what does feminism look like today?

In its formative days (in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and then in the 1960s and ‘70s), feminism was, above all, about promoting equal social and political citizenship for women. Contemporary feminism – the “third wave” – is, like today’s world, far more complex than its predecessors. It’s not just about equality anymore (though this is and always will be an issue). To me, today’s feminism is less about getting equal pay and spouting catchy phrases (“down with the patriarchy!”) and more about fostering a world in which women, men, and transgendered people all have the opportunity to live healthy, happy lives as whole and fully valued human beings. To me, feminism is about turning current concepts of gender, sexuality, rape, and more completely on their heads. I could spew statistics galore about unequal pay, but the fact of the matter is that inequality is only one piece of this massive, multifaceted puzzle.

Give me a world where rape (not only of women, but of men, children, and transgendered people) is obsolete, and I’ll show you a world where feminism isn’t needed.

Give me a world where ze and hir are as common and widespread as he/she and him/her, and I’ll show you a world where feminism isn’t needed.

Give me a world where women and girls are valued primarily for their intelligence, humanity, and personalities rather than their physical attributes, a world where sex trafficking doesn’t exist, a world where politicians don’t bicker about what a woman can and can’t do with her body, where music about raping and killing women isn’t popular or mainstream (such as Eminem’s album Relapse, which sold over half a million copies just upon its release and contains the lyrics: “whore you’re the kinda girl that I’d assault and rape and figure why not…”), a world where sexual violence isn’t sexy, where young girls aren’t taught that in order to be a “pure”, happy, healthy member of society, they must jealously guard their virginity, a world where sexually active women aren’t called “hos”, “sluts”, “whores”, or any other multitude of demeaning and dehumanizing names, but rather are considered to be normal and healthy human beings.

We need more than systematically defined equality. We need a world where men and women aren’t forced into constrictive, harmful, and untrue sexual stereotypes such as the passive woman lacking in sexual desire (and thus needing to be convinced or coerced into sexual activity) and the man who is predatory and hypersexual. Let’s build a world where the foremost method of combating rape and rape culture isn’t telling girls and women ways to protect themselves (don’t drink too much, don’t wear anything too revealing, never go anywhere alone at night, don’t ever leave your drink alone, carry pepper spray, don’t lead men on, don’t leave your house, become a nun, et cetera) – thus preemptively placing the burden on potential victims – but a new paradigm where men and boys are instilled with the values of healthy sexual relationships and taught to view women as human beings who are sexual creatures, as are all human beings. (This is opposed to the current images of sex in popular culture, in which sex is portrayed as a commodity, something that women “have” and men must obtain through force or some other non-mutual, unilateral action.)

Give me a world where all these things are true, and I’ll give you a world where “feminism” is a thing of the past.

Many people don’t know what being transgender means. I, not being transgendered, don’t fully understand every aspect of it either but my fiancée is in the middle of transitioning so I want to express what I do know. Here is some information I’ve gathered about people transitioning from one gender to another.

Being transgender means feeling that you are a different gender than your physical biology. It means that a person does not see themselves as the biological gender they were born into. In other words they do not feel that their gender matches their sex (their body parts). Some people (like my sociology professor) refer to a person transitioning as “man to woman” or “woman to man” because (as he describes it) people transitioning are only transitioning their gender, not their sex, and that even if they change their actual sex organs their DNA is still the same. I asked my fiancée and he disagreed with my professor. Genetics are very complex and a lot still remains unknown about them. Scientists are not sure about all the genes that work in brain function — it is unintelligent to state that someone’s physical and mental biology is solely determined by an X or Y chromosome. New ideas are surfacing that a person’s biological sex may not be the sole factor of things like one’s physical strength, emotions and intelligence level.

We as a society have trouble differentiating between sex and gender, and I think that is where a lot of the confusion surrounding being transgendered comes from. A person’s sex is their biological organs but gender is affected by society in many ways. Society can have great influence on what a person’s gender is and is not supposed to be. People’s gender can be influenced without them even knowing it. Take for example masculinity. Men are pressured to be masculine through society and media. Masculinity suggests that boys must be strong, tough, powerful, and not weak, wimpy, emotional, and especially ‘girly’. These ideas do not derive from the XY chromosomes in a male’s body. Without masculinity, society and the media would be very different and that would lead to different views of gender and what it means to be a man.

Present day media rarely represents people who transition from one gender to another. Most people hear about children transitioning from male to female or female to male and do not consider adults who recently feel they have the ability and social support to transition and pass. We especially don’t hear about individuals who are FTM (female transitioning to male) as often as we hear about MTF individuals. The media puts the spotlight on little boys that want to wear dresses and love pink. Why? Once again I bring up masculinity. These children are questioning masculinity and that is seen as a threat to the patriarchy. Threatening patriarchy means a possible loss of control of the sexist status quo. Once control is lost, those in power feel that they will lose control of everything. So how do they keep control?

First consider who controls the media and keep in mind our patriarchal culture. White, heterosexual, affluent men largely control our capitalistic society. They generally want to obtain as much money and power as possible and eliminate all threats to that goal. They do this by creating unrealistic ideals, like for men to be incredibly strong and women to be extremely skinny (sounds like a bad combination); they also enforce the idea that for people of color light skin equals privilege (which in our society it does) which creates a hierarchy. They do this to turn us against each other so they can continue to make money off of people trying to reach that unreachable ideal. Getting back on topic, trans people blur the lines of gender. They threaten patriarchy just like any person of color or any non-heterosexual person does. What is most important in all of this is that everyone deserves equality and the majority of people do not receive it.

It’s important for us, as feminists and as people in general, to understand what being transgender means. We need to support the transgender individuals in our lives, because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s been shown that having peer support and counseling groups among LGBTQ people leads to less bullying and lower suicide rates. It’s vital that we all become educated, visible and reliable allies.

the scene of the crime

(Warning: The following video link shows real and brutal violence.)

This video, which surfaced on the internet yesterday morning, shows a transgender woman being beaten by two female customers at a McDonald’s restaurant in Baltimore, Maryland. The two young women appear to have attacked the woman after realizing she was transgender, brutally and violently kicking and hitting her as she curls into a ball on the ground. The physical violence, which eventually caused the woman to suffer a seizure on the floor of the same McDonald’s, is only a piece of the injustice. Out of the employees and fellow customers in the store, only two feebly attempt to help the woman. The others stand by, cheering on the two attackers and filming the whole order on their camera phones, which is how the incident came to the attention of the public. Several shots in the video show store employees standing by and laughing as the woman suffers a seizure from her blows to the head, and one man can be heard telling the attackers to run before the police arrive.

Even more shocking is the news that one of the attackers has already been arrested on juvenile charges from the event, as she is only 14 years old. (Source: The Smoking Gun). Information on Vernon Hackett, the McDonald’s employee who filmed the attack, has also been revealed via his own Facebook and Twitter accounts, where evidence of his own transphobia is abundantly clear.

Media coverage of this incident has been quite limited– most of the information is only available through internet news outlets and blogs, and troublingly, these focus on the racial issues presented in the video rather than the clear issue of transphobia. While it has not been confirmed that the woman is indeed transgender, police reports do call the victim a woman, despite Vernon Hackett’s angry claim that: “[sic] Tha Title Of That Video Is A Lie….That Was Not A Female That Was Getting Beat Up…. That Was A Man….He Was Dressed Lik A Woman…. And He Was In Tha Females Bathroom Knowing He Was A Man…..”

Fox Nation, the conservative news outlet run by Fox News, has reported on the story under the false and misleading headline:‘Woman’ Beat Up At McDonald’s Was A Male Cross-Dresser. This is harmful not only to the victim but to readers of Fox Nation, who are receiving false and cis-sexist information. On Sunday, April 25^th, this interview of the victim was released, in which she discusses the attack and her feelings about the media reactions.

The woman was using the women’s restroom in a public restaurant because she clearly identified herself as a woman. This is regardless of biology, regardless of sex– this is gender identity. Whether you are born with it or find it later on, we all have a right to a gender identity. This violent case shows how fear can turn human beings into monsters who terrorize innocent victims based on gender alone. Luckily this case garnered enough attention, probably due to the media of the video, to end in two arrests. However, many similar incidents of gender-based or LGBTQ violence occur day after day and go unreported.

We need to stop the fear and stigma that surrounds transgender people, and bring attention to transphobic violence.

the clearly evil photo in question

A recent J. Crew promotional email showed a picture of the company’s president and creative director Jenna Lyons laughing with her 5-year-old son, Beckett. A bottle of Essie nail polish is juxtaposed with their photo. The caption of this spread reads, “Lucky for me I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is so much more fun in neon.” For most, this image, shown at left, depicts a loving mother and her son sharing a fun and sweet moment together, but some social conservatives have labeled the image as “blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.” This statement comes from an article written by Erin R. Brown for the website of the Culture and Media Institute, whose mission is to “prove – through sound scientific research – that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines American values.” The article begins, “J. Crew, a popular preppy woman’s clothing brand and favorite affordable line of first lady Michelle Obama, is targeting a new demographic – mothers of gender-confused young boys.” Brown goes on to suggest that Beckett has been somehow exploited by people pushing “liberal, transgendered identity politics.” Psychiatrist and Fox News contributor Keith Ablow also wrote an article on the topic. He went even further than Brown, calling the image “a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity—homogenizing males and females when the outcome of such ‘psychological sterilization’ is not known.” Ablow demonstrates his blatant idiocy to an even greater extent with this suggestion:

“Well, how about the fact that encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil—not to mention crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts? Why not make race the next frontier? What would be so wrong with people deciding to tattoo themselves dark brown and claim African-American heritage? Why not bleach the skin of others so they can playact as Caucasians?

Why should we hold dear anything with which we were born?”

Ablow’s extrapolations are outrageous. People don’t change their gender because of something as trivial as putting on nail polish; they transfer genders because the identity they were born with doesn’t match their biology. Similarly, sexuality isn’t something that can be influenced by external forces. If Beckett grows up to be gay or transgendered, it certainly won’t be because him mom permitted him to paint his toenails as a five-year-old. But you don’t need to take my word for it; Dr. Jack Drescher, a New York City psychiatrist who serves on the American Psychiatric Association’s committee addressing sexual and gender identity, has stated, “I can say with 100 percent certainty that a mother painting her children’s toe nails pink does not cause transgenderism or homosexuality or anything else that people who are social conservatives would worry about.” And the comparison to race is ridiculous. I won’t get all the way into this issue, but gender identity and cultural identity are two completely different things that a psychiatrist like Ablow should know better than to lump together.

In my opinion, this whole story is a non-issue that doesn’t even warrant discussion, but since social conservative ignoramuses like Keith Ablow have made it a topic of controversy, I think they need to be called out for their offensive commentary and the way they have blown this thing way out of proportion. The story being told by the photo is that of a loving mom who is embracing her son’s creative whimsy. Ablow closes his article by asking, “I wonder what Jenna would think if her son wanted to celebrate his masculinity with a little playacting as a cowboy, with a gun? Would that bring the same smile of joy and pure love that we see on her face in the J. Crew advertisement?” You know what, Mr. Ablow? I think that her reaction would have been just the same. She is clearly a mother who loves her son for who he is, and who would support him no matter what. Beckett is lucky to be being raised in an environment without harsh restrictions on self-expression. Whether he grows up to be straight, gay, or even transgender, I’m confident that his mother will accept him for who he is. That’s what this photo is all about.

My interest in feminism could have started when my mom told me that people “aren’t weird, they’re just different.” It could have started when I was teased in elementary school for having braces or in high school for having overbite. It could have been those journalism classes or seeing how Native people in my high school were treated by my peers. Maybe it was because I had to come out as queer and then again, as a transgender man.

Hell, for all I know it started because I watched the Beatles animated film “The Yellow Submarine” every day with my brother when I was nine. All of those happy people dancing, becoming frozen because some Blue Meanie didn’t like music. Unjust, I tell you! I grew up listening to the Beatles because my mom was a huge fan. They promoted love for everyone. As a boy with unusual plumbing and a large vocabulary, I firmly believe that everyone has the right to love whomever they like and be happy while doing so.

Within all of that identity-seeking and stumbling around, I hadn’t yet considered feminism. I’ve emerged from last semester’s intense depression and now I’m coping day-to-day with being a closeted transgender man in college. I’m planning on being out in my university of choice (Women’s Studies minor!) but I need to finish my college degree first, which means I need to keep hopping on that city bus to school until May. As I’ve been struggling with depression, I’ve been going to a gender advocacy center at my university of choice. They have a peer support program so I’ve been walking over there every Friday to rant about my life. I’m dealing with a lot of anger and queer/trans (in)visibility/erasure, and all sorts of lovely problems. This anger is surfacing in my art and within my day-to-day life, to the bruised feelings of several people around me. I’m trying to be a good boy but patience is hard. The gender advocacy center that I go to is very feminist, working from a harm-reduction framework. They’re also anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-oppressive and other progressive things I’m certain I’m forgetting. This means that the gender advocacy center is basically my cheering squad—a great boost on a bad day. Needless to say, I’d been picking up a lot of feminist language and terminology without realizing it.

I was temporarily working as a polling clerk a month ago and I told someone that I had just gotten back from Toronto, where I had attended the Canadian Universities Queer Services Conference. I had met some amazingly hard-working people there and they had gotten my energy up. My co-worker then asked, “So are you a queer activist?”

I was startled. A queer activist? A trans one, sure, by virtue of coming out and educating people all the time, but queer? “Sure, I guess you could say that.”

Then a few weeks ago I was sitting in my college’s student union office when a young woman cracked a sexist joke. She made a joke dismissing her own sex. She said that she thought “anti-feminist” jokes were funny. I called her out on it and the head executive backed me up. She rallied a few people, who also chuckled at her jokes, and then the head exec shut them down. The incident rattled around in my head for a few days.

Spring break came and I attended a bunch of radical queer workshops. I met burlesque dancers, sex workers, and international activists who were doing and continue to do amazing work within their communities. It was incredibly inspiring.

Through all of my soul-searching these three years, of course, I was reading online and offline. More queer and transgender lit, but they so often intersect with feminism, don’t they? I found Kate Bornstein though the terrific gender-celebratory site Genderfork.com. Kate Bornstein, Goddess bless her soul a thousand times over, has supported me and others through her wonderful books and regularly updated Twitter feed (hashtag: #stayalive). She taught me to be compassionate to myself. Through her banter online and offline with S. Bear Bergman, I remember to try and be a gentleman at all times. She also had me aware of when I, as a white able-bodied male, could be using my privilege to get ahead of someone.

Somewhere last month, in between being attracted to burlesque dancers and re-reading Auntie Kate’s My Gender Workbook, I realized “Hey! Feminism is for everybody!”

The first time I stated it with surety was when I was in my psychologist’s office two weeks ago. I was talking about gender expression and stereotypes. Some people were under the impression that I was straight, that I would get married to a woman and have children, and that I’d play lots of sports just because I identify as male. It was pissing me off. I was adamantly telling my psychologist that I was not like that because, well because, I was a feminist, dammit! I wasn’t going to adhere to stereotypes because some people in my life expected me to! I was going to educate people about gender and oppression! I wasn’t leaving a box I hated for another box I didn’t like! I was a feminist!

It fell out of my mouth as naturally as saying “I’m a boy.” Like, duh. And now I need to catch up on my reading. People keep mentioning Butler and Foucault and I have no idea what they’re going on about! Gender is a social construction? But my gender feels natural so how is it a social construction? See, ignorance makes me argumentative and angry so I definitely need to educate myself some more.

Then I’ll move onto educating others. I want to teach some sort of art therapy workshops, pay-what-you-can, because art saves lives. I don’t think that’s acknowledged enough in society. Mental health is important. I’m working on keeping balanced as I bide my time in college, half-closeted. Being two different people in the same institution is very trying. Just yesterday, I was called both my preferred name and my birth name in less than a minute. That collision of identities was very painful. Incidences like those mean I need to drink a lot of tea and write vast amounts of angry spoken word poetry.

Fortunately, that gender advocacy center that I’m absolutely in love with is going to help me transition when I’m in university. They’re going to help me contact my future professors about my preferred name and pronouns. I’ve been accepted into English and Creative Writing. I still need to contact the Simone de Beauvoir Institute about getting into their Women’s Studies program but I’m sure it will be OK. I mean, I’m an angry feminist who’s a boy! What more could they want?

the link between beauty and privilege

We don’t live in a vacuum. Our ideas, our lexicon, and our beliefs are shaped by outside forces like society, culture, environment, and religion. Fields like sociology and anthropology prove that.

Words matter. You said something heterosexist because your parents / the media / your religion told you; you weren’t born a bigot. Forces like that reflect and shape your ideas. When people, especially celebrities, say transphobic things they fuel transphobia and other people think it is ok because their ideas aren’t challenged. Their bigotry is reinforced every day by outside forces like that. We are conditioned to say things that hurt other people, but we don’t change it because it seems like it doesn’t affect your reality.

That’s where privilege comes from. If the dominant culture constantly puts out ideas that reinforce your idea of reality you accept it as such without question because you consider that the norm. You will vehemently defend your privilege and the entitlements you enjoy because you can’t honestly believe another person’s reality is different from your own. You think you’re a good person; anything that happens to other people is the fault of their own.

Just because you aren’t aware of what is happening doesn’t mean it isn’t occurring.

The bottom line is the idea that “it’s just a preference” ignores how factors like racism, sexism and transphobia shape your ideal of what is beautiful or considered attractive.

Whenever I tell people this they get super upset and deny that this is true. People just think that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” but if most of the media features middle to upper class, white, thin, able-bodied, cisgender, straight people wouldn’t that shape your idea of beauty? Pop culture is extremely important to us. Of course it will shape how we think.

But there is a lack of diversity in the media and if marginalized groups are in television or movies, it is mostly to be a stock character.

And I don’t want to make it seem like people with privilege aren’t aware of their privileges or entitlements. They know and they will fight for it at all costs. One tacit is acting ignorant or crying political correctness.

For a cheap joke a late night comedian will attacks trans-women’s femininity; a TV show will feature male characters joking around about their shrew-like wives and make sexist degrading comments about women’s bodies; a movie will feature a wise talking sassy black woman with little education etc. etc. repeat this 3 million times across every medium. Yet, people have the audacity to act like pop culture or religion doesn’t affect what we consider to be true.

Anyways, “it’s just a preference” really isn’t just a preference. Saying you don’t like black men or fat people or whatever was obviously shaped by some force.

2010 Super Bowl

This year I, like nearly 100 million other Americans, will watch the super bowl. However, this fact has very little to do with the game of football. I have no idea what occurs in this game, and if you asked me to name more than 3 football games I’d probably just walk away. The few times I’ve gone to see my high school team play I’ve left even more confused than before. No, I watch the super bowl for the ads.

Let’s be honest, the ads are awesome. About 99% of the time I watch T.V. ads make me want to bang my  head against a cement block repeatedly (a lethal combination of sexist and stupid), Super Bowl ads are different. First of all, they’re well put together because…well they have to be for that  much money and that big an audience. And if they’re not “good” they at least bring people together – as does the sporting event as a whole.

Remember the Magic Fridge?

Now, the merits of this commercial are certainly debatable, sure. But I remember kids at school were talking about it for days afterwards. Not in the “yay alcohol” way but in the “haha that was funny” way…just to be clear.

But not this year. This year the topic of Super Bowl Ads is tearing people right down the middle…right along the lines us feminists know very well. Yep. Pro-life  versus pro-choice will rear its adorable little head in an unusual place: an audience of predominately drunk men.

Christian group Focus on the Family has paid about $2.5 million to run an ad focusing on football player Tim Tebow and the fact that his mother was told to have an abortion, didn’t, then gave birth to one of the greatest college football players ever.

While I do think it’s unfair to completely condemn this commercial before having ever seen it, I did check out Focus on the Family’s website. They advocate complete abstinence outside of marriage, with this winner of a paragraph included: Looking at the history of teen birth rates, it can appear that rates have lowered significantly and that there’s less reason to educate our youth about sexuality. The rates have in fact decreased, but the higher historical numbers represent married teens. And, married teens tend to face less life-long negative consequences of teenage births than unmarried teens.

Yep, that's Tim Tebow. With the bible verses under his eyes.

No. We need sex education. We need it. And I’m sorry, what are these life-long negative consequences that teens are facing by marrying their high school sweethearts because of an accident? Not that I’m saying that never works, but honestly, why does that make everything better?

Although, at the same time, they do have what I will term “not-negative” articles on homosexuality and transgenderism.

So, yeah, I don’t want to completely judge the organization Focus on the Family or the commercial (especially since I haven’t seen it yet) but honestly, the fact that CBS is willing to run a commercial that is taking any type of definitive stance on a controversial issue is just not okay in my book. Honestly, I don’t think the Super Bowl is the right place to address this issue, even if Focus on the Family spokesperson, Gary Schneeberger, believes that, “there is nothing political or controversial about the spot” and that it’s just about “family values.”

Whether or not the ad uses the words “abortion” or “pro-life” doesn’t mean America will look at what they’re seeing as unbiased. The message here seems to be “abortion is a mistake.” The only mistake is not viewing this as an issue of choice. Tim Tebow’s mother had a choice: she chose not to have an abortion. That we’re incapable of viewing this situation as a choice is the real problem.

Can’t we just leave the Super Bowl as one of the very few times our country comes together? We lose this and we’re left with very few times that that actually happens.

Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network

When I read the news every morning, I don’t expect to read good things. If I read about a bombing in the Middle East or the murder of a gay teen in Puerto Rico I’m certainly upset about it, but it’s sad to say that I almost expect it. Our world is fueled by hate, and it always seems to have been. But this morning I came across an article that even I didn’t expect to encounter, and sadly it’s familiar to me, more familiar than it ever should be.

This study, Harsh Realities: The Experiences of Transgender Students in School carried out by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Network, is about transgendered youth in American high schools. Its contents are highly disturbing. For instance, this study found that two-thirds of transgender students felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation (69%) and how they expressed their gender (65%), and only 24% of the students said that the school policy included specific protections based on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

When I read this, I fell into a state of shock. How could this even be allowed to happen? How can so many of these teenagers fear for their safety and their lives simply because they’re different from others? And yet even I’ve witnessed this firsthand, even though I live on the opposite side of the world-New Zealand.

When I was in primary school I knew one boy three years younger than me, and he was really feminine. He dressed in girl’s clothes, spoke like a girl, and referred to himself as a girl. He was new to the school that year, and yet from his first day he was tormented and alienated by his classmates; only eight and nine years old. He was bullied, beaten up and made fun of on a daily basis. In the end his parents moved him away because the bullying was becoming dangerous. I remember how upset he used to look when others were picking on him, and I also remember the guilt that I felt when I stood by and didn’t do anything. I still kick myself over that. I don’t know where he went, and I don’t know what he’s doing now. He’ll have almost finished his first year of high school this year. Are the statistics in my country the same as they are in the USA? Does he still feel unsafe at school? Is he still being bullied?

Is he still alive?

And sadly, for many transgendered teens all over the world, this question could well be answered with “no”.

Maybe one day people will look beyond looks and preferences and realize that deep down, we’re all the same. I hope that day comes soon, because there’s almost no time left for these teenagers. The clock is ticking.

Maybe with more and more content out there in the world like this, more people will begin to understand…I can only hope.