Queer feminist ideas re womanhood

Further evidence that I am still stuck in the Second Wave. I have never seen this thought expressed this way before, and here Stryker is talking about events in the early 90s…  I typed it out to save for posterity.  (I added paragraph breaks to make it easier to read on screen…  this is all one paragraph in the book.)

The new “queer” version of gender espoused by de Lauretis and other like-minded  feminist scholars, which de Lauretis laid out most succinctly in her essay “Technologies of Gender,” discarded the older feminist idea that gender was merely repressive—that it was only a system for holding women down, turning them into second-class citizens, exploiting their labor, and controlling their reproductive capacities.

Without denying that gender systems indeed produced systematic inequalities for women, the new queer take on gender also talked about gender’s productive power—how “woman” was also a “site” or a “location” that its occupants identified with, understood themselves through, and acted from.

The new queer feminism drew heavily from French philosopher Michel Foucault’s concept of social power as decentralized and distributed rather than flowing from a single source—that is, that each of us has a power particular to our situation and that power is not just something vested “up there” somewhere in the law or the army or the “patriarchy.”

Queer feminism reimagined the status of “woman” not simple as a condition of victimization to be escaped from, and it reconceived gender as a network of “relations of power” that, like language, we don’t ever get outside of but always express ourselves though and work within—a situation that gives feminist women a “dual vision” and “split subjectivity.”

Sometimes womanhood is a binding-in-place that needs to be resisted and worked against, and sometimes, de Lauretis said, women want womanhood to stick to them “like a wet silk dress.”

Transgender History, by Susan Stryker (Seal Press, 2008) page 125 and 128

This is useful for me to articulate because of this weird assumption folks seem to have that my issues with my gender stem from my issues with patriarchy… I guess it has to do with the cultural idea that “feminists want to be like men.”  I have never found this concept to be terribly accurate, or useful…  It’s been a while since I got down with the idea that femininity can be strong and powerful, that it often is, and that the pursuit of masculinity is not the way forward for women, as a group.

The folksinger

Stumbling on folk musician Coyote Grace reminds me of an image of masculinity I have always loved, and the one I have been dancing around though I have forgotten about it.  The archetype I am thinking of is the folk singer.

The folk singer can be radical, like me.  He can be a fighter, and organizer.  He feels the stories of others deeply, and collects them, as Utah Phillips said, and scatters them around wherever he goes. In fact, also as Phillips said, he has a social responsibility to do such. The stories want to move, they want to be told, and told well. He puts enormous value in the thoughtful communication of experiences, lessons, ideas and histories.

The folk singer inevitably has the tools of his trade with him, or nearby.  A banjo, a guitar, a mandolin.  Perhaps a drum, a harmonica. Or something more exotic.

He works, and often his music is informed by the jobs he takes to support it.  The folk singer is always at work, he always has an ear open and is ready to make someone laugh or feel the possibilities of life with a story.

His clothes are work clothes: he wears a simple t shirt sometimes.  Boots often. Jeans, or wool trousers, or maybe corduroy if he’s feeling luxurious.  Shirts are often button-up, with collars.  They might need some ironing.  While the folk singers is a performer (of storytelling) like I am a performer (of gender), he does get on with his life aside from that.  He might like a particular vest more than he likes his clothes to match every single day. He might want to wear that old hat more than he wants to look perfectly clean cut. But he appreciates a well-tied tie, and may keep his shirt tucked in. He wears those dorky big wireframe glasses.  I don’t know what it is about string instruments that make people want to wear them, but if he wears glasses they are inevitably wire-rimmed.

The folk singer might be physically strong, through genetics, or hard labor, or dedication.  He may just as likely focus all his power and agility into the muscles of his throat, his chest, his hands. The hands are rough from the use of his instruments.  He touches his lovers with care, or not.  He charms many with his songs and stories and uses he own guidelines to decide which offers to take. The folk singer’s vocabulary is extensive enough to say what he wants, but he is never excessive in his words.  They are just the tools he uses to build his stories.

Old Man Luedecke

(Actually I’m somewhat embarrassed at putting something so silly up for public viewing but I am going to swallow my pride and do it anyway. That’s what blogs are for, as I understand it.)

A look to the future?

I thought I would draw out what I might look like if I transitioned to male. I thought about how I am now, and what the men in my family look like. First I drew myself with clothes on:
Then I undressed myself:

Here I am in all my beauty: a slightly dumpy, very hairy man with breasts a big bigger than someone not too fat ought to have, and a big juicy cunt.

My bookshelf right now

All the books I'm reading right now

• Terry Pratchett, Thud!
• Donald A Norton, The Design of Everyday Things
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body (on loan from the gracious S)
• Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (also via S)
  I really want to read this but so far it’s as thick as molasses.
• Julia Serano, Whipping Girl
  Actually I just finished this book.  I can’t even remember the last time I got to the very end of a full-length book. Highly recommended.
• Thomas More, Utopia
  This book is so short, but at the half-way point it is pretty boring
• Susan Stryker, Transgender History (courtesy of the Toronto Public Library)
  Reese Kelly has a good review of this on his YouTube, which has inspired me to pick it back up.
• Original Plumbing
  A great zine about trans men
• Inga Muscio, Autobiography of a Blue-eyed Devil (from the TPL)
  This book looks promising but I will probably have to return it to the library before I read it.  I might buy a copy sometime though so I can read it when I’m in the mood.
• Jean Bobby Nobel, Sons of the Movement: FtMs Risking Incoherence on a Post-Queer Cultural Landscape
  This book is exactly as academic as the title suggests.  I ploughed through some of it but was unable to find much of use.
• Patrick Califia, Macho Sluts
  So much introductory material the first story doesn’t start until page 73! It’s a very interesting introduction though, and the stories are worth the wait.
• Emily White, Fast Girls
  Uninspiring, from the TPL
• Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright Sided
  Started reading this hoping to justify by generalized crumugenliness, however the arguments presented so far have logical errors and I would be embarrassed to repeat them in conversation.  Disappointing from the woman who once wrote Witches, Midwives and Nurses, a booklet which as far as I can see is now distributed exclusively in zine form.
• Robert E Penn, The Gay Man’s Wellness Guide
• Michael Manning, The Spider Garden
• Kevyn Aucoin, Making Faces

Sex and transex

Two points against me being transexual:

1. Was never confused about why I didn’t have a penis although I can remember when I was very little thinking I did.  Somehow that notion was corrected and I accepted it, though. (What I thought was a penis was actually my inner labia.) Have no angst about not having primary or secondary male sex characteristics. Everything revolves around social role, behavior, self image, interactions, rather than “wrongness” of body. That said I think what I want when I consider hormones is being “more right”.
2. Do not put myself in the male role in my fantasies and I consistently identify with the female-bodied roles in the erotica I read. I love reading stories about people who’s body configurations roughly match mine because so much of the imagery I enjoy involves receptive penetration of all sorts and various ways to be very, very mean to breasts.  Also coincidentally, two things I enjoy tremendously in real life. I tend to be sillily realistic with my fantasies and things which are implausible or seem outright dangerous are much less erotic to me than things I could conceive of, even if it’s implausible I would ever carry them out.

These seems to be pretty consistent pieces of trans sexuality, according to my reading.

(I am becoming exhausted from thinking about this stuff. I tihnk soon I will reach the point where I will just stop for a few months to process it… That’s my usual MO.)

What I’m reading tonight (trans/ftm stuff)

• CAW’s guide to unions and transexual workers includes a list of Canadian legal decisions relevant to on-the-job discrimination (PDF)
• Collection of documents from Vancouver Coastal health regarding trans health
• XX Boys is an art project of some sort, it has a lot of pictures of transmen from all over and a profile of each
• Gender outlaw is sending me lots of cool places
• Medical Therapy and Health Maintenance for Transgender Men: A Guide For Health Care Providers

re: Three paragraphs of silence

Just stumbled upon the really wonderful blog Gender Outlaw.  The guy who runs it said something reminding me of my previous post:

Related to this is the disconnect that exists between the person I (really) am and how I am perceived by others. It’s very confusing to understand myself one way, but have other people see me as something that is quite the opposite. Since uncorking my heart and letting my trans-nature shine through, that confusion is closer to the surface.

Three paragraphs of silence

I was trying to buy some nice rolling tobacco from the neighbourhood smoke shop.  After asking for ID, he guy in the shop said told me, “You look too young.” What did he mean by this? “You look too young,” he said. “To be that age.” I don’t know what to say to that.

I talk to my friends about the thinking I have been doing about my gender, and I have been told, “But you are so womanly.” I am surprised that anyone is surprised. Even my token efforts at femininity have been for special circumstances where it was somehow required of me. I see much of my behaviour as masculine, sometimes macho, it the best sense of that term. Not nasty, abusive, patriarchal or demeaning of others.  In groups where I’m comfortable, I observe my behaviour as being much more male than female. Alone with someone else, same thing.  How many friends and lovers have told me they’ve never met a woman like me? I have often explained myself saying, “Dating me is like dating a man” and got agreement. But now, the same people tell me now that I am so deeply woman, they can’t imagine me another way. I don’t know what to say.

It has been years now that I have thought of myself as a crotchety old man, inside. How is it that what everyone else sees is so different? I really just don’t know what to say to it.