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Showing posts with label transsexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transsexuality. Show all posts
Saturday, May 30, 2009
What Does It Mean To Be Pansexual?
Lately I've been struggling with that exact question. What does it mean to be pansexual? Ignoring the omnipresent stupid joke thrown in there ("Someone who likes to do it with pots and pans?"), the answers are usually very similar- something about liking many genders, more than the male/female duo covered by bisexuality. And I agree with that definition.
And yet, almost every time I read someone's description of pansexuality, I cringe, as my eyes end up alighting on the all-too-common phrase "gender-blind".
I'll come right out and say it- I take issue with the idea of pansexuality as a state of being gender-blind. If anything, as a pansexual, I feel that I am the complete opposite of blind when it comes to my consideration of the sexual attractiveness of an individual. Gender matters to me- I am completely and utterly passionate about it, and it's one of many things that I respond to in another person. I simply cannot say that I am apathetic about gender, that I don't care if my lover is male or female or trans or two-spirited or third-gender or genderqueer. Of course I care, and it gets me hot to know that he/she/ze is any of those things. I get hot over their bodies. I get hot about their gender identities and gender expression. And that is why I simply find it hard to align myself with the label of "pansexual" when people keep on tossing terms like "gender-blind" around. I always feel like I need to add these caveats in order to differentiate myself and to explain.
But it's more than just this personal dissonance. I feel slightly betrayed by what "gender-blind" really means, in a political sense. I dislike this concept of pansexuality because it completely erases the desirability of trans/intersex bodies- especially as a "normal" desirability that is not part of, say, the strong T-girl fetish of a trannychaser. This "gender-blind" definition removes the possibility that someone could simply find trans bodies to be sexy BECAUSE they are trans, and instead makes it out to be an exception to the rule, laden with words like "in spite of". Why, one definition reads thus: "The ones who fall in love with people, regardless of gender, even transsexuals.". Even transsexuals. The disgust/contempt for transpeople drips off of that statement (even though I believe its writer to actually have good intentions). It's such a pervasive attitude, that nobody in their right mind could ever see a trans body as hot. It's a cissexist (is that a real term? If not, I'm totally coining it!) stance that firmly puts transpeople "in their place" by othering them.
And all that in a sexual orientation that is supposed to remedy the marginalization of those outside the gender binary!
But of course it is easy to want to applaud for pansexuality. It plays to the old and well-worn script of the accepting lover, the one we all want for ourselves. On the revelation of his/her/hir trans status, the accepting lover decides he/she/ze can "handle it". The phrases "I still love you for you.", "I love you in spite of . . ." and "I love you regardless." are thrown about and everybody feels good and happy and warm. We like it because pansexuality is the ultimate comfort- that someone could love you in spite of your flaws, whether that flaw is the penis you were born with but want to get rid of, or the rolls of fat on your body, or the skin you always worry is too dark to be sexy. It feels good to have that reassurance, the consolation of unconditional love.
The only problem with this is that it completely buys into the status quo. It subverts nothing, and in fact reinforces these ideas that you can only be truly sexy if you are cisgender, thin, white, etc.. What it says is "You aren't sexy, but I love you anyways." And maybe it's just me, but I know that I'd be more than a little upset if someone told me they loved me "in spite of" something about me that wasn't negative. I'm waiting for a new script- the one where the robe drops and the response is "You are so fucking sexy."- not "I think I can learn to love you."
The idea that pansexuality is somehow better than other orientations is very telling in this regard. It reminds me of Stephen Colbert's eponymous character's bragging claim that he doesn't see race. I can even hear the conversation in my head now: "Oooh, pansexual. How wonderful for you- how amazing that you are able to be so egalitarian, so open-minded, to not even see gender!". (Or, as I read on a Deviant Art blog: "I so badly WANT to be a pansexual. It's all I believe in, all anybody espouses who's enlightened!"). But in order to be enlightened, you have to have overcome all those old preconceived ways of thinking. It sounds like a compliment. It even sounds like it's trans-friendly, but it's not. It describes a world where trans bodies can never be desirable naturally, but have to be the result of some sort of monumental mental gymnastics. Not to mention that it is highly offensive to accepted understandings of sexuality. Enlightenment implies choice, as if you simply work at it long and hard enough, you can get an erection for a transguy. For most of us, who feel our sexuality was not something chosen, the belief that pansexuality is superior is horrible- setting anybody not pansexual up for failure because they cannot "get over" their transphobia and start liking gender-variant bodies. In every way possible, the idea of pansexuality as gender-blind and enlightened purports to be trans-friendly while in reality being quite transphobic and upholding the status quo.
And don't get me wrong- I'm not trying to say that pansexuality is the sort of political identity people take on only in order to subvert the status quo. I'm wary of anybody who says that any sexual orientation has some ulterior goal/motivation other than sex and love, in fact. I am most certain that there are pansexuals out there who do feel that the gender-blind definition of pansexuality fits them perfectly. Certainly there are even bisexuals who feel that way (dealing solely with the two mainstream genders, of course). I'm not saying that the definition isn't true, but merely that it's limiting, and that its implications subtly influence our understanding of trans people and, as I'll explain below- of sex.
I'm tired of being told that pansexuals fall in love with personalities and with people, rather than fall in lust with bodies and genders. In no other definition of sexuality does the word "love" pop up so frequently. Homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, even asexuality, all rely on words like "attraction" when we define them, which implies a range of feelings (aesthetics, romance, etc.) but most importantly, sex. Pansexuality, however, has been whitewashed of its sex, often in a sex-negative way.
I can hear it yet again- that admiring voice saying "Oooh, pansexual- gender-blind, so that you fall in love with personalities and not bodies! How wonderfully enlightened! How incredible! To not be so focused on such a base thing like sex, but to truly love people for who they are!"
Except that I am sexual. Oooh boy, am I sexual. When I am lying in bed with one hand stuffed into my panties and a fantasy playing on the back of my eyelids, I am not watching a romance where I fall in love with a character "regardless of gender" and we finally consummate our love. No, my fantasies feature bodies, beautiful bodies doing dirty, sexual things. I often see individuals and I want to fuck them, simple as that. No needing to know them. But pansexuality does not offer me that option. Apparently casual sex for the pansexual is out of the question, because we fall in love with people, not anonymous bodies in heat like straight and gay and bisexual people sometimes do.
Why the hypocrisy? Why is it widely understood that gay people and straight people feel lust based on a whole complex combination of aspects, with sexual attraction as the primary one, but pansexuals aren't allowed the same? Does it all come creeping back to the aforementioned problem with trans bodies, that of course it cannot be primarily or evenly wholly sexual, because nobody would ever be able to feel attraction for a transperson without being perfect in every other way, to make up for their "deficiency"? And what's with the glowing discussions of pansexuality as enlightened for seeing personality before sex? I don't know . . . it scares me, as an intensely sexual being, to be told that I am less moral because I get the desire to fuck somebody based on the physical- regardless of whether I follow through with that or not. It makes me worry that we are only thinly veiling our real deep-seated issues with sex, our view that it is something dirty and perverse and wrong, only validated by love and "nobler intentions" than getting your rocks off.
I have brought this topic up in conversation before and have been shot down and dismissed as nitpicking, but I just don't think that's true. Every time somebody says that pansexuality is about loving people regardless of their gender, it whittles away at the concept that gender-variant/trans/intersex bodies can be sexually desirable. Every time pansexuality is declared to be about love first and sex later, it implies that we have made a choice to put sex aside in order to be more enlightened. Every time that pansexuality is lauded over other orientations, it sends out a sex-negative message that sexual desire is base, lewd, something dirty to be sneered at and looked down upon compared to "pure" romantic love.
And I'm not sure I want to be a part of these implicit messages. So what am I left with? How can I construe how I feel without having to direct everybody to my blog? I picked up "pansexual" as a label for myself years back when I first heard it and breathed a sigh of relief, that I could condense a paragraph of sexual attractions into one neat little word. But that has no longer become the case, and I wonder if I should be making myself a new label, or perhaps fighting for an expanded, more nuanced understanding of pansexuality. All I can say is that I'm utterly confused on where I stand, and tired of correcting people, tired of hearing the words "gender-blind" and "personality". My sexuality has never been easy, but lately it's gotten to the point where I can no longer stand by the "P" word. What's a girl who wants to fuck all genders to do?
And yet, almost every time I read someone's description of pansexuality, I cringe, as my eyes end up alighting on the all-too-common phrase "gender-blind".
I'll come right out and say it- I take issue with the idea of pansexuality as a state of being gender-blind. If anything, as a pansexual, I feel that I am the complete opposite of blind when it comes to my consideration of the sexual attractiveness of an individual. Gender matters to me- I am completely and utterly passionate about it, and it's one of many things that I respond to in another person. I simply cannot say that I am apathetic about gender, that I don't care if my lover is male or female or trans or two-spirited or third-gender or genderqueer. Of course I care, and it gets me hot to know that he/she/ze is any of those things. I get hot over their bodies. I get hot about their gender identities and gender expression. And that is why I simply find it hard to align myself with the label of "pansexual" when people keep on tossing terms like "gender-blind" around. I always feel like I need to add these caveats in order to differentiate myself and to explain.
But it's more than just this personal dissonance. I feel slightly betrayed by what "gender-blind" really means, in a political sense. I dislike this concept of pansexuality because it completely erases the desirability of trans/intersex bodies- especially as a "normal" desirability that is not part of, say, the strong T-girl fetish of a trannychaser. This "gender-blind" definition removes the possibility that someone could simply find trans bodies to be sexy BECAUSE they are trans, and instead makes it out to be an exception to the rule, laden with words like "in spite of". Why, one definition reads thus: "The ones who fall in love with people, regardless of gender, even transsexuals.". Even transsexuals. The disgust/contempt for transpeople drips off of that statement (even though I believe its writer to actually have good intentions). It's such a pervasive attitude, that nobody in their right mind could ever see a trans body as hot. It's a cissexist (is that a real term? If not, I'm totally coining it!) stance that firmly puts transpeople "in their place" by othering them.
And all that in a sexual orientation that is supposed to remedy the marginalization of those outside the gender binary!
But of course it is easy to want to applaud for pansexuality. It plays to the old and well-worn script of the accepting lover, the one we all want for ourselves. On the revelation of his/her/hir trans status, the accepting lover decides he/she/ze can "handle it". The phrases "I still love you for you.", "I love you in spite of . . ." and "I love you regardless." are thrown about and everybody feels good and happy and warm. We like it because pansexuality is the ultimate comfort- that someone could love you in spite of your flaws, whether that flaw is the penis you were born with but want to get rid of, or the rolls of fat on your body, or the skin you always worry is too dark to be sexy. It feels good to have that reassurance, the consolation of unconditional love.
The only problem with this is that it completely buys into the status quo. It subverts nothing, and in fact reinforces these ideas that you can only be truly sexy if you are cisgender, thin, white, etc.. What it says is "You aren't sexy, but I love you anyways." And maybe it's just me, but I know that I'd be more than a little upset if someone told me they loved me "in spite of" something about me that wasn't negative. I'm waiting for a new script- the one where the robe drops and the response is "You are so fucking sexy."- not "I think I can learn to love you."
The idea that pansexuality is somehow better than other orientations is very telling in this regard. It reminds me of Stephen Colbert's eponymous character's bragging claim that he doesn't see race. I can even hear the conversation in my head now: "Oooh, pansexual. How wonderful for you- how amazing that you are able to be so egalitarian, so open-minded, to not even see gender!". (Or, as I read on a Deviant Art blog: "I so badly WANT to be a pansexual. It's all I believe in, all anybody espouses who's enlightened!"). But in order to be enlightened, you have to have overcome all those old preconceived ways of thinking. It sounds like a compliment. It even sounds like it's trans-friendly, but it's not. It describes a world where trans bodies can never be desirable naturally, but have to be the result of some sort of monumental mental gymnastics. Not to mention that it is highly offensive to accepted understandings of sexuality. Enlightenment implies choice, as if you simply work at it long and hard enough, you can get an erection for a transguy. For most of us, who feel our sexuality was not something chosen, the belief that pansexuality is superior is horrible- setting anybody not pansexual up for failure because they cannot "get over" their transphobia and start liking gender-variant bodies. In every way possible, the idea of pansexuality as gender-blind and enlightened purports to be trans-friendly while in reality being quite transphobic and upholding the status quo.
And don't get me wrong- I'm not trying to say that pansexuality is the sort of political identity people take on only in order to subvert the status quo. I'm wary of anybody who says that any sexual orientation has some ulterior goal/motivation other than sex and love, in fact. I am most certain that there are pansexuals out there who do feel that the gender-blind definition of pansexuality fits them perfectly. Certainly there are even bisexuals who feel that way (dealing solely with the two mainstream genders, of course). I'm not saying that the definition isn't true, but merely that it's limiting, and that its implications subtly influence our understanding of trans people and, as I'll explain below- of sex.
I'm tired of being told that pansexuals fall in love with personalities and with people, rather than fall in lust with bodies and genders. In no other definition of sexuality does the word "love" pop up so frequently. Homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, even asexuality, all rely on words like "attraction" when we define them, which implies a range of feelings (aesthetics, romance, etc.) but most importantly, sex. Pansexuality, however, has been whitewashed of its sex, often in a sex-negative way.
I can hear it yet again- that admiring voice saying "Oooh, pansexual- gender-blind, so that you fall in love with personalities and not bodies! How wonderfully enlightened! How incredible! To not be so focused on such a base thing like sex, but to truly love people for who they are!"
Except that I am sexual. Oooh boy, am I sexual. When I am lying in bed with one hand stuffed into my panties and a fantasy playing on the back of my eyelids, I am not watching a romance where I fall in love with a character "regardless of gender" and we finally consummate our love. No, my fantasies feature bodies, beautiful bodies doing dirty, sexual things. I often see individuals and I want to fuck them, simple as that. No needing to know them. But pansexuality does not offer me that option. Apparently casual sex for the pansexual is out of the question, because we fall in love with people, not anonymous bodies in heat like straight and gay and bisexual people sometimes do.
Why the hypocrisy? Why is it widely understood that gay people and straight people feel lust based on a whole complex combination of aspects, with sexual attraction as the primary one, but pansexuals aren't allowed the same? Does it all come creeping back to the aforementioned problem with trans bodies, that of course it cannot be primarily or evenly wholly sexual, because nobody would ever be able to feel attraction for a transperson without being perfect in every other way, to make up for their "deficiency"? And what's with the glowing discussions of pansexuality as enlightened for seeing personality before sex? I don't know . . . it scares me, as an intensely sexual being, to be told that I am less moral because I get the desire to fuck somebody based on the physical- regardless of whether I follow through with that or not. It makes me worry that we are only thinly veiling our real deep-seated issues with sex, our view that it is something dirty and perverse and wrong, only validated by love and "nobler intentions" than getting your rocks off.
I have brought this topic up in conversation before and have been shot down and dismissed as nitpicking, but I just don't think that's true. Every time somebody says that pansexuality is about loving people regardless of their gender, it whittles away at the concept that gender-variant/trans/intersex bodies can be sexually desirable. Every time pansexuality is declared to be about love first and sex later, it implies that we have made a choice to put sex aside in order to be more enlightened. Every time that pansexuality is lauded over other orientations, it sends out a sex-negative message that sexual desire is base, lewd, something dirty to be sneered at and looked down upon compared to "pure" romantic love.
And I'm not sure I want to be a part of these implicit messages. So what am I left with? How can I construe how I feel without having to direct everybody to my blog? I picked up "pansexual" as a label for myself years back when I first heard it and breathed a sigh of relief, that I could condense a paragraph of sexual attractions into one neat little word. But that has no longer become the case, and I wonder if I should be making myself a new label, or perhaps fighting for an expanded, more nuanced understanding of pansexuality. All I can say is that I'm utterly confused on where I stand, and tired of correcting people, tired of hearing the words "gender-blind" and "personality". My sexuality has never been easy, but lately it's gotten to the point where I can no longer stand by the "P" word. What's a girl who wants to fuck all genders to do?
Friday, April 4, 2008
No Shelter From The Storm: Transphobia Rears Its Ugly Head
I know I should be happier.There's a pregnant transman all over the news (Google 'pregnant man') and I should be jumping for joy. Yay for trans visibility! More yay for pregnant transman visibility! Mega yay for the ever-magical process known as childbirth, and the knowledge that a child will grow up in such a tolerant and loving home.
And then I go anywhere on the Internet and my smile droops, my energy drops, and I almost want to cry.
From simple statements of "freak", referrals to daddy-to-be Thomas Beatie as 'it' or, perhaps even worse, as 'she', all the way to arguments about what constitutes a man (general consensus seems to be: penis), anywhere where anyone can make a statement, they're making it. I know that these are growing pangs of a transphobic society getting exposed to novel concepts, and that there's not going to be instant acceptance, and yet I wasn't ready for the hate. I was reading some comments on some post or another and someone had written about forgetting that we queers (gender queers, sexual queers, hell, even just cultural queers) have become accustomed to living in a warm, loving, and most importantly, insulated GLBT communities where acceptance and tolerance reign supreme and our collected numbers allow us to laugh off the bashers and homo- or trans-phobes who come calling with their bigotry and Bible-thumpin'. So it's a terrible shock when something is offered to mainstream society at large- because suddenly everyone comes out of the woodwork to offer their opinion . . . and the most vehement and prevalent seem to be the hate-mongers.
And it hurts. I try to pretend that it doesn't, but God, it does. I'm not even trans, and yet I cringe, I look at what people have to say, and I know that I could never even begin to answer every negative comment, to give them thumbs down (Youtube), report them (Yahoo! Answers) or simply respond. I feel myself drowning in a sea of animosity and misunderstanding, and I am thrown into a fury at the number of people who preface each of their comments with "I totally support gays and lesbians and all that, but this . . .". People seem so anxious to scream out "That's not a man!", and I wonder why they're so scared, what plucking-the-wings-off-flies sort of person they must be when they assert over and over again "WOMAN" and use female pronouns with a mean sort of glee. The anger fades and it's simply replaced with exhaustion. I don't want to fight it, I feel like I can't, and I'm depressed because of it. The only tiny thing that manages to bring life to my spirits is watching the Youtube clip of Thomas seeing the ultrasound of his daughter- that mixture of amazement and love on his face brings me back to the real issue here, which is the beauty of giving birth to a child, and of gorgeous, miraculous transman pregnancy.
Having written that (and somewhat calmed and salved my soul), I would like to address some of the statements that I see written and the questions I hear asked. Sidestepping the obvious bigots, here's something for the other people:
* "Wow, the first pregnant man!". Sorry, everyone. I don't know who's spreading this information, but Thomas Beatie is definitely not the first pregnant transman. Transguys have been having babies for quite a while now, and I hope that in light of the media's attention on this that maybe they can drum up some families willing to step forward and show their normal lives. But even if they don't, we really need to cut with the "first pregnant man" bit. Matt Rice, partner of my fave author and sex activist Pat Califia, gave birth quite a while ago. Not too long ago, transman photographer Kael T. Block posted a gorgeous photograph of a pregnant James (who is now the proud father of a healthy, bouncing baby girl):
* "Wow, the first pregnant man!". Sorry, everyone. I don't know who's spreading this information, but Thomas Beatie is definitely not the first pregnant transman. Transguys have been having babies for quite a while now, and I hope that in light of the media's attention on this that maybe they can drum up some families willing to step forward and show their normal lives. But even if they don't, we really need to cut with the "first pregnant man" bit. Matt Rice, partner of my fave author and sex activist Pat Califia, gave birth quite a while ago. Not too long ago, transman photographer Kael T. Block posted a gorgeous photograph of a pregnant James (who is now the proud father of a healthy, bouncing baby girl):
* "Isn't the baby going to be messed up because of the hormones?". Nope. In order to actually menstruate so they can even get pregnant, transmen must necessarily stop their male hormones. Beatie had been off of hormones for two years before getting pregnant- that baby will be just fine.
* "What about breastfeeding?". What about it? Not every mother chooses to breastfeed her baby, and *many* do so through bottled formula. People who are getting in a hussy over this at least ought to get in a hussy over other women not breastfeeding. There are simply many options for someone who chooses not to- including using formula or having another woman breastfeed the child.
* "It takes hormones and cuts its hair but still keeps the female reproductive organs? Talk about selfish!". This is the weirdest comment that I keep on seeing . . . it's as though people think that Thomas is being some kind of odd transman for still having his uterus and reproductive organs. I think this boils down to ignorance and a lack of understanding about female-to-male transsexuality and surgical options today . . . there are many transmen who have all their inner workings still intact, whether because they want it (possibly for future pregnancy, or other reasons), because it's prohibitively expensive or dangerous, or heck, simply because IT DOESN'T MATTER TO THEM. These people seem to think that if you're going to be a man, you have to give up all options relegated to females. My response: 1) "Why?", and 2) sounds like someone's jealous!
* "That's not a man.". Huh. Debatable, I suppose. I could write hundreds of thousands of words on this topic and never be finished. What makes an individual a certain gender is a highly complex question, and for almost every person's claim, I can make a powerful counterargument (if a man must have a penis, does that mean that men who have lost theirs in combat or accidents are now women? or if claim that only XY chromosomal individuals are men, you better damn well be ready to prove to me that you get a guarantee on a dude's genetic makeup before you make any gender decision about him). I only wish that instead of people simply screaming "Man!" and "Not a man!" back and forth that we could open the dialogue and start asking deep-seated questions about gender and our own prejudices. Until then, respect the law (Thomas is legally recognized as a man), and more importantly, respect his feelings. As my mother always said, if you can't say anything nice (and calling someone something that will insult and hurt them definitely ain't nice), don't say anything at all.
* "That's a woman.". All I have to say to this is: okay . . . so you'd sleep with her? I'd like to see what kind of ladies these people are hanging around, because where I come from, women do not have beards, deep voices, male names, and they do not identify as men. Beatie is a man, or, if we must get really precise, a transman. For anyone who simply refuses to call him a man because he is pregnant or for whatever reason, I challenge them to deny that he is a transman.
* "Yeah, how are they going to explain that to the kid? Actually I'm your daddy but I gave birth to you . . .". Oh, I know. And God, can you imagine those crazy single-parent families where the parent has to try to explain where the kid came from? And those divorced freaks? Oh, and man, adopted kids! (Heavy, dripping sarcasm). Families come in so many different ways, and just because it's different doesn't mean kids will have a hard time understanding it. I think it's brilliant.
* "She thinks she's a man because she grew up without a mom.". Yeah, I heard him talk about that on Oprah, too. If only people could hear from a broad spectrum of transmen- the ones who had strong feminine presences in life and still happened to be trans. Drop the discussions of "she's a confused woman" and freaking listen to what he's saying; what he's feeling. The common way to take power away from anyone is to question their mental faculties- it's happened time and time before.
* "You don't mess with what God gave you.". Hah. Which is why we never do things like repair cleft lips or other disfigurements, or administer medicine when people are sick- because that's God's will that they have such things, or die from their disease. Right? I'm not all that religious, but I can tell you that we certainly intervene all the time in what was naturally given to us. You don't get to use that argument until you're living an all-natural life.
And there's probably tons more, but I'm tired (and getting more depressed yet again browsing online for stuff to respond to). The fact of the matter is that Thomas Beatie has done something amazing- and the least of it is being a pregnant man. It is about stepping up and making his story known, and regardless of what his motives are, it's definitely shaking the world up (a great thing) and letting people know of the possibilities that are out there- of transsexuality, of living openly and bravely. Amen to that.
Congratulations, Thomas and Nancy. Let's hope the forces of love and tolerance and at least the seeking of understanding prevail, so I can be happy again.
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