Navigating the Social Minefield

We are the summation of all our life experience, including that which results from the sex assigned at birth.

I personally reject the idea that the sex assigned at birth determines all of my identity, drawing a hard boundary around the gender role and presentation I am permitted, and forcing me to remain in one little box of gender identity.

I am aware of the potentialities of biology and biochemistry, and understand the path this body has taken from conception onward, resulting in a person who has transcended the boundaries that this culture draws around gender identity, presentation, and role.  My awareness demands that I reject the ideologies that declare assigned sex at birth to be all, or even the primary determinant as to which cultural boundaries I must remain within.

I recognize that there are those whose ideology demands that they deny the validity of my experience, and who demand that I remain within the bounds set by assigned sex at birth.

I also recognize that there are those who accept part of my path and my experience, but for whom my origin and experience are insufficiently pure, ideologically unacceptable in summation, to be worthy of their chosen labels.

These various interacting ideologies and prejudgements make social interactions a bit of a minefield. Living in a culture that insists on a gender binary, and only accepts a narrow set of paths through life can lead to someone like me being rejected or viewed as undesirable by some others.  While I personally do push hard for acceptance and recognition that people like me are human and valid, I don’t do this to deliberately others cause discomfort in others. I wouldn’t be comfortable pushing into a crowd that rejects my right to exist as myself.

I would, for example, no more demand entry to a “womyn-born-womyn” event than I would try to attend a Klu Klux Klan rally, for similar reasons.  I’d be encountering people whose ideology denies the validity of my existence, and who would not be swayed by my presence.

I do have to be mindful that not all such groups label themselves clearly, and am careful to reach out to organizers in advance to make sure my attendance won’t cause difficulties.  I’ve run into situations where a group might tolerate me, but other individuals there are uncomfortable with my presence.  I generally will drop such groups, rather than have my presence cause issues.

This is an area that lies outside the experience of the typical white upper-middle-class cisgender woman, but is a part of my life.  I am somewhat social and extroverted, and can’t really live my life closeted to avoid causing discomfort to others.

Waiting for “a more convenient season”

"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. 

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” 

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

- MLK Jr

Reverend King’s words still ring true, and apply even today to the struggle of all marginalized people to be treated as equals and to dispel the hierarchy of privilege imposed by Western Colonialist culture.  

I hear these words, “Not now.  It’s not your time.  Wait for a ‘more convenient season’, as we have other priorities.”  This saddens me.

Within the path of my own life, I see all too clearly the intersectional nature of the same forces that hold back people of color, the differently abled, the queer community, and transgender people.  None of us quite fit the Western Colonialist culture.  We are all seen as somehow living life improperly, due to factors beyond our control. There’s that taint of the broken concept of ‘original sin’, with our differences seen as somehow being more sinful, thus placing us lower on the hierarchy of privilege.

I think that even those of us involved with a faith that has no room for the concept of original sin have, by being raised and living within a Western Colonialist culture, incorporated the cultural concept into our patterns of thought and action.  There is a subtle tendency to place obligation on those whom we see as somehow less worthy, less privileged or more damaged, even when our intentions are good.

We see this placing of obligation in patterns of speech, those little conversation starters and commentary that some see as harmless, but place obligations on the less privileged.  These often carry demands that others justify their presence, or even their existence, demands that are simply not present between privileged peers.  They may serve to put others in their place on a perceived hierarchy of privilege.

“No, where are you REALLY from?”

“Oh, did you see the dress he is wearing?”

“What are you?”

“You don’t act like a normal black person, ya know?”

“I just don’t understand why you’d want to mutilate your body.”

“No, you’re white.”

“You look just like a real woman.”

“No, I don’t do pronouns.”

We call these microaggressions, although there really is nothing “micro” about them to the person on the receiving end.  Impact is rather different than intention, and whether a person is marginalized by nationality, race, orientation, ability, or gender identity, it hurts to be reminded of having less privilege.  It hurts to be put in what others believe is our place.

It hurts to be told that it is not yet our time.  It hurt when I was 15 years old, and it still hurts to hear this at age 65.  I wonder if I will live long enough to see our time come.

I long for the day when I will not be viewed as being wrong for simply existing.  I hope for the day when simply living as our authentic selves will be accepted by the world, rather than seen as proof of our unworthiness, our sin, our mental illness, or other codewords for hatred.

Is it possible to look to common cause, the intersectional source of much of the poor behaviors that we see as white supremacy culture, as homophobia, transphobia, and the other manifestations that come from Western Colonial culture’s assumption that there is only one right set of beliefs, appearances, and ways to live?   Is it possible to move the conversation towards accepting diversity, not only in race, but in nationality, in ability, in gender, in sexuality and identity?

Or, are we advised to wait for “a more convenient season?”

“Letter From a Birmingham Jail”, King, Martin Luther, Jr. (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), April 16, 1963

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/letter-birmingham-jail

“The Time Is Always Right to Do What Is Right”, Michelle Paquette, 2019

https://michellepaquette.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-time-is-always-right-to-do-what-is.html

“Thoughts on Privilege”, Michelle Paquette, 2019

https://michellepaquette.blogspot.com/2019/01/thoughts-on-privilege.html

“TRUUsT Releases Report on the Experiences of Trans Unitarian Universalists"
https://transuu.org/2019/01/21/truust-releases-report/

"BORN BAD: Original Sin and the Making of the Western World”, James Boyce, Counterpoint, 2015

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1619024985/ref=nodl_

Divide and Conquer works, unfortunately

I am an older woman, attracted to femme presentation, who got this way by being a transgender person.  I have had some interesting things said to me recently.   Women  tell me I am not a “real woman”. Lesbians tell me I am not a lesbian. Transgender persons tell me I am not trans enough, or am a transsexual and not transgender. 

What is going on?  While there has always been some friction between the factions making up the “Q” community (LGBTQQIA2SM+, some 600 recognized identities) recently we have moved beyond friction to see a significant increase in folks who are outright exclusionary.  Perhaps there is a reason this is happening now, when at first glance, we should be standing united against forces hostile to all of us.

In October 2017  the Values Voter Summit, the annual political gathering sponsored by Family Values Council, a strongly anti-Q organization, featured a breakout session on “transgender ideology in public schools.” One panelist encouraged a “divide and conquer” strategy to defeat “totalitarian” school policies on transgender inclusion.

Meg Kilgannon, a panelist and director of Concerned Parents and Educators of Fairfax County, said:

“For all of its recent success, the LGBT alliance is actually fragile, and the trans activists need the gay rights movement to help legitimize them. Gender identity on its own is just a bridge too far. If you separate the T from the alphabet soup, we’ll have more success.”

She laid out a five point plan of attack to the conference:

1. Engage: “Focus on gender identity to divide and conquer.”
2. Educate: No personal attacks!  “If you attack trans people, you become the proof they rely on for demanding protection,” she said. “So don’t play into their victim narrative because in this culture war, they are the bullies, not the victims.”
3. Explain: Use secular arguments to reach a more diverse audience rather than less effective religious arguments.
4. Empowerment: Kilgannon said that the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition—which describes itself as a group of conservative and progressive women that rise above their differences “to oppose the transgender agenda”—includes feminists who argue that gender identity is the “ultimate misogyny” and “erasure of women.”  She said lesbians in the group are concerned that “transing masculine girls is a form of lesbian eugenics.”
5. Elect: She urged activists to run for school board or to encourage other people from outside the “education-industrial complex” to run. She complained that school boards are full of ideological liberals.

The session speakers phrased their opposition to nondiscrimination policies in what sounded like progressive rhetoric, using phrases familiar to feminist moment speakers pushing for transgender exclusion.  Transgender rights were depicted as anti-feminist, or hostile to minorities.  They were framed as being disrespectful to LGB persons, pretenders and predators harmful to ‘the cause’.

This all sounds horribly familiar, and is unfortunately effective.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/23/christian-right-tips-fight-transgender-rights-separate-t-lgb

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/values-voter-summit-panelist-divide-conquer-to-defeat-totalitarian-trans-inclusion-polici

We each define our own identity

We, each of us, are individuals, with our own core identity, our own feelings, our own experience.  We each have our own unique experience of life, and over time, have come to know ourselves.

Some of us may seek aid in clarifying the meaning and impact of various elements of our lives, whether through therapy, guided meditation, support group discussions, or more spiritual means.  These are all aids in understanding ourselves.  These externalalities do not define us.  They do not hold our lives and experience, and cannot tell us who we are.

Each of us, within ourselves, holds the knowledge of who we are, what we need, how we are best recognized and acknowledged by others.  The process of self-discovery to reveal and clarify this knowledge to ourselves is one that many of us undertake.

We have to take care in entering this process to be aware that others may seek to impose their will on us, attempting to assign to us who we are, what we need, and how we should be recognized. This can be toxic, an attempt to poison our very identity, in a misguided effort to make others more comfortable by putting us in a box, what others wish was our place.

When we are on our journey of self-discovery, allies who can help us, and shield us from others who would impose their own ideals or desires on us, are vital.  A good support group or friends may provide this.  We still have to exercise care lest someone that we see as an ally may, perhaps unwittingly, try to designate who we are, place us in some arbitrary box.

Some people are only comfortable with others once they have labeled them, tucked them into their place, and determined what others should be.  Be careful around these people.  When we are most fragile, such folks, even if identifying as friends or allies, can be very damaging.

We are, each of us individually, incredibly complex in our identity and needs.  Never let anyone else set your identity.  Find your own path on your journey of self-discovery.