juliaserano

ok, so i have not been posting much. nor have i been writing much more generally. i've had four major life changes/upturnings (some good, some not so good, some a little of both) that have dominated my thoughts and time over the last two months. i will probably write about some of them later, but in the meantime i've been mostly being kinda hermit-ish, taking care of myself, and so on...

one of my big escapes in the midst of all this has been watching the MLB (aka, baseball) playoffs. so  i am not a big sports-geek at all, but i have a weak spot for baseball. when i was a young kid (aka, elementary school) i dreamed of being a major league baseball player. it was also my favorite sport to play, although i was not especially good at it. (although, being the smallest boy in my league, i also had the smallest strike zone. since i wasn't a great hitter, my little league coaches used to encourage me to get walks. i got to be pretty good at working the count. back when i played (late 70s, early 80s) nobody paid any attention to On Base Percentage - if they did, i might have been an all-star..., but i digress...).

anyway, i hadn't followed baseball regularly for years until last year, when the Phillies (aka, of Philadelphia, where I grew up), made the playoffs and went onto win the World Series. the team has also been great this year too. i only got to see them play (on TV) about 5 times during the regular season, being that i am on the West Coast now. But since they've made the playoffs again, I've been following them regualrly. they have provided excellent escapism for me. escapism from my work, which has been more hectic than usual. and escapism from all of the trans/gender/activism/writing i do. while i enjoy the trans/gender/activism/writing i do, the "source material" i work with is often really troubling (e.g., people writing fucked up things about trans folks, media depictions mocking gender-nonconformity, and so on). so it's good to take breaks from it from time and time...

But the New York Post has ruined that for me today. The day before the World Series, they ran this cover. It is Shane Victorino's (a Phillies player) upper half photoshop'd onto a short-skirted cheer-leader's lower half. the caption says "the Frillies are coming to town!"

am i surprised? no, not really.

is it trans-misogynistic? duh.

is my annoyance compounded by the fact that pro-Philly folks relentlessly point out that it's a photoshop job (aka, that Shane does not sport ladies wear)? you better believe it!

i just want to escape. where does a baseball-lovin' trans lady turn these days in order to achieve transmisogyny-free escapism?

sigh...

-julia

This is one of the most enlightening spam emails I have ever received:

'All of the emotional struggles you may have had with your "old penis" will cease to exist once you know what it's like to walk around confidently with a big dong in your pants. It makes a world of difference!'Wow, the email from the random spam robots is so right: I have had "emotional struggles" with my "old penis." and here I thought I might be happier with something entirely different. You know, a clitoris and vagina perhaps. But I had never once considered going in the *other* direction. You know, the "big dong in your pants" route. It's like a whole new world has opened up for me...sign me up!

Spam is annoying and stupid and bothersome. And if you're a trans woman, it can also be highly ironic...

-j.

so I was assaulted last night. i’m ok, but it was traumatic nonetheless.

after having gone out to dinner with friends, I walking home down 14th St, when I see a group of four people: two men, two women. They seemed youngish (early 20s?) and boisterous. There are a lot of bars in my neighborhood, so I assumed they were just in party-mode. I was on the far right-side of the sidewalk (to let them pass), and just as they were about to move past me, one of the women stepped right in front of me and clocked me (aka, purposefully punched me) right on the bridge of my nose and my glasses fell off. as she did it, she said “bitch!”

it was completely unprovoked: I hadn’t done anything, and there was no sign that she was going to take a shot at me until it happened. I don’t think I was targeted for any reason. I just think that she was wasted and did something random and stupid and impulsive. The two guys she was with laughed, as if they were taken completely by surprise, and were amused at how random and stupid and impulsive what she did was.

As soon as it happened, everything seemed like a dream, probably because my fight-or-flight system kicked in. My first impulse was to turn around and punch her back. I didn’t strike her hard (as she was walking away from me), but I made contact on her back. It was pure instinct. They all turned around. They were all bigger than me, and as rational thought kicked in again, I realized that nothing good could come from this. Plus, as it happened, I yelled “fuck you!” in the deepest, loudest, boom-iest, rage-iest voice I could muster (aka, it was a distinctively testosterone-influenced vocal cord moment). I am not sure what they made of it, but I figured that if they did suddenly became aware that I was trans, it would only throw more fuel onto the fire. so, with no other viable alternatives, I shouted one last profanity at her and started walking away. As I did, I heard her step on my glasses (on purpose, I assume). Because everything was adrenaline-rush dreamy-like, I didn’t think much about it at first - i think I assumed it was just my sunglasses. But then everything was blurry and I realized that “duh,” it was nighttime, and I had wore my glasses rather than contacts that eve. fuck...

I feel lucky that it wasn’t any worse than it was. My nose is black-and-blue and scraped up, but no blood, nothing broken, nothing stolen. Just a pair of broken glasses. oh yeah, and almost forgot, a little touch of post-traumatic stress disorder.

I feel like I shouldn’t talk about my emotional reaction to this, like its taboo. When something frightening/awful happens to us, we’re suppose to simply assure everyone we’re doing ok. “No worries, I’m fine, thanks for asking.” I am mostly fine, but not entirely. I feel really really really really really angry on the inside. It sometimes comes to the surface unexpectedly. I yelled at someone on BART today, and at someone else at Trader Joe’s. They did mildly annoying things, but I yelled like they had fucking crossed me.

There’s a homeless guy who is always on my block. I have to pass by him almost every day. He is clearly not mentally balanced. Some days he’s fine. Other days he’s wandering around in traffic yelling at cars. On his bad days, he often tries to fuck with me. A lot of times he will purposefully walk in front of me, to block me from walking around him. He’s also tried to fondle me twice, and sometimes he mumbles “bitch” or “cunt” as I walk by. But he was fine today. He nicely asked for change as I walked by. And I can’t tell you how hard it was for me to walk by him today with out yelling at him or kicking him or spitting on him or something. I was just filled with rage, and I wanted to take it out on him. It wasn’t his fault - I mean, he wasn’t the one who clocked me last night. But I am just so full of rage.

Most of my rage is directed at the woman who clocked me last night. I’ve had about 200 flashbacks of the incident today. It sounds weird to say that, like it’s too straight out of a psychology 101 textbook to actually be a real thing, but it’s true. I keep re-imagining, in a highly vivid way, the events as they unfolded last night. I keep imagining her take that step in front of me, and her arm going up to clock me. And then I mentally intervene. I imagine grabbing her arm and twisting it back behind her as she falls to the ground. Or I imagine striking her first, preemptively. I imagine her writhing in pain. I want her to feel pain.

Granted, this is not the rational, intellectual part of my brain speaking. That part of me actually feels sorry for her, for the fact that she and her friends think that random acts of violence against people are funny. But the rest of me - the physiological, emotional me - wants to beat her fucking brains in.

I know from past traumas that the rage I feel now will pass with time. But there is one lesson that I will never forget, and it has to do with gender stereotyping. I will never ever ever again stereotype women as not being violent...

-julia

p.s., the picture above (of me with the bandage on my face) is not from today - it's from when I had a big chunk of my cheek removed due to skin cancer 3 years ago. But somehow, it seemed appropriate. Cancer, like being assaulted, truly sucks...

...there are any trans women performers (or acts/bands that include trans women) at Homo a gogo this weekend? I might be going to a show or two this weekend with friends, so i was perusing through the schedule. I noticed lots of trans guy acts that I know of, and a mention of drag queens, but I didn't see any trans woman acts that I know of. But then again, I've been a bit out of the music loop the last few years, so there could be bands/performers that I am simply not aware of...

Anyway, if anyone knows of any such acts, please let me know, I'd like to support the trans ladies if possible...

thanks, -julia

for those who did not see already, Bitch Magazine recently asked me to write about a feminist-y book that influenced me for their blog. It was tough to pick just one book, so I picked one I thought most people would be less familiar with: Alice Echol's Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-75. If you wanna read it, here's the link:

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/rave-on-julia-serano-on-daring-to-be-bad

enjoy! (or not, it's up to you...)
-julia

Julia update July 2009

1.    new writings!
2.    Julia in Tulsa, OK!
3.    another Bitesize show!

hi everyone,

just wanted to let you know about some recent goings on:

1. new writings

OK, so I have a couple new writings that are floating around out there.

First, my spoken word piece “Ophelia Revisited” appears in the new anthology “She's Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out and fighting back.” As you may have guessed, it was edited by the wonderful folks at Shameless Magazine (http://www.shamelessmag.com). Definitely look for it in your local bookstore! If you can’t find it there, here is the Amazon page for it:

http://www.amazon.ca/Shes-Shameless-growing-rocking-fighting/dp/0978335198

In other news, I have finally updated my “TS Psychology” webpage to include links to four new pieces: my Feministing.com piece about the impending DSM revision, my speech from May’s APA protest in San Francisco, my speech from last month’s Trans March (also in San Francisco), and my keynote talk from last month’s Philly Trans-Health Conference. Lots of me raging against the machine. Enjoy...

Also, there has been much brouhaha in the webosphere (or the cyberverse, or whatever you wanna call it) regarding cis/trans terminology and the concept of cis privilege (both of which I forwarded in WG). To clarify some of the misperceptions that are out there, back in May I wrote an FAQ about the issue - it can be found here:

http://juliaserano.livejournal.com/14700.html

also, Ethan St.Pierre recently had me on his show (TransFM.org) to talk about the issue – you can listen to that interview here:

http://www.archive.org/details/RadTrans-2009-7-05-TransFM

and finally, some of you may remember that Gina de Vries and I co-curated a show for last month’s National Queer Arts Festival called Girl Talk: A Cis and Trans Woman Dialogue. Since lots of out-of-town folks were interested but could not attend, we recently posted an mp3 of the entire event for anyone to listen to! It can be found here:

http://www.juliaserano.com/av/6_17_09-GirlTalk09.mp3

links to all of the details of the show and the cast (including a breakdown of the times each performer comes on in the mp3) can be found here:

http://juliaserano.livejournal.com/15219.html

once again, enjoy...

2. Julia in Tulsa, OK

Yes, I will be performing spoken word in Oklahoma later this month! Here are the details:

July 24, 2009
at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center
http://www.okeq.org
621 E. 4th in Tulsa, OK
the event will begin at 7pm

3. another Bitesize show!

On the heels of our March reunion show, my band Bitesize will be playing yet again! btw, for those who haven’t heard us before, we have free mp3s available for your listening pleasure at http://bitesize.net/mp3s.html

here are the details:

This upcoming Sunday (July 12th), Bitesize will be participating in "The Festival of Drums" at the Stork Club in Oakland. Basically, every band is including extra drummers and/or percussionists, and audience members are encouraged to bring percussion instruments to the event! And every band is supposed to end their sets with an "all-star" jam (open to interpretation, of course). [note: read the recent East Bay Express article about the show!]

We already have some excellent beatboxing and finger-cymbaling lined up, and we may be adding some other impromptu drummy stuff into our set on the day of the show (so if you have any brilliant ideas for participation, please let us know!). We are also planning to end our set with a Hey-Jude-meets-We-Are-the-World version of The Bee's Knees - so if you know the tune, we encourage you to join us onstage at the end of the song for a seemingly endless sing along!

Also, a bonus: it is a BBQ show! It starts fairly early (5pm) and we go on promptly at 7-ish - so if you wanna bang away with us, be sure to get there on time...

Okay, so here are all the details:

Sun 7/12/09
Sunday, July 12th @ 5pm

Stork Club
2330 Telegraph Ave
Oakland, 94612
Cost:$7
storkcluboakland.com
510-444-6174

A torrent of drums.  A hurricane of drums.  Class 6 rapids of drums.  7 bands adding countless drummers at the Festival of Drums.  More thunder than the drum corps.  More power than the solo in "Wipeout."  More drum solos than a Led Zeppelin concert.  More fun than the post-apocalypse.  The theme of this BBQ is "graduation" and it will also be Bunny Numpkins & the Kill Blow-Up Reaction's cd release.  So dust off your double kick petals, tablas, and kettle drums and get ready to rumble.

5:00 DJ Mole, DJ Tidbit, Kelsey on Accordion

5:45 David & Joanna www.myspace.com/davidandjoanna
6:30 Harlan Hollander www.myspace.com/musicbyharlan

7:15 Bitesize www.bitesize.net
8:00 Bunny Numpkins and the Kill Blow-Up Reaction www.myspace.com/bunnynumpkinsandthekillblowupreaction
8:45 The Happy Clams www.thehappyclams.com
9:30 Siddhartha www.myspace.com/siddharthamusic

10:15 The New Dysfunctions www.myspace.com/dylanchampagne

11:00 Static Mind-Fi www.myspace.com/staticmindfi

OK, that’s it for the update, hope some of you can make it out to the shows!
-julia
http://www.juliaserano.com

hi folks,

for those interested, Ethan St.Pierre will be interviewing me on the next TransFM show this Sunday (July 5th)! In part, we will be discussing the "cis/trans" distinction and "cis privilege" in the wake of the blogosphere eruption surrounding the issue that occurred in the last week. My interview will be at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific - see TransFM.org for more details.

-julia

Happy Pride month everyone!

I just wanted to let everyone know about a 2009 National Queer Arts Festival show I will be participating in this month. It is called Girl Talk: A Cis and Trans Woman Dialogue - it is a spoken word event that I have co-curated with Gina de Vries (and featuring an awesome cast!) on a topic that is very near and dear to my heart. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area on June 17th, I highly encourage you to come out for it! All the details and a description of the show are below. Please be sure to order advance tickets online, as the event may sell out...

The National Queer Arts Festival Presents:
Girl Talk: A Cis & Trans Woman Dialogue
http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/QFest09/GirlTalk.html
Curated by Gina de Vries & Julia Serano
Wednesday, June 17th
LGBT Center - Ceremonial Room
1800 Market Street, San Francisco
7:30pm
Tickets: $12-$20
Buy Tickets on-line!!:  http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/66001

Featuring the lovely & fabulous!:
Ryka Aoki de la Cruz
Tina D’Elia
Gina de Vries
Dorian Katz
Nomy Lamm
Julia Serano
Rose Sims (aka Little Light)
Lauren Steely

Queer cisgender women and queer transgender women are allies, friends, support systems, lovers, and partners to each other. Trans and cis women are allies to each other every day -- from activism that includes everything from Take Back the Night to Camp Trans; to supporting each other in having “othered” bodies in a world that is obsessed with idealized body types; to loving, having sex, and building family with each other in a world that wants us to disappear. Girl Talk is a spoken word show fostering and promoting dialogue about these relationships. Trans and cis women will read about their relationships of all kinds – sexual and romantic, chosen and blood family, friendships, support networks, activist alliances. Join us for a night of stories about sex, bodies, feminism, activism, challenging exclusion in masculine-centric dyke spaces, dating and breaking up, finding each other, and finding love and family.

*********

note added on 6-20-09 (i.e., after the show):
The show was amazing! For those who were not able to make it, you can listen to an mp3 of the show, which (for the foreseeable future) will be available here:
http://www.juliaserano.com/av/6_17_09-GirlTalk09.mp3

here are the times for those interested:

0:00:00        Pam's introduction
0:03:16        Gina
0:17:39        Ryka
0:32:26        Tina
0:42:26        Lauren
1:06:23        Nomy
1:19:23        Rose
1:33:09        Dorian
1:46:17        Julia

enjoy!

Ok, so this is the fourth installment of my Whipping Girl FAQ, where I answer common questions and/or clear up confusion about what I said (or was trying to say) in WG. This FAQ discusses the “cis/trans” distinction and “cis” privilege.

The origin of “cis”

I have come across people who have assumed that I invented the terms cissexual and cisgender, but this is not the case. I reference “cissexual” this way in my book:

I was inspired to begin using the term “cissexual” after reading one of Emi Koyama’s Interchange entries (www.eminism.org/interchange/2002/20020607-wmstl.html). Apparently, the related term “cisgender” was first coined in 1995 by a transsexual man named Carl Buijs.

I don’t know much about Carl Buijs or why he coined the term “cisgender.” But as a scientist (where the prefixes “trans” and “cis” are routinely used), this terminology seems fairly obvious in retrospect. “Trans” means “across” or “on the opposite side of,” whereas “cis” means “on the same side of.” So if someone who was assigned one sex at birth, but comes to identify and live as a member of the other sex, is called a “transsexual” (because they have crossed from one sex to the other), then the someone who lives and identifies as the sex they were assigned at birth is called a “cissexual.”

As someone who was assigned a male sex at birth, but who lives and identifies as female, I may be described as a transsexual woman, a transgender woman, or a trans woman. Those women who (unlike me) were assigned a female sex at birth may be similarly described as cissexual women, cisgender women, or cis women.

(note: I discuss the terms “transsexual” and “transgender” more extensively in a previous WG FAQ)

Why use the term “cis”?

I suppose different people might give different answers to this question, so it is probably best for me to explain why *I* started using this terminology, and why I chose to include it in the book.

I began writing Whipping Girl in 2005, before I had heard of the “cis” terminology. A major focus of the book was to debunk many of the myths and misconceptions people have about transsexuals. Initially, I was kind of scattershot in my approach: In one chapter, I would critique the way the term “passing” is used in reference to transsexuals. In another chapter I would critique the use of the terms “bio boy” and “genetic girl” to describe non-trans men and women. In yet another chapter, I would critique the way that transsexuals are always depicted as imitating or impersonating “real” (read: non-trans) women and men. And so on. After a while, it became obvious to me that all of these phenomena were stemming from the same presumption: that transsexual gender identities and sex embodiments are inherently less natural and less legitimate than those of nontranssexual people.

I realized that it would make a lot more sense to write a chapter for the book that thoroughly exposes this double standard and describes the many ways it is employed in order to marginalize transsexuals. As I was contemplating this, I stumbled onto the aforementioned Emi Koyama post, where she discusses the usefulness of the terms cissexual, cisgender and cissexism. She said:

“...they de-centralize the dominant group, exposing it as merely one possible alternative rather than the "norm" against which trans people are defined. I don't expect the word to come into common usage anytime soon, but I felt it was an interesting concept - a feminist one, in fact - which is why I am using it.”

It was then that I realized that the double standard that I was writing about already had a name: cissexism. And the chapter of WG dedicated to debunking cissexism eventually took on the title: “Dismantling Cissexual Privilege.”

People sometimes freak out a bit when confronted with new terms/language. So when doing presentations, I often offer the following analogy to help people understand the usefulness of this terminology:

Fifty years ago, homosexuality was almost universally seen as unnatural, immoral, illegitimate, etc. Back then, people regularly talked about “homosexuals,” but nobody ever talked about “heterosexuals.” In a sense, there were no “heterosexuals”—everyone who wasn’t engaged in same-sex behavior was simply considered “normal.” Their sexualities were unmarked and taken for granted.

If you were lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) during this time period, there was almost no way for you to convince the rest of society that you were unfairly marginalized. In society’s eyes, nobody was oppressing you, it was simply your fault or problem that you were “abnormal.” In fact, it was quite common for LGB people to buy into this presumption of abnormality themselves, as there was simply no other obvious way to view their predicament.

But then gay rights activists began challenging this notion. They pointed out that all people have sexualities (not just homosexuals). The so-called “normal” people weren’t really “normal” per se, but rather they were “heterosexual.” And the activists pointed out that heterosexuals weren’t necessarily any better or more righteous than homosexuals. It was just that heterosexism—the belief that same-sex attraction and relationships are less natural and legitimate than heterosexual ones—is institutionalized within society and functions to unfairly marginalize those who engage in same-sex relationships.

Once one recognizes that heterosexism is a double standard, then it becomes clear that (whether they realize it or not) heterosexuals are privileged in our society. They can legally marry, engage in public displays of affection with their significant other without fear of being assaulted, their relationships are typically approved of, and even celebrated, by others, and so on. Like all forms of privilege, heterosexual privilege is invisible to those who experience it—they simply take it for granted. By describing and discussing heterosexism and heterosexual privilege, LGB activists have made great gains over time toward leveling the playing field with regards to sexual orientation in our culture.

One can easily understand the potential power of cis/trans terminology by simply replacing “heterosexual” with “cissexual,” “heterosexism” with “cissexism,” and “heterosexual privilege” with “cissexual privilege” in the above analogy.

Critiques of the “cis/trans” terminology

While cissexism and cissexual privilege are useful concepts, I have met many people (both cis and trans) who don’t like the cis/trans distinction. Here are my thoughts on some of the more common criticisms:

1) It sounds too academic/jargony; why can’t we speak in plain, simple English?

First, “cis” is not an academic term, it is an activist one. And it sounds like jargon simply because most people are unfamiliar with it. On a recent Feministing post on this very topic, cannonball put it this way:

“words that start with cis may seem esoteric, but how many times are words like “sexism” and “heterosexism” thrown back at groups who work to end oppression as too academic?”

(note: cannonball’s post was a response to two earlier excellent posts by Queen Emily at Questioning Transphobia: Cis is not an “academic” term and Cis (2). In those posts, she goes more in depth into the cis-as-academic trope than I do here.)

To be honest, when people make the can’t-we-speak-in-plain-simple-English complaint, I just want to bonk them over the head with a stack of George Orwell books. Our ideas/thoughts/concepts/beliefs are very much constrained by the words available to us. If we didn’t have the terms heterosexual, heterosexism and heterosexual privilege, those of us who are LGB wouldn’t have the language to describe (and thus challenge) the marginalization we face because of who we sleep with. If we all just spoke “plain English” circa the 1950’s, where do you think we’d be these days with regards to sexual orientation-based discrimination?

2) comment often made by cis people: “but I don’t identify with the term cis.”

Cis is not meant to be an identity. Rather, it simply describes the way that one is perceived by others.

An analogy: I don’t strongly *identify* with the terms “white” and “able-bodied,” even though I am both of those things. After all, I have been able to navigate my way through the world without ever having to give much thought to those aspects of my person. And that’s the point: It is my white privilege and able-bodied privilege that enables me *not* to have to deal with racism and ableism on a daily basis!

In general, we only identify with those aspects of ourselves that are marked. For example, I identify as bisexual, and as a trans woman, because those are issues that I have to deal with all of the time (because of other people’s prejudices). While I may not strongly identify as white or able-bodied, it would be entitled for me to completely disavow myself from those labels, as it would deny the white privilege and able-bodied privilege I regularly experience.

3) comment often made by trans people: "I don’t like the distinction between cis/trans because I don’t think that I am any different from a cis woman (or man)."

I can relate to this sentiment. After all, I don’t believe that I (as a trans woman) am inherently different from cis women. Such a view point would be essentialist/universalist, as it would assume that all cis women are the “same” as each other and entirely distinct from trans women. This ignores the large amount of variation amongst, and overlap between, cis and trans women.

When I use the terms cis/trans, it is not to talk about *actual* differences between cis and trans bodies/identities/genders/people, but rather *perceived* differences. In other words, while I don’t think that my gender is inherently different from that of a cis woman, I am aware that most people tend to *view* my gender differently (i.e., as less natural/valid/authentic) than cis women’s genders.

Here’s how I put it in WG:

[Some people] might dismiss much of this language as contributing to a “reverse discourse”—that is, by describing myself as a transsexual and creating trans-specific terms to describe my experiences, I am simply reinforcing the same distinction between transsexuals and cissexuals that has marginalized me in the first place. My response to both of these arguments is the same: I do not believe that transsexuals and cissexuals are inherently different from one another.  But, the vastly different ways in which we are perceived and treated by others (based on whether or not we are trans) and the way those differences impact our unique physical and social experiences with both femaleness and maleness, lead many transsexuals to see and understand gender very differently than our cissexual counterparts.  And while transsexuals are extremely familiar with cissexual perspectives of gender (as they dominate in our culture), most cissexuals remain largely unfamiliar with trans perspectives. Thus, to ask me to only use words that cissexuals are familiar with in order to describe my gendered experiences is similar to asking a musician to only use words that non-musicians understand when describing music.  It can be done, but something crucial would surely be lost in the translation.  Just as a musician cannot fully explain their reaction to a particular song without bringing up concepts such as “minor key” or “time signature,” there are certain trans-specific words and ideas that will appear throughout this book that are crucial for me to precisely convey my thoughts and experiences regarding gender. In order to have an illuminating and nuanced discussion about my experiences and perspectives as a trans woman, we must begin to think in terms of words and ideas that accurately describe that experience.

The limitations of cis privilege:

A friend recently told me of a trans woman she knew who complained that other women were exercising cis privilege over her whenever they complained about their periods. This is what I told my friend:

I understand where the person is coming from, but I would be hesitant to call that cissexual privilege. I try to only use the term with regards to social and legal legitimacy (e.g., that cis people’s legal sex & gender identities are taken for granted and considered valid in a way that trans people’s are not). In those cases, there is a blatant societal double-standard at work, and cis folks should be made aware that they are taking something for granted that others cannot.

But once we get into issues of biology or bodies (rather than the rights and entitlements associated with them), things become more fraught. For example, I have white privilege, not because my skin has less pigment than people of color, but because my whiteness enables me to not have to face racism on a day-to-day basis. I have able-bodied privilege, not because I can see or walk "just fine", but because (in a society that presumes that everyone can see signs or walk up a flight of stairs if necessary) I don't face the same obstacles or barriers in my day-to-day life that differently-abled people do.

Sometimes, when other women I know are bitching about their periods or pregnancies, I get really sad. While I certainly don’t doubt that those experiences are painful and difficult, I feel a sense of loss about not having the opportunity to choose to bare a child if I wished. (I’m not sure that I would want to do that if I were able, but it would be nice to have that option available to me). I have a cis female cousin who had very irregular periods her whole life and who was distraught to find out as a young adult that she couldn’t bare children (she & her husband eventually adopted after years of infertility treatment attempts). While we’ve never talked about it, I’m sure we both relate to our similar situations in very different ways. For me, it’s wrapped up in my sadness about not having been born female. For her (being socialized female), it’s more likely tied to her having imagined since she was a child that someday she’d become pregnant and have her own children.

Both of us are biologically unable to have regular periods or get pregnant. Both of us experience sadness and loss at the fact that we have been denied something that other women take for granted. But to say that people who properly menstruate have cis privilege, or menstruation privilege, plays into a kind of pathologizing mentality. It plays into the idea that my (and her) body is intrinsically “wrong” while other bodies are “right.” I know some trans people see things that way, but I find that disempowering. I wish I had been born female and that I could menstruate, just like I wish that I didn’t have skin cancer two years ago, or that I wasn’t hypothyroid, or that I wasn’t on the verge of needing bifocals (and I’m only 41 for Christsakes!), etc. But I don’t feel like I was denied any privileges because my body isn’t the way that I wish it was. It only becomes about privilege when I am deemed inferior or less legitimate than other people because of my body and situation.

My cousin and I share some similarities, but also some differences. She was able to qualify for adoption despite being infertile. It is very likely that if I applied for adoption (on the grounds that I am infertile because I am transsexual) that I would be denied because of my trans status. If I were denied for that reason, that would be a clear case of cis privilege. And while I don’t consider it cis privilege when other women are bitching about their periods, I have had cis women tell me that I am “lucky” that I don’t have periods. I know for a fact that they would *never* tell someone like my cousin (an infertile cis woman) that she is lucky for the same reason. In that case, I would definitely say cis privilege is at work (because of the double standard).

I am glad that WG helped to popularize the usage of cissexism and cis privilege. But it is important to keep in mind that all of us are privileged in some ways and marginalized in others. As a trans person, I am very sensitive to cis privilege, but not so attuned to my own white privilege or able-bodied privilege. In the past, I have presumed that someone was exercising cis privilege over me only to find out later that they didn’t even know I was trans. And I have had people (rightly) call me out when I have inadvertently said something that was steeped in my own white privilege or able-bodied privilege without being conscious of it.

This is especially important to keep in mind in feminist settings, where both cis and trans women are marginalized in largely overlapping, albeit sometimes different ways. Being forced against my will into boyhood overall really sucked for me, but I would be lying if I said that I didn’t experience *some* advantages as a result. For instance, I was given more freedom in many ways than my sisters growing up. And I honestly can’t say whether or not I would have become a scientist if I was raised female. Similarly, I have no doubt that there are a lot of aspects about being raised as a cis girl that really suck. But there are also advantages (e.g., having people take your gender identity seriously, not being forced against your will into boyhood, etc.).

I want to be a part of a feminist community where we can talk about cis woman-specific issues *and* trans woman-specific issues without the former group being automatically called out for exercising cis privilege and the latter group automatically being called out for supposed male privilege. To achieve this, it is important for us to challenge oppression/privilege when it occurs. But it is also important for us to listen to what others have to say, to give people the benefit of doubt whenever possible. Some people are stubbornly prejudiced and repeat offenders, and they of course should be taken to task for it. But most of us (I hope) genuinely want to both understand *and* to be understood. Discussions of “privilege” should be about teaching (and learning) how we each see and experience the world differently; how we each have blind-spots; how we each make incorrect and undermining assumptions about other people. Discussions of “privilege” should serve as a teaching tool, not a weapon to wield.

Hi all,

As some of you may know, I recently contributed an essay called "Why Nice Guys Finish Last" to the anthology Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti. It's a really amazing collection, so I highly encourage you to check it out!

For those of you who are interested, you have a couple of opportunities in the next week or so to hear a little bit more about the book:

1) today (Wednesday, April 29)  Jill Filipovic and I about will be interviewed about our respective Yes Means Yes essays on KPFA (a Berkeley public radio station). The show is called Against the Grain, it will take place between 12-1pm Pacific time. You can either listen live on the web at kpfa.org, or you might be able to find it archived for a period of time on the Against the Grain website. You can also obtain it by subscribing to the Against the Grain podcast...

2) next week there will be two Bay Area Yes Means Yes! book readings! I will be appearing at both:

Thursday, May 7, 7:30 pm at Modern Times, 888 Valencia in San Francisco
Saturday, May 9, 7:30 pm at Pegasus Downtown 2349 Shattuck in Berkeley

hope you can make it!
-julia

**addendum: the aforementioned interview can be found here.

 So it seems that Amazon is ranking my book again. I checked it on Sunday night and it was de-ranked at the time. But it seems to be back up now... 

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about, here’s the deal: On Sunday (i.e., yesterday, April 12) news broke that many LGBTIQ books were no longer being "ranked" by Amazon.com due to their "adult" content. Apparently, this ranking is crucial for determining how books come up on searches. So if a book has no rank, it doesn't come up in searches for keywords, and thus is effectively censored to a certain degree. The LA Times ran a big story on it and lots of bloggers went to town on it (some of the more informative posts I found about it include: Jezebel,  Meta Writer, tehdely, Jessica at Feministing). In the Twitter-dome, people referred to the incident as "amazonfail," a term that has apparently become the official name of this debacle. Amazon now says that the whole thing was due to a "glitch," but as many of the aforementioned blogposts discuss, this seems unlikely.

Also discussed in the aforementioned blogposts, the de-ranking especially affected books about LGBTIQ issues, feminism & gender studies, rape survivors, and so on (read: subjects the "religious right" abhors), while blatant hetero-porn (e.g., Playboy) was not affected. tehdely offers this explanation for this discrepancy:

It's obvious Amazon has some sort of automatic mechanism that marks a book as "adult" after too many people have complained about it. It's also obvious that there aren't too many people using this feature, as indicated by the easy availability (and search ranking) of pornography and sex toys and other seemingly "objectionable" materials, otherwise almost all of those items would have been flagged by this point. So somebody is going around and very deliberately flagging only LGBT(QQI)/feminist/survivor content on Amazon until it is unranked and becomes much more difficult to find.

This seems to make sense to me. It would also explain why Kindle versions of many de-ranked books were not de-ranked (as such pages are relatively new and have not accumulated enough "flags" yet. 

Anyway, while the incident seems to be somewhat over, there is a petition I encourage you to sign. 

-julia

so I recently got back from a crazy, hectic week on the road. I had three college presentations, plus the WAM! conference, all in one week. The WAM! conference was especially fun – I got to meet lots of people whose blogs I have read and/or folks I’ve corresponded with but whom I have never met face to face. It is neat to meet people that you know, but have never seen with your own eyes. It makes you realize how often we unconsciously make assumptions about people based upon their appearance in the "offline" world.

At WAM!, I was on a panel called “In/Out of Focus, Broadening a Feminist Lens: Gender, Non-Conformity and the Media” which was moderated by Kate Bovitch, and also included Miriam Zoila Perez and  Jack Aponte. The conference filmed it and video of it should appear on the web soon – I’ll let you know when it happens...

At WAM!, I also learned that I am probably the only feminist in the world not Twitter-ing, and that I was likely the only person there who was not actively blogging about the conference. Although, I suppose I’m blogging about it now. But in the new modern world, does blogging about something ex post facto even count anymore? sigh...

While on my trip, I also got to see my family, since the last college event was in Bryn Mawr - a 15 minute drive from my parents house (aka, the house that I mostly grew up in). I had a weird time capsule moment while at Bryn Mawr. I remembered bike riding around that campus when a car pulled up beside me. A middle-age-ish guy rolled down his window, said he was from out of town, and asked if there were any good bars or clubs in the area (this was day time, mind you). I told him that I was home from college and never really went out around this area. Then he asked me if I liked to party. No lie: he literally said “do you like to party?” It was only then that I naively realized that he had been hitting on me. I said no, not really, and biked off. I think that was the first time that a guy ever hit on me as a boy (or, at least, the first time I figured out what was going on).

On my trip, I read my first fun, non-gender-y book in a long while: the Steve Martin book Born Standing Up, which chronicles his stand-up career. Lots of folks younger than me seem surprised when I say that he is probably my favorite stand-up comedian ever. They probably know him only from his many lame movie appearances over the last 20 years. Or they have seen little snippets of him saying “Excuuuuuse me” or “I’m a wild and crazy guy” and they got the impression that he was a shtick-y sort of comedian. But he was actually very surreal and “intellectual” (as he’d often joke). For those who have not been initiated, I highly encourage you to check out his comedy albums (e.g., Let’s Get Small. or Wild and Crazy Guy).

Anyway, I’ve been poking around YouTube looking for old bits from his stand up days (there are too few) when I stumbled onto this. It’s Steve Martin guest hosting the old Johnny Carson Tonight Show. The main guest is Burt Reynolds in his sexyist-man-alive heyday and, if you have the endurance to make it to part three, Burt Reynolds shaves off half of his moustache live on TV. and, if you make it to part four, Burt & Steve share a man-kiss. enjoy...

I know this will make me sound old, but I felt like I was at home watching it. I have no desire to go back to the 70’s. Nostalgia is kinda dumb, as every decade has its good points and bad points. But it was nice seeing something from my ten-year-oldish days that made me smile. those were (for better or worse) my formative years...

-julie

hi everyone,

so this month’s update is chock full of all sorts of upcoming events that involve me in some way, including several college appearances, a conference panel, a cabaret, and a reunion of my band Bitesize! But before I delve into all of that, a quick personal note:

some of you know (and others may know of) Dani - she was my partner for many years and remains a close friend. Well, she is currently looking for a job, preferably one that is full time with benefits. She has oodles of non-profit admin, HR and event organizing experience and is a pro at event production, marketing, and fundraising/sponsorships. She ran two successful businesses and has worked at coops, non-profits, and for profits. Dani is one of the smartest, most hard-working people I know, so if you (or anyone you know) is looking to hire someone in the Bay Area, I highly encourage you to get in touch with her! Dani’s contact info and resume can be found here: 
http://www.daniland.com/resume.html
or you can email me and I’ll put the two of you in touch...

okay, now here are all of my events for the month in chronological order:

Saturday, March 7, 2009
I’ll be performing at Cupcake Cabaret, a performance celebrating the strength we get from what marks us as different in this world. Size, gender, sexuality, class, race, dis/ability, age, religion and all numbers of identities bring the artists in the series a sense of power and esteem. Cupcake Cabaret features comedy, burlesque, spoken word, performance art and all manner of genres celebrating the radical act of self-love.

the show features an All-Femme Cast! in addition to me, performers include:
Bevin Branlandingham
Gina de Vries
Zuleikha Mahmood
Mollena Williams

the show will take place on Saturday, March 7, 2009
at the Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission St. San Francisco (between 11th Street & South Van Ness)
Doors at 7:00, Show at 7:30
$10-$20 sliding scale
more details at http://queerfatfemme.com/cupcakecabaret
This event is presented by San Francisco in Exile (http://sfinx.org) and is co-curated by Bevin Branlandingham & Gina de Vries.

*****

Thursday, March 12, 2009
Bitesize reunion show!

As some of you know, for many years I was the guitarist-vocalist-lyricist for a noisy pop/indie rock band called Bitesize. We’ve spent most of the last four years on hiatus, but lately we’ve taken up playing again!

on Thursday, March 12, 2009, we will be playing our first show in quite a while. It will take place at the Eagle Tavern (398 12th St. San Francisco, CA), and we will be playing with one of our very favorite local bands, Ex-Boyfriends, as well as the excellent Control-R. The show will be held at 9pm, 21+.

for those who haven’t heard us before, we have free mp3s available for your listening pleasure,

also, if you’re interested in learning more about us, you’ll be happy to know that we *finally* refurbished our bio page after many years of neglect. It now includes a (hopefully) humorous (mis)informative career retrospective article called "Hear No Evil: the almost entirely true unauthorized autobiography of the band who almost changed the world."


*****

Wednesday, March 25, 2009
I will be at USC Upstate (in Spartanburg, South Carolina) to participate in their 2nd Annual Bodies of Knowledge Symposium. It takes place from 4-8:30pm on the campus of USC Upstate in the Rampey Building. Other presenters include Kirk Read and Jennifer Baumgardner. More info about the symposium can be found here:
http://www.uscupstate.edu/bodiesofknowledge

(note: Seating for the event in Rampey is limited and advance registration for this date is required.  Register online now at http://www.uscupstate.edu/bodiesofknowledge)

*****

on Thursday, March 26, 2009
I will be at UNC Chapel Hill for their annual Women's Week giving a presentation entitled Trans Feminism: A Performance and Discussion (it will be part talk, part spoken word performance). It will take place from 5:30 to 7pm at Stone Center, Hitchcock Multipurpose Room.

*****

March 27 - March 29, 2009, I will be at
Women, Action & the Media:
A Conference for Activists, Journalists & Everyone
at MIT’s Stata Center, Cambridge, MA

While there, I will be taking part in a panel called:
In/Out of Focus, Broadening a Feminist Lens: Gender, Non-Conformity and the Media
it will take place March 28th, Saturday, 11-12:30 pm, and the other panelists include Kate Bovitch, Miriam Zoila Perez and Jack Aponte

*****

Monday, March 30, 2009
I will be presenting a talk at Bryn Mawr College as part of their Trans-Awareness Week. more details to come...

*****

also, some new press snippets:
 
a new interview with me will appear in the March 2009 issue of Stereotypd.

I am also briefly mentioned in a review of the new Antony & the Johnsons CD that appeared in the Chicago Reader.

*****

ok, that’s it for now. thanks for listening!
-julia
http://www.juliaserano.com/

So let me begin by saying that I have never wanted to join Facebook, mostly  because of bad experiences friends of mine have had trying to delete their accounts. After attempting to do so, some of their information continues to exist and to be retrievable on the site. In one case, the person was trans and was looking for jobs and didn't want potential employers to have access to info about her trans status and personal interests. I think that it is evil for a site not to allow you to fully delete your profile & postings once you leave, and for that reason, I want nothing to do with Facebook.

Given this, I am extremely concerned that someone may have recently has created a false Facebook account for me without my consent. Of course, I can't determine this for sure (as people who don't belong to Facebook aren't even allowed to search it (another creepy aspect of the site if you ask me)). If any of you do belong to Facebook and wanna check to see if there is an entry for me, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Why do I think there might be a fake account for me? Well, before I used to get Facebook emails from friends encouraging me to join. In the last few days, however, the emails are different and say:

"______ added you as a friend on Facebook.  We need to confirm that you know ______ in order for you to be friends on Facebook."

There seem to be two possible explanations for this:

1) someone has created a false account using my name and email address (as the people who have tried to friend me are all real-life friends). This kinda freaks me out, because why would someone else create an account for me? And god only knows what is posted in my name on that site  (which I have no password for, cannot access, and cannot even see!).

2) There is no false account for me, it's just that Facebook has changed the emails they send out to nonmembers to give the impression that they are now members. In which case, that would just be another reason why I hate Facebook...

ok, so the following is a rant that I posted on a trans-themed email list. It is in reference an exposé written by folks within the gender variant community about a proponent of autogynephilia theory who happens to be a trans woman. Now this person has said some messed up things about people I respect, and she is accused of a number of other things which I have heard second hand that, if true, are very disturbing. Having said that, I wrote the following post in response to certain aspects of that exposé that really really bothered me as a trans woman and activist. For anonymity reasons, I have omitted/deleted names of the person in question, as well as those who published the exposé. I ask those who wish to leave comments to respect this anonymity...

Am I the only person offended by this?

I can understand why someone would want to critique what proponents of “autogynephilia” say about that theory. And if a hypothetical individual were to engage in shady behaviors—for example, misrepresenting themselves, inconsistent, distorted or fraudulent writings, edit-warring (as _____ is alleged to have done)—I can understand why someone might want to bring it to other people’s attention. But I am especially appalled by two of the tactics employed against _____ in the above [deleted] link.

The first is the insinuation that _____ isn’t a “real” transsexual (in fact, the very word transsexual is often placed in quotes in reference to her). It is insinuated that she must not be a “real” transsexual because she still has facial hair. I guess that means that I’m not a real transsexual either. In fact, off the top of my head, I can name at least ten dedicated trans women activists I know who (like myself and ______) have not completed electrolysis. You wanna know why? Because it’s fucking expensive! In addition to being classist, that tactic is oppressive. Deeming that some people are “real” transsexuals while other people are not is exactly what the gatekeepers have been doing to us for years.

Second, I am disturbed by the way the report essentially accuses her of being “autogynephilic” (both because she supposedly asked a girl to the prom and because other people supposedly view her as a “tranny chaser”). Reading those passages made me feel like I was I was reading Bailey’s book all over again. And I know what you’re going to say: “Well it’s relevant to bring it up because she calls herself a ‘homosexual transsexual’ and it demonstrates that she misrepresents herself.” Gee, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that one before...now where was it?...oh yeah, in Alice Dreger’s ASB article. In fact, Dreger rather promiscuously (no pun intended) uses the cloak of “relevance” to delve into the presumed sexual pasts of [many of the trans women who critiqued Bailey's book]. Do you know wanna know why she did that? Because sexualizing a person invalidates them! This is precisely why defense lawyers ask rape survivors irrelevant questions about their past sexual histories during trials. If you can reduce a person to just their sexual behaviors or their sexual bodies, then you inevitably dehumanize and delegitimize them. Isn’t this the very same reason why most of us abhor Bailey’s book — because it so relentlessly sexualizes trans women (thus delegitimizing us)?

The pinnacle of sexualization in the ______ report is a link to a supposed “cock shot” (plus related dialogue) that had nothing to do with autogynephilia or BBL or anything. What the fuck! I would be pissed if BBL were to include my forays on Craig’s List in one of their “reports”. So why on earth would you do exactly that to ______? There is absolutely no reason to include that passage, except, of course, that 1) sexualizing someone invalidates them, and 2) you want to delegitimize her.

Look, I am not naive, and I can assure you that I have no fantasies about having a “respectable dialogue” about “autogynephilia” after everything that has already gone on. If you wanna call someone a fraud or a troll or a hypocrite or what have you, I am not going to stop you. But when you start sexualizing proponents of “autogynephilia” (and insinuating that they are "autogynephilics") as a way of invalidating them, then you are no better than Bailey and the like. And, as Audre Lorde famously said, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

respectfully yours,
-julia

so i usually don't waste my time commenting on "cis" politics (he he), but i do have to say that i am ever so grateful that the Bush presidency is finally gone baby gone. it just makes me wanna hoot and holler!

reflectively yours, -julia

p.s., i literally spent 10 minutes pushing all the buttons on that link. i am so easily amused...

p.s.s., i'm generally not super-moved by mainstream politics. the first candidate i was ever excited about was Clinton when he was first elected. but after he disappointed me time and time again, i realized that anyone who could be popular enough to become president would inevitably be far to conservative for my taste. but i do have to say that Obama has made me more hopeful (aka, less cynical) about what might be possible...

p.s.s.s., although the whole Rick Warren thingy made me feel like it was Clinton all over again. but we'll see...

p.s.s.s.s., i thought i might be somewhat triggered as a queer when Warren gave his invocation today. but it turned out that i was mostly bothered as an agnostic. his prayer was so JudeoChristianCentric that it was rather frightening. He even tossed in the Our Father for Christsakes!

p.s.s.s.s.s., and i do have to say - despite how cliche the sentiment might sound by now - that it was moving to witness the first nonwhite American president being sworn into office. now i just hope to live long enough to see the first trans person to be nominated president...

so this story has been making the blog/email list rounds, so i'm sure many of you have seen it already. but for those who haven't, here's an excerpt:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction. "(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration.

How ironic that God put me on this earth in order to fuck with Ratzinger's ecosystem...

-julia

p.s., since when did transsexual become a "behavior" (or "bevaviour," as the folks who fancy extra vowels might say). at the moment, i'm sitting in an airport typing on my laptop - is that transsexual behavior? ooops, just took a sip of beer - there i go again with that transsexual behavior...

p.s.s., hard to believe, but Ratzinger triggers my recovering Catholic sensibilities even more than the last "pontiff"...you know, what's-his-face the second...