Oct 03 2018

The APA is so fucked up.

Why Are Some People Transgender? an APA pamphlet [1] asks.

Their answer?  “Many experts believe that biological factors such as genetic influences and prenatal hormone levels, early experiences, and experiences later in adolescence or adulthood may all contribute to the development of transgender identities.”

Um, no.  People are transgender because they are intelligent and thoughtful enough to realize that gendered behaviours are typically constraining and that feminine behaviours in particular subordinating.  And so, they reject them; they refuse to conform to the gender expectations aligned to their sex.

 

How Does Someone Know They Are Transgender? the pamphlet then asks.

Their answer?  “They may have vague feelings of “not fitting in” with people of their assigned sex or specific wishes to be something other than their assigned sex. Others become aware of their transgender identities or begin to explore and experience gender-nonconforming attitudes and behaviors during adolescence or much later in life.”

Again, no.  I know I’m a writer because when I write, I actually realize that that’s what I’m doing when I do it.  Similarly, when I refuse to wear make-up and high heels, I know I’m doing it.  I’m that aware.  And I know it’s transgressive.  I’m also that aware.  I know what the gender expectations are in our society, so I know when I’m refusing to meet them.  That’s how I know I’m transgender.

One doesn’t “become aware” of one’s gender identity.  One creates it.  One chooses it.  Unlike sex [2], sexual orientation, height, skin colour, eye colour …  gender is not a biological given.  It’s an arbitrary collection of preferences that ‘society’ says should you should adopt: the so-called feminine collection is supposed to be adopted by female people, and the so-called masculine collection is supposed to be adopted by male people.

Do you always do what you’re supposed to do?

_____

1. “What Does It Mean to Be Transgender?” from “Answers to Your Questions About Transgender People, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression” American Psychological Association 2011.http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender.pef

2. Which is why it’s particularly disturbing that professional psychologists believe that “Sex is assigned at birth …”  No, sex is recognized at birth (or before, if a conclusive ultrasound is obtained).  Typically by external genitalia.

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Sep 28 2018

Some excellent insights about gender identity by Sharon Thrace

“[Gender identity] holds that ‘feeling like a woman’ (whatever that means) is the same as being a woman.  It’s a callous disregard for our lifetime of oppression, the limits placed upon our participation in society, the ever-present threat of rape we face.  It’s an erasure of the quarter of our lives we spend managing bleeding and pain, the constant diligence we must employ to prevent pregnancy.  It’s a gross insensitivity of the staggering percentage of us who are victims of sexual assault, starting in childhood.  We face these realities because we have female bodies and because of how men treat people who inhabit such bodies.  There exists no fashion choice nor inner angst that can bring men closer to this experience.”

“It takes a great deal of male privilege to ‘choose’ your gender, as if gender weren’t a set of obligations and proscriptions designed to keep women physically, emotionally, and financially handicapped.”

“[My transgender husband] likes to complain that I don’t recognize him as a woman, something he sees as a great offense.  But the iron is that he does not recognize me as a woman. … My biology is not irrelevant. My experience cannot be duplicated by trying on my clothes.”

from “Destruction of a Marriage: My Husband’s Descent into Transgenderism,” by Sharon Thrace.  in Female Erasure, edited by Ruth Barrett.

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Sep 26 2018

More insights about transgenderism, by Ruth Barrett

“Imagine …

“If the vocal trans majority had not chosen to focus their energy on re-defining women in their image, and instead proudly claimed themselves to be gender non-conforming men …

“If they had not insisted on erasing our biology or their own in order to validate their gender identity, and instead acknowledged themselves as males who simply choose to adopt and express a gender stereotypical feminine appearance.

“If they had not bullied themselves into female spaces and worked to make illegal our private spaces, and instead showed themselves to be true allies of women by respecting and protecting our needs.

“If they allowed themselves to feel even a fraction of empathy that they fully expect from women and girls toward their needs.

“If they had not focused their anger at women for the actual violence they experience at the hands of other males.”

 

Ruth Barrett, in Female Erasure (p.481)

 

EXACTLY.

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Sep 20 2018

Algorithms perpetuate sexism …

Check out this interview for a VERY enlightening (and scarey) interview about how algorithms are perpetuating sexism in its many, many, aspects:

https://www.feministcurrent.com/2017/04/07/algorithms-arent-working-women/

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Sep 19 2018

The Hook-Up (a very short screenplay)

FADE IN:

INT. BAR — NIGHT

Crowded bar scene.  MAN and WOMAN do the standard flirting thing, he buys her a drink, they dance, then exit.  Their dialogue isn’t important — the bar’s too loud for us to hear much anyway.  But it’s clear that both are willing to engage in the sex that follows.

 

INT. APARTMENT — LATER

They enter her apartment and move through it toward the bedroom, happily and heatedly, kissing, touching, and unbuttoning each other on the way.

 

INT. BEDROOM — CONTINUOUS

They are on the bed, then in the bed, which has a nightstand right beside it, then while intercourse is clearly occurring —

WOMAN: So, do you want a girl or a boy?

He stops mid-thrust.

MAN: What?

He pulls out.  Grimaces at his limpness.

WOMAN: Well, you aren’t using any contraception, so it stands to reason you want a child.  I mean, you must know that —

(she gestures vaguely)

MAN: (rolling off her; things are clearly over) Of course I know — No, I don’t want a kid —

He’s up and dressing.

MAN (CONT’D): I assumed you were —

WOMAN: Pretty important thing to just take for granted, isn’t it?

MAN: (his anger increasing) What is this, some sort of trap?

WOMAN: Not at all.  I’m okay with it. I mean, I’ll charge for incubation services, $50,000 is about standard, and then I’ll give you the kid, no strings —

MAN: I don’t want a kid!

WOMAN: Then why —

MAN: Because you’re the one who gets pregnant!

WOMAN: I realize that.  And as I said, I’m okay with it.  If you’re the one not okay with it, if you’re the one who doesn’t want this to be reproductive sex, then you’re the one who should be using contraception.

He says nothing as he continues to dress.

WOMAN (CONT’D): Are you usually this adept at separating cause and effect?  At not looking at the consequences of your actions?

He reaches for his jacket.

WOMAN (CONT’D): I mean, if you and a friend do a B & E together and he’s the only one who gets caught, you’re okay with that?  You’d really not consider yourself equally responsible?

MAN: (quite angry now) I’d consider myself lucky.  Bitch!

He strides out of the bedroom.

WOMAN: (cheerily) I’ll call you!

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Sep 15 2018

Men, Noise, and A Simple Request, Really

I finally figured it out — why the men in my neighborhood react with such escalated lack of consideration whenever I ask them, politely, to limit their noise.  I’ve asked snowmobilers who are out racing around the lake and having a good time going VROOM VROOM to please just turn around a few seconds before they get to the very end of the lake, which is where I live; I’ve asked dirt bikers to please ride up and down and up and down on a section of road that doesn’t have a bunch of people living there; I’ve asked men who are building new houses to please put the compressor behind the house (so the building acts as a berm) rather than on the lake side (which means, of course, that the noise not only skids across the lake with wonderful efficiency, but also that it then bounces off the hills, echoing amplified all over the place); I’ve asked men to at least close their lakeside doors and windows when they’re using their power tools inside.  (And I’d like to ask them if they really, seriously, need to use a leafblower — we live in the forest, for godsake.)

And almost every single time, not only has the man not acceded to my request, he’s escalated his noise-making and/or responded with confrontational aggression.

Do I live in a neighborhood with an unrepresentative number of inconsiderate assholes?

No.  Here’s what’s happening.  (As I say, I’ve finally figured it out.)  Partly it’s because I’m a woman asking a man to do something.  Most men do not want to be seen taking orders from a woman; even to accede to a woman’s request is apparently too much for their egos.  My male neighbour has made similar requests and the responses have been along the lines of ‘Sure, no problem.’

And partly, it’s because making noise is perceived to be an integral part of being a man.  I’ve long known ‘My car is my penis’ but I never realized that that was partly because of the noise of the car.  I didn’t know that men routinely modify the mufflers of their dirt bikes in order to make them louder.  And then I happened to catch a Canadian Tire advertisement on television (I seldom watch television) and was absolutely amazed at the blatant association of masculinity with power tools, the promise that ‘You’ll be more of a man when you use this million-horsepower table saw’ or whatever.

So the resistance to my requests is because I’m essentially asking that they castrate themselves.

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Sep 12 2018

Football takes precedence over climate refugees

People are fleeing for their lives from North and South Carolina, but there may not be enough rooms in hotels because — football.  Apparently there’s a (male) game scheduled for play and (mostly male) people have come to watch.

Clear evidence of the male obsession with competition having a stranglehold — wait, the hurricane itself is clear evidence of that: a long but incontestable causal chain leads back from the increasing frequency and severity of storms to the desire of (overwhelmingly) male executives and stockholders (of, for example, oil companies) to become rich — i.e., to be #1, to win.

And as is their way, they give the hurricane a female name; as if we’re to blame.

My god, is there no end to their psychopathology??

 

 

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Sep 12 2018

“The Adult Market”

What’s adult about forcing someone to do something she doesn’t really want to do?

What’s adult about doing sexual things to children?

What’s adult about humiliating another person?

What’s adult about hurting another person?

 

We should call it what it is.  The psychopathic sociopathic misogynist market.  The sick fucks market.

 

 

(I’d intended to be more specific, but I’m concerned that the psychopathic sociopathic misogynist dudes would like that.  Plus, merely describing these things repulses me.)

 

 

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Sep 12 2018

Women Writing Science Fiction as Men — why bother?

I’ve just finished reading Mike Resnick’s collections Women Writing Science Fiction as Men and Men Writing Science Fiction as Women.  There were two rules for submissions to the anthologies: “First, each story had to be told in the first person of a man [woman]; and second, if changing the narrator from Victor to Victoria [or vice versa] didn’t invalidate the story we didn’t want it.”

So what he ended up with was a bunch of stories emphasizing the gender stereotypes we all know and hate so well.  The women wrote about men who were competitive and primarily interested in sex.  The men wrote about women who were nurturing and primarily mothers.  Ho hum.

What would have been far more interesting, and far more challenging (though a challenge sf writers, if anyone, are certainly up to), would have been stories in which changing the narrator from Victor to Victoria (or vice versa) would not have invalidated the story, would have made no difference whatsoever.

Those are the stories I want to read!  That’s a future (a fantasy?) I want to live in!

 

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Aug 29 2018

Gretel, by Chris Wind

Gretel, by Chris Wind (from Snow White Gets Her Say)  www.chriswind.net

 

We read fables in school to teach us a lesson. And we read fairy tales at bedtime to put us asleep. And indeed they do: especially those of us, a full half of the human species, who are lulled lower and lower into a semi-conscious state by their lessons.

Remember “Hansel and Gretel”? The one about a little boy and a little girl. Who was me. Not particularly proud of it, but there you go. I didn’t write the story. I didn’t intend those lessons.

That, first, women are deceitful. There are two women in the story, the stepmother and the witch. And both of them lie to us. When Hansel and I are taken into the forest to be left there to die, my stepmother says “We’ll come back for you.” And later, when we meet the witch, she assures us she will “do us no harm”. But of course they didn’t and she did. Both women used deceit to achieve their goals.

That, second, women aren’t very intelligent. It was my stepmother’s idea that a good solution to the food shortage was to leave us in the forest. Why not kill and eat the pigeon or the cat first? Why not hunt for squirrels and rabbits? The witch, as well, wasn’t too brilliant when she climbed into the oven to give a little demonstration.

That, third, little boys are competent and resourceful (and therefore can, and do, take care of little girls, like me). The first time we were taken into the forest, it was Hansel who thought to unravel a spool of thread behind us so we could find our way back. The second time, again he planned for our survival, leaving a trail of crumbs to mark our path. Clever though this was, he didn’t think about the birds, who ate the crumbs. I was quite resigned to our fate; it was Hansel who refused to give up so easily. Well, as you know, we found our way to a house, but it belonged to the witch and she locked Hansel in a cage. Still using his head, he held out a bone instead of his finger each time she checked to see if he was fat enough to eat.

However, if you’ve read the story, you’ll know that, notwithstanding this glowing portrait of my brother, I’m the real hero: it was my cleverness that saved us. You’ll remember that the witch told me to creep into the oven to see if it was hot enough to bake the bread. I knew, of course, that she was going to slam the door shut and bake me instead. So, I said, ever so sweetly, “I do not know how I am to do it, how do I get in?” You know the rest, I’m sure: she showed me, I shut the door on her, and then I rescued Hansel and together we escaped.

What bothers me is that I had to be clever in that way. To this day, I resent having had to resort to that ‘dumb blond’ ploy. To begin with, because it’s just that—a ploy, a disguise, a deceit; and it teaches us that pretence is our best method of operation. So we pretend to be something we’re not to get what we want, be it life, love, whatever. But more than that, I resent the ploy because it teaches us that for a woman, ignorance is valuable: it is her defence, her weapon, her salvation.

Why is that so dangerous a lesson, since my ignorance really is just a ploy, and not genuine? Because habits of behaviour become habits of thought which become habits of belief. If I spend most of my life acting like I’m stupid, people will think that I am. And then it’s just a short step to actually becoming what people already believe I am.

But if we wake up, we all will live ever after.

 

***

In the story “Hansel and Gretel”, two children are taken into the forest by their father and stepmother, to be left to die because there is not enough food to feed them; this solution is the stepmother’s idea, and her “We’ll come back for you” was simply a lie. The story unfolds exactly as I’ve described it—the spool of thread, the breadcrumbs, the witch’s house, Hansel in the cage, Gretel and the oven, their escape—and they find their way back home to live happily ever after. (The mean stepmother had died.)

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