Tag: politics

Tobi Hill-Meyer, Autogynophilia pathologizes normal female behavior

Tobi Hill-Meyer: Autogynophilia pathologizes normal female behavior.

…they were cis women. No one is going to take away their womanhood for feeling sexy about lingerie and slinky dresses. This seems to be something cis women, particularly femmes, do all the time.

The bottom line is that the behavior classified as autogynophilia is normal female behavior. Charles Moser did a small study where he tried applying the criteria for it to cis women and found that 93% of cis women qualify as autogynophiles. So why are trans women subjected to this standard and often stigmatized, punished, or denied access to healthcare if they fit this criteria? And why is there no similar criteria for trans men?

It seems to me this is primarily about exerting the control doctors have over trans people to maintain male control over the sexuality of women.

Bye bye Ford and Harper: Would their departure have any benefit for Canada’s Left?

Shawn Whitney at rabble.ca makes the case that Stephen Harper and Rob Ford are not being brought down by the left, but by capitalist elites, and looks at how more conservatives (Karen Stintz, Justin Trudeau) are being set up to replace them. “People need to sober up and take a look at who is putting in the knife and why.”

I mean, [Toronto police] released a report that doesn’t demonstrate any proof of illegal activity on the part of Ford. If they had any proof they would have arrested him. This is about destroying Rob Ford while there is still enough lead-time before the next municipal elections to rebuild the right wing on city council.

This is about giving Karen Stintz — who, coincidentally, announced her candidacy last week — a clear shot for the mayoralty. Stintz is also a Tory but one who knows how to work with city capitalists and who saved the transit plan from Rob Ford. And she doesn’t get drunk in public.

Bye bye Ford and Harper: Would their departure have any benefit for Canada’s Left? | rabble.ca.

Cis Denial, Self-Knowledge, and Sexist Epistemology

What does it mean that cis people are that clueless about the motivations of their own actions, the motivations of the institutions to which they belong or on which they depend? Isn’t it kind of troubling to think of cis people as being fundamentally not-self-aware, or to think that trans people might better understand what a cis person is thinking than that cis person hirself?

This is a kind of ignorance that I find deeply unsettling, yet it’s not legible as ignorance, because it’s fundamentally about self-knowledge. And here’s where we get to sexist epistemology: the kinds of knowledge that to lack is called “ignorance” are more likely to be coded masculine–terminology, politics, etc–and are all public sphere, whereas cis people’s lack of knowledge coded feminine and private sphere–self-knowledge–is not. Thus, “ignorance”‘s epistemology–theory of knowledge–values masculine knowledge over feminine knowledge.

Self-knowledge cannot be taught in trans 101 workshops, nor can one ever completely deny accountability for a lack of it. It’s a much more arduous process to obtain self knowledge than to learn the “right terminology,” and the process is fundamentally one that has to be self-driven. In some ways, this understanding of what knowledge cis people lack is deeply dispiriting–while it takes the onus off trans people to educate cis people, it also implies that much of what cis people need to learn we *can’t* teach them or pressure them to learn, that they can only learn through a painful process of introspection few are motivated enough to attempt, and which it’s incredibly difficult (impossible?) to hold individuals accountable for whether or not they do. It’s also dispiriting in that if ending transphobia depends on skills that are devalued as feminine and are deliberately undermined by capitalism and advertising, it makes the project that much more daunting.

Combatting “Combatting Ignorance” Part 3 (of 4): Cis Denial, Self-Knowledge, and Sexist Epistemology | Taking Up Too Much Space.

How Could You Have Known? –You Already Did.

“The one thing ignorance is not is innocent, it is about having the power not to know and not to care… and we simply can’t afford to be naive enough to think otherwise.”

It’s actually the power to know and not care.

There’s a widespread trope that trans people are super rare and new, that most people have never heard of us and thus can’t know what to say. And of course, “[y]ou can’t blame people for not knowing about something that they might never have encountered.” But here’s the thing: they have.

I don’t care that you’ve never met a trans person before, I don’t care that you’ve never had a women’s studies course before, I don’t care that you’ve never had a trans 101–you can find out what we want to be called from the worst transphobic screeds and jokes. Making fun of trans people is a widespread cultural trope, it’s not something you’ve never heard of.

Combatting “Combatting Ignorance” Part 2: How Could You Have Known? –You Already Did. | Taking Up Too Much Space.

Whose Ignorance/Who’s Ignorant?

Targeting the ones that get culturally pre-defined as “ignorant” might be tempting, because their offenses are frequently the most highly visible, and (relatedly) least culturally sanctioned, but it’s those culturally pre-defined as “knowledgeable” that do me the most damage, and thus, through a privilege+power rubric, are most transphobic. Who’s worse, the most “ignorant” “redneck” (supposedly) embodying every awful anti-rural stereotype, or J Michael Bailey, who has a PhD and sits in the halls of knowledge?

So when we construe transphobia as about “ignorance,” not only have we engaged with classism, racism, and colonialism, we’ve shot ourselves in the foot and let the worst offenders off the hook.

Combatting “Combatting Ignorance” Part 1: Whose Ignorance/Who’s Ignorant? | Taking Up Too Much Space.

How Addiction Treatment Killed Cory Monteith | The Fix

How Addiction Treatment Killed Cory Monteith

Monteith took the deadliest possible combination—alcohol and heroin, whose actions to slow breathing are not additive but multiple—at the deadliest possible time. He was likely not informed about the risk because abstinence-focused rehabs typically don’t provide harm reduction advice. He certainly was not provided with maintenance medication like methadone or buprenorphine that can dramatically reduce that risk; he may not even have know that maintenance was an option—just as Cobain was told he could not take any more opioids, even for his chronic pain. Nor, apparently, were Monteith or his loved ones given naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdose, or instructed on how to use it.