Indeed it has. Since Sigmund Freud asserted at the turn of the twentieth century that all humans have a capacity for bisexuality, and a male and female side (purloining the latter insight from his own guy crush, Wilhelm Fliess), society has been dealing consciously with an invitation not just to understand complicated attractions to others, but to explore the complex role of gender within ourselves. When Alfred Kinsey created his famous Kinsey scale, he cast sexuality as a continuum. Being able to see sexuality as not just straight (i.e., normal) and its opposite, gay (abnormal), primed people to understand that gender, too, might be distributed across a spectrum. Thus, comprehending sexuality—bisexuality—lends itself to understanding transgenderism. The two are inextricably linked—and not just as the most recent initials in the LGBT label.
The movement for queer civil and human rights is a crucial ascendant fight right now, animated by the same urgency and backlash directed at feminists and African Americans decades ago. The benefits of this movement are easily found. In 1990, there were two Gay-Straight Alliances in the country; by 2010, there were more than four thousand GSAs in schools across the country. In 2011, same-sex marriage is available in a handful of states; a decade ago, that number was zero. There are now summer camps for children who identify themselves as another gender—and there is enough consciousness of transgenderism that a ten-year-old can tell his parents he was born in a girl’s body but is a boy, and know that he is not abnormal and is far from alone.
I WAS A beneficiary of gaystreaming—the mainstreaming of gay rights. When I fell in love, at twenty-two, with a fellow female intern at Ms. magazine and had to think about queer politics and feminism in a much more practical way, I didn’t feel alone or that my life was somehow lawful. There were problems, however. I was immediately perceived as a lesbian—poof! Overnight, all of my previous dating experience was rendered false. A couple years later, I began dating a petite and fey man and was immediately recategorized as “actually straight.” A year later, I fell in with a woman again (albeit a very masculine one) and there you had it: Instantly gay!
As perceptions of me ping-ponged back and forth, I felt most myself as both gay and straight—or neither—and became bolder about declaring who I was: bisexual. I sort of disliked the label, but couldn’t think of anything better. I called myself bisexual because, as activist Robyn Ochs always says, “I acknowledge that I have the potential to be attracted to more than one gender or sex, but not necessarily to the same degree or at the same time.” Still, I feel awkward at times offering the term to describe myself—as if I am hell-bent on answering a personal question that no one has really asked me.
“The word bisexual may not be perfect,” wrote Julia Serano in 2010, referring to how it is often inaccurately maligned as “reinforcing the binary”—the binary being the feminist equivalent of bedbugs. “But it does have a rich political history, one that involves fighting for visibility and inclusion both within and outside of the queer community.”
Robyn Ochs calls herself a survivor of the bad times in the lesbian and gay movements, before people could tell the truth about being bisexual and transgendered. She helped to organize bisexual women and men in Massachusetts, and it isn’t a coincidence that the state with the most active bisexual organizations was also the first to legalize gay marriage and other protections for queer people. The entitlement that bisexual people were accused of having—straight privilege—was also their secret weapon. They believed they deserved full human rights, because they had enjoyed them when in an opposite-sex relationship.
I’ve thought about that rich political history a lot over the years, especially as bisexuality continues to be disbelieved and demeaned by many straight and gay people, and remains largely invisible in the culture as anything other than a titillating sweeps-week gambit. Bisexuality is still somewhat invisible within the queer rights movement because it is visible only in certain situations—when one is polyamorous or single. Our continuing invisibility links us to trans people in general and trans feminists in particular. Transgendered people are also disbelieved, believed to be a fake woman or man.
DURING THE FIRST leg of book touring with my first book, Manifesta (a manifesto about current feminism, coauthored with Amy Richards) in 2000, two trans women attended a reading in Portland, Oregon. We were at In Other Words, a feminist bookstore, a space I felt was created for me and mine. The women were Emi and Diana, two well-known feminist activists. I had met Diana years earlier, at a Riot Grrrl–esque feminist conference called Foxfire in Olympia, Washington, at which she performed a spontaneous striptease to demystify a trans female body that hadn’t been surgically reassigned. She also spoke at the anti-violence rally that evening about her experience in an abusive relationship and about the lack of resources for trans women, who were often turned away at shelters for having a penis. I thought she seemed like she needed a lot of attention.
Both Emi and Diana wanted to know why Manifesta didn’t address trans experience. My internal reaction was: Why are you two men here in this women-only place, taking up so much space and critiquing me? You have male privilege. You know how I can tell? Because you feel like you can waltz into a women-only space and take over!
I now recognize my reaction as bigoted, a function of ignorance and feeling threatened by something I didn’t understand, mixed with the embarrassment of being called out in this setting.
At first blush, trans people have the opposite problem bisexuals do: If anything, they are too visible, as evidenced by my extremely vivid memory of the trans woman who worked at Stop N Go in the 1980s. It’s part of the current human condition to notice gender right away; most of us feel an urgent need to sort people into male or female. But transgendered people in fact suffer from a similar kind of belittling assumption—that one’s external genitalia denote gender. But transpeople disagree; they say that what we see as their gender doesn’t trump or undermine what each individual feels is his or her gender. Thus, gender is conferred not by penis or vagina (at least not solely), but by a deeply personal, interior, and psychological sense of what one’s gender is.
While there are no good statistics about the prevalence of transgendered people, we know that about .25 to 1 percent of the population identifies as transsexual to statisticians, and this number doesn’t include gender-variant or gender-queer people. Still, this relatively low percentage translates into hundreds of thousands of people. The broader social acceptance is reflected in how many younger people identify as trans, and the anecdotal evidence will, I hope, be followed eventually by better statistics. These are things I’ve learned since that day more than a decade ago when I met Emi and Diana.
Back then, I did feel extremely self-righteous about two things: I was confident that Emi and Diana were manifesting privilege, and I was confident that privilege was bad. Soon after, this ironclad denunciation of having any unearned advantage felt contradictory to me. After all, I finally got over my guilt about straight privilege in certain settings, and I had a revelation about bisexuality that struck me as deeply feminist. There is a fundamental error in how bisexuality is understood. It’s perceived as being conferred by your partner. But (and here’s the revelation) your sexuality isn’t bequeathed to you; it comes from you. Thus, bisexuals aren’t confused or broken, but a culture that tells us we are is broken and must be changed. This is vintage personal-is-political feminist theory.
I applied that feminist lens to my life and began seeing myself as having some human rights as a bisexual woman. I had the right to self-identify, not to be told who I was. I had the right to have acknowledgment, compassion, and interest from friends and loved ones about my relationship, regardless of the gender of my partner. I had the right and the responsibility to make friends with my privilege.
In thinking more about my own privilege, I began to see how shortsighted it was to merely critique it as a corrupt influence. Wasn’t privilege—access to higher education, health insurance, marriage for those who seek it, as well as dig
nity and respect—what we in social justice movements were fighting for, but for all people? What were the concrete aspects of male privilege that I felt transwomen benefited from, anyway? In the case of Emi and Diana at In Other Words, I perceived their ability to advocate forcefully on their own behalf as a product of their having been raised with male privilege. Their presence, however, challenged me to ask why I didn’t feel I could be just as aggressive myself. I decided to try to grab some of that privilege (that is, take up space), rather than ask Emi and Diana to make themselves more meek.
As I began to make friends with my own privilege, I had to confront the options for what conscious, feminist people do with privilege. These options fall into three categories: denial, guilt, and positive force. Denial is categorically bad. Guilt is a natural reaction and even a step toward dealing with privilege, but it’s not constructive—and holding on to it is another form of privilege and indulgence. Positive force means that we can use our power in the service of activism and social justice. Rather than be ashamed that I got married when same-sex couples still could not in forty-four states, I could direct guests to give money to marriage-equality campaigns in lieu of toasters and Nambé salt and pepper shakers. I could use my entitlement to aid the visibility of gay people, as couples with a trans partner could when they married. I could focus on the work yet to do by having conversations with loved ones, not just lawmakers.
AFTER YEARS OF working in feminism, I’ve had to rethink all of the assumptions I entered the movement believing. I’m ashamed that I was once so bigoted with regard to transpeople, but I’m proud that I evolved—as feminism and feminists must—when faced with new information and new times. I wonder sometimes about that cute guy at the Stop N Go. Was the nice vibe I felt between the two of us due to progress? Mostly, I ponder how our chance meeting framed both of our places on the continuum of sexuality and gender, underscoring all that feminism has done to liberate individuals to be whoever they are.
Bisexual and transgendered people continue to nudge queer and straight and cisgendered communities into a deeper understanding of being human—and that is our particular, and spectacular, contribution to the movement.
Julia Serano
I KNOW IN MY BONES THAT MISOGYNY EXISTS, BUT SOMETIMES it’s hard for me to put my finger on the ways in which our culture still clearly demeans women. That’s why Julia Serano and her 2007 book, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, are so crucial. Using the frame of transgenderism, she demonstrates that our culture says, “Men—yeah, men! Who wouldn’t want to be a man? Men are great!” which can bolster trans masculine people. By contrast, trans women or people on the feminine spectrum are perceived as inferior and more questionable and are treated as entertainers and sex objects.
Julia, a forty-three-year-old evolutionary biologist originally from Philly, is a trans woman, writer, activist, and spoken-word artist. She offers readers an almost scientific comparison, experienced in the laboratory of her life, of how men are treated versus women. Julia is brilliant, friendly, and fetching—a tomboyish, bisexual Bay Area lady with bangs and pink Chuck Taylors. When I read how her transgender experience was defined by traditional sexism, I saw good oldfashioned misogyny anew—and felt its unfairness in a way I hadn’t since I was twenty and reading Backlash for the first time.
Jennifer: What was your family like?
Julia: Basically, I am half Italian American and half Irish American. Dad is a stockbroker; Mom was a homemaker. I was the oldest of five children, although one of my sisters died of SIDS, so there were four of us growing up. All girls. I initially appeared to be the exception to that, but I eventually proved them wrong.
JB: Were you always a feminist?
JS: To some extent, but not nearly as much as after I transitioned. Because I was moving through the world as male, I wasn’t sure I could call myself feminist. I thought of myself more as a feminist ally before then. Also, I had a blind spot in regard to misogyny. I experienced some of it because I was a pretty effeminate guy before I transitioned. I didn’t think of that as misogyny, I thought of that as homophobia. Numerous of my former partners, including my partner who I was with when I transitioned, were outspoken feminists and told me to research feminism. After I transitioned, it became very obvious to me, the ways in which I experienced misogyny.
JB: What are some of the distinctions between the ways you experienced misogyny as a trans woman versus what you were hearing about from your partner, from a cisgendered woman?
JS: When I think about experiencing misogyny, there are two different contexts. There’s the context of everyday life, where I move through the world and people don’t necessarily know that I’m trans, so I experience misogyny like most cis women do. Then there are experiences where people know I’m a trans woman—that’s a little bit different. I had heard a lot about misogyny and what women experienced, so whether it’s walking down the street and men running up to talk to you, or catcalls, or being in a situation where men talk over you or treat you in a particular way, these are things I’d heard about before, but the experience of having that happen to me firsthand was very visceral and evoked a lot of feelings of frustration and anger and annoyance. I would say that those experiences are not that different [from cis women’s], but I had the experience of moving through the world as male beforehand, and then being thrust into it, rather than experiencing it on different levels my whole life.
I talk about “transmisogyny” in my book, which is the intersection of being trans and experiencing misogyny. As a trans woman, I don’t just experience how our culture devalues femininity—I’m treated as a fake woman. I find that men who know I’m trans will be abruptly forward, thinking that trans women are more sexual. Then there’s a tendency within queer communities for trans men to be more respected and perceived as less frivolous than trans women. Trans women tend to be seen as drag artists—just there for entertainment.
JB: How do you think transgenderism has impacted feminism, especially recently? I feel like I’ve seen such an enormous change. Younger feminists seem to question gender almost automatically, whether or not they would ever identify as trans themselves, and seem to get energy from the idea of gender being more fluid, in a way that feminists fifteen years ago did not.
JS: In the last five years, I’ve observed an acceptance of trans people and an acknowledgment that transgender people’s experiences fall within the realm of feminism’s concerns. Within younger circles, there’s kind of an appropriating of trans, in that it’s discussed in terms of challenging the gender binary, but there’s less concern about the actual issues that transgender people face.
For example, people might be interested in my experiences as a trans woman, in my experiences with misogyny, or about how I defy gender norms, but when we get to the issue of how sometimes trans women, because of their anatomy, are put into all-male jail cells, or if we get into issues of trans people actually surviving in the world and the issues that they face, there is less interest about that.
JB: It’s more of an abstract, intellectual, ruminating interest, as opposed to a real, concrete, activism interest?
JS: Yes. It’s definitely an abstract interest, rather than being concerned about activism that’s being done in order to help transpeople be able to move through the world safely. Within academic settings, and within certain feminist activist circles, there’s more of a tendency for cisgender feminists to relate to transmen’s experiences than to transwomen’s experiences. I think there are a lot of reasons for this: Part of it is just by being assigned as female from birth—there are a lot of similarities there—and I think a lot of cisgender feminists who kind of feel that they’ve been put into this box of female can kind of relate to people in the trans masculine spectrum a lot more easily. And I think that there is the reality that a lot of people on the trans masculine spectrum are involved in feminist circles, are women’s studies majors, are gender studies majors, before their transition
s, so I think there’s more of an ease of allowing trans masculine people into feminism.
On a real-life, logistical level, there’s not nearly that level of acceptance for people on the trans feminine spectrum within feminist settings. For example, I spent my entire early adulthood as male and feeling I was a feminist ally, but not actually feeling like I could actually call myself a feminist or get really involved. It’s really hard, I think, for those of us who are trans women to bridge that gap. Because of that, I think that transfeminine-spectrum people have had less of an impact on feminism than transmasculine-spectrum people, which is something I’m hoping, as time goes on, will change more.
JB: Trans men do seem to walk more freely within feminism, just as men walk more freely in the broader culture. For instance, trans men have attended Michigan during periods when trans women couldn’t do so openly. When you lived as a man, was there really any reason to see yourself as not fully a feminist? I don’t want people to think they can’t call themselves feminist based on their genitals or how they were raised. JS: I hear you. I think the environment has changed, partially because of increased acceptance of trans issues. Looking back fifteen years ago, even LGB kinds of issues were seen as more separate from feminism than they are now. Now, it’s definitely easier for men, whether trans men or cis men, to become actively involved in feminism. Trans people and queer-people issues are being seen as feminist issues. I definitely think that men can and should be feminists.
F 'em! Page 17
