[Day 2] Transgender Issues
One hundred and sixty one years ago, a group of women and men drafted the Declaration of Sentiments, stating that "The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman..." Their immediate goal of equal voting rights for women in the United States has long since been met, but this statement still rings with a tragic amount of truth.
Three years ago, when rageprufrock first began the project that would grow into 14 valentines, she spoke about how women are praised and worshiped, torn down and degraded. We live in a world where our bodies are revered for the ability to give life and derided for leaving behind the appearance of adolescence, where we can rise to the highest offices of power in some countries and are deprived of basic rights in others.
We are told to be strong, to stand up for ourselves, told that we can do anything, be anything - but only to a point, always to a point.
Around the world, women die from lack of basic medical attention, from infanticide, from starvation beyond their control, from starvation inflicted upon themselves in a twisted attempt to be beautiful. We are beaten, raped, murdered, told in so many horrifying ways that we are lesser that we don't matter.
Forty years ago we declared that Sisterhood is Powerful, and it still is. We must remember that, must continue moving forward.
It's 2009 and we've come so far, but there is still more work to be done. We deserve better, and we can do more. We're strong. The next fourteen days is meant to remind us of that. It's our time to take back our bodies.
V can stand for vagina, like Eve Ensler's groundbreaking monologues. V can stand for violence, under whose auspices all women continue to make a home.
V can also stand for victory.
Transgender/Transsexual Issues
It’s easy to think of fannish communities as progressive. Many talk openly about the big issues of silence - politics, sex, and religion.
But how progressive are we as disparate and varied (in terms of our preferences, our fandoms, our politics) communities when it comes to sex and gender? How many times have we, as participants, assumed the gender or sex of a person we were talking to online?
A lot of assumptions are culturally-shaped when it comes to discussions about gender and biological sex. This is not limited to fannish communities, but a lot of those assumptions bleed into the ways that we, as fans, see sex and gender. That is, how do we, as community/communities see the gender that people represent as compared to the biological sex that they identify as?
Gender, increasingly, is seen as complex - women are not necessarily feminine, men are not necessarily masculine. It’s even becoming more common to recognize that femininity and masculinity (or butchness or femmeness or androgeny or genderqueerness) as culturally-located, as descriptions that are set within particular contexts. Although a man wearing a skirt may be seen as feminine in the United States, a man wearing a kilt in Scotland is the height of traditional masculinity and men all over sub-Saharan Africa wear what people in the United States might call skirts.
This widespread examination has, largely, not been applied to biological sex. It would seem easy to say, perhaps, that biological sex is simple - it’s about what’s between your legs or your chromosomal makeup. Penis, XY = man. Vagina, XX =woman.
However, individuals within and without fannish communities can say firsthand that sex is nowhere near that simple. Biology is, in fact, not destiny and there are increasing numbers of individuals who are talking openly about their experiences of non-normative sexuality - for example, what it is like to be born into a body that is culturally-defined as female but feeling that you are a man.
Have you wondered how you can better educate yourself about gender and sex issues or learn to be more sensitive to transgender and transsexual people in your community? GenderPAC works to ensure that classrooms, communities, and workplaces are safe for everyone to learn, grow, and succeed - whether or not they meet societal expectations for masculinity and femininity.
As a human rights organization, GenderPAC also promotes an understanding of the connection between discrimination based on gender stereotypes and sex, sexual orientation, age, race, and class.
[Today's essay courtesy of belladonnalin.]