to enact violence on those who do not conform. LL said it all much better than I could, and for that, for her bravery and tolerance and insight, I thank her.
I can't begin to tell you what reading this post meant to me.
I've said many times that if I wrote a book on how it really was to go through childhood as trans, feeling your sense of self systematically beaten out of you every day, nobody would believe me. The context is so far beyond most people's experience, it is difficult to relate to. I do not claim anything about the relative level of abuse or suffering experienced, but one of the very few cis people I know who I feel really *got* it...grew up for several years in a WW2 concentration camp.
I don't talk about it much anymore. I survived, a fact that still amazes me to this day, stumbled into adulthood and not long after, into transition. It has been ten years since I've really looked at anything trans-related online, I just burnt out on everything gender related after being a visible activist and educator for a few years. One factor in that was having a few radfems actually protest my very existance while simply answering questions to a Womens' Studies class. It gets wearying.
This post has caused me to reconsider, and I'm thinking about becoming an activist again and doing more writing. You have truly captured the essence of what it is to grow up as a trans woman. To those reading this who are cis - it is not exaggerated in the least. It is a horrifying, demeaning and soul-crushing experience that I would not wish on my worst enemy. I still carry the scars inside, and find tears welling up though it was so long ago. My dysphoria is long gone, but I will never forget. And...this is a story that needs to be told, until the world wakes up and realizes that we are human beings, that we are not merely freakish aberrations to be systematically crushed.
Little Light, thank you. Your voice gives me hope.
This post was heartbreaking and hope inspiring, all at once. Thank you so much. If I had known and understood these things back when I first began transition (about the time you posted it), things could have been a lot easier for me, I think. This post was a reminder of why I transitioned to begin with and why I don't give up, despite being told in so many ways that I don't belong and shouldn't exist.
With regards to some of the sadder comments, I have seen both sides of the fence (or all three, depending how you look at it). I was raised and socialized as a girl. I now live as a man, for which society labels me trans. I also pass very well and am frequently the recipient of male privilege. For ME, speaking in my OWN EXPERIENCE, being transgender is more dangerous and emotionally draining than being a cis girl. For whatever that's worth.
Privilege is as coercively assigned as oppression. It wasn't little light's fault that she was chosen to be one of the enforcers of oppression against women. I can't understand what it was like to be in her shoes, but I can be thankful that women like her are speaking up. Maybe my children will grow up in a more compassionate world, thanks to words like these.
Wow... this post is amazing. It's beautiful. It was published years ago, and the bigots who spouted trans misogyny are probably long gone, but I think I should address something that was said before. For starters, Margaret's idea that trans women seek to have the same opression directed to females is laughable enough, and doesn't deserve attention. Regarding the male / female argument often used by radfems to misgender trans people:
1) 'Science' is not and never has been a neutral arbiter of truth, but an institution that overwhelmingly uses and reinforces the existing biases and power structures existing around it. Patriarchal white imperialism has had a stranglehold on the world, and of course academia, and thoroughly tainted Western ideas of what science is.
2) 'Male' and 'female' are not objective, neutral terms with no bearing on anything but some sort of ~pure scientific truth~. Pretending they don't have any gendered meaning is arrant bullshit.
3) Naming things is an inherently arbitrary and subjective process to begin with, and is not in any way the product of a scientific process.
4) And if you still arrogantly persist in claiming that SCIENCE says I’m ‘male’, well, the ‘~biological, scientific~’ definition of ‘male’ and ‘female’ isn’t even what you think it is. You know how in seahorse reproduction, the ‘male’ carries the young? You might wonder why they call it the ‘male’ at all then, why they don’t just flip the labels. The answer is because, as biological terms, ‘male’ and ‘female’ are defined solely by the size of the gametes an organism produces. ‘Male’ seahorses carry the young, yes, but they produce much smaller gametes than the seahorses dubbed ‘female’ - and that is the only basis for these ~scientific~ labels. I don’t produce any gametes, so the ~official biological scientific~ definitions of male and female don’t cover me at all.
Your stale oppressive bullshit isn’t even consistent within its own biased, specious, transparent framework of lies. Congrats.
Oh Gods... you have no idea how much I thank you for writing this. You have told your truth but it is the truth of so many trans women out there, myself included.
Feeling repulsive and unlovable is something I struggle with to this day and this story lets. Me know I am not alone. I just want to hug you tightly and cry a release when I read this.
Thank you for all you endured. It takes amazing courage to look inside yourself and write it down for anyone to see. You are amazing.
Firstly /HUG
I just wanted to say I know how you feel I had an abusive parent when I was growing up, and I never feel "male" for what ever reason, I never got why I was different to the other boys until I was older. I've only just started to figure what was done to me and learn how to fix it maybe I might be trans I still trying to figure that one out
I suppose I am lucky that I have a friend who is trans and she helped me figure out why I may feel the way I do
I wish you the best of luck
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