My instinct is to apologize for the lack of posts this summer - I’ve basically only posted a couple of times since my Spring Quarter. However, as part of accepting and getting used to my limitations, and in recognizing that my blog can be just a casually updated space, I’ll just start by putting out there my desire to apologize (which is different, somehow).
As you may have gathered from my last post, the past few months have been pretty difficult for me. I’ve spent most of it reflecting on this past year and the transitions that came with it: moving back to Portland, starting school, finding work, building community, forming relationships, and how my gender transition colors all of those elements. I had been so caught up in my classwork, internship, research, and working life that I simply did not have the mental energy to process all of these things until school ended, and now that I have the time for it it’s been all-consuming and somewhat earth shattering.
During the school year I was so caught up in so many different things I really only had the energy to feel sad, defeated, and overwhelmed. Now that those responsibilities have dipped and my energy reserves have replenished, I’m finding those reserves are constantly burning with rage at the experiences. Moreover, I’m finding myself unable to contain this rage and have been (somewhat productively, somewhat unproductively, seeking change and meeting resistance. Here are the big things that have been going on:
Resistance to permanent and consistent sharing of all employee pronouns at work as a way of avoiding employee misgendering/placing that burden on trans staff
The director of my department’s apparent/perceived/projected indifference at my being misgendered and excluded due to my gender
My therapist telling me that I was asking too much by wanting trans-competent care, objectifying/fetishizing trans needs and competent care as “fascinating” subjects to ruminate on, and ultimately not being able to distinguish marginalized care of one sort from another (ie he compared the desire of survivors of sexual assault to be treated by other survivors to the desire of queer/trans folk wanting queer/trans therapists)
Certainly there are a lot of larger and smaller components to each of these, but the underlying structure that bothers me is the hypocrisy of the double-standards that allow each of these situations to exist. I’ve come to this conclusion (with the help of many long talks with my boyfriend, thanks love) primarily through gender-swapped thought experiments:
How would these various gatekeepers respond if my gender was binary conforming?
Certainly I cannot prove that things would be different, but common-sense says that it would completely change these situations. Let’s imagine these scenarios, using the marginalized gender of the two binary genders. What if a woman brought these concerns to these various institutional sources of power?
How quickly would a supervisor, the director of a school, squash harassment in the form of peers intentionally misgendering a woman because her body had a little extra hair, or she had broad shoulders, or a flatter chest? I imagine even the professors overhearing this kind of harassment would step-in and administer some kind of discipline, whereas for me they often perpetrate it. Similarly, how quickly would faculty swoop in, or even other students, to include me in study groups, field trips, and social events if they knew a female student was being excluded because she was a woman? There would be significant legal repercussions as well - how easily would that student or employee win their Title IX lawsuit? (Pretty easily, so long as they’re not transgender).
In the case of the therapist, the scenario is simply absurd. Women wanting female therapists is more or less the expectation, and a male therapist so much as suggesting there aren’t enough female therapists in a major city to provide competent care could easily ruin his career or practice. In my case, I didn’t even suggest I needed a non-binary therapist - merely a transgender or even trans-knowledgeable queer therapist.
Yet - the reality is these comparisons are not visible to ciscentric society. When I talk to my supervisors, I have to explain why staff being misgendered is a big deal - and do so slightly less I seem like I’m just out to make trouble. With the director of my department I have to focus on scarier issues, like harassment and how exclusion affects my grades and learning, least she dismiss me completely (she still has). With my therapist, I filed a grievance and the eventual response was that they provided my therapist with opportunities to advance his understanding - no suggestion of discipline, not even forced retraining, and no apology.
And why should there be? At the end of the day, my gender is more joke than real in most eyes. Asking for respect surrounding it has to be a joke too, right?
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
andulkaphoto
yousharknotpass
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
areudirty
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
