Twin Cities Trans March: organized by the TC Trans March Collective

Twin Cities Dyke March: organized by the TC Avengers

Pegasus/Dyke March Afterparty: brought to you by the Revolting Queers

And check out my loving comrade JAC’s post about his Pride experience this past weekend.

http://www.citylimits.org/multimedia/258/transgender-need-not-apply-a-report-on-gender-identity-job-discr

Another thing that comes with spring fever is spring fever– that sexy time when we all start running around in tank tops and rolled up jeans (i call them shants), having impromptu bonfires and dance parties, and maybe getting our make out on.

So in honor of spring, I remind you of my favorite zine about consent, and two videos made by the Sexual Violence Center here in Minneapolis (I have a pal who works there and a few pals who volunteer there) about sexual violence prevention.

Please be good to yourselves and one another!

[cross posted to the Dating Algorithm]

So like many activist-y types just trying to pay their bills, I work at shitty non-profit. That isn’t to say that the services we provide aren’t important or needed, but that somehow a bunch of neo-liberal capitalist assholes run the place, and as far as I’m concerned, seem hell bent on running that place into the ground. They talk down to the people they ‘help’, top-down manage in the most hierarchal fashion possible, and, just to top it all off, treat the employees below them like shit. I’ve really had it with my bosses complaining and complaining about the non-profit we all work at having no money, which I suppose would be how they would justify a recent action that occurred at work. When it came time for my annual raise, my bosses found it fit to give me a raise of .08 cents. I’m not complaining about this because the money is so damn important. I’m upset about this because the person who decided my work, which I’ve absolutely poured my heart into, was only worth .08 cents of raise, while this same person collects more than 100,000 dollars a year. On many weeks I work just a many hours as she does, but I still have to collect food stamps and work a second job just to get by. She drives a corvette to work. This is even more upsetting to me considering the radicals who started this program, in part to help people that are of low-income backgrounds, have had their efforts hi-jacked by capitalist assholes who re-create in the workplace the same structure that harms the people we are supposed to help. If we want true liberation we’re going to have to create our own programs and systems of mutual aid, always aligning ourselves with those who have been marginalized by the capitalist patriarchy, not becoming it.

It’s no surprise to us that the assimilationist, consumer-driven mainstream gay community has played and continues to play a large role in the displacement of low-income and working class communities and communities of color – including members of the LGBT community. This is certainly the case here in Columbus as highlighted in the 2003 documentary “Flag Wars”.

We’re currently looking for essays, articles, news, poems, art, stories, and interviews that highlight our major themes for this zine which include: The history of gay-driven gentrification in the U.S., queer struggles for economic / housing justice, community centered alternatives to gentrification, and success stories highlighting queer & multi-racial working class organizing efforts. That said, If you have other ideas for topics, please don’t let this hold you back!!! Ultimately we want to create a zine that uses the issue of gentrification as a means to support the queer community in developing a deeper anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and queer liberationist praxis for economic and housing justice. Our submission deadline is February 28th – the zine is scheduled to be out in by April. Submissions my be sent to organizeCBUS@gmail.com

“Femme Means Attack” aims to change that by giving us, radical femmes, a voice. We welcome submissions from femmes of all genders, trans and cis, binary gendered and genderqueer, of all races, socioeconomic backgrounds, both urban and rural, of all dis/ability statuses, etc. While submissions should touch on both femme identity and radical politics/communities, we leave it up to each contributor to determine what that looks like. We welcome all types of submissions – essays, personal accounts, poetry, artwork, etc.

Along with your submissions, we ask that you submit a one hundred word bio. This is merely to let us know who you are and where you are coming from on the femme spectrum. That said, there will be a bio section in the zine, so if you do wish to have your bio included, let us know.

Likewise, if you wish to tell us (the editors) your name, but would not like it published in the finished zine, just let us know. However, we do request that you use a pen name or nom de queer so that half of the zine is not attributed to “anonymous.”

Criteria for submissions are:

Absolutely nothing oppressive.

You may submit as many pieces as you would like.

Submissions must be in an easily accessable computer format.

Additionally, written works must be submitted in a format that will allow for editing.

That is- editing of format, not content.

PDF files will not be accepted.

Artwork must be submitted in jpeg format.

If any other issues arise with submissions, they will be handled on an individual basis. You will receive notice as to whether or not your submission has been accepted. If you wish to challenge our rejection of your submission, we welcome your feedback. We only ask that you are as respectful to us as we will be to you. We both identify as anarchists and do not wish to hold any sort of power over anyone else. This zine’s purpose, and our purpose in publishing it, is to bring unity and strength to femmes around the world.

Submissions are due by April 15, 2010 Please send submissions to: femmemeansattack@gmail.com

Your co-editors,

naydeehn pearl messier and gayge sparkly purple unicorn freyjasbarn

A few years ago I came out to a friend of mine in the queer community about being trans.  I’d held off telling her for quite a while, as I honestly wasn’t sure she’d be very positive.  Her immediate response was that while she didn’t know I was trans a few of her friends had asked her.  She then launched into a discussion of why or why not people would think that, but I’d already made up my mind.  I emailed her back that I didn’t see us going far as friends, and left it at that.

There was a time earlier in my transition when the discussion of whether or not I had passed as cis would make me nauseous.  To not pass, as I apparently had not done with her friends, was the most embarrassing, shameful feeling I could imagine, and one with which I had strong motivations to self-harm .  I had been taught by the culture I grew up in, by Doctors and counselors, and by other trans people that I must do one thing, and that was to pass.  To not do so was failure, something for which I should feel shame.  How glad I am, then, that I don’t believe that b******t anymore.

Passing is perhaps the central component through whether trans lives are considered ‘successful’ or not, and as such it is the central component of trans oppression.  It is the part of our lives always up for debate in public, and by which cis people mark trans individuals as ‘other.’  I’ve written about this before, as a response to the cis belief that places self-erasure as trans people’s greatest fantasy, and my attitudes about passing remain the same: Passing is a system used by cissexist cultures to control trans people, to ostracize, and to justify violence perpetrated against them. Although passing is presented as a trans endeavor or desire, the truth is it is a system for cis people to identify trans people and to alert other cis people to their presence.  Whether used to mollify trans people with suggestions that other cis people don’t know about their trans status, or to shame them because other people do, it is centered in the cis person’s perspectives and assumptions.  It is the constant reminder that in the power relationship between cis and trans, cis dominates.

I transitioned in my early twenties into a medical system that elevated the young, the straight-identified, and those who cis people might not mistake for being trans (all things I was back then), and the value placed on passing was made clear to me very early on.  The first time I ever reached out to the medical community for support (because before the era of radical trans self-empowerment that was the only system I knew about) I made an anonymous phone call to the Clarke Institute to ask for information.   At the end of about 20 minutes of trying to scare me off the woman on the other end of the line finished with “No one passes 100%, how are you going to deal with that?”

How indeed?  While I thankfully did not end up at the Clarke, my experience with Vancouver General Hospital was – if gentler – no less focused on transition as a process to be judged against cis ideals (of which passing is central).  This accomplishes a great deal for cissupremacy.  It sets up a paternalistic, gatekeeper relationship in which trans people are subjugated to cis “caregivers” as it makes erasure of transness the primary goal.   As a trans person you are constantly under the scrutiny of cis eyes, reminded that should you fail to meet cis-centered ideals of gender you will not receive the support or treatments you seek.

The lethal catch-22 of passing is of course the ‘deceiver ‘role into which trans people and trans women especially are framed.  Whether used by aggressors to justify anti-trans physical violence or theorists to justify theories of anti-trans rhetoric, to pass and be discovered could cost you your job, your position in community, or your life.  The justifications of both the killers of trans women and exclusionist feminist writers are coldly similar.  It quickly becomes clear one simply cannot be trans, passing or not, and expect to not experience violence for what you are.

I spent a good portion of my twenties living in quasi-stealth:  While I told a very few people I was close to (such as lovers) I otherwise actively worked to distance myself from my past.  Rather than being empowered in approximating a cis experience, however, my transness was a constant source of shame.  The stress of living a life while constantly looking over my shoulder took its toll on my health, despite appearing on the surface as one of those trans lives which were ‘successful’ from the cis-dominant stance.  As I got older and began to question assumptions I’d made about my sexuality (my experience of heterosexism in trans medicalization is a post in itself), then, I was very ready to ask questions about my own gender, my relationship with being trans, and my relationship to this system I’d apparently done well at but was nonetheless still feeling shame for.  This questioning brought me to a process of finding comfort in my gender in ways that were never served by the cis focus of passing, and often actively worked against it. I began feeling more empowered by choosing not to pass, or at least by not trying to pass.

How then do we dismantle this system that declares the trans identity of individuals is public property?  It seems to me a lot of that has to do with coming out, not coming out, and the role of conversation at the personal level versus the community.  Simply put we must stop acting like it matters.  To that end, some things to consider for cis people:

1. Don’t bring it up first. It’s up to the trans person, and you should never expect that eventually having that conversation is a guarantee, no matter how well you know the person you think is trans.  Really, if having that knowledge was so central to a friendship, maybe be friends with people you’re not trying to apply labels to.  Bringing up a person’s suspected trans status – to them or to another – is wielding the cis-supremacist tool I’m talking about here.
2. If a trans person outs themselves to you, don’t assume that means the conversation is about whether or not you knew. When I tell someone about my trans-ness, I do so because I want to make it clear I consider them someone I trust to know me in a more significant way.   I don’t care if you knew or didn’t know or who you think knows, and if the example at the beginning of this piece is any indication I probably will regret having brought it up with you.
3. Your perspective is not universal. This is a difficult one for many people, it seems, especially families and friends with an investment in a person’s pre-transition gender.  Gender perception varies with individuals, cultures, and any number of factors.  While some might be 100% certain the world must see a trans person’s gender the way they do, this is cis chauvinism.  In the process of making my own gender less clear I have grown used to being confidently sir-ed or ma’am-ed, often within seconds.
4. Defer to the trans person’s wishes as to how open they want to be. Seriously, it astounds me how this eludes many people, especially LGBqueers.   Outing someone can get them killed!  Combined with a strong sense of entitlement to ignore point #3 because they’re queer, this behavior is infuriating and dangerous.

Ultimately, in a culture where the prefixes cis and trans led to equality as groups and equality as individuals the conversation would not be needed as the concept would be pointless.  It would be distasteful and irrelevant to force one’s cis or trans status into conversation.  Finally, then, it would stop being a tool used against trans people, and there wouldn’t be a need to re-center trans experience against cis lives.

THE END DISCLAIMER, or “Don’t try to shoehorn what I said into your radical ideas that gender doesn’t exist or anything else that places your theory above lived trans experience”: While my own process of finding empowerment against the passing-focused narrative of trans experience led me to a less-binary, more androgynous presentation, that in no way means my gender is more radical, sophisticated, or queer.  There are many trans people whose self-identity presents in ways that lead cis people to mistake the trans person for being cis, but that does not mean they are living up to cis ideals, it merely means the cis person has made a cis-centered assumption.  Further, there are many who choose to be stealth or make other choices which lead to passing, and I refuse to be critical of that.  Being trans can be a death sentence in most cultures, and I won’t criticize other trans people for doing what it takes to stay alive.

we're not leaving there's a disconnect/
between the the powers in play and the needs of the rest/
     - Direct Action

While the nation’s “gays and lesbians” fight for their “civil rights” in the form of passing gay marriage laws, Heidi is talking about the real struggle for basic needs of queer an trans people.

Health care and a place to sleep/ we need love and some food to eat
we need  a life without the threat of violence at the hands of police
won't suffer in silence
on average once a month/ a trans person is murdered because/
we've been viewed as less than human/ lets lower the stats no holding us back
     - Direct Action

Heidi is a Trans-Radical-Queer M.C. from minneapolis mn. She writes and performs songs about Trans rights, addiction and the shame and tribulation’s a trans-queer faces growing up in gender-normative “liberal” midwestern city.

You can pick the free ep here: http://www.4shared.com/file/187576441/638de59/The_familiar_pattern_ep.html