Hi Bil;thanks for starting this conversation.
I have questions. First who am I? In part;
I'm 45 years old and have only been out/actively FTM for 2 years. Prior to that, I was out/proud butch lesbian and part of the Disability and Gay communities as an activist/advocate.

In the spirit of community, questions are important. What about the simple concept of "when one is oppressed, all are oppressed?" Where does the frustration/hatred of trans people com from? From judging a book by it's cover? Is that what happens when people "don't get", "don't understand" what "those" LGB people do "in bed?"
I've seen this in the disability community. "if you appear in a chair or using two canes, are you less knowledgeable than the able bodied person?"
(this happend over and over to friends of mine, despite the ADA)

When someone get's fired, if there's an ENDA law with no T, are they getting fired because they're LGB or because they "look differently" gendered? I imagine the scenario of the butch or fairy getting fired and fights in court saying, "no, no I'm not trans, only gay/les". How would this fight, if it happened effect community?

I see the feminist connection and have more questions. What about the woman broadcaster who was fired/nearly fired because she looked old or fat? What about Delta Burke nearly losing her "Designing Women" job cause she "gained a few?"

For me, I hope the issue is to join communities. For me, yes. GLBT and Q and Straight allies, Immigrant, Disabled. "Together we are stronger"
Thanks community; yours, Sonam Ben

You have mail.

Can we even consider childhood gender-variance, adolescent/adult gender variance, and adolescent/adult transsexualism and genderqueerness the same thing?

I'm skeptical. Young children are faced with gender roles. Older children, shortly before puberty, are faced with the prospect of body changes, and many TS people, myself included, first became aware of our gender dysphoria shortly before puberty. Adolescent/adult transsexualism may correlate with gender variance, but it isn't the same thing.

This isn't to dismiss the needs of gender-variant kids.

Thanks, Monica. I will say this. My partner said in the very beginning that he didn't want me to give up my identity just so that he could have his. But it's still a question for me. I recently attended an extended family function (alone - I don't want to subject ANYONE else to that) and people were asking my why I had moved to Tucson. I told them it was to be with my boifriend. And I could hear them internally saying, "hallelujah, she's seen the light." If only they knew!

Thanks, Tobi. You and I have similar definitions on this one.

In the end, we're not labels. The labels are tools that we can use to describe ourselves, so that people can get closer to understanding us. We should never allow ourselves to live our lives chasing the labels.

You got mail, too.

Seriously, let's use these questions as open threads in the weeks to come. There are a lot of good ones here.

It's not what feminism is, but I think the most powerful lesson I learned from feminism was one of perspective--not the normal people versus the powerful type of imagery, but just that everyone has a bunch of stuff that they take for granted when they look at a situation. And when you take all of that stuff away (and perhaps replace it with different stuff), it radically alters the way that things look.

It's such a powerful tool for talking to people about so many things. And it's why Bil's post here is so beautiful.

Abby,
How are you defining "transgendered"?
I think you are using a broad definition that includes many ways of being "trans" that I am not including. I may be wrong about my definition, so this has been a valuable discussion.

By the way, Bil, thanks and good for you, as far as getting a word directly to Baron Hill is concerned. I've tried a number of times to get past the palace guard at his local offices and in DC, and haven't been able to get past the aides. He's definitely in a tough race again against Mike Sodrel, who's somewhere to the right of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Do you feel Hill's educable on the issue, if he gets past Sodrel again? If you wish to answer offline, you have my email.

What strikes me about your response to poolboi, Grace, is your use of "us." One thing that feminist theory has taught me (I was a women's studies major in college), is how frequently universalizing claims serve to silence, marginalize, and make invisible particular groups of people.

So, in the interest of education and not falling into sexist, cissexist, racist, classist, or otherwise oppressive traps, can we (all of us engaging in this conversation, in good faith) clarify who is being referenced with "we" and "us?"

Because for some people, educating others is a pain in the ass and a nuisance, but nonetheless "a very minor cost." However, that's not the case for everyone upon whom the burden of educating falls. For some people, calling out the privilege in the expectation that someone be educated in order to be a better ally isn't about patrolling the borders of the politically correct, but about the need to prioritize between helping people understand issues and keeping ourselves, families, friends, and loved ones alive and safe.

There is only so much energy, time, and effort that any one person has in a day, week, month, year, or their lifetime. When we choose to engage in educating those who could be better allies, we are certainly working to advance a cause, but what about when that education comes at the expense of efforts that could have saved someone's life or job, or otherwise mitigated the right-here-right-now effects of oppression?

I'll give you an example from recent, personal experience. About a week ago, maybe a little more, I posted a heads-up in an online feminist community about the possibility of ICE raids in Mississippi. Someone responded wondering what the connection was between immigration and feminism. Thus ensued a very heated, sometimes bitter, and long-winded conversation about why feminists should care about issues that affect women and people who aren't "just like them," why immigration is a feminist issue, and a lot of effort was put forth into educating people about why it mattered. During the 24 hours or so in which this conversation took place, While many of us were spending time educating a few people, hundreds of people were being arrested and a community was being destroyed. I don't know what could have happened differently, I don't have very many contacts in Mississippi because I've never lived in the south, but if instead of telling someone, point-by-point, what they could have found out with a little bit of googling and reading, we had all been calling everyone we knew and letting them know about the possibility of raids - would workers have stayed home that day? Would there be fewer people in detention now? I can't say for sure, but I can say that it was more than "frustrating" or "a pain" for those people who never got the word that their lives could be destroyed that morning.

As an able-bodied, upper-middle class, college-educated cis-gendered Jewish queer woman who is usually (although not always) perceived as white, I'm more often on the ally side of the ally/marginalized community member line. And so, I often work to educate others because I recognize that action as a responsibility of being an ally and a luxury I have because it is not MY life that is being challenged and threatened by these issues, most of the time. I believe in education, but I also believe in self-education.

There was a time when my scope of feminism was mostly centered around things that I saw as sexist. My vision was moderated by all of those aforementioned identities and social positions. But I had an inkling, and heard some whispering about the whiteness and racism of the US feminist movement, so I figured I should probably read more feminists and women of color, because it sounded like something I'd care about. Lo and behold, there was a treasure trove of information out there, and I've been able to continuously educate myself about what it means to be a white feminist, and an ally to feminists and women of color, and it's an ongoing process - but my hand wasn't held by kind, soft-spoken, warm-hearted women of color making me feel good about trying to do better. I'm not saying this in an effort to paint myself as the most awesome ally ever, but to point out that it's actually not that hard to educate yourself. It's certainly harder for some than others, but if you're sitting here reading this blog and these comments, you could probably also be reading .

I work, professionally, as a community educator. I spend a lot of my working and non-working time educating people, most of the time about social challenges and issues facing groups of people I am not identified or aligned with. I believe in the power of education. But when cisguys come to me begging to have me take care of them and hold their hand while their eyes are opened up to the misogyny, fear, sexism, and general shittiness I deal with on a daily basis, my inclination is to say: "read a book. I have to walk home safely tonight, and am not comfortable being distracted on my cell phone while I explain rape culture to you." (Note: I'm not trying to characterize this post or the attitudes of people here like that, but it happens a lot and a lot of the anger that can come up when confronted with requests for education, even when you're polite and well-intentioned, is a result of a long pattern of self-absorbed assholes who expect to be catered to.)

So, yeah, sometimes it's just a pain, but sometimes it's more than just a minor inconvenience for some of "us."

That all being said, I think there is value to this thread, and as an ally to trans people and gender non-conforming people, and as a feminist (although, as previously mentioned, I have less patience for explaining MY issues than I do educating as an ally), I'm interested in doing what I can to foster greater knowledge, awareness, and education. However, I think it's incredibly important that all of us involved in this conversation remember the privilege inherent in asking to be educated, and that it's not simply a matter of being "PC" or a pain in the ass.

Hey Bil. Learn more? I hope until I'm worm food. The why I don't buy into it is actually a pretty short and boring story. I locate my reality within mainstream culture. My goal has always been to expand social and cultural institutions/conventions rather than to subvert or overturn them. So for me the more practical question is not one of convincing anyone to change their mind, but how to navigate the differences in the service of commonly identified goals.