[Slater]

So much good stuff in this thread already.

I wanted to put together a coherent post that had some sort of discernible structure and flow. Yeah, that ain’t happening tonight. So instead I’m just going to throw a few disjointed thoughts out there and shoot for coherence another time.


We are no longer – as a community – as embattled as we were a couple decades ago, which is not to say that things are swell for everyone, but in general as a community, we are not bobbing in the middle of the ocean surrounded by sharks and clinging to a half-deflated life raft like we once were. And I think maybe that is some of where the rush to cast the victim and oppressor roles that Medusa mentioned comes into play. We’ve come to expect sharks, so we see them around every corner (and yes I realize the middle of the ocean doesn’t technically have corners). We sharkify each other in part because we are accustomed to battling sharks.

Somewhat conversely is the phenomenon that AJ and Heart and others have talked about, whereby things stand unchallenged that should be challenged, or if they are challenged, the response is defensive and dismissive. And I think they are right when they talk about needing to build the community around shared values or morals instead of just around identities. But I also think there is simply not enough education on anti-oppression. I think most all of us are familiar with general concepts but I am talking about understanding the mechanics of how oppression functions and learning how to do the work of combating it.

One other thing that I’ve been thinking about, though I’m not quite sure how this fits in to this discussion, is that we need to stop pretending that broadened inclusiveness is always free in every circumstance. That is, sometimes, in some situations, there is a cost. That doesn’t mean the inclusiveness isn’t the right thing to do or isn’t worth the cost, but maybe acknowledging the cost might make the process easier for those who are paying it.

For instance, there was a time when butch was considered a specifically female identity. And I admit, when I first heard male-identified people using butch, I felt like something was being taken away from me. While it’s obviously true that male-identified people using the term does not prevent me from identifying that way, it does change what the word means and therefore it changes what I am saying about myself when I use it. When people talk about feeling erased, maybe that’s what they sometimes mean. The femaleness of butch was, to me, an integral part of it. It described a particular, and highly marginalized, way of being female in the world. And then it didn’t; it meant something else.

I want to be clear that, for me, it was never about thinking transmen should not be part of the community. It was about wanting to hold onto a word that named my experience. I know some people think the naming thing is or should be unimportant, but I don’t agree. I think it is vital for marginalized groups to have words for themselves, words that represent their existence and specific experience in the world. When I was in college and newly out, I had a friend who was from a rural part of China. She could scarcely comprehend coming out to her parents because in the dialect they spoke there were no words for lesbian or gay or even homosexual. There were no words at all that named her reality. It was clear how lost and helpless she felt even thinking about how to begin that conversation with her parents. Our names matter.

I came to understand the reasons why butch was being used by some transmen. I do understand. But I will say that I appreciate it when a male-identified person uses the term transbutch. To me, that clearly connects them to the butch identity and community while at the same time acknowledging and respecting that the female tradition of the word.

I realize I’ve wandered a bit far afield from the topic of the thread, so I’ll try to bring it back around. If one of the things we are talking about is how to better coalesce our various groups into a united community, I think we need to honestly acknowledge that sometimes broadening definitions or scopes can mean something is going to be lost along the way, sacrificed to the process of change. While this doesn’t mean the change shouldn’t happen, it might at least be worth considering what, if anything, is being sacrificed.


Considering I can hardly stay awake I should probably stop here. Hopefully in the morning I will not have horrifying realization that I should have stopped long before now.

Great thread, important discussions, looking forward to more.