A Trans Man Is Attacked: It's All About Misogyny

I realize that in this blog, I have recounted many--too many--stories about harrassment, assaults and even killings perpetrated by haters against trans women.

While we are certainly more likely to be the victims of hate crimes than other people, I don't want to give the impression that all transphobic violence is committed by cisgender men against trans women (or males who violate societal gender norms).  Indeed, too many trans men also are abused, beaten or worse by those who simply cannot abide our existence.

Yesterday, Paul Wettengel was charged with hate crimes for his alleged assault in a Boulder, Colorado bus stop last month.  His victim was a trans man.

According to a published account of the incident, a man asked Wettengel for a lighter.  Wettengel shoved him.  A third man--who would become the victim of the crimes for which Wettengel is now charged--tried to intervene by getting in between them.

Wettengel punched him in the face and, apparently realizing the victim is trans, grabbed his breasts and stomach while calling him derogatory names related to homosexuality as well as transgenderism.

The incident, if it was anything like it's been reported, shows that at the root of all transphobia (and homophobia) is misogyny.  Wettengel attacked the trans man whom he perceived as "a girl pretending to be a guy"; too many trans women are victimized because we are perceived as men who don't have the balls to live as men and who choose, instead, to be female.  Gay men are also perceived that way and similarly victimized, just as lesbians are attacked for being women who think they are men or who think they're too good for men.  

How can anyone hate women so much, knowing that we're all born from them?

Taking A Joke

How many times have you heard hateful, mean-spirited remarks punctuated with, "It's just a joke!"?

How many times have you been told you "can't take a joke"?


Well, most of us can "take" a joke.  But we can't--or shouldn't have to--take name-calling, misogynist or transphobic remarks or threats against us.  Those are not jokes.

From tumblr

Not For Women--Or Anybody

When I was writing for a newspaper, a police precinct commander sold me something I haven't forgotten:  "Lucky for us that most criminals are stupid."

For many perps, their folly begins in thinking that they'll actually get away with what their misdeeds.  But for others, their foolishness shows in the ways they execute--or don't execute their offenses. 

I got to thinking about all of that because I think there's a parallel principle in making works of "art".  We are lucky, I believe, that most of the truly offensive stuff--you know, things that are racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise show contempt for some group of people that did nothing to deserve it--is purely and simply bad.  And that is the reason why it is usually forgotten.

So why am I pontificating about virtue and virtu on a bike blog?, you ask. Great question.

Yesterday "The Retrogrouch" wrote about a bicycle displayed at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS).  Its builder, Allan Abbott, dubbed it "The Signorina."

With a name like that, you might expect a nicely-made women's city or commuter bike with some Italian pizzazz.  Instead, it's a not particularly well-made (for a handbuilt bike, anyway) machine that's supposedly built in the likeness of a naked woman.



So far it sounds like a silly novelty item, right?  But it doesn't seem like anything to get worked up about. Or does it?  

Now, I'm sure there are places where such a bike could not be ridden because it would offend the sensibilites of some people.  I'm not one of them:  I have no aversion to nudity, although I have to wonder whether anyone in his or her right mind would want to see me naked.

But I digress.  If you're going to use a human form, au naturel, in one of your creations, at least show it in all of its imperfect glory--the way, say, any number of painters, sculptors, photographers and writers have done.  Whatever its gender, size, colors, shape, age or state of alertness or weariness, make it a reflection of what we are, and aspire to.  Above all, make it living, human and organic.

The supposedly female form in Abbot's frame is none of those things.  If anything, it's plain creepy:  The "signorina" is on her "hands" and "knees"--and headless.  I'm sure there are people--a few of whom are cyclists or collectors--who are turned on by such degradation.  I guess I'm philistine and reactionary:  I'm not one of them.

But, to be fair, if "Retrogrouch" hadn't described it, I might have needed time and an extra look or two to discern the nude female form straddling the wheels.  Call me slow or un-hip if you must.  Even after reading about it on Adventure Journal  as well as Retrogrouch's blog, I'm still not convinced that the bike in any way--realist or abstract, linear or Cubist, Classical or Impressionist--evokes a female, or any other human, form.

In other words, it doesn't work as art.  Perhaps we should be thankful for that.  

Somehow I get the impression it's not such a great bike, either. 

Misgendering, Misogyny And Murder

A week and a half ago, I wrote about the way Cleveland Plain-Dealer reporter John Canigilia maligned murdered transwoman Ci Ci Dove, and how his editors wrote a headline that further trivialized her death.  

As Dana Beyer points out in an excellent Huffington Post article, Caniglia and the Plain-Dealer's errors are not merely breaches of rules laid out in the AP Stylebook or lapses of decency and respect.  As Beyer writes, "Misgendering has implications beyond murder and is often used by religious and feminist fundamentalists to dehumanize trans persons." She correctly identifies it as the root of "the 'bathroom bill' meme", which fosters fear about "men" in women's bathrooms. It's also the basis of the "gay panic" defense men invoke after beating or killing women whom they discover to be trans because, they believe, being attracted to trans women makes them gay. 

At the bottom of such misgendering is (ironically, given its use by feminist fundamentalists) misogyny.  One researcher found, in the words of an interviewee, that "transgender is just a long word for 'gay'."  To people who share such a belief, a cisgender man who makes love to another cisgender man is no different from a post-operative transsexual like yours truly.  Each is seen as a man who behaves in a "feminine" manner, which means that we have violated the code of masculinity.  In such a system of belief, a man who fails to be a man is a failed human being who deserves, at best, contempt or, worse, the kind of brutally violent death that claims too many of us--and struck Ci Ci Dove.

Man Charged In Murder Of January Lapuz

Many of us in the US see Canada--and Vancouver in particular--as a safe, tolerant haven. After all, it was the first country outside of Europe to legalize same-sex marriage, and Toronto and Vancouver are reputed to be among the world's more trans-friendly cities.

Even in those places, though, trans people are apparently not immune to violence and worse.  On 30 September, January Lapuz was found stabbed in her New Westminster, BC home.  She later died in the hospital.   Now a 20-year-old man has been charged in her slaying.

If it's not disturbing enough that the social coordinator of Sher Vancouver (a South Asian gay, lesbian and transgender group) was murdered in metropolitan Vancouver, it would come as another shock to most people to realize that the arrest in her case represents more police work than is done in most other places on most other cases of murdered transgender (or otherwise gender non-conforming) people.   

Sher Vancouver founder Alex Sangha correctly sees Ms. Lapuz's murder, and that of other trans women, as part of an even larger problem.  "There's violence against women, period," he explained.  "[A]nd, if you're different, you're even more vulnerable."

Perhaps that is one reason why there were people who sought to minimize this tragedy.  Although British Columbia isn't Brazil, there is still enough ingrained misogyny that some people sought to, in essence, blame Ms. Lapuz for her stabbing.   When some of the local media reported that she'd been a prostitute, one commenter even said, of her murder, that he was "relieved" for his family.  "I don't have room in my heart to love a gangsters (sic), or a crackhead or an alleged hooker," he explained.

Even if she had been a "hooker", how in the world could he compare her to a gangster, or even a crackhead?  One reason why a larger percentage of trans people than other kinds of people are involved in sex work is that too many of us have no other way to make a living.  Even in a relatively trans-friendly city like San Francisco, in the relatively good economy of 2005, it was estimated that half of all trans people didn't have legitimate paid work.  Much of that, of course, has to do with discrimination.  But many other trans folk--especially the young ones--were bullied out of their schools or kicked out of their homes.  They have no credentials and, too often, lack skills because they've missed so much school and have had chaotic home lives.   So few, if any, legal jobs are available to them.

Even in the unlikely event that she became a prostitute by choice, it is no reason to dismiss the tragedy of January Lapuz's death.  If any other woman--someone's mother, wife, daughter, sister, niece or friend--had been stabbed to death, someone would, rightfully, mourn her.  Ms. Lapuz deserves no less.

Testing My Patience

I am going to say something that, coming from an educator, you might find odd:  I utterly abhor tests.

All right.  I'll lay my cards on the table:  I never was very good at taking tests.  I know lots of other people aren't, either.  More to the point, I wonder whether some tests measure anything besides its taker's ability to take tests.

And then there are the ones that are just plain stupid, and worse.  An example is one that was on Planet Transgender's site the other day.  The blog's author put it very well:  "The ChaCha quiz challenges you to prove your (manly) or (womanly) misogynistic transphobic cissexualism by being able to distinguish between real Woman (sic) and transgender fakers."

The test does play into, and display, all sorts of stereotypes and pure-and-simple hate. However, I have to admit that in one way, I do find amusement in the fact that it exists.  In looking at it, all I could think about was a guy I knew who made it a point of showing me that he could pick out all of the gay people walking down the street or in a crowded restaurant.  And, after every display of his prowess, he insisted, "But I'm 100 percent straight."  Uh-huh. 

In a more serious vein, the test reminded me that society at large will accept us as equals to cisgender folk only when it can embrace, not only diversity as most people currently understand it, but diversity within any given group of people.  In other words, there won't be any real hope of equality until more people are willing to accept the same sorts of variation in physical appearance, behavior and other characteristics in trans people as it does in cisgendered people.  We're not all weepy bombshells, just as not all cisgender women are.  And some of us, as much as we love clothes and shoes, actually care more about things like books.

Anyway...If you've been reading this blog, it's likely that you already understand what I've just said.  So I don't want to risk beating the proverbial dead horse to death.  I just hope that I live long enough to see true acceptance become the norm.

Forever Seventeen At Two Hundred

Seventeen and two hundred.

All right, you ask, what is the connection between those two numbers?

Well, I'll tell you:  It's Charles Dickens.

Yes, the famed British writer is two hundred years old today.

So what about seventeen?  Think about Dora of David Copperfield, Estella of Great Expectations and Rosa Budd of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Thanks to Dickens, they will be forever seventeen.

You see, as progressive (for his time, anyway) he seems to be in describing life in London in the middle of the 19th Century, his attitudes about women were fairly retrograde, even by the standards of that time.  Take a look at the portrait of perfect womanhood he paints in his description of Mrs. Chirrup, in Sketches for Young Couples:

‘...the prettiest of all little women... the prettiest little figure conceivable...the neatest little foot, and the softest little voice, and the pleasantest little smile, and the tidiest little curls, and the brightest little eyes, and the quietest little manner... a condensation of all the domestic virtues – a pocket edition of the Young Man’s Best Companion...’

More than one critic has pointed out that were he not considered such a great writer, Dickens would be considered a terrible misogynist.  There's a lot of truth to that, I think, as the quote above is not merely an isolated example.  As we say in the old country, "There's more where that came from."

There are a number of explanations as to why Dickens seemed to have what amounts to a fetish for women who were young, small, weak and submissive--and virgins.  One is that he was in love with his wife's younger sister, who died in his arms when she was seventeen years old.  That may well explain, at least partially, his infatuation with young girls who, basically, were china dolls.  But it doesn't explain the other side of that obsession:  the cruelty he could express in his depictions of older women, or those who were sick or disabled in some way.  I'm thinking, for example, of Flora Flinching of Little Dorrit, who wants to rekindle a romance with the young lover but, in Dickens' descriptions, is beyond any hope of sexual allure, and is therefore worthy only of contempt. 

His portrayal of Flora Flinching is hardly the most misogynistic thing you'll find in his writing.  There's also the wheelchair-bound Mrs. Skewton, whom we meet in Domby and Son:

‘Cleopatra was arrayed in full dress, with the diamonds, short sleeves, rouge, curls, teeth, and other juvenility all complete, but Paralysis was not to be deceived, had known her for the object of its errand, and had struck her at her glass, where she lay like a horrible doll that had tumbled down.’

Some have said that this description, being from one of his later works, is a reflection of how he viewed his by-then-aging wife.  People who knew him--including one of his daughters--said that he didn't treat her well, and that he could be as cruel to some as he was generous to others.  And, she said, "My father does not understand women."

I suppose that such complexity is what made him a keen observer of the economic and social uphevals of his time--but not of women. 

Are We Trannies?

It had to happen sooner or later:  Some are suggesting we stop using the term "tranny." Others say it is "our" term, and that some of us use it affectionately with each other.


It's the same sort of debate that surrounds the use of "queer" and the "n-word." All of those terms have been used to denigrate the people denoted by them. And, of course, non-trans people wonder why they're wrong for using the term when we use it to refer to other trans people.


What's often forgotten is that "tranny" is most often used as a derogatory term against MTF transsexuals as well as drag queens and cross-dressers.  So, along with its debasement of transgender people, the term also has an element of misogyny, which would, by itself, be reason not to use the term.  At least, that's how I feel.  


What do you think?

Subduing Corruption and Vice

We never get a break, do we?


First we're blamed for leading men into perdition, or simply making things complicated.    That's how guys use the stories of Eve, Pandora and other women of myth and religion. 


But when those stories are used as rationales for subjugating women, the results can be really strange, if not offensive.

This is called "The Triumph of Civic Virtue," was created by American sculptor Frank Mac Monnies about 100 years ago.  A nearly nude man is standing, and dangling a sword over, two female sirens representing Corruption and Vice.


It stands in front of the Queens Borough Hall.  But the Borough President and other local politicians want to get rid of it.  Rep. Anthony Weiner even suggested selling it on Craig's List.


They are not the first people to find this statue offensive.  It stood in front of City Hall in lower Manhattan until 1941, when then-Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia deemed it offensive and ordered it banished from the premises. 


I've seen the statue before and I must say that I find it offensive, too.  Yes, the sexism and violent sexuality bother me, but I also remember that such blatant misogyny was perfectly acceptable in public art (and much else) to an even greater degree than is allowed today.


What I find offensive about the statue is that it's just plain hideous, at least to my eyes.  And, it nearly two stories tall, it's all but impossible to ignore.

Tyler Clementi, Rutgers and Me

Tyler Clementi's suicide prompted me to do something I don't do very often:  I found myself thinking about my own days at Rutgers.  I'm not going to express shock and disbelief, or murmur that what happened to him was inevitable.  However, I must say that even though I am upset, I am also not surprised.

When I attended Rutgers three decades ago, campus social life was still driven, to a very large degree, by the fraternities.  That might have been a consequence of the fact that Rutgers College (RC), the "original" school of Rutgers University (RU), was all-male for more than two hundred years and had begun to enroll women only four years before I started my freshman year.  So, by that time, there were only a handful RC alumnae, and nearly all of the college's faculty, administration and staff worked at the college when it was all-male.  

Then, as now, Douglass College (DC) was a school whose student body was entirely female.  It is to Rutgers as Barnard is to Columbia or Radcliffe to Harvard.   DC and RC students took courses on each other's campuses, though not as much as one might expect.  As a result of the small numbers of DC students, and even smaller number of female RC students, on the RC campus, women were still seen as the "other" --if they were lucky.  If they weren't, they treated as merchandise, especially if they were to go to, or even pass by, a frat house. 

I have been in environments that were even more dominated by males, at least in terms of numbers and male-to-female ratios.  But I don't think I've ever been in any situation in which as many men were as ignorant or contemptuous of women as the ones at Rutgers were in those days.  Because I was living as male in those days, male students often told me what they really thought about women, and referred to them by a few names I won't even soil my tongue by uttering.

In such an atmosphere, you can guess how gays and lesbians were seen.  (I don't think transgenders were even on the radar of most people.)   The term "hate crime" didn't exist in those days, but what we now refer to by that term happened with disturbing frequency.  I knew of a few gays who were beaten and a few more students who beat them up.  And I heard more than a few who bragged that they'd "beat the shit out of" some "gay-bird."

The gay-bashers, and more than a few who never would put a hand on anyone, made gays--whether or not they knew any--the objects of their prurient fantasies.  Some would follow gays, while pretending not to, and find out where they hung out. Still others posted placards or graffiti (We didn't have chat-rooms in those days.) on billboards, sign posts or other public places.  And, of course, speculation about some men's sexuality was scrawled inside bathroom stalls and over urinals.

From what I've heard, things haven't changed much at Rutgers, and I can say the same about the the wider world.  I know firsthand that if you don't fit into cisgender/hetero norms, people not only speculate, in ways they never would about straight people, they also think they're entitled to know, and to broadcast, the details of your actual or imagined sex life.  Why else would Dharum Ravi feel no compunction about secretly videotaping his roommate Clementi while he was having sex with another man?  And, worse, why did he think there was nothing wrong with posting that video on the Internet?

I'm glad that so many spoke up at the Rutgers rally today.  However, I'm sure that there are many more students who don't feel safe in letting their sexuality or gender identity become public knowledge.  Long before I got to Rutgers, I knew I didn't fit into any of society's notions about gender and sexuality.  However, I tried to fit into one or another of them; by the time I started my sophomore year, I was at my wit's end and thought, perhaps, that because I didn't feel the same urgency about having a sexual relationship with a woman as other males seemed to feel, I was gay.  

In fact, I "came out" to my mother and a few friends.  Ironically, those friends were in the campus Christian fellowship, which I joined (as I did so many other things) in desperation.  While some expressed disapproval, others said they "loved" me even as they "hated" my "sin," and still others told me to place my faith and trust in Jesus,  I actually felt safer there than I would have in almost any other venue in the university.  Part of that may have been a result of the esteem some of them--including the leader of the fellowship, who was my roommate for a year--felt for me personally.  It was such that, at the invitation of that leader, I was editing the fellowship's newsletter and leading a prayer and Bible study group, even though I hadn't been in the fellowship very long and, only a few months earlier, had never before read the Bible.

Although I am not religious--and, truthfully, never was--I can say that I graduated from Rutgers intact (more or less, anyway) in part because I was in that fellowship.  If nothing else, they encouraged me to study and even, at times, to stay in school. I was probably unhappier then than I've been before or since and, even though I was not reluctant to drink, I despised the frat parties and bars--and, in fact, pretty much the whole social scene, such as it was, that existed there. Even more important, I felt safer in that fellowship than I felt anywhere else in the university.  In fact, it was the only place where I felt safe at all.  The worst things I experienced there were somewhat sanctimonious or condescending lectures; elsewhere on campus, I could and did experience much worse.

Unfortunately, thirty years later, Tyler Clementi did, too--only even worse.