Seattle Translations Follow Up -
When I wrote my report back from the film festival last week, I also reached out to Jason Plourde, the Programming Director at Three Dollar Bill Cinema who helps run the festival. We sat down last friday to discuss the issues I raised and had a very productive conversation. The following is what he wanted to share with everyone.
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[tw for transmisogynistic slur]
Today someone asked me what I think of the event called “Hey tranny, it’s tranny” occuring during Seattle Pride. Here’s what I had to say
For me, it’s a lot less about the word being a “bad” word or someone being bad for using it as much as it is about being conscious and thinking through the consequences and outcomes for the community. I hadn’t heard of Hey Tranny, It’s Tranny, until you pointed me to it. I don’t want to make any snap judgments, but knowing the community here, my guess is the reason why the title is tolerated has more to do with how the concerns of trans women are not taken seriously in the Seattle queer and trans community rather than because of any kind of evolution toward it being a non-issue. Ultimately, I’d expect that the vast majority of trans women will avoid the event because of title - as well as many allies to trans women. It bothers me that the organizers, who either know or should know that will be the outcome, chose that outcome anyway. In many spaces, I take that as an indication that the support to or even awareness of trans women’s issues will be minimal and that any trans women who do go would have a strong chance of experiencing some inappropriate behavior or statements.
Many events here fail to create inclusive space for trans women. In some cases, trans women literally are turned away at the front door, in others they encourage a hostile environment, but probably the majority of queer spaces intend no disrespect while also doing nothing to dismantle the hostile environment that already exists throughout the community. Using the term tranny flippantly or without great care does not cause this problem, but it is often an indicator of where the problem might be worse.
Seattle Translations Report Back -
The Seattle Translations Trans Film Festival has just wrapped up. I had a great time at my screening and being on the filmmakers panel, and there was a great response from the audience. While occasionally disorganized or last minute, the volunteers and staff were a pleasure to work with and I really look forward to working with them again. That said, there was one rather glaring and difficult to ignore low point in the weekend that we really need to talk about.
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It’s painful to think this is how trans homelessness, teenage pregnancy, and disability are thought of in the larger community. When the audience applauded and laughed, it felt like they were laughing at people I care about. When we are reaching out to other communities in coalition against oppression, representations like these are detrimental. They also serve to send the message that trans people of color, trans sex workers, and trans people with disabilities, as well as those who care about them are not necessarily welcome and should not expect to feel safe in this space.
photos by courtney trouble: QueerPorn.TV Casting Call for NYC: trans women -
My porn site QueerPorn.TV will be shooting a few scenes in New York City this Spring/Summer and I am looking for some trans women! QPTV has 3 or 4 scenes featuring trans women shot in the past 2 years of operation, but we would love some more faces and new stars for the site!
The scenes will…
A collection of letters from trans people from various backgrounds to their childhood selves. I feel like it could be useful for trans youth and hell, even trans adults. Might set up a separate blog for folks to submit to. Anyone feel like they’d be interested in this?
I would definitely be into this.
Seconded.
I would be interested in this.
That was part of the idea behind my story for Best Lesbian Erotica 2010 about a young trans woman who gets a visit from her time traveling future self (spoiler: they have sex). Mixed into it is what the older self has to tell the younger self and also many important messages that the younger self has for the older self. It would be interesting to finally write such messages for my own younger self rather than a fictional character.
[video]
I’m stunned by the otherwise trans supportive queer folks who are buying into the anti-trans arguments around the cotton ceiling. This is coming from a woman who wrote a letter to the UN asking that gender identity non-discrimination not be instated. She makes no attempt to hide the fact that she has a strong anti-trans agenda. Her writings and the comments her friends leave on them are bordering on hate speech. Bottom line: there is a huge difference between what trans activists are saying when we talk about the cotton ceiling and what she claims we’re saying.
I can understand anti-trans folks who pick up her argumentation, but everyone else? I mean, check your sources. If NARTH or Focus on the Family was railing about some horrible presentation Ellen Degeneres or Lady Gaga was giving, wouldn’t you be extremely skeptical? Wouldn’t you want to hear directly from Ellen/Gaga what she was doing, rather than take NARTH’s description of it on face value? Please use the same discretion here.
When women complain about the glass ceiling, it isn’t so we can guilt or shame our bosses into a promotion. Nor is it a statement that my company (or my boss) must be sexist because I didn’t get that last promotion. Many women who complain about the glass ceiling don’t want to be a CEO - or perhaps already are one. Rather than being interested in personal gain the main goal is to see an end to the old boys club in corporate boardrooms.
Discussing the glass ceiling is about identifying the systemic problems leading to the lack of women in workplace leadership despite being present in lower positions. It’s about an education system that doesn’t give girls the same support as boys. It’s about double standards in the workplace. It’s about internalized societal messages that women can’t succeed in science or business and shouldn’t try. It’s about customers and clients that don’t respect women in positions of authority. It’s about workplace harassment that makes many women decide it’s not worth it. It’s about how the companies that do promote women to positions of leadership risk having their stock prices go down or otherwise being seen as less than other companies.
All of these issues have parallels with the cotton ceiling. Discussing the cotton ceiling is about identifying the systemic problems leading to the lack of trans women in queer women’s sexual spaces and relationship networks, despite being present in non-romantic/sexual queer women’s spaces. It’s about feminist community and training that doesn’t give trans women the same support as cis women. It’s about double standards that celebrate sexually empowered behavior in cis women yet call that same behavior “male privilege” or “rape-y” when trans women do it. It’s about internalized messages that no one will ever love a freak like you so you shouldn’t even try. It’s about trans women in queer women sexual spaces who are treated disrespectfully and told we’re disgusting. It’s about harassment campaigns against trans women speaking out on this topic (including publishing work and personal email and phone contact). It’s about being hit on by someone who’s really really into you but turns cold when you disclose trans status. It’s about how cis women who are involved with trans women are told they aren’t real lesbians.
The call to discuss the cotton ceiling is a plea for an end to the shame and coercion trans women - and our cis partners - face. The anti-trans feminist activists who frame the cotton ceiling as a shaming tactic to coerce cis women to have sex with trans women are purposefully misinterpreting the metaphor it is based on. They frequently accuse trans women and trans-supportive cis women of not having an awareness or understanding of feminism from the 70s and 80s, however, when they dismiss the ceiling metaphor as coercion and shaming or as insincere attempts at personal gain, they clearly are the ones who lack understanding of second wave feminism - or are choosing to ignore it.
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Tobi Hill-Meyer, has directed and produced Doing It Ourselves, the first queer/feminist porn film made by and for trans women and their partners, and The Genderfellator, a plot-driven, pornographic sci-fi parody. Tobi was honored with the Feminist Porn Awards 2010 Emerging Filmmaker Award for her work on Doing It Ourselves, and The Gendercator received an Honorable Mention in 2011.
Twitter: @Tobitastic
Handbasket Productions is a radical media collective focusing on queer culture, trans experience and sex positivity. Spanning non-fiction, fiction, and fantasy genres, we use books, zines, films, music and other art to cover a variety of topics including sex work, polyamory, racism and queerspawn experience.
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Courtney Trouble is an erotic film-maker, photographer, and porn performer who is largely known for their genre-defining “queer porn,” a term that was born from Trouble’s ground-breaking site NoFauxxx.Com, established in 2002. Trouble has received multiple Feminist Porn Awards and AVN Awards nominations.
http://courtneytrouble.com
Twitter: @courtneytrouble
TROUBLEfilms is a porn production company that focuses on sex-positive, diverse, and authentic representation headed by award-winning pornographer Courtney Trouble. Established in 2011, TROUBLEfilms plans to add more alternative, queer, feminist, and indie heterosexual titles by Courtney Trouble and others to its catalog throughout 2012 and beyond.
http://troublefilms.com
photos by courtney trouble: oh no here i go! -
i know i do a whole lot of showing here, and not a whole lot of telling, but i seriously have seen enough transmisogyny. it’s disgusting. i sort of expect it from heterosexual cisgendered folks (call me jaded) but when i see or hear lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer people misgender, disrespect,…
Thanks for saying this. It really needs to be said more often. When it comes to a good portion of the people saying and doing these hurtful things, though, I think framing it as an issue of education only causes more problems. The folks at factcheckme, pretendbians, gendertrender, and so on are not under-educated about trans issues. It’s clear that they have quite a lot of knowledge and awareness around transphobia and transmisogyny because they would need it in order to be able to hit people’s insecurities and vulnerabilities so effectively.
We as activists often get used to assuming best intentions and expecting inappropriate behavior to disappear when someone better understands the situation. There are plenty of people that works for, but those tactics will not work here and often only make things worse.