All girls in.

My 19th book for the Cannonball Read, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls by Rachel Simmons, hit really close to home.  My memories of being excluded and shamed by my first “friends” have been impossible to shake, not that I’d want to.  So, like Simmons, I’m going to start my review with my experiences.

As the only child of a pair of older parents (one of whom was on the nerdy side), I had a somewhat difficult time fitting in, but things didn’t get really bad until 7th grade.  That was when my group of friends collectively decided to turn on me.  It started out seemingly innocently enough, with makeovers of me becoming a regular pastime.  I quickly got the message that the way I was normally wasn’t okay.  Then there was the time they tried to make me believe one of them had slit her wrists (the chunkiness of the cocktail sauce they used as blood was a clear giveaway, along with the paper placed strategically under her wrists to protect the carpet), I decided to play along and said we should call 911 rather than call them out, which would have been worse for me than letting them think they succeeded in duping me.  My mom took notice on the snowy night when they called and said they were all at one girls house.  I walked over there and they weren’t there, they had called from someone else’s house a few blocks away.  Instead of going home, I went and sat in the drainage ditch behind my house and cried in the snow.  Eventually, they took to excluding me at school and encouraged other girls from the neighborhood to do the same.  I went to visit the counselor to talk about it and her genius plan was to call them into the office to talk about it.  Naturally, they all said they didn’t know what my problem was and that they all loved me.  The counselor then patted herself on the back for her excellent conflict resolution skills while I ended up being homeschooled for the rest of the year.

Why do girls do this to each other?  Simmons spent three years interviewing girls and women to find out why, most of which boils down to girls are supposed to be “nice” and not rock the boat.  Open conflict is viewed as extremely bad and to be avoided at all costs (at least with white, middle-class girls, girls of color tend to act a little differently due to their cultural expectations and this is addressed in the book as well).  Friendship is a commodity to be given or taken away depending on how a particular girl is viewed at any given time.  Girls are so wrapped up in seeming nice and good that they put each other through psychological torture that is much worse than any honest argument.  Most of the book explores the how and why until the last chapter where the author gives tips for combating this behavior.

I didn’t remain a social pariah, I decided to say “fuck them” and found new friends who were actually like-minded rather than just close by.  In 9th grade (the highest junior high grade in my school district), some of my old friends were still attempting to have an affect on me, but I was so beyond it, it didn’t work at all.  My lesson was hard learned, but if every parent of girls reads this book (and Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman, the inspiration for Mean Girls), our children can have an easier time of it than we did.

Trans women, cis privilege and RuPaul’s Drag Race

(Okay, this is going to be a change of pace and not just because it’s not a book review.  This has been weighing heavily on my mind for a couple of weeks and I had to get it out there if I’m going to get any sleep.  As I’m doing this for me, to get this off my chest, I’m disabling comments on this post.  There’s nothing anyone can say to change my mind and it hurt my heart enough to read all the vitriolic posts on the Drag Race Facebook, I don’t need them in my inbox.  {A note on pronouns before I begin: some trans* people prefer gender neutral pronouns, but as this issue mainly only affects trans women, I’m using feminine ones; in the same vein, I usually use feminine pronouns when discussing drag queens, but to differentiate them from trans women, I’m using masculine ones in this instance.})

 

I’m cis gender, for those of you that don’t know what that means, I identify with the gender I was assigned at birth.  And that’s all it means, it has no value tied to it, it’s just the opposite of trans gender (someone who does not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth).  A lot of cis people are feeling put upon lately due to a change made by the producers of RuPaul’s Drag Race, to stop using the term “she-mail”, which is a play on words based on a term that has long been used to dehumanize trans women (and also “e-mail”, but as e-mail is already not human, it can’t be dehumanized so that part is beside the point and anyone who brings it up {and many have} is just derailing the conversation).    When LOGO made the decision, they posted about it on the show’s Facebook page and within hours there were over 3,000 comments.  The vast majority of them were from people who were virulently angry about the minuscule change.  As someone who considers herself an ally to all LGBT people, this does not sit well with me; I’m going to address the most common reasons given for the outrageous outrage to try and explain why.

 

This infringes on people’s Freedom of Speech!

No, it doesn’t, like not even a little bit.  LOGO is not the US government, they aren’t regulated by the First Amendment, they have every right to allow or disallow any speech they want on their network.  If you’re having trouble understanding that, here’s a comic on the subject.

 

Drag is supposed to be subversive, this censorship is against that!  It’s also a slippery slope!

I had an epiphany regarding this one.  Until today, the definition of “subversive” had slipped my mind.  Let’s examine that, shall we?  The root of “subversive” is “subvert”, here’s the definition:

verb: Undermine the power and authority of (an established system or institution)

There’s a concept in comedy called “kicking upward” where the butt of the joke should be someone with more power or privilege than the person telling the joke (you can thank Patton Oswalt for my knowledge of this { if you click the link, part 3 is the relevant part, but the whole essay is great}).  This is why it’s cool when black comics make fun of white people but it’s off-putting when it’s the other way around.  Mocking those with less privilege than you (like Alaska did in his disgusting video) isn’t subversive, it’s the status quo.  Drag queens should be operating on the same standard as Finely Peter Dunne and comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, not the other way around.

As to the “slippery slope” argument, that’s just plain ridiculous.  For starters, everyone who fears a slippery slope is wrong; marijuana doesn’t lead to heroin, gay sex doesn’t lead to pedophilia or bestiality and feminism doesn’t “encourage women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians” (thanks, Pat Robertson!).  Taking the feelings of trans women into account isn’t going to undermine the integrity of the show.  And secondly, the idea that these queens can’t be funny without disenfranchising trans women (or anyone for that matter) is seriously underestimating their talent (especially Bianca Del Rio, one of the commentors wondered if they’d end up cutting out everything he said; honey, if you think he can’t be scathingly funny without using slurs, you don’t know who you’re talking about).

 

Drag queens are trans allies, so it can’t be offensive.  They’re taking it back!

I want to use an anecdote from my own life to illustrate my point.  While I’ve never been racist, there was a time in the early 90’s when my (white) friends and I called each other the n-word.  Snoop and Dre had just made it big so we thought we were being cool.  It was all well and good until one day when I accidentally said it to a black guy.  He played it off like it wasn’t a big deal, but as soon as it was out of my mouth I felt like shit and I haven’t said it since (unless I’m quoting someone and even then I don’t usually do it because I can’t stand the way it sounds or feels).  I wasn’t trying to be offensive, but it was still hurtful.  And while, on Drag Race, they aren’t addressing trans women when they use the term, the countless trans women who are fans are still subjected to it every week and that adds up (google “micro-aggressions” to see what I’m talking about {you didn’t think I was going to do all the work for you, did you?}).  Just like Randall can’t take back “porch monkey” even though his grandmother called him that, cis gender drag queens can’t take back “shemale” even though they might be called that while working.  Because at the end of the day, they can take off the drag; trans women don’t get that luxury.  Cis people don’t get to decide what’s offensive to trans people, that’s why Pandora Boxx’s patronizing eulogy was so gross and Willam’s status update was so awesome (I love that people were all “oh, Willam isn’t afraid of being offensive, let’s see what he has to say”, whoops!).

 

I’m trans and it doesn’t bother me/I have trans friends and it doesn’t bother them.

Good for you and your friends, but you don’t get to dictate how other people feel about it.  I can use myself as another example for this one.  I’m a cis woman and I don’t have a problem with the term “fishy” (in drag parlance, it means a queen who can pass as a cis woman), and I’ve been the subject of a song where the singer said they hated me because I smelled like a fish.  However, I can understand why some cis women do have a problem with it, and if there comes a time where enough of them complain about it and they ban the term from Drag Race, it’s not going to bother me.  If that happened, the last thing I would do would be to go and post a bunch of shitty comments on the Drag Race Facebook.  Because there is so much more to drag than being “fishy” and there are other ways to reference it that won’t upset people.  It is such a small price to pay to make many people more comfortable and able to enjoy a great show that gives a spotlight to some incredible talent.

 

It took them 6 years to complain!

It didn’t take trans women six years to complain, it took LOGO six years to listen.  There have been trans women complaining about “she-mail” since they started using it.  There are two factors at play that brought it to a head this year.  One, the “female or shemale” mini-challenge was even more offensive than the e-mail pun, so that drew a lot more attention.  Two, trans women are more visible in mainstream culture now than ever before in modern history.  Director Lana Wachowski and Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace came out in 2012, but the real mainstream face for trans women is Laverne Cox, star of Orange Is the New Black which first aired last year.  These women are pushing trans* rights to the forefront of people’s minds in a way that has never been felt before.  Also, let’s not forget those trans women who were on Drag Race itself; Sonique, Carmen Carrera and Monica Beverly Hillz.  Carmen Carrera has gotten a lot of heat for speaking out about this, there has been lots of talk of biting the hand that feeds you and “why didn’t she say anything when she was on the show?”.  It is extremely scary to speak out against oppression when you are disenfranchised, especially if the entity you’re speaking against is someone/thing that you love and respect (I’m going to talk about a friend later on and I was up all night afraid of calling him out because I was sure that it would ruin our friendship, and I’m not even trans).  Those with privilege tend to push back, hard. You only need to look at the comments on the Drag Race Facebook to see it in action; there is some horrific, vile shit being spewed on there, it takes a very strong person to open themselves up to that sort of thing.

 

You’re all being too sensitive, it’s not that big of a deal.

Ah, this one is familiar.  Women in general get this a lot.  Having emotions is seen as some sort of negative and should be viewed with scorn.  This tactic has been used to discredit women for years.  If you can’t discuss it without emotion, your logic isn’t sound.  This patriarchal bullshit is why I feel more affinity towards trans women than gay cis men.  Not that I have anything against cis men, gay or otherwise (I’m marrying one and some of my best friends are cis men), but there are things they’re just not going to fully understand when it comes to the way women are treated when they speak up.

 

The trans community is a bunch of bullies.

Yeah, bullying comes from a position of power, always.  Trans women can’t be bullies, just from their position on the privilege pile alone.  That doesn’t mean that Drag Race were bullying with their use of trans slurs (they just weren’t taking trans women’s feelings into account).  However, many of the Drag Race fans weren’t afraid to bully trans women and their allies when they posted on the Facebook page.  When I posted a comment thanking the producers for making the change, I had a guy call me a bully and a bigot in addition to a bunch of other flippant and offensive remarks (such as “get off your cross, we need the wood”).  He then went on to call me a cunt, which just told me that it wasn’t so much that he didn’t care about trans women, he had a problem with women in general.

This last bit hit really close to home for me when one of my dearest friends made a post rejecting the cis gender label.  He said that he didn’t want to be referred to that way because it was “derogatory” and that other people shouldn’t be allowed to police his gender identity.  It came off as very reactionary, as in “trans people get to complain about this, so should I” or something like that.  (It’s like a white person saying they reject the term “Caucasian”, or a straight person saying they reject the term “heterosexual”.)  It threw me, because he has referred to being cis in the past with no worries.  Like I said in the beginning, there is no value to the term in either direction, positive or negative, it’s just a descriptor that enables us to discuss the differences between people.  But, I kind of see where he’s coming from.  I have a friend who is a trans activist and she often makes posts that say “cis people do/say (insert awful, prejudicial thing here)”.  She doesn’t use qualifiers like “some” or even “most” and sometimes it stings a little.  I think, “I’m a cis person, and I don’t do that”, and for a split second I want to say something.  But, then I think, “I don’t do that, so she’s not talking about me, therefore, I don’t need to be upset”, so I don’t.  Because her journey isn’t about me and my feelings, it’s about her; she doesn’t and shouldn’t have to worry about me.  When someone is part of a disenfranchised group, they tend to notice more negative things coming from those with privilege.  Part of this is because humans are just wired to remember painful things more than happy things and the other part is because respectful people don’t tend to inflict themselves on others.  (I experience the other side of this when I talk to the men in my life about street harassment.  I’ve been accused of thinking every man is out to rape me just because I complain about being objectified on a constant basis.  Sure, most men do leave me alone, but the ones that don’t leave quite an impression and when I voice my frustration about it, I’m not accusing every man of being a harasser, even if I don’t use qualifiers.)

One of the comments on my friend’s post said that they reject both the cis and trans labels because we’re all the same.  This is the same as people saying “I don’t see color”, it sounds really great, but it actually diminishes the experiences of trans people and people of color.  They have to navigate the world in a different way than cis people and white people do.  Jane Elliot speaks to some people of color in this video showing her “blue eye/brown eye” experiment, and they said that they don’t like it when a white person says they don’t see them as black because it’s leaving out a big part of their identity that has a huge effect on how they’re treated (it might actually be the second part but I don’t feel like watching them both to figure that out right now and everyone should watch the whole thing anyway, it’s very informative).  We need to give everyone the same respect while still recognizing our differences.

And that’s about all I have to say on this subject.  I know, it’s long, but I wanted to get it all out and I appreciate everyone who read this far.  If you do happen to have said or thought something that I’ve criticized in this entry, I don’t hate you (some of you I love more than words can say).  I just want you to listen to those who are affected; I didn’t think this sort of thing was a big deal either, until I actually listened to trans women.  People like to throw “PC” around like it’s a dirty word, but being politically correct is just showing empathy for those that are different than you.  Everyone should be able to do that without shame.  Now, it would be really great if the gay community would start listening to the trans community and we can all jump into our QUILTBAG and cuddle.