Today’s installment of Charles Responds to Wayward Googlers brings you a brief lesson on trans* history and etiquette. Buckle in!
Before I can proceed with today’s episode, I must note that “man becoming a woman” or “woman becoming a man” is an outdated way of phrasing transition which has largely fallen out of favor with the trans community (or if it hasn’t, it really should), not only because it’s awkward, but because it’s a very simple, kind of insidious way to de-legitimatize trans* existence. Saying that someone, through medical transition, “becomes” a man or a woman is the same as saying that anyone who has not, cannot, will not, or does not want to go through the “full” transition is not a valid member of their identified gender, and it ties another knot in the rope that binds sex and gender as somehow irretrievably linked ideas – which is what causes so much trouble (or a lot of trouble, anyway) for trans* people in the first place.
A much better way to phrase things is to say that someone was male or female assigned at birth, and is transitioning – because it is not their status as a man or women which is changing (and do forgive me for binary-specific language, but as of now there isn’t really much of a system or general recognition of non-binaries, so the languages, situations, and concerns are often considerably different), but because their appearance, and, often, social presence is. Medical transition too often becomes the axis around which trans* narratives revolve, which is, in many cases, an accurate portrayal, but certainly not universally. Respect diversity! and all that.
That said, the first “man to become a woman” was in fact not Christine Jorgensen, but a different woman entirely.
Filed under: Charles responds to wayward googlers | 1 Comment
Just so you know,
Same-sex marriage* is now legal in New York State!
Which is tremendous.
Now to make the world a genuinely accepting and friendly place for people in under all parts of the rainbow umbrella.
Which is significantly harder and takes much longer to accomplish.
*People seem to really like calling this “gay marriage,” which I hate. Yes, most of those will be marriages between people of the same gender – but not all. No one seems to talk about it much, but same-sex marriage is also, in a lot of places, a trans issue, as many trans people – even those who are heterosexual - find it difficult or impossible to marry their partners in many places because they are incapable of changing the documents that legally establish their sex, so their parntership is considered by the state to be “gay” - and is, thus, illegal. So the progress made by allowing those who are legally the same sex even benefits “opposite gender” couples.
Filed under: LGBTQetc. | 3 Comments
When considering good books for asexuals, Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci was the first to come to mind. It was a very important book for me as a young lad just stumbling into the dark and ominous Adolescent Woods, and for being so it became a kind of behemoth in my memory, a perfect representation of everything it meant to be very definitively Not Interested in a culture (and, more immediately, peer group) which glorified Interest above all things.
Boy Proof is a short, pretty simple book for teenagers about a teenager who calls herself Egg after her favorite character in a fairly popular science fiction franchise (which is pretty clearly meant to mirror The Matrix, right down to the ass-kicking, short-haired woman in a post-apocalyptic Earth*). Egg considers herself “boy proof,” being of the opinion that romance and sex and all of that distracting adolescent nonsense gets you nowhere, whereas a cool social disconnect and rugged self-reliance gets you everywhere.
When I first read it as about a thirteen or fourteen-year-old, it immediately became extremely beloved to me – here, finally, I had a teenager who wasn’t in a prolonged pre-coupled state, or even just casually indifferent to the whole ordeal. Egg is vehemently opposed to the idea of coupling up at the beginning, and even in the end, when she’s softened and is more receptive to at least the potential for friendship, she isn’t running around, desperate for a relationship. Egg is her own person, and as a younger person who was nothing short of insulted by the suggestion that ending up dating someone was a happy inevitability of existing as a human, I read her as being exactly like me.
Unfortunately, as with all glorified memories, it was exaggerated and somewhat inaccurate. Egg isn’t aromantic, and she definitely isn’t asexual – they aren’t excessive, but there are definitely scenes in the book very strongly establishing that Egg is sexual, she just doesn’t let that become a defining factor of her life.
And that’s most of why I’m still including Boy Proof in my list of good books for asexuals, because even though Egg (and later, Victoria) is not asexual, and thus a lot of her experiences just don’t overlap with those of aces, she doesn’t really act on it at all, and outside of a few moments describing various fantasies (though still in a very PG-13 kind of way), she remains untethered, and happily so, for basically the entire book. Egg could well be demiromantic, and outside of that she has, for a lot of the story, the kind of determined attitude hell bent on remaining uncoupled (and taking steps specifically to remain so, by making herself “boy proof” – hence the title) visible in a lot of aces, particularly if they’ve had to fight people to have any preference for singlehood and celibacy taken seriously.
*Or at least this is how I read it, and I will continue having read it this way until Cecil Castellucci herself tells me otherwise.
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Asexuality and Christianity
In the great and protracted Are Asexuals Hurt Because They’re Asexual battle (a pretty straightforward if head-scratchingly inexplicable argument that even more inexplicably Just Keeps Going), the issue of asexuality in regards to various religious traditions is often excused by “well, celibacy is always seen as a Good Thing” and then swiftly brushed under the rug. I, and a variety of voices who piped up particularly during the great Privilege Denying Asexuals hullabaloo of June ’11 (if you missed it, well, you’re happier for it, I assure you), think this is wrong.
Filed under: asexuality, it's not all sunshine and kittens | 7 Comments
If you have spent more than ten minutes in the asexual community, you almost definitely know what Doctor Who is, which is basically the best show to ever exist, about an alien called the Doctor who travels about in his TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space), which is also kind of his wife, across all of time and space, usually accompanied by a companion, who is almost always female and almost always human (though not necessarily either).
It is the Best Ever.
No one, not even the most seasoned naturalists who have made it their life’s work to study these strange creatures we call “asexuals,” know quite why it has such strong, widespread appeal to aces outside of it being a really fantastic show, though I would imagine it has something to do with how the Doctor – the aforementioned show-running alien – never has an explicitly, canonically sexual relationship (I mean, you can debate whether the bondage gear the Master whips out in “The End of Time” makes it canonically sexual all you want, but the show never comes out and says ”look at the person with whom the Doctor is having sex go on look”), and in fact most of his relationships can’t even be stretched to include anything much beyond simple friendship and/or mentorship. Which itself almost definitely has a lot to do with how Doctor Who is, and has always been, intended as a “family” show.
The original intention, back in the ’60s, may or may not have been meant to be an entertaining show to educate the kiddies on the Wonders of History (which I may or may not have read back in the “obsessive reading” phase of being a fan), so making it child-friendly was, you know, pretty important. But because of this prolonged (and unremarked upon) celibacy on the part of the Doctor, he’s become a sort of asexual hero to a lot of ace fans, in the same way characters such as Sherlock have been branded with the “asexual” label due to public opinion. The validity of that classification, I think, wavers with Doctor (with Ten, the Doctor just before our current one, played by David Tennant, being the most wibbly-wobbly point in the long chain, re: sexuality, being closest to “normal” human levels of sexual interest of really any Doctor), but is pretty firmly applicable to the current Eleventh “I was not expecting this!” Doctor.
And I can prove this.
With science.
… no I can’t.
But I do think what we’ve seen so far from Eleven places him pretty firmly in the ace camp, next to all the others left bewildered and oblivious of the bizarre sexual practices of humans, and why on earth anyone would do them to begin with. The first time we see Eleven faced with any kind of potentially sexual situation is at the end of “Flesh and Stone,” after he’s taken Amy back to her house on the night he picked her up, which is, as it happens, the night before her wedding (to Rory, whom she does eventually marry, much to the delight of everyone, because the Doctor is married to Sexy the TARDIS and Amy loves Rory and Rory loves Amy and it’s all very nice).
Filed under: asexuality, asexuality in fiction | 3 Comments
Tags: Doctor Who
Two things:
- Someone found this blog by googlig “the layperson’s guide to articulating trans* experience and identity,” and frankly I am flattered that someone found it interesting or useful (or, hell, even horrible) enough to google specifically.
- What would you think of a book called “Even Tesla Loved Pigeons”?
- And to add another onto a post only meant to include two points, I am debating the merits of publishing with my actual legal name now (Charles Wallace – which I feel safe sharing here because it’s virtually ungoogleable) because it is plain but perfect.
Filed under: asexuality | 4 Comments
There was a post written recently on an LGBT-focused blog called Good As Gay, found here, that argued against the inclusion of asexuality under the rainbow umbrella essentially on the grounds that asexuals aren’t discriminated against – basically, that we benefit from straight privilege because we aren’t actively, visibly not straight simply by virtue of being asexual.
This seems to be one of the primary arguments made (by ace-spectrum and non-ace-spectrum people alike) against the inclusion of asexuality in the great queer alphabetsmoosh – that because we don’t suffer as much (or, according to some people, at all) we don’t deserve to be included.
Personally, I think this is bullshit.
Filed under: asexual community, asexuality, it's not all sunshine and kittens, LGBTQetc. | 15 Comments
HERE THERE BE SPOILERS, TREAD LIGHTLY
Continue reading ‘Good books for asexuals: Will Grayson, Will Grayson’
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Although Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You is set primarily in the summer between James Svelk’s senior year at high school and expected first year at college, it isn’t really about that, nor is it really a “coming of age” novel in the way most “coming of age” stories are.
James doesn’t really make that many Great and Amazing discoveries about himself; although a lot of other readers (from what I’ve seen in reaction opinions elsewhere) seem to disagree, James seems, to me in any case, to be mostly formed by the time he starts telling us his story (which is the point as which his mother unexpectedly stumbles into their New York apartment several days earlier than expected, having left on her honeymoon a week before – the honeymoon, we quickly learn, which was to celebrate a marriage that didn’t outlast it), and his change isn’t Great and Amazing, but far more subtle.
Continue reading ‘Good books for asexuals: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You’
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I have an idea
We rope John Green – vlogger, brother, all-around silly person and inspiration – into being the ambassador between aseualland and the kingdom of actively directed sexuality.
This is a fantastic idea. Nonono, let me talk.
…well, basically that’s it. I have had a great deal of admiration and slightly creepy love for John Green since I started watching the project he’s been doing for several years back in the middle of 2007, and then proceeded to read all of his books, the whole run of his old blog (on Sparks Fly Up rather than his new website), every piece he’d written for NPR, and anything else by him or about him or mentioned by him that I could. Man’s brilliant, and I love him.
But more than just my immense admiration for him, he seems genuinely supportive of everything outside of the hetero and cis norm, despite belonging to both groups himself – back in the days when kicking Chris Crocker while he was down was the hottest thing to do, he made a video in defense of gender variance, mentioning that our rigid binary systems of biological and behavioral classification are ultimately baseless and harmful; he made a video during the big storm of It Gets Better videos, but instead of claiming to be able to speak for the experiences of those who are LGBTQetc., he just spoke about hope and made a playlist of other people’s videos; and he seems, more than most other people, already actively in support of The Asexual Cause.
Or, well, whatever kind of Ace Cause they might be unofficially. I don’t think he’s every specifically come out and say, “Yes, I suppose asexuals and their struggle,” but he has included asexuality as just A Normal Thing in his part of Will Grayson, Will Grayson (more to come on that front, since it’s set to be the second installment in the Good Books For Asexuals series, but basically he uses asexuality correctly and then goes on to argue for the importance of platonic and familial relationships over those which are specifically romantic or sexual) and his Valentine’s Day video basically made the same argument, asking why we care so much about romantic/sexual relationships that we care to the point of detriment of other relationships, and why we have Official Lovers Day rather than, say, Best Friends Day.
I mean, he has conflated romantic with sexual several times, but … honestly, I’m willing to make a thousand different allowances him, though of course I am slightly biased, and his track record with LGBTQetc. stuff is far better than almost any other non-LGBTQetc. person’s.
Filed under: asexuality | 4 Comments
