the seam of skin and scales
I am not a woman trapped in a man's body. This body is no man's; it is mine, it is me, and there is no man in that equation. And I am not trapped in it. There are a million and one ways out of this body, and I have clung to it, tooth and claw, despite an endless line of people and institutions who would rather I vacate the premises, and have sometimes been willing to make me bleed to convince me they're right.
This body is mine, and I claim it and its bruises, and it is not a man's, and I am not trapped here. I have looked leaving my body in the eye and I have said, in the end, hell no. There is too much to do, too much to love, too many who need one more of us to say hell no and help them say the same.
You might not like it. It might be a wrongness to you.
I am done with traps. I am done with the philosophy of traps, and I am done with the feminism of who owns my body for what cause.
It is time for something that tells you that I am here for blood--my blood, the blood of my loved ones, the blood of the people who have battered themselves against my life and found me still here.
It is time for a feminism of the monstrous.
That is this body. That is this me. That is the voice that says get your names off of my parts and your hands off them too, that says stop colonizing my reality and telling me what I mean without listening to a word I say.
What I say may be in a language incomprehensible, but there is a time for that, and it is right now, because this is a monster's creed. It is for the cobbled-together, the sewn-up, the grafted-on. It is for the golden, the under-the-earth, the foreign, the travels-by-night; the filthy ship-sinking cave-dwelling bone-cracking gorgeousness that says hell no, I am not tidy. I am not easy. I am not what you suppose me to be and until you listen to my voice and look me in my eyes, I will cling fast to this life no matter how far you drive me, how deep, with how many torches and pitchforks, biting back the whole way down. I will not give you my suicide. I will not give you my surrender.
This is for the Lilim, because you forget that the next part after your co-opted icon parts ways with Adam and goes her own way is and she begat monsters, and she becomes terrifying. This is for the Gorgons and the vampires and the chimaeras, for Cybele and Baba Yaga, Hel and Ashtoreth, for Lamia and Scylla, for Kali and Kapo 'ula-kina'u. This is for all of them with teeth.
It is time to look the monstrous in the eye. It is time. It is time to say that we are beautiful in our fierceness, and that we are our own. We are not the rejected of what we can never be. We are what we were meant to be. We are not pieces of wholes thrown together incorrectly. We are not mistakes.
We are not inferior knockoffs of someone else. If our monstrousness is frightening, then it is time we bare our teeth and draw that fear close to us and stop being so afraid of our fearsomeness that we fear everyone and everything else right back.
I am throwing my head back, here, and saying it: no more being afraid. Hell no. My monstrousness is not a place of shame. It is a strength. It is the power to say I am mine, and I will tell you what I mean. Not you. I am not any thing trapped in anyone's body. I am tougher than that, and I have plenty of blood to spare in this body of mine, and plenty more miles to go before any of you can bring me to my knees, and I dare you to try.
I am choosing to stay here, and it is mine to choose. And if that means changing shape, if that means putting together the unexpected, that is any monster's ancient right. It is damn well traditional.
The only ones setting traps are the ones in our way.
There. There's my teeth. There's my cause.
Boo.
Hiss.
Keep kicking: a thousand, thousand slimy things lived on. And so. Did. I.
This body is mine, and I claim it and its bruises, and it is not a man's, and I am not trapped here. I have looked leaving my body in the eye and I have said, in the end, hell no. There is too much to do, too much to love, too many who need one more of us to say hell no and help them say the same.
You might not like it. It might be a wrongness to you.
I am done with traps. I am done with the philosophy of traps, and I am done with the feminism of who owns my body for what cause.
It is time for something that tells you that I am here for blood--my blood, the blood of my loved ones, the blood of the people who have battered themselves against my life and found me still here.
It is time for a feminism of the monstrous.
That is this body. That is this me. That is the voice that says get your names off of my parts and your hands off them too, that says stop colonizing my reality and telling me what I mean without listening to a word I say.
What I say may be in a language incomprehensible, but there is a time for that, and it is right now, because this is a monster's creed. It is for the cobbled-together, the sewn-up, the grafted-on. It is for the golden, the under-the-earth, the foreign, the travels-by-night; the filthy ship-sinking cave-dwelling bone-cracking gorgeousness that says hell no, I am not tidy. I am not easy. I am not what you suppose me to be and until you listen to my voice and look me in my eyes, I will cling fast to this life no matter how far you drive me, how deep, with how many torches and pitchforks, biting back the whole way down. I will not give you my suicide. I will not give you my surrender.
This is for the Lilim, because you forget that the next part after your co-opted icon parts ways with Adam and goes her own way is and she begat monsters, and she becomes terrifying. This is for the Gorgons and the vampires and the chimaeras, for Cybele and Baba Yaga, Hel and Ashtoreth, for Lamia and Scylla, for Kali and Kapo 'ula-kina'u. This is for all of them with teeth.
It is time to look the monstrous in the eye. It is time. It is time to say that we are beautiful in our fierceness, and that we are our own. We are not the rejected of what we can never be. We are what we were meant to be. We are not pieces of wholes thrown together incorrectly. We are not mistakes.
We are not inferior knockoffs of someone else. If our monstrousness is frightening, then it is time we bare our teeth and draw that fear close to us and stop being so afraid of our fearsomeness that we fear everyone and everything else right back.
I am throwing my head back, here, and saying it: no more being afraid. Hell no. My monstrousness is not a place of shame. It is a strength. It is the power to say I am mine, and I will tell you what I mean. Not you. I am not any thing trapped in anyone's body. I am tougher than that, and I have plenty of blood to spare in this body of mine, and plenty more miles to go before any of you can bring me to my knees, and I dare you to try.
I am choosing to stay here, and it is mine to choose. And if that means changing shape, if that means putting together the unexpected, that is any monster's ancient right. It is damn well traditional.
The only ones setting traps are the ones in our way.
There. There's my teeth. There's my cause.
Boo.
Hiss.
Keep kicking: a thousand, thousand slimy things lived on. And so. Did. I.
Labels: feminism, monstrous, postcolonial, queer, trans, unifying theory
posted by little light | 7:28 AM
135 Comments:
This post is amazing.
Amazing, amazing, amazing.
ditto what trin said LL.
Yes, absolutely, yes!
Oh, dude, the Lilim. Yes. Duh.
(Maybe I should change the 'Minotaur' tag to 'Lilim'.)
Wow. and, yeah, that: me, too!
Wow. Just. Wow.
Incredible. Thank you. See you beyond the pale, sister.
Strength, determination and pride. I love this post, you are amazing.
Nightbreed.
Discovered you via the TF dust-up, and figured I'd delurk.
I'm going to print this out and keep it next to my bed. These are exactly the words I've been looking for. Fighting words, and powerful words. So, thanks.
That f*ckin' rocked!
This was wonderful. I like the implicit idea that we see ourselves as familiarly, comfortably embodied when we are in a state of surrender to norms, whereas the way we experience our body as a real phenomenon, authentically, is partly through details and distortions that scan as monstrous.
Lovely and astonishing. Bravo!
Fantastic.
I said GOD DAMN! That was amazing!
goosebump-inducing.
and righteous.
Holy shit. Thank you. *bookmarks*
This is fantastic. The "monstrous feminine" is a concept as old as the hills, but not one that I have seen subject to the reclamation strategy before. A "feminism" that mobilized the mess of embodiedness against unrealistic normative forces need not belong to any particular gender, and therein lies the genius.
this is the. best. post. i've ever read.
thank you for sharing it.
WOnderful, and I am linking it TOO because it is that freakin' perfect.
Exquisite. Stunning. Ferocious.
You are all these things.
You own the terrible beauty of honorable scars and proudly claim them.
Thank you for this. It is beautiful (in its own monstrous way).
I am saving it and keeping it to read always.
WOW, LL!
*standing ovations and showering you with flowers*
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Reminds me of Susan Stryker's "My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage"
I forgot to add that it reminded me of that in a very good way.
Oh, love it! :D
Beautiful :) I'm not supposed to be frequenting the blogosphere at the mo, but I had a sneaky peek at some blogs I knew wouldn't make me mad and came here via belledame. Reminded me why blogging is a positive thing :)
LL, you are a poet with this post. And, like some poetry I didn't get all of it. There were references to things that I don't understand.
But, what I took away from this post is that you honor who you are -- just AS you are. No one can alter that reality for you. That is powerful mojo. I love that strength of identity.
You are gifted in so many ways; we are blessed that you share that gift with us.
Hi Little Light! I've been reading you since the IBTP blowup and I'm a fan of your writing.
I love this post so much, and the Latin student in me loves it, too. The words monster and monstrous come from the Latin word monstrare, which means to show or reveal, and that's what you're doing, revealing your body and beauty to everyone whether they can fucking deal with it or not. Etymology is uncanny sometimes, eh?
I am really glad you caught that, Emily. Truth be told, the next thing I was going to write in this series was on that etymological connection.
It's, frankly, neat.
I want to apologize to anyone who has been kind enough to link to this post. Another blogger has posted at her place encouraging her commenters to go to all of your places and inform you that I am, apparently, a plagiarist, because she has found a poem from the Sixties with some similar themes. Comments have already been left to that effect on blogs who linked to me.
I don't want discussion of this issue to mar what has gone on here, but I hope none of you are inconvenienced by this behavior, and thought you all deserved some fair warning.
"Monster," is an amazing poem written by Robin Morgan. The least you could do, little light, is give Robin Morgan credit when you plagerize her work and try to pass it off as your own.
The most you could do if you have no originality, is when you co-opt someone else's work, to try to not let it go so completely over your head that you're not even in the same ball park with what the author is getting at, let alone on the same page.
May I suggest "Invisible Woman?" It's a really short poem by Robin Morgan. Maybe you'll get that?
-- Luckynkl
Hey, I haven't a clue whether this will do any good, or whether it will even be approved by the moderator, but I did post this over at Heart's site:
Heart, it's really not clear to me why you didn't structure your post this way: "Dear LittleLight, you may not be aware that in the 60s Robin Morgan was making a similar point as you...it's fantastic to see how certain liberatory revisions of 'body image,' including monstrosity, keep coming up when we try to think our bodies through in a fashion beyond oppression."
It's a great thing to share your knowledge, and to create connections between old feminisms and new. It's not such a great thing to immediately accuse LittleLight of plagiarism, in a manner that is likely to start another blog war and which creates divides when there could have been bridges.
I'm a teacher, and I have to be alert to plagiarism. This is convergence, not plagiarism; to be honest, "monster" remains a fairly empty category in Morgan's poem, whereas LittleLight fills it brimful with a wealth of mythological references. No philosopher is the first to use the word "truth," no poet the first to write about "beauty," and nobody alive can have read everything that pertains to their writing. A query is a better starting place than an accusation. That's not because it's better to be weak. It's because it's better to be completely right than half-right.
joseph kugelmass:
Yes. I'm a TA myself -- plagiarism means something pretty damn specific: using another's words as your own. It can include paraphrases, yes, but paraphrases are near-exact as well.
Similar themes and imagery do not plagiarism make. This whole thing is laughable, as is the mobilizing to trash LL.
Why can't these feminists mobilize against rape, against violence, against racism, against ableism, against sexism, against -- YES -- transphobia?
It's always safest to attack our sisters, isn't it?
The sad, patheitc thing is I was just reading a post over at kactus' where Heart was all about "Yeah, it doesn't matter who we are or how we differ from other feminists, we have to band together." and in that post of kactus' she mentioned some things that I was sure a Heart-style radfem would hate. It made me wonder if maybe there was some glimmer of the notion of real sisterhood deep inside that racist, vindictive, cruel person. Apparently not.
As a professor who has seen plenty of cases of actual plagiarism, I agree totally with what Joseph Kugelmass said. Even if you had read the Morgan piece and decided to pick up on the monster idea, your piece would still not be plagiarism for all of the reasons he states.
And I'll add - I doubt your accuser really thinks it is. This is about something else. How dare your feminism not be HER feminism, right?
She might as well accuse Morgan of plagiarizing Mary Shelley.
It's a great piece, by the way.
People will tend to mobilise in response to what makes them feel threatened and unsafe.
It's been clear for some time that Heart and her ilk are extremely threatened by the idea that a transwoman could have any sense of personal power or strength; that Little Light is willing to actually be publically herself is terrifying.
I wrote, a long time ago, in another locale, that it's terrifying to stand up and be beautiful. It's hard to find the guts to actually do it, to step out and thunder and say "I AM." Too much aphorism about the tall poppy, too much memory of the junior high school lunchroom -- I, at least, learned a bit about how to be grey and innocuous and pretend that I didn't have teeth because I was tired of fighting. There are times I think that coddles the people who are threatened by those-like-me, lets them live in the comfortable illusion that they're safe from the monster under the bed.
Or in the closet. Another traditional place for monsters.
oh yeah, and lucky? wrt the gay marriage thing? my friends who have to either split up or basically go into exile on account of one of them is from another country? send you an extra extended middle finger.
And I'll add - I doubt your accuser really thinks it is. This is about something else. How dare your feminism not be HER feminism, right?
oh yeah, it's something else all right--that, and, but, particularly: how dare she lay claim to being a woman. how dare she lay claim to being oppressed. especially if that has Implications for the despicable actions of Heart and lucky and all the rest. which it does. how's it feel, baby? the guilt? no, not you, right? never you. no one's EVER suffered like you've suffered. no room for anyone else. FUCK no.
I think they're more used to trans women either as easy targets to point at and say "oh my god! how unfeminist!" or as hapless sycophants in search of approval from some sort of orthodox feminism, looking for a pat on the head that will earn them some shred of "OK you're something sort of like a woman maybe" that's tokenizing at best. The spectre of a trans woman rising up and saying "I don't give a fuck, this is my feminism" and saying it in a powerful, vibrant voice? Well of course it won't do. Of course it must have been copied from someone else. Of course anything that looks, smells, sounds like feminist thought must have been co-opted, because it can't have been real thoughts, experiences, feelings, from inside a trans woman's life? That would start to pull at that little thread, at the corner of the sweater...
yup. "what? it spoke? that, that's not supposed to happen."
goes with her M.O. LL addressed her directly, repeatedly, politely, at bfp's, when she was still being all Saruman with bfp, and Heart never did respond to many if not all of her questions; when it became clear that neither bfp nor most of the rest of us were having any (but were still quite civil; bfp's a tough moderator), she gathered up her skirts about her and swept off back to her place. there to complain that she'd been the Only One! to represent her POV at bfp's spot, which, just slap it on the list of massive injustices; then proceeds to moderate the fuck out of a positively Foxesque "fair and balanced" conversation. kh posted a compare n contrast of her original post with Heart's editing; it looked like it had been eaten by mice. and i gather a number didn't make it through at all. dear lucky was not one of them, so i understand.
Speaking of amazing, I found this piece of absurdity particularly astounding.
Dw3t-Hthr said...
It's been clear for some time that Heart and her ilk are extremely threatened by the idea that a transwoman could have any sense of personal power or strength; that Little Light is willing to actually be publically herself is terrifying.
Dw3t-Hthr, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Nobody I know feels threatened by a transwoman merely having some sense of personal power or strength. But then, people who profess to know what others must be thinking rarely have a clue.
Aletha
Thanks for stopping by and sharing!
That's very ironic given the number of professed feminists around blogland recently who have been falling over themselves insisting what trans people must think, believe, what ideas we must inherently subscribe to, what our political stances must be...
Dw3t-Hthr, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Nobody I know feels threatened by a transwoman merely having some sense of personal power or strength. But then, people who profess to know what others must be thinking rarely have a clue.
Aletha
I think the fear is more that transitioning in one's own body is somehow an encroachment on biological women's bodies. If a biological man can say he's a woman, then when I, biological woman, say I'm a woman, the word loses its meaning, the sky falls down, yadda yadda. (Actually, I do think it's fair to claim that biological women and biological men have different experiences, but then, biological women have lots of different experiences, as well. I can't think of a single thing I do or experience as a woman that is common to *every* other woman on the planet, except the things that are also common to every human on the planet. Even the most surprising things - I met a biological, cissexual, non-trans woman recently who had no vagina. So there you go. All preconceived notions, right out the window.)
I always have to wonder what people who are so worried about the attack of the transpeople are doing with their time when they're not trying to keep out the transfolk. I mean - you know, it's not an issue that I really see coming up as a threat to biological women anywhere on the feminist frontlines. Transgender people are far more likely to be the victims of rape, bashing, assualt, and murder than to perpetrate it. I don't see an old transpeople's network collaborating to keep women making $.70 on the dollar, or to cut social service programs and the minimum wage. Transfolk are not mining uranium on Native land and testing Quinacrine on Native women. They're not banding together to throw men and women of color into prison in hugely disproportionate numbers.
(You know, I'm sure there are *some* transgendered people who are doing these things, but I think y'all take my point.)
So when we have these very real threats to deal with...well, gosh, I'm so glad that there are biological women who are fighting for what's really important. Because excluding others so that I can have the right to name myself the way I want to is just so much more central to feminism than is fighting poverty, racism, etc.
*Sigh.* And I promised myself I wasn't going to get bitchy. I really do feel bad about that, but not quite bad enough not to post this.
It's not plagiarism.
I linked to this, but I don't have trackbacking. So... here.
"My monstrousness is not a place of shame. It is a strength."
Oh HELL yeah!
Clapping and clapping and clapping and ...
there is no irony deficiency in this world, i'll say that much.
but then, biological women have lots of different experiences, as well. I can't think of a single thing I do or experience as a woman that is common to *every* other woman on the planet, except the things that are also common to every human on the planet.
Even the most surprising things - I met a biological, cissexual, non-trans woman recently who had no vagina. So there you go. All preconceived notions, right out the window.
*nod* yup. i knew someone like that, too. some condition with an incredibly long and convoluted name; born without a uterus or a vagina. (ovaries, yes). or, rather; she had one created for her, a vagina that is, when she hit puberty, without her consent or even being informed that that was what was happening to her. ain't it grand?
i was thinking about her the other day, what with the whole new uterus transplant business (there's another one that ought to have Heart foaming at the mouth. well except also apparently a lot of other people will be, rightfully as well; girlistic was writin' about how sloppy the "testing" procedure has been thus far, and the spavined thinking behind that). but anyway, assuming it does work out okay in the end, i wonder if this is something she'd want to go for: she desperately wanted to have children, i know.
oops, had meant to respond to this bit first, cut myself off:
but then, biological women have lots of different experiences, as well. I can't think of a single thing I do or experience as a woman that is common to *every* other woman on the planet, except the things that are also common to every human on the planet.
well, see, i think that's what's -really- at the (ahem) heart of this. Because that's been the problem with ehm Certain People all along. i have argued this very point with Heart herself, point o'fact, in relation to something having nothing to do with trans issue ("Heart, with all due respect, you are not Every Woman," essentially. the flowery response to that--i -was- being polite, then--i felt, was rather surreal, at best).
there are names for this sort of mmm thinking? relating? Call it ideology if you like, but it goes deeper than any one political faction.
"high demand groups"
OCTRINE OVER PERSON - Doctrine supersedes human experience
The ideological myth merges with their "truth" and the resulting
deduction can be so overpowering and coercive that is simply replaces
reality. Consequently past events can be altered, rewritten or even
ignored to make them consistent with the current reality. This alteration is especially lethal when the distortions are imposed on the individual's memory.
...The underlying assumption is that the doctrine - including it
mythological elements - is ultimately more valid, true and real than is any aspect of actual human character or human experience. The individual under such pressure is propelled into an intense conflict with his own sense of integrity, a struggle which take place in relation to polarised feelings if sincerity and insincerity...
Cookie Monster sad.
Sigh. I had my own sense of the irony of my post, but expected it to be misconstrued in the manner it has been taken. Of course, nobody has yet bothered to address my point, which was to object to this particularly absurd and insulting presumption:
"It's been clear for some time that Heart and her ilk are extremely threatened by the idea that a transwoman could have any sense of personal power or strength..."
In that context, I think my ironic juxtaposition is appropriate. I also think disagreeing with the way a transwoman self-defines does not remotely equate to "falling over themselves insisting what trans people must think, believe, what ideas we must inherently subscribe to, what our political stances must be..." That is a straw man if I ever saw one. Some transwomen claim to be identical to women, while others acknowledge there is a distinction. Some women think that distinction has some meaning and importance. For some reason, that seems to really bother some transwomen, so much so that they throw around all sorts of presumptuous insinuations with no basis in fact. Oh those transphobic doctrinaire cruel vindictive radical feminists!
I should say plain(s)feminist did obliquely address my point by attempting to explain what the fear was really all about. Not that I agree with that explanation either, but at least it had something to do with my point!
Aletha
Hey Aletha? The thing is? It ain't about you. Or radical feminism. She's talking about her life; you really need to get over yourself(ves). Y'all don't get the patent on suffering, or feminism, or even womanhood. And: maybe, since you're ON HER BLOG, you might consider trying to understand -her- before demanding we get -your- deal.
p.s. can you play "Melancholy Baby," by any chance?
I also think disagreeing with the way a transwoman self-defines does not remotely equate to "falling over themselves insisting what trans people must think, believe, what ideas we must inherently subscribe to, what our political stances must be..." That is a straw man if I ever saw one.
(I wrote the part in quotation marks.) Yeah, that totally would be a straw man, if that's what I was talking about at all. It's not; I was referring to a whole set of discussions on other blogs, particularly the long thread on Amp's blog, in which a few people kept insisting on much more elaborate theories about what trans people "must" believe. Not anything that had to do with self-defining as "woman" or "just like every other woman" or anything like that. Some of those people doing that were trans themselves! So among other things, your rebuttal is pointed off in the wrong direction.
For the record, I think women have a lot of different experiences, and trans women have different kinds of experiences than other women. But all of this can still be part and parcel of "the many varied experiences of women" that connect us through difference and intersection. And the sky really won't fall down and the world won't fall apart and the political project will not automatically splinter into uselessness, either.
"I'm not a homophobe, so STOP SAYING THAT. I just don't have to approve of your CHOICES, is all; god, some of us are just tired of all your FLAUNTING and PARADES and DEMANDS for SPECIAL RIGHTS. p.s. I'm in UR Space, talking up some shite! Witness how I have been Misunderstood! Everybody, look at me! Loooook at meeeeeeeeeeeee"
Some women think that distinction has some meaning and importance.
And some women think their bloodline makes them a special snowflake, and they really shouldn't have to associate with Those People, not that they have anything against them or anything, why can't They keep to Their own and find their own space?
And some women think the stars on their bellies make them superior to the ones without ones upon thars. (more oppressed. six of one).
And some women think you need to go and boil your head.
"For some reason;" yeah, i can't imagine what that would be.
say, I don't really care for you calling yourself "Aletha;" I find that offensive, because I have a friend named Aletha and I really don't care to think of you in conjunction with her. so I'm just going to call you "Binky," 'k?
and besides, she was called "Aletha" way before you; I'm fairly certain she invented the name; and here you come along with your inferior imitation and ruining it for all real Alethas everywhere. Why'd you have to go and spoil it all, Binky, why?
Easy, now, Belle. I'm not about to go taking anyone's name; we ought to be better than that.
Aletha, the funny thing is, I never made any statements here about radical feminists. I didn't mention them or critique them. I didn't say anything about anyone else's gender or, for that matter, even say in this piece that I'm a woman. I have never claimed to be identical to other women of any sort or to have had different experiences than my own. And yet, at Heart's place, there's a stack of comments about how I'm trying to say I'm better than other women, or I'm attacking radical feminists, etc.
And here you are, talking about the relative validity of transgender self-definition--I thought the issue was plagiarism? Or was it appropriation?
Because I'm being told that I'm taking things that aren't mine. Like my experiences? Like the things that have happened in my life that I was actually talking about here? Like being Othered and called monstrous, which I brought up because that is directed at me and needed addressing and reclaiming? Like Babylonian mythology?
So someone else, in another struggle, was called the same names I was. And maybe she, looking at some of the same literature and mythologies I concerned myself with, here, came to believe it was better to reclaim those epithets and write about it.
That's no A-HA moment. I didn't take anything from her. Either I'm being blamed for stealing her ideas--which I can't have, having never come into contact with them before--or I'm being blamed for being ignorant of them, because I have a duty to read everything ever written about monsters, a symbol that matters to me because of my own studies and life experiences that takes up a huge chunk of human literature on the whole.
But it's not really about supposed plagiarism, is it? It's that the person I am accused of paralleling, I am now told, would disapprove of my own personal project of self-acceptance and my own politics besides. I'm "taking what doesn't belong to me"--that is, though I didn't claim it directly here, womanhood. The notion of being stepped on by a hostile system. Of being defined by other people instead of myself.
The point is getting me to bow and scrape and beg to be allowed my own liberation from someone who doesn't think I should have it, and somehow admit that all of my work really belongs to a woman whiter, older, and more well-off than me, because my pretty little brown head couldn't have come up with anything from my own knowledge, education, and history.
The point is I should have to read everything written by people who want to keep kicking, and then beg them to be allowed to use nouns they're willing to spare for my own experiences, because I don't deserve better.
I'm sorry; I have my influences, and they're not Robin Morgan, and they're not any radical feminist writers that I know of. I'm not stealing their work; their work is mostly off my radar. I came to these words organically, through discussing disability-advocacy solidarity, my dissatisfaction with aspects of cyborg feminism, my own religious practice, the stories and literature I was raised on, postcolonial theory, mestiza theory, and writers like Edward Said, Fatima Mernissi, Gloria Anzaldua, Donna Penn, Salman Rushdie, Farid Esack, Mary Shelley, and, well, my commenters, whose discussion helped me get here. I'm proud of my influences, and have never hidden them. They are not radical feminists' words. They are mine, for better or worse.
This was a personal piece. It was not about you. It was not about Heart. It was not about radical feminism. It was not about what womanhood is or who owns it. You people came in here--or didn't, and fired shots from afar, mostly--and made it about you and yours, and scoring points in your longstanding internecine battle of theory, which looks an awful lot like appropriation to me. It's not about you and yours. It's about the cops who sexually assaulted my friend, about the kids who gang-beat me with hockey sticks, about my colonized ancestors being exploited and renamed, and about me. Owning myself and my history and all my parts. And not backing down.
It wasn't that you had the audacity to use the word "monster" in your writing. As usual, it was that you had the audacity to use the word "feminist." You're allowed to be one, but not the other... fancy that!
also: "woman." as opposed to "transwoman." Aletha/Binky thinks there is an important distinction to be made, see.
Oh geez, how could I have forgetten that one? The oldest one, tried and true. How dare you call yourself a woman?
A tangent, but: Y'all realize, right, that you cannot actually steal an idea? (In the literary sense, that is.) Ideas - themes, motifs, archetypes, images - are not intellectual property in any meaningful sense at all.
Only the words matter. That's why this isn't even in the same postal district as "plagiarism," except in the fevered imaginations of people who think Star Wars and Star Trek are the same thing because they're both set in space.
Aletha,
Yes, I do understand why some feminsists perceive trans as a threat, and while I got snarky in my post, I didn't intend to entirely dismiss this. Obviously, from the rest of my post, I personally do not see a threat.
However. You might be interested in Jennifer Finney Boylan's book, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders. What Boylan does for the first time that I've seen in writing by MTFs, is to address some of the differences between born women and transwomen. In particular, she talks about the difference between adolescences and womanhood. Boylan says that many transwomen see themselves as girls rather than women, and that they are focused on the trappings of femininity - and that Boylan, herself, can understand why this pisses off women, esp. those who consciously reject these trappings as the essence of womanhood.
Hoping I'm not sounding patronizing here - there is a theoretical point to be made by saying that born women have a different experience than do transwomen. I think that's fair to say. But then, to move from that to Janice Raymond's assertion that transwomen are coopting women's bodies and that this is just another way that men are appropriating women - which, of course, was Heart's whole point in her post - *that* is tarring a whole diverse group of people with the same brush, and that is bigotry.
Anyway, I think that an analysis like Boylan's goes a long way toward addressing some of the problem. Surely Boylan isn't the only transperson to do this, but she's the first popular writer I've seen do so.
I also think Emi Koyama has good things to say about all of this - her website is www.eminism.org.
Further, identity politics have pretty much proven to be a bad way to keep a movement going - they're great for theorizing, bad for action. (I say this as someone who, ironically, can't get an article published on bisexuality b/c the way I use it in the piece is being dismissed as "too identity politics" - this is ironic as I've critiqued identity politics in other writing.) Some feminist theorists, like Kristin Esterberg, suggest that we have to focus instead on feminist projects - where can we form alliances, for example? Surely, transwomen and biological women can form alliances around domestic violence, rape, and other issues for women. How we identify ourselves should be secondary to these efforts. But we won't have these efforts if we can't first agree to give each other room and respect, and reaching way back, that does mean moderating hate speech on blog comments (which, for the record, I see that IBTP did, once she'd read the comments in question, and quite firmly). It also means making an honest effort to understand the other person/position and not dismissing them.
You could argue, as some have on Heart's blog, that radical feminists have been dismissed in this discussion. First, what Heart is talking about, the more that I read her, is cultural feminism, not radical feminism. She seems to believe (for the most part) that it isn't patriarchy that's the problem, but men. And that women and men are essentially different (rad fems don't believe this - rad fems believe that gender is a social construction that comes from the patriarchy and that there is no difference btw women and men except that women get the shaft under patriarchy). And second, on the issue of transgender, the rad fem "camp" has often shown a complete unwillingness to education itself by reading trans writings, knowing trans people, or even engaging in thoughtful dialogue with the transfolks who've been struggling to reach out and have a discussion.
This is what I've seen over the past several weeks mostly as a new observer to all of this. Sadly, I've seen this occur again and again and again in many different arenas.
I will say this, however - I'm not completely trashing identity politics. And I'm not saying that rad fem or cult fem are awful and need to be thrown out. But I do think that all of us need to focus on dialogue and coalition and, of course, respect, which comes from understanding and yes, trusting each other.
And Aletha, I apologize for being snarky with you. I don't know you, and I was taking out my frustrations with this whole thing on you.
Quite honestly, I feel like pretty much any trans person who takes part in these discussions is either an emotional masochist or trying to put themselves out there in order to build bridges of some sort. Or possibly engaged in some personal soul-searching they need. But whatever the case, trans people get dirt clods flung at us in these discussions. We're not just called names or scolded for daring to be on this side or that side of a bounadary; we're held to double-binding standards, told what we think, rolled over by objectifying theories from the medical establishment or from people who never bothered to try and talk to us.
Some people make fun of the tendency to want to protect yourself and move away from these conversations by teasing about "hurt feelings." Well yeah, hurt feelings matter too. And they're inevitable for any trans person who steps into these kind of turf-war ideological warzones. At least, it feels very much like a warzone to us, since our lives are being used as ammo.
That isn't to say that there aren't trans people who show up and say some very dunderheaded things -- essentialist, solipsistic, reifying gender standards and stereotypes that are obviously bogus to everyone else. There's little enough "trans community" where people can learn and grow, and in these discussions people get slapped around hard, not taught.
One last thing:
Hoping I'm not sounding patronizing here - there is a theoretical point to be made by saying that born women have a different experience than do transwomen. I think that's fair to say.
I don't think it's just fair, or theoretical. It's an absolute disservice to and erasure of trans women to insist that there are no differences in experience. It would certainly erase (in the bad way) a lot of bullshit that has happened to me if differences in experience were ignored. But again, I don't see that many trans people insisting on that, at least not around these parts. On the other hand, it would also erase huge chunks of my life and experience if you insisted that I'm not a woman and haven't been *directly* targeted by sexism, violence against women, and patriarchal oppression. Trans women are a type of women with particular experiences. That's all that really needs to be said, but somehow our presence inside the oh-so-important boundaries makes the sky fall down and the political endeavors fail.
I hope I'm welcome to post here, little light.
Anyway, what you wrote is extremely powerful; fortunately it is powerful enough to not get buried under the bizarre fantasies that you are somehow appropriating, eh, something (talk about essentialist thinking!)
As far as I know, only Christ claimed to be the Word. /irony
- Q Grrl
You know, Holly - that is a damn good point.
So much of the fear of trans from feminist circles is about having their experiences erased. And I can understand the fear (of being erased) because being erased is a terrible thing. But this focus on biology isn't thought through - it merely positions women's oppression as unique and ignores the ways in which transpeople actually feel the worst of that oppression.
I wonder sometimes if those who are so focused on biology have ever considered that transgendered people are far more likely to be raped and assualted and murdered precisely for being transgendered than are biological women. And aren't rape, assault, and murder the very tools that they argue are used by the patriarchy against women?
Anyway - I've gotten away from your point here and into something else, so I'll close.
It's not always about biology, though. A lot of accusations get tossed around about biological essentalism, on either "side," but there are other kinds of essentialism that people engage in which are just as flawed, and more subtle.
For instance, I think someone referred to it as "cultural essentialism" -- the idea that while women may not be defined by biology, the essence of "woman" is forged in the crucible of being socialized in a patriarchal system as a woman. This can never change, and that anyone who was not assigned female at birth has no part of that essence. The flaws in this argument are a lot harder to see unless you understand how trans people's experience disrupt norms of socialization -- not in some kind of inherently "transgressive" ways, but because we often don't get "properly socialized."
Some ideas of feminism seem to reify the capital-P Patriarchy as a sort of Machine God that rules us, and casts all human beings into two indelible molds at birth and programs them: the oppressors and the oppressed, male and female. There is some truth to this, to how the system is "supposed to work." But it really doesn't make sense to insist that the Machine God is perfect and never makes mistakes, or that "factory rejects" who don't fit properly into the system must, even in a feminist world-view, be forced into that system somehow, as men or women, or any kind of pigeonhole that does not come from our own voices and understanding of our lives.
(Just in case anyone thinks I'm calling trans people rejects and mistakes, I'm not... except perhaps from the imaginary, reified point of view of The Patriarchy. And besides, this is just another way of being a monster. Also, there's nothing "inherently transgressive" about being a mistake of the system, unless it's in pointing out that the system is not flawlessly perfect.)
>Some people make fun of the tendency to want to protect yourself and move away from these conversations by teasing about "hurt feelings." Well yeah, hurt feelings matter too.>
THANK YOU.
signed, been there, done that, got the T-shirt, in other contexts.
or, well, the real problem is this:
if you want to say, let's keep it on the level of structural blahblah only, then y'know, it's really difficult considering just how personally loaded this shit is, and yepper more so for some than others in certain contexts, that needs to be acknowledged ("gay marriage" is not a theoretical debate between equal opponents when nothing's gonna happen to -your- marriage either way, straight person), but, you can try, i suppose.
but what really chaps my ass is that a lot of the time the same people who make fun of "wounded fee-fees" and so forth are the -first- to start whining whenever someone else looks at -them- crosseyed. they just won't cop that it's personal. or sometimes they do; they just have all kinds of rationalizations and justifications about how it's never, ever, EVER any of their responsibility. You know: "stop running into my fist with your face! Look! Bruises! On my hand!"
For instance, I think someone referred to it as "cultural essentialism" -- the idea that while women may not be defined by biology, the essence of "woman" is forged in the crucible of being socialized in a patriarchal system as a woman. This can never change, and that anyone who was not assigned female at birth has no part of that essence. The flaws in this argument are a lot harder to see unless you understand how trans people's experience disrupt norms of socialization -- not in some kind of inherently "transgressive" ways, but because we often don't get "properly socialized."
Mhm.
Well, and yet: I don't personally relate to a trans person's experience, obviously; and yet I still find the whole "cultural essentialism" thing pretty much so much handwaving, upon inspection. Because, it still doesn't allow for any difference as to how -anyone- might have been raised; and, it also doesn't really allow for how we're supposed to make the jump from this rigidly reified (by Them, of course, only, always by Them) world to the new gender-free, non-patriarchal utopia.
much more to the point: my cynicism gets jacked up another few notches when people like Heart, who claims to -not- be a biological essentialist, suddenly turns around and pulls out the whole Robin Morgan and her son's experience of her monstrous -genitalia- business.
and then too, there was this exchange, in the comments:
Mary Sunshine Says:
January 18th, 2007 at 7:08 am
But … but … they do such a *better* job of being women than we do.
Can’t we just get over it, and pay obeisance to them for that?
We never really knew how do do feminism until *they* came along and brought us into the light, while keeping the spotlight on themselves.
Being *born* female is such a nasty, creepy slimey thing that we need to have the way shown to us by those who were not so cursed.
Copycats are better cats, seems to be the point in all of this.
Mary S.
womensspace Says:
January 18th, 2007 at 7:13 am
Profacero, exactly. Let’s talk about the apparent erasure. Let’s talk about Robin Morgan and her poem, “Monster,” which is beautiful and brilliant and worth talking about. Let’s talk about the difference between the struggles/issues of women and the struggles/issues of transwomen. Let’s talk about who has made whom to be monstrous and why and when and where.
Mary Sunshine, I love you.
xxxooo
Heart
n.b. not going back again, but the profacero post that Heart is responding to, I do not think it means what Heart thinks it means. or wants to think it means.
Hoping I'm not sounding patronizing here - there is a theoretical point to be made by saying that born women have a different experience than do transwomen. I think that's fair to say. But then, to move from that to Janice Raymond's assertion that transwomen are coopting women's bodies and that this is just another way that men are appropriating women - which, of course, was Heart's whole point in her post - *that* is tarring a whole diverse group of people with the same brush, and that is bigotry.
Well, exactly. I mean, -of course- there is a difference in -experiences;- if that weren't true then LL wouldn't have had to write this post in the first place. And yes I would hope there is space, somewhere, to come together and talk about those differences, and any parallels, in a true consciousness-raising session. You know, where we all like listen to each other? and amplify rather than counter or dismiss?
as you say: this was not that. in fact this was the opposite of that.
anyone who really wants to "build bridges" would not have reacted to that post as though it were a -threat.- Which is exactly what Heart did.
some people just won't own their shit.
...i mean, right here, okay:
Let’s talk about the difference between the struggles/issues of women and the struggles/issues of transwomen.
Sure!
Let’s talk about who has made whom to be monstrous and why and when and where.
BZZZZT.
Not. Helping. Anything.
Really.
Unless you want to come to it from the position (it would be mine) that the (groan) Patriarchy makes -all- of us, transwomen and cisgendered women, hetero and otherwise (as well as any cisgendered man who strays from the narrative he's supposed to follow, either in gender presentation or sexual desire/expression or both) monstrous, in related but not identical ways, and that that is worth talking about.
but, given the overall context, somehow i don't think that that is Heart's point here. In fact.
...starting with, Heart's (and Aletha/Binky here) adamant insistence that it's just plain "woman" as differentiated from "transwoman." as in, a transwoman is not only not the same as a woman who who was born with the requisite naughty bits and the F on the certificate, she ("or he," yes, again, we all saw it, Heart) is -not- a *real* woman. at best, we now grudgingly accept that "she or he" isn't a man, either, exactly. but that's IT. anything else and we're right back into HELP HELP WE'RE BEING OPPRESSED territory.
Forget about Robin Morgan. What about Sameul Coleridge?
Make that Samuel!
...yeah, I already acknowledged Coleridge. I wouldn't have used the allusion as directly as I did if I had any plans to sneak around about it.
That's one of my favorite lines of poetry, and my paraphrase of it was supposed to bring his imagery to mind. In that case, I think I was just expecting people would know what a direct poetic allusion to another poet, deliberately, looked like.
For those who missed my nod to him in the other thread, since we're dissecting, here, the last line is a reworking of one of the best lines from "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." I like Coleridge, and the "Rime" has very interesting things to say about confronting horror and becoming horrific yourself.
My girlfriend made fun of me when I alluded to it, though.
This is a beautiful piece of writing and I am happy that I have read it. Some of the comments- not so much but it interesting how divergent some of the paths this thread has taken are getting.
This is for the Lilim and their many faces and the many ways that we perceive them, the dance goes on.
I have also linked to this.
Plagiarism actually does include the stealing of ideas, as well as the theft of words. But this is not a case of plagiarism. In fact, one of the more remarkable and beautiful features of this piece is that it explicitly honors its sources.
As has been said elsewhere, this new dust-up is not about plagiarism: it is about something else, and I'm sorry to say that it's about something quite nasty. I'm also sorry to observe that "feminist" and "bigot" are not mutually exclusive categories.
Little light, I just wanted to say thank you, thank you for your awesome, heartfelt poem. It touched me in ways I cannot describe.
Pre bottom surgery I used to describe myself as a chimaera, a discongruous being. Then I lost touch with my monstrousness as the years ticked away and I faded into normalcy.
Thank you for reminding me of it, and also that it is nothing for me, or any of US, to fear. That it's okay to show our teeth once in a while.
Hell, we had BETTER.
Hey, all, some interesting points here. Unfortunately, there is a long history of acrimony clouding these issues. FTR, Heart said specifically in her thread that she liked the poem and did not consider it plagiarism. That was an issue raised by other posters. From my perspective, her position is far more nuanced than one would think from reading this thread here, so I would think Heart does not deserve all this spite. However, in view of all that history, much of which I am not familiar with myself, the frustration expressed here is not surprising.
Belledame222, I severely doubt your friend invented the name Aletha. How old is she? I started using that name almost thirty years ago. Hell, I have gotten spam from Alethas! So you will understand if I ignore your taking offense at that. As to your gratuitous insults and misinterpretations, you are trying to bait me, and I prefer not to take the bait.
Aletha
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
::applause::
thank you!
Hey, all, some interesting points here. Unfortunately, there is a long history of acrimony clouding these issues. FTR, Heart said specifically in her thread that she liked the poem and did not consider it plagiarism. That was an issue raised by other posters. From my perspective, her position is far more nuanced than one would think from reading this thread here, so I would think Heart does not deserve all this spite. However, in view of all that history, much of which I am not familiar with myself, the frustration expressed here is not surprising.
I'm tired of this defense. Someone makes it every single time this happens.
Actually, Heart said that only after a bunch of people started complaining about how horrible her post was. When several of her commenters went off about how LL's post was plagiarism, and used that word, she said nothing at all. She knew, therefore, that people were taking "plagiarism" away from the post, and that didn't bother her. She still hasn't really apologized for how her post got Little Light accused of plagiarism, or clarified in the OP, or--ahem--spoken directly to LL at any point during all of this.
That's how she operates: when people like Lucky and Pony interpret her to be saying "plagiarism" or when they go off about how transwomen are eeeeeevil, she's on board. When other people--people who are not transsexuals, in general--start talking about the injustice of that clear implication, and how horrible it is to let those ideas go unchallenged, she suddenly needs to clarify. (And then, of course, Lucky or whoever complains and she starts applauding them again, or someone posts a particularly vituperative comment and she compliments it.) That isn't nuance. It's pandering.
The proper way to behave would have been to either comment on LL's blog or send LL an email. The proper way to behave after screwing that up would be to update the original post, leave some sort of comment on LL's comments thread, and maybe send LL and email--oh, and tell Pony and Lucky to stop calling it plagiarism, because that's a horrible thing to say. That's how normal people handle these situations. This whole thing is an example of how passive-aggressive jerkwads do it.
Look at the comments Mary Sunshine left about how, sure, mtfs can mutilate themselves but they're still men men men. Heart has not distanced herself from that; she might, eventually, but not because it actually seems offensive to her.
From my perspective, her position is far more nuanced than one would think from reading this thread here, so I would think Heart does not deserve all this spite.
Yep. Like I said in one of these threads, the reasonable sounding bigots are much more dangerous than the outright ones, simply because they sound so... well, reasonable.
And nuanced, of course.
Heart isn't nuanced at all. She's the bigot who tries to make you feel slowly comfortable with her bigotry. Seriously. Read how she interacts with Mary Sunshine, a bigot who's kinda in your face about it all.
Heart is the bath of water whose temperature is gradually being raised, so you don't detect it until you've been boiled to death.
Aletha wrote:
FTR, Heart said specifically in her thread that she liked the poem and did not consider it plagiarism. That was an issue raised by other posters. From my perspective, her position is far more nuanced than one would think from reading this thread here, so I would think Heart does not deserve all this spite.
Heart's issue was that LL did not credit Morgan. To Heart, Morgan's poem is the only bit of writing that matters b/c it is well-known - she compares it to Lorde's "Master's Tools" comment. This is a poor comparison - Lorde's comment is far better known than Morgan's, and further, unlike Morgan's "empty category" of monster, which is not developed at all and which is one of hundreds, at least, of works to reference "monster" and "woman," and one of hundreds to reference "monster" and "feminism," Lorde's phrase is developed specifically and uniquely.
But what has upset people here is not the specific charge of plagiarism (which, by the way, not crediting earlier work that one is building on is a form of, though again, that isn't what happened here). It is what Heart finally copped to. Heart is upset only because a transwoman is using an image to talk about her experience that was also used by a radical feminist to talk about her own experience as a woman (Heart would add, "born woman").
Heart doesn't really care about Robin Morgan being ripped off - if she did, she wouldn't have posted Morgan's entire poem on the web in defiance of copyright law and without remuneration to Morgan. And, in fact, Heart believes that she, because she believes in Morgan, is incapable of appropriating her work: "I can’t appropriate a politics, feminist work, that I believe in with all of my heart." No - it is HEART who feels ripped off, here, because someone else - a person born MALE, is using the same imagery to talk about transgender experience as Heart uses to think of her own experience. THIS is the plagiarism she is concerned with, implicitly, and she admits this herself in the comments on that post.
And this is what angers us, and why Heart has been the target of spiteful comments. For all of her expressions of acceptance of a diverse community ("Let’s talk about the difference between the struggles/issues of women and the struggles/issues of transwomen. Let’s talk about who has made whom to be monstrous and why and when and where."), she is not really interested in this unless everyone who doesn't share her experience is willing to call themselves Other and not dare to claim their experiences honestly. For example, here's what being a woman means to Heart:
"For now– my reality, my experience, is the reality of by far most of the women on this planet, the reality of bearing many children in my body, giving them birth, breastfeeding them, losing them. It may not be the reality of most comparatively affluent women in the U.S./Canada/Europe, but it is still the reality of most of the world’s women now living. It is the reality of nobody born male.
So yes. Don’t take what pertains to me. Don’t appropriate what belongs to me. It isn’t yours to take."
So it's clear to me, now, as a "born woman" who has borne one child, breastfed him, had one miscarriage, had no abortions, lost no children, that it is important to Heart to show me that I am significantly different from the majority of the women on the planet. And thus, following Heart's reasoning, I am not truly a woman, and any time a woman uses an image as a metaphor for women's experience, it belongs solely to Heart and to those who have also borne multiple children, and if I use it, I am appropriating her experience.
I came into this without a dog in the fight, and I was willing to read all the different sides and to not jump to conclusions. But what Heart did and what her motivations are are pretty clear, and all the claims of "Heart never called it plagiarism" ring false, particularly when, as I said earlier, not crediting sources is a form of plagiarism (not applicable in this case, but Heart thinks it is), and when her supporters, like Pony, call it plagiarism on Heart's blog and elsewhere and Heart does nothing to correct this (which you'd think she'd do if she really did disagree).
oh well and as far as -that- goes, there have been a number of WOC who've had some choice things to say about white womens' use of "The Master's Tools."
but y'know: Heart knows best, what is and what isn't appropriation for one's own purposes.
For now– my reality, my experience, is the reality of by far most of the women on this planet
Stop. Cut. Print it.
THAT is the problem, even before we get to the specifics of what that experience is.
"My reality is the reality of by far most of the women on this planet."
Which planet would that be, Heart?
No, seriously? Solipsism, much?
Anonymous nails it, btw.
And also btw, that whole, "bearing many children in my body, which no man can share" business? Congratulations, Heart, you are, you are, you ARE a plain ol' full-on biological essentialist. Just own up to it, all right? Be proud. Speaking of saying what you really are and not pretending to be something else so as to try to win over more people.
Can't do the trackback, but I put my objections to Heart's POV as well as a comparison of your poem and Morgan's here.
I suppose it doesn't matter that there are a bunch of men who have had children, who are having children. Balding guys with big beards who in many other ways receive male privilege. I've met some. Anyway, I guess that's just dismissable as not important or a monstrosity or something, because that would really make the ideological roof cave in.
i suppose it's no secret that i like heart, that i've defended her publicly on blogs when she wasn't around to defend herself, that i've worked with her to create a document that supports wbw space. and i've paid for that support in real ways, to the point where i've lost friends, some who used to be very close, who now profess to actually *hate* me, and have banned not only me, but also my husband from posting on their blogs.
plain(s)feminist's words ring true to me, and i belive in this case, heart is wrong. she positioned little light's work - a work i might add that to me, is the strongest, most beautiful piece of trans literature that speaks right to my soul, as plagiarism, without actually saying it, and without calling out others for saying it on her blog.
in a real sense, we are our brothers keepers, and we all need to keep watch over each other, and for each other. and that transcends who we are, and what groups we identify with. so i suppose i can understand why heart feels as she does, but i again agree with plain(s)feminist - heart acted inappropriately, and should have emailed little light first with her thoughts, or posted here.
no needless to say, i'm very much torn and upset over this whole mess. so what's a person to do?
well, i know what i'm going to do. i'm going to keep my post on my blog that links to little light's work that calls it "the.best.post.ever", and i'm going to keep trying to work with heart and other radical feminists as best i can. because even though we, as members and supporters of our respective communities, very much have our differences, we have a lot of things in common too. and i believe that the patriarchy - how ever one defines it - is happy that radfems and trans people are always fighting each other. because as long as we are fighting each other, we're not working together to fight it.
i'm going to continue to be as forgiving and generous as i can. and while i'll do my best to call out people when they talk shit, i'm going to get over it as fast as i can, and continue to try and work with everyone i can, to make the world a better place for everyone. cause i don't see how constant animosity helps anyone.
and if that's not feminist, i'm ok with that. i never called myself a feminist, in part because i try to avoid labels, and rarely embrace them without a lot of thought. "trans" is one label i have embraced, and i still have issues with it. but i am trans, and consider "the trans community", whatever that means, as my own, comprised of people from the same tribe.
There's "plagiarism", and then there's "borrowing so heavily from another work without citation that it might as well be plagiarism".
Personally, I have contempt for both types. I also have contempt for those who make excuses when both types occur.
You suck, and your excusers suck. Deal.
Deal.
Then, we're agreed on your status as a troglodyte. Thanks for playing. :)
I wish you the very best of luck, Nexy, and I'm sorry this has been so hard on you.
You have a greatness of heart in these matters that I'd like to emulate, but there are times that it's very hard to turn the other cheek, you know?
New troll: it's very sweet of you to show up. I do hope you've read the Morgan piece, and I'm sorry you didn't enjoy mine during your compare/contrast, if you indeed read it.
Hell, I hope everyone reads both. I have nothing to hide, here. If you see similarities, that's your business; there are some similarities to exploit in that argument. It's kind of neat, considering that I'd never heard of it--wait, never mind, you already think I'm a liar for the daily life I lead and didn't believe me when I said it before. I guess we'll have a hard time working this one out.
thanks little light, yours are kind words indeed. and yeah, i've kinda run out of other cheeks to turn too.
My feeling, and it is only mine, is this:
I have a limited amount of energy. I can spend it with the (as I judge it) about 80, 90% of people who demonstrate any ability at all to truly engage even a little bit; or I can spend it hurling myself against the others that are brick walls.
sometimes i think, you know, if one has spent enough time hurling oneself against a particular brick wall, one develops a sort of tunnel vision; one forgets that there is also a much larger world beyond that wall; perhaps in some other direction entirely.
Yeah nexy, I like Heart too. Always have. Of the hardliners back on the Michfest board, she was one of the few willing to engage a different, opposing viewpoint with respect. Even when up against the libelous charges that one poster made, she always handled herself with dignity and treated even her most vicious detractors decently. And what little I know of feminism, most of it she taught me, though she doesn't know it.
She is in many ways a class act.
But she's still wrong. She has a blind spot the size of Antarctica when it comes to non-trans privilege. And she is sticking her head in the sand and closing ranks with people who truly, truly hate us in order not to see it.
You're right belledame222, it's probably a waste of time to engage her. Oh well, I just left a comment over on her blog. At least I tried.
So yes. Don’t take what pertains to me. Don’t appropriate what belongs to me. It isn’t yours to take.
Right. Except this is also the same damn thing she did a while back, at the end of the Blowjob Wars, about how no one will ever Understand (how awful blowjobs are, more or less, i took it) until you have suffered what she's suffered (long graphic description of what she's suffered, oral rape, other stuff). Okay.
So, antiprincess writes a response post at her own place about, "You know what's the worst thing about (oral rape?) (graphic awful detail of her own)." iow, she's been there too, got the t-shirt, and she still hasn't come to the same conclusions as Heart.
so, Heart could've responded to this in any number of ways. if not, "oh, well, okay then, i guess that's a point" at least "i am sorry, my dear, for your suffering, let us go mad together my sister" or some suchlike. but, no. instead, she shows up at antip's (so she definitely read it) to respond to some trivial thing (no worries about getting the link wrong, smiley, or suchlike) and to argue with someone else about her take on a book called "Radically Speaking," iow the diss to the Theory, again.
but as far as the other woman on the planet, who suffered pretty damn close to what she suffered in that instance, just didn't say "oh Heart, you are SO RIGHT"-- *crickets crickets.* no concession, no real empathy expressed, and no admission that she, too, had something to say, that her, antip's piece, was, like Heart's (as she went on to claim) was a powerful, poetical type "gift to the universe."
so it's actually not limited to the TG thing either; it's -anyone- who doesn't fall in line--
i mean and okay, and more recently there was her whole engaging in yer classic "how to suppress discussions of racism 101," suffused with her inimitable sense of dwama of course, in several places--some people took issue with racism in white feminist circles, mentioned one thing she'd done that they found offensive, among a whole shitload of other concrete examples. somehow it ended up becoming--surprise!--all about Heart, and her Suffering, and Nobody Understands What She's Been Through except people who've experienced -exactly- what she's been through. in this case, not just a woman who's had a bunch of kids, but a white woman who'd been married to an abusive black man.
the common theme i find running throughout most of these encounters: Heart's Not Like Other People, She Can't Stand Pain, It Hurts Her.
and, she is the Cosmos. goo goo ca choob.
and, "I weep for you, the Walrus said, I deeply sympathize" =! actual empathy, although it can fool most of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time.
"by their deeds you will know them."
this was one shoddy deed, and she's still not even remotely copping to it.
time to bail.
Chiming in quite late here; Holly recently clued me in to what was going on with Heart and company's unbelievably ridiculous and hostile accusations. I haven't decided whether it's worth it to waste my time saying a damn thing to those people (actually, scratch that, I'm going to write something). But it's definitely worth my time to say that this piece is beautiful and powerful, and I thank you for it.
I have a question, I guess, for the transfolk who learned a lot about feminism from Heart and others like her, who feel an affinity for this sort of radical/cultural feminism (if i am understanding this correctly):
seriously, putting aside my personal feelings toward Heart and co. as best i can for now, I am genuinely curious: what is the attraction? specifically as opposed to other branches of feminism, other feminists? what do you get from it?
Hey, I actually read the plagiarism accusation before I read your piece. I followed a link to that post from somewhere (can't remember where, most likely Dewd or Slanttruth, apologies if it wasn't) and then followed the link from there to your original piece. All I have to say on that is, "lol wtf. That's not plagiarism."
It was, however, some totally awesome writing.
I guess this was directed at me, among others. I've been trying to think of how to answer it.
I guess it was mostly the whole gender-as-oppression business. Because that's how I, personally, experience the binary gender system, and in a society where there was a third category other than "man" or "woman" that was equally valid, I'd opt for that. One of my favourite novels is Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, and I suspect that if I was born into a society like whatever New England town that was in 2237 (my copy is loaned out right now, can't check), I probably wouldn't have had anywhere as strong a need to transition. I think far fewer people would, as compared with today. I also, like Heart, could never really see transgender per se as subversive in any real practical way of the gender binary. I pretty much agree that "doing" gender, whether it's the one society associates with one's birth sex or the opposite, does little if anything to help to dismantle the oppressive system we live in. And so, post-transition, it's something I do as little of as I can get away with.
Her anti-porn and anti-prostitution positions, I'm ashamed to admit, I also agreed with, on a gut, knee-jerk, totally unexamined level. Reading blogs like LL's, yours, dw3t-hether's, and others that I've found by following those wonderful links, has opened my eyes to, well, a much wider world of feminism that I never knew existed. It's sad, ironic, and not very comfortable to admit, but it took being a target, quite personally as a Trans woman though not directly at ME, of some of the ugliest and vilest bigotted hatred that I've ever seen in any context, to realise how much privilege I still have, among other ways as a white, middle class (professional, not affluent, but definitely not working class) "passing" trans woman who managed to make it through grad school before transitioning.
This post: Yes. Yes.
crimefighting multiracial transsexual steampunk street medic who moonlights as a hereditary semiprofessional occultist and obsessive religion scholar
And in Portland?
Have I met you? You sound like a composite of my friends!
Dunno, AJ, I know lots of people. Who're your friends?
I don't want to potentially out a bunch of people randomly, so I emailed you a sort of laundry list of people you might have met based on that beautiful list of adjectives.
Hail Babalon! Aleister Crowley praised her for selfish reasons, but she seems to have to gotten away from him. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I'm late to the commenting, but I wanted to say that this is wonderful. I'm saving it and referring back to it as needed.
Thank you for writing it.
Likewise. This is beyond awesome.
Have you read "The Many-Headed Hydra" by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker? I think the Hydra ought to be added to your list (i nearly said team - imagining some sort of Marvel superhero line-up!) of revolutionary monsters...
Am i right in also seeing a detourned Lovecraft in there?
this is a lovely post, little light. thank you very much.
if you're interested in reading some other trans writing on monsters, may i suggest monster trans by boots potential? it's very different to this piece, but you might still be interested.
beyond amazing.
Can I just say that even though this was posted over a year ago, I still come back and read it every once in a while because it's so inspiring and beautiful. Thank you Little Light! I look forward to every post!
I've just seen this post. It is truly amazing. The poetry of your words is beautiful
you made my heart explode with hope, and joy, and empathy
amazing. thank you.
I would like to have your permission to read this at our TransForm Arizona conference in October, (edited a bit ONLY for length, and credit given to you, of course!). Please contact me at michaelb at transmentors.org.
Thank you,
Michael Brown
Executive Director
TransMentors International
*hug*
This is one of the best written and emotional things I have read ever. My hat off to you, this is an incredible call for strength. Keep on fighting this good fight =)
Who is woman?
Who feels woman in her heart,
She is woman.
That is real.
Do not rant to me of biology,
Others of limited vision.
That does not change my view.
No one has a patent on pain.
There is too much of it
going around already.
That you feel pain is just as real
as that you are woman.
Yet pain is not
the heart of your life.
Being your true self,
that is the heart of your life.
You do not belong on your knees,
mi hermana.
You belong standing tall, as you are -
teeth bared,
Fierce and strong and scaly.
You rock that!
You are showing the young ones,
I have life, I grab it and savor.
I hold fast.
Honor and respect to you,
Powerful
Creative
Woman!
May you keep on living on!
Viva la vida, Flor
saw this linked from a fetlife post today. thanks for sharing the fuel to persevere.
Holy shit. This post completely stopped my heart.
Thank you.
I can't even properly articulate the level of beautiful emotion I just experienced. Thank you.
I've always despised that phrase so much I won't even state it here. I'm weeping from your artful wordcraft. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you so deeply for this post. Reading it turned my head toward the courageous path of confident integrity which I too often hide from. I felt a deep welcome toward healthy peace with my polyglot body, and a hope to live it publicly...
And then I read the comments section... (sigh)
(Seriously, if feminists wonder why young women, er, "wimmmnmnn" have rejected the feminist ideology and labels, yet insist on feminist progress, this is a prime example. I know dozens of women who preface statements with "I'm not a feminist but..." Feminists have only themselves blame in this.)
Anyway, brava for the post.
Thank you. This is exactly what I needed to read.
I am amazed, I nearly cried. My life is very different, and my reasons are distinct, but I needed to remember that I am much more than people tell me I am, that there is nothing wrong with me being me, nothing wrong with my body or my mind simply because it doesn't conform. Nothing wrong with being difficult to pigeonhole, no matter the reason. I'm simply bigger than the box they're trying to fit me in, and so are you. Thank you.
Thank you.
This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it.
Yes. This.
(Also this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CL7U6hfIaw -- Heather Dale's song "Medusa",)
Yes!!!
Another traditional attribute of monsters? You think you've beaten us... even killed us. But we regroup, and we lick our wounds, and just when you least expect it, we come roaring back stronger than before.
Hey. This poem continues to help people, even to this day. 13 years and running, this blog post is saving lives.
I just wanted to share that.
~Sunspot
15 years and as breathtaking today as it ever was
Bless you for writing this. It has lit a fire in my belly and inspired me to stand up and stop apologising for being me x
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