BROOK SHELLEY: welcome, folks!
FRANCES LEE: hi, made it in!
MALLORY: hi everybody!
BROOK: maybe we should have a little intro section, since I don’t think everyone knows each other. I’m Brook – I am 31, and a white trans lesbian. I live in Portland, OR with my cat Snorri. I work in tech, and write for a few places, and am on the board at a queer rights group. I’ve been out for a while.
FRANCES: Hello. I’m Frances. I’m 30, live in Seattle, work in the tech industry (for now), Chinese American, ID as non-binary queer. I’ve been out for two years, try my best to keep up with the current (Western/internet) dialogue on queer and trans stuff, and am applying to a cultural studies masters program next fall where I hope to dive deeper into these experiences and others’ research. I really dislike having a FT job and wish I could just write, take photos, shoot video, make pottery, do woodworking, make books, dance, and try out all the hobbies.
MALLORY: I am Mallory! I run The Toast with my best friend Nicole Cliffe and am also the instigator of this chat. I’m a white cis queer lady with a very old dog. His name is Murphy. I was just on a train!! These are the only important things about me, pretty much.
GABBY BELLOT: Hi, everyone! I’m Gabrielle Bellot – I often go by Gabby. I’m a binary bi transwoman from the Commonwealth of Dominica. 28. Multiracial, to the extent that I often get confused for someone from places I may visit – I’ve been mislabelled as Puerto Rican, a Brazilian, and even as an Arab, though people in the US often seem to think I’m black or ‘Hispanic,’ that catch-all term I so dislike. I just say I’m very mixed. And I’m a writer – fiction and nonfiction and some criticism. Right now, I teach undergrads at FSU, where I’m trying to finish a PhD in fiction. I’ve been out for just over a year. Coming out meant that I couldn’t return to my home in Dominica as I used to, since it’s not the most LGBTQ-inclusive world, and so coming out has been for me as much about place as it is personhood.
MEY VALDIVIA RUDE: Hi! I’m mey, I’m a 29 year old half-white Latina (my dad is white and my mom is Mexican) binary trans woman and lesbian. I’ve been out since 2012. I’m the trans editor at Autostraddle, where I also write a lot about comics, dinosaurs, witchcraft, TV shows and queer representation in all-ages media. I live in Idaho, but I also spend a lot of time in Los Angeles. I have a pet cat and epilepsy and a new therapist.
MALLORY: ALSO
GUYS
STEVEN UNIVERSE THIS WEEK
BROOK: YES Steven UNIVERSE
I’m only 2 in so far though – I need to watch the other 3
BROOK: Mey, come visit Portland
it is your neighbor
MEY: I went to Portland once when I was 18 and I was a professional disc golfer and I participated in the Beaver State Fling, which is a big disc golf tournament
BROOK: ah, cool
MALLORY: PROFESSIONAL DISC GOLFER???
okay this chat is now about professional disc golfing
BROOK: I used to disc golf in Austin – get really stoned and wander around the rad parks there
MALLORY: omg
you are my two favorites right now
MEY: I was a ranked member of the PDGA for about three years
BROOK: damn
MALLORY: Dykes Who Disc Golf To Watch Out For
MEY: but like, really low ranked
GABBY: I agree with Mallory–this must be written about immediately
BROOK: i like the idea that disc golf is another one of those *wink* wink “trans women like this” things
like trains. and having a pilot’s license. and working in IT
MALLORY: ;aslkdfja;skldjfa;lskdjf
MEY: also comic books are big with us
BROOK: yea, true
MEY: a couple months ago, I went into my local comic shop in Pocatello and there were more trans women than all other people
Pocatello is getting better, for years we couldn’t get a comic shop to last more than two years, but now we’ve had one for about four years and it’s pretty cool and really women/queer friendly, which is different from any of the older ones
MALLORY: Mey, I can only imagine you get a lot of “ARE THERE EVEN QUEER PEOPLE IN IDAHO” comments from coastal gays, so I won’t ask
MEY: and my answer is always, no, not really
I mean, Pocatello has one gay bar that I’m not even sure has lesbian nights.
GABBY: Tallahassee feels pretty queer-desolate as well–we have half a gay bar, really
MALLORY: SF isn’t much better now that the Lex is closed
lots of gay bars with occasional lesbian nights but all the dyke bars are out here in the East Bay
FRANCES: Seattle has the Wild rose which I keep forgetting to go to. Last standing lesbian bar
BROOK: let’s put on an all-trans remake of My Own Private Idaho in Pocatello
MALLORY: BROOK YES
MEY: jajaja I like that idea!
MALLORY: ok let me try to organize my thoughts
this was sort of sparked by a chat Brook and I and a few others were having on Twitter recently
about transmisogyny in the LGB community
we can talk about our own experiences, what gives us hope, what our own communities are like, what’s not working, etc
would you want to start a bit by talking about your own queer experience so our readers sort of know where we’re all coming from?
MEY: So, I can start. I’ve had two wildly different sides to my experiences with queer women’s spaces. Experiences with Autostraddle communities and experiences with non-Autostraddle communities. I know that this sounds like an advertisement, but really, it’s the truth.
I came out, and then about six months later I was off to Autostraddle’s A-Camp, which is an entirely immersive queer women’s community experience, and I never once felt like an outsider, or like I was considered anything other than a woman and lesbian and a queer woman and welcome part of the family. it was honestly one of the best experiences of my life. And it’s just gotten better since then.
But outside of Autostraddle, things aren’t so great. In Idaho I often am tokenized, included in name only, and sometimes just straight up made to feel like I don’t belong. The same can be said for other online communities I’ve found. It’s tough, because the online community and family that I’ve found at Autostraddle are super amazing and great, but sometimes I want to be able to have that in real life, to be able to leave my house on a random day and be a part of a queer women’s community, you know?
MALLORY: have you always lived in Idaho?
MEY: yeah, I mean, I visit LA every summer and Christmas, but I’ve always lived in Idaho
MALLORY: do you have a similar experience in LA?
or is it hard to compare the two because you’re only there on vacation vs. real life
MEY: Well, I think it’s harder to compare because when I visit LA I have that Autostraddle community in real life. Like, I have a good number of Autostraddle friends (like trans women and comics people I’ve interviewed and become friends with) who are excited to hang out with me when i’m there since we can’t hang out for most of the year, so sort of because it’s a vacation, they know that i’m not normally there, does that make sense?
MALLORY: yes, absolutely
It seems like AS has worked hard as a site to become more trans-inclusive, like they’ve made it a priority in a way that not a lot of other cis-run lesbian and feminist sites have done. Not to say AS is flawless and everyone else is fucking up, of course.
FRANCES: I’ve also gotten that vibe over the past year. It’s great to see.
BROOK: a friend of mine is one of the cofounders and she said it was very much intentional
GABBY: Definitely–since I began reading and doing some writing for AS, I felt ‘safe’ there as a trans woman.
MEY: Yes, definitely, and they’re very open about it. During trans awareness week this year, Riese wrote about it, and talked about how they used to not be so great, and even included trans men before trans women (which, as a women’s site, you know…) but it’s been extremely intentional.
BROOK: that said, there are pockets of any community that can be bad to trans women
MEY: of course
MALLORY: oh let’s come back to that for sure
can someone else do their intro next?
BROOK: My experience is… a bit different
I came out first when I was 12 – and that went very badly. I didn’t have any idea how to be a lesbian trans woman, and this was the mid-90s, and I was in Texas, so I had no clue how to access that community. I stayed online with my identity, and would tell a lot of my friends and girls that I dated that I was a lesbian, and explain what that meant to me to a certain extent. I didn’t actually transition until a few years into my relationship with Frances: (we’re exes), and it was a shock I think, to them, that transition was very important to me. We were part of the same mostly hipster queer/lesbian women’s friend group in college, and it suddenly made a lot more sense to those who didn’t know me why I was there. I got a lot of tacit support at the beginning, but quickly learned that tacit support doesn’t mean that someone wants to date you, sleep with you, or actually go to bat for you.
We broke up a year or so later for trans and other reasons – it’s super hard to recontextualize a relationship, and there were many other factors. Since then I’ve been vocally a part of a lot of mostly cis queer/lez spaces, and I’ve gotten very, very mixed reactions. I don’t always get read as trans, so I get to see people’s faces and attitudes change as I come out. And it’s often a clear sign of bad news when I’m the only trans woman in the room.
MALLORY: it feels so cliche that at least two of us are exes
and yet how could it be otherwise
MEY: jajajaja!
FRANCES: Hahaha
MALLORY: watch at least two of us start dating AFTER this chat
BROOK: HA. true. and I’ve had other trans women ask why I want to be in cis lesbian space at all – but those are my people in a lot of ways. I grew up on riot grrrl, Tori Amos, and zines
FRANCES: I feel lucky to be good friends with Brook now. We had some time apart and now we can talk about lesbian and queer stuff in really specific ways that I don’t get to do with my other friends.
BROOK: Totally. It rules to have someone that knew me super intimately for 7 years that I can count as a friend
FRANCES: I grew up in a very evangelical Christian Chinese American family in Texas. My dad is still a pastor. I probably knew I was queer when I was 12, just had a strange feeling in my tummy whenever I looked at certain girls in orchestra. Anyways, I did the whole good Christian girl heteronormative life path til my mid-20s. It’s a bit complicated, but a turning point was meeting Brook, and then later ending that relationship, during which I finally came out as lesbian. Then I had to get the fuck outta Texas, and since then I started identifying as queer and non-binary (which is a newer thing for me). I don’t feel like a woman or a man, and get misgendered all the time, but in specific ways that are different than if I were trans.
I have found queer community in Seattle (where I have been for a year), but it’s hard. I had fantasies that I would automatically get along swimmingly with folks with my identities – QTPOC – but really people are just people and making friends as an adult is hard. Plus all the politics and drama and misogyny specific to queer spaces.
BROOK: Quick note that Frances and I both had pastor dads… we were the queer pastor’s kids your parents warned you about
MALLORY: ME THREE, my parents are both pastors
although I don’t think anyone gets warned about me
MEY: My mom was the office manager at a Baptist church and I taught sunday school and was a youth group leader for six years
BROOK: Gabby, I’m curious to hear about your religious background too(edited)
FRANCES: So many church connections
MALLORY: we could start our own church
GABBY: Church-wise: no pastor parents, thank the pagan gods, but I was brought up Roman Catholic for many years, abandoned Christianity for Wicca briefly as a teenager, returned to Catholicism and thought I would burn in hellfire for my sense of gender and who I wanted to love and how, and now I’m not religious anymore–but that belief in eternal punishment leaves scars that don’t fade quickly.
MEY: Hey! I was also raised Roman Catholic!
MALLORY: guys we seriously need to start a church
it will mostly be about candles
and cats
MEY: I honestly have at least a dozen la virgen candles in my house right now, plus another dozen other saint candles
GABBY: And comics
MALLORY: THE THREE C’S
BROOK: I was going to say a different C-word, but it’d have to be censored
MALLORY: Brook was the word ‘coping mechanisms’
GABBY: I knew who I was from as early as I can find memories, in the sense that I saw myself as a girl; the map of mind and body didn’t align for me. But I didn’t understand what that meant. I grew up in the Commonwealth of Dominica, and for most of my life I didn’t have any clear models for queerness, didn’t know that anyone like me existed in the island or the archipelago at large or the globe. And because I was raised to believe that being queer in any way was a one-way ticket to a capsizing kayak ride on a lake of fire, I didn’t come out until I was 27.
FRANCES: Whoa. When did you first meet other queer people?
GABBY: Whenever I dated women prior to beginning my transition, I felt scared: navigating the waters of saying, I am a girl, and I want to date you as a girl, especially when you lack the language, is difficult. Translating inner experience was difficult for me and made my early dating life difficult. So I felt that all my early relationships would fail because I didn’t think I could be a woman dating women, yet that was what I wanted more than anything else. Now, it’s a bit different: I live as a woman, yet I have new fears in lesbian spaces: will someone invalidate my gender because my voice sometimes drops down too much in pitch? I also felt distinctly uncomfortable with my first experience with a woman post-coming out because I was asked, innocently, if I could use my genitalia like a man, and I felt so awkward afterwards, this sense of being with a woman and yet being treated only partly as one by her.
I first met other queer people in college in the U. S. I unfortunately acted homophobic at the time as a mask for my own internal struggles and because this is such a common default for how Caribbean ‘males’ are expected to be.
I also just want to add that in terms of lesbian spaces and how we can navigate those, cultural context matters here, the way that different histories and expectations carve out the contours of how we define or come to expect to define things; for instance, I grew up with the few depictions of people I now know would be trans women being portrayed as ‘homosexual men,’ and in Iran, there is a somewhat common idea that transgender individuals are heterosexual people trapped in the wrong body, which is why sex changes are allowed there to ‘correct’ people’s sexual orientations: a validation and invalidation all in one. But navigating those spaces adds some nuance to this.
FRANCES: Gabby, I would love to hear your thoughts and writing about Western queerness and colonization sometime. 100% of my “radical queer identity” has come from Western notions of queerness and difference. Like, “I am the most legitimately queer because I am all up in these American tumblrs/twitters/queer blogs and I am using the currently deemed accepted language and concepts to describe my gender experiences and identities.” I have a strong desire to return to Taiwan for a bit (my dad’s from Taiwan) and check out the queer communities there and see how they are. Not being totally fluent in Mandarin Chinese in these topics is a huge barrier for me, yet I realize I can’t use that an excuse to parade around my Western queerness as the “right” way to be queer.
BROOK: agreed – straight trans women were my only lens to transition for way too long
MALLORY: oh gosh yes
this reminds me of what Mey brought up earlier
about how a while back AS “included trans men before trans women”
and there sometimes seems like (at least in American lesbian/bi circles) there’s a very strange double standard cis people hold for trans men and trans women?
MEY: yes, absolutely
BROOK: so much of it is sadly based on assumed genitals and assumed activities with said genitals and it is often totally off-base
MEY: for example, there’s a queer women’s site, that this year for Trans Day of Remembrance, they had a trans man write something for them, and published nothing by a trans woman
GABBY: And there’s also an exclusion based off voice and how one ‘acts,’ sort of a la Germaine Greer: this idea that trans women ‘sound’ and ‘act’ different from cis women, which I have heard indirectly said by lesbian women I know, unfortunately
BROOK: oof
GABBY: Which is such offensive reduction of who we are
MALLORY: [12:55 PM]
I think some cis lesbians have this sort of idea that trans men still ‘belong’ but trans women must be kept at arm’s length?
BROOK: right. this is why I try very hard to be out about being a trans woman at every juncture, because I don’t want cis queers forgetting that I am trans, and writing me off in their head as “but you’re not like other trans women” because fuck that.
MALLORY: I’m trying to qualify my statements because these are not, like, hard and fast rules, and I realize I have only an imperfect understanding of these dynamics.
MEY: Yeah, there’s sometimes the idea that trans men were “socialized as women” and trans women were “socialized as men” which is an idea with so, so many problems
MALLORY: as if socialization stops when you transition!
BROOK: and there are some trans men I’ve known who are cool with that, and the sex and community they get from those attitudes. And some who are like “Whoa, that’s disgusting. If you won’t date a cis guy, you can’t date me.”
FRANCES: Being non-binary is thrilling and dangerous. It’s on me to express my gender in a way that feels good but doesn’t continue the old-as-time sexist oppression in queer spaces. It’s interesting that Brook alludes to masculine-of-center folks dressing in very boyish ways, and I can easily fall into a boyish stereotype. Sometimes when I’m with my partner, I lose focus on the convo and I’m like *omg, boobs* and she is mildly annoyed and laughs about me morphing a 12-year-old boy. I don’t disagree, it’s just that getting access to stuff like that after 27 years of stifled wanting also feels like a supremely wonderful thing.
But on the other hand, it’s playing into horrible traditional gender expectations about how men can openly objectify women’s bodies and get away with that sort of behavior – oh God, I have to go process that now… :sweat face:
In short, thanks so very much to everyone for sharing – I’m glad that we’re focusing on trans women’s voices, and I’m very grateful to have been invited to participate in this very important discussion.
MALLORY: like…we’re being socialized RIGHT NOW
MEY: and as if socialization is universal across religions, ethnicities, locations, etc
GABBY: Yes, socialisation is the tool people use to pin us down to assignments at birth all too often
BROOK: and as if socialization doesn’t occur on a spectrum.
GABBY: This was the argument that Elinor Burkett made in her disastrous NYT article about trans women last year.
MEY: as if a closeted trans girl at age eight doesn’t hear “girls act that way, don’t do that” and doesn’t internalize that in a very different way than a guy would
GABBY: People like Burkett want behaviour and biology to mesh, even as they are supposedly against reductions of bodies and persons to either one
MALLORY: Brook, you mentioned “straight trans women were my only lens to transition for way too long”
can you talk a bit more about that?
(also anyone else who would like to)
BROOK: right. sure. So, I bet a few of us have seen sites like “trueselves” or “susan’s place” or “http://transsexual.org”
MEY: jajaja yes
GABBY: Susan’s for sure. Argh.
BROOK: And a lot of that content is helpful in some ways, but a lot of the ways they talk about womanhood, or passing, or transition just seemed inaccessible and unnecessary to me
some of that advice is like “don’t paint your nails and draw attention to your GIANT MAN HANDS” which, like, as a woman struggling not to hate her body, that was pretty hard to read
and there was this traditional narrative that you had to change your name, move away, and marry a guy
BROOK: that I was like “I’ve read erica jong, and know about the lavender menace and riot grrrl – you don’t have to do that to be a woman”
I was like, I see badass women at punk and metal shows – how do I do that? what do I do?
MEY: For a long time as a teenager I wondered if I would have to be straight, because I knew I so desperately wished I was a girl (that’s how I thought of it back then) and like Brook said, the only trans women I saw heavily encouraged a stealth, straight lifestyle, and so I was like, “well, I guess if I ever want to become a women, I’m going to have to date guys” and it caused me so much stress.
[Frances had to leave the chat to catch a plane at this point]
GABBY: My mother asked me point-blank: so, if I am a woman now, I want to date men, right?
MEY: So many people asked me if I was gonna date guys after I came out! Also, a ton of people I know thought I was a gay guy before I came out.
BROOK: right! same
and I’ve felt, even now, a pull that, like, to validate our womanhood we should date guys
MEY: I was not good at acting like a guy, and being trans didn’t even enter most people’s minds in the 90s, so everyone assumed I was a gay guy because I was feminine, and I think that idea that I liked guys stuck with people’s assumptions about me after I came out
GABBY: For my mother and many more ‘traditional’ women back home, questions like that stem from the way we are taught that a rigid religious view of the world simply is how things are and that, as my mum said, ‘God doesn’t make mistakes,’ which is how she viewed trans women and lesbians for a long time, as ‘unnatural.’ Which made me so nervous to come out until later on.
MEY: People at my old church told me the same “God doesn’t make mistakes” line when I came out to them
BROOK: I confused a lot of folks, because I really loved cars, but was in theatre. I hung out with a lot of women, but played video games with a lot of boys. I was really into literature, but grew up hunting. It’s almost like gender can be socially constructed!
GABBY: Ah, yes–I was also told that I couldn’t be a woman because I hadn’t acted ‘feminine’ as a child. To be honest, aside from definitions of gender, I did try to act ‘masculine’ per our cultural codes to conceal questions about me.
BROOK: I’m super glad I never heard the “god never makes mistakes” thing about trans women. I moved out of my dad’s house at seventeen to live with a partner, and from then on I didn’t really care what my family thought.
MALLORY: I imagine being a queer trans woman there is a lot more pressure to fit in with certain ideas about what’s feminine.
BROOK: indeed. which is why I always exfoliate…
MALLORY: ij;alwkdjfa;slkdjfa;skldjf
GABBY: You’re damned if you do and if you don’t: act too feminine and you are a ‘stereotype’ of womanhood, and don’t act ‘femme enough’ and you are not legitimate as a trans woman.
BROOK: exactly.
GABBY: The catch-22 of asinine essentialism
BROOK: Plus, there’s the conditional acceptance in cis queer spaces based on “being one of the good ones,” which is such a load of garbage.
MEY: Yes! Also, like, i’m a femme and I proudly identify as a femme, and I don’t see that changing, but I know so many trans women who were hyper femme for the first year or so after they came out and then settled into more tomboyish looks or identities.
BROOK: Yeah, I very intentionally didn’t wear jeans for a few years, because I wanted to explore what it was like to present more femme, but still be tomboyish. Now I wear a lot of jeans, but still wear skirts and dresses with Docs whenever I feel like it.
MALLORY: It’s weird that cis lesbians can be super accepting of cis butch women but really freak out if a trans woman deviates from ‘femininity’ sometimes? Like, we do not have a great track record sometimes on that!
BROOK: Totally.
MEY: Yes! like, i’ve heard cis queer women talk about how butch trans women are “triggering” bc they “look like men” which is so wildly transmisogynistic
MALLORY: oh wow
MEY: and those same cis women are perfectly fine with trans men being in their spaces
MALLORY: *my diamonds voice* MY SPACES
BROOK: I’ve known lots of queers who are totally stoked about a hairless, boyish “androgynous” person, but as soon as there is facial hair, or a sort of “man” identity, there’s rejection. So it’s also a narrow lens of acceptance
GABBY: I once heard that a lesbian woman I knew here in Tally had asked why any ‘man’ would come out as a trans woman because of the ‘wonderfulness’ of male privilege, and because I had just come out, I felt stuck, wondering if people really just saw me as exercising male privileges, and I became, briefly, afraid of ‘invading’ spaces like women’s restrooms. So I didn’t use the restroom at all at my university, for a few weeks, out of that fear of misperception.
BROOK: The amount of shrinking back we do and have done as trans women…
GABBY: Casey Plett talks about this a lot
MEY: And it goes back to the trans men/trans women thing: while trans women, who are women, are seen as invaders in queer women’s spaces. But trans men, who are men, and very much not women, are not seen as invaders.
again, that’s some spaces, not all
BROOK: “Here is the stereotype I am trying to get to: trans women try to shirk their male privilege before transitioning, disappear into themselves, and then can never really get back out to become assertive, present, feminist women. And this is why everybody thinks we’re weird.
Binnie, Imogen (2013-03-23). Nevada (p. 64).”
I was talking to Imogen a few weeks ago, and she referenced the “I see the queer community as my ex” thing that she wrote about in MRR a while back
I think that might be an okay model. we were also discussing the colonist impulse to show up in communities, and say “I deserve to be here” which, for parties or organizations is fine, but for friend groups… it can take time, and we may just have to build more or our own things
but like “queer community” isn’t a monolithic thing, but it’s so often at our parties, spaces, and in our groups… and maybe we can just give it a wary eye, and treat it like it’s hurt us before
MALLORY: any FINAL THOUGHTS? hopes for the future? things you’d like to see more in queer communities?
what did you have for breakfast today?
BROOK: i’m really curious how dating has been for folks btw
MEY: I had Cheez-its for breakfast, which I know is terrible, Ii’m sorry
BROOK: grass-fed roasted beef shank, fried egg, chou tofu cheese, coffee
MALLORY: Brook
get out
BROOK: HA
GABBY: I want to stop seeing the statement ‘I would never date a trans woman’ from certain lesbian spaces, for one, this idea of us being presumed guilty and ‘wrong’ from the start–even if one of the ones saying it found us attractive before knowing we were trans.
MEY: wait, Mallory and Gabby what did you have for breakfast, brook and I had the two extremes, so we’ve got that already taken care of
MALLORY: I am at Nicole’s house and I had that Iceland yogurt
GABBY: Oh, no breakfast yet–out of groceries
MALLORY: it said it was strawberry flavored but there was NO STRAWBERRY?
so just plain yogurt I guess
MEY: also I’d like to stop seeing the belief that trans women are interested in using our genitals during sex in the same way that cis men are (I mean, some may be, but many of us are not)
MALLORY: there’s this idea sometimes, that dating preferences are just ‘innate’ and outside one’s control and if they happen to reflect social prejudices like racism or transmisogyny it can’t be helped
GABBY: I just want us to be seen as women: saying you are attracted to women just means that, and women come in many categories. To say you would not date a trans woman is not the same as saying I only date women, yet they are presented by both TERFs and ignorant people as if they are
BROOK: I hope that many individual AFAB queers who make up communities, spaces, and dating pools rethink their assumptions about trans womanhood, and realize that we too are not a monolith. I hope that more trans women will go out and try to find each other in the spaces and hang out. and I hope that not knowing or or having trans women in queer spaces is more universally recognized as a sign of grossness. Dating is rough, but I think that anyone who dates women as a woman should be thinking about what they want, why they want it, and how little trans or cis matters in that scheme of things.
ugh, yes, that ridiculous “it’s a preference” thing. Like all preferences in the US are informed by white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonialism, dude.
GABBY: In spaces like where I grew up, I want, as our LGBTQ movements grow and do good work, like the Caribbean Women and Sexuality Diversity Conference, to work towards abolishing the idea that trans identity is an ‘American’ or ‘Western’ import being thrust upon formerly colonised nations by their colonisers
MEY: yes Gabby
100% yes
GABBY: It’s an open door to invalidation by saying that we only ‘think’ we are women because of colonisation and that if we just turned to the (coloniser’s) religious tenets, we would see the error of our ways
And this leads into the portayal of trans-ness as anti-black in certain communities. Which aligns with the rhetoric from certain African evangelists, for instance, that being queer is ‘un-African,’ something we also occasionally say in the Caribbean despite many Caribbean people seeming all too happy to divorce themselves from ‘inferior’ African-ness in other contexts–which is to say this is a mess of issues.
MEY: Gabby, I’m so obsessed with your writing and your thinking
it’s all so brilliant
GABBY: Thank you!
BROOK: It’s awesome. God, I just want to hang out in a room with all five of us and listen and talk all day
a quince of amazing people
MEY: jaja same
BROOK: quincet?
MALLORY: we should do this again sometime!
BROOK: i don’t know the word for a group of 5
GABBY: I’m so hungry I read that as quiche
BROOK: HAHA
quince is a fruit, apparently?
MALLORY: five queers is definitely a quiche
MEY: a quiche of queers
MALLORY: well thank you all so much for doing this!
MEY: thank you everyone!
BROOK: rad
GABBY: Thanks so much for having us :DD
[Image via]
true fact: There’s a disc golf course a 10 minute drive from the detainment center in Guantanamo, and I was ranked for the under 12s there for a bit. I was very bad at it.
1. I love this, thank you all for participating!
2. Mallory, you can’t recycle glass in Utah unless you drive to a depot, so you can’t put the glass yogurt jars in the recycling bins at our house.
glass is oddly not good to recycle:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/…
From the start, it was hard to argue that glass should have been allowed in the curbside mix. It’s the heaviest of recyclables but has always been of marginal value as a commodity. In the rough-and-tumble sorting facilities, a large share of it breaks and contaminates valuable bales of paper, plastic and other materials.
Today, more than a third of all glass sent to recycling facilities ends up crushed. It is trucked to landfills as daily cover to bury the smell and trap gases. The rest has almost no value to recyclers and can often cost them to haul away.
Nooooooo! 🙁
this was excellent!
*Hearteyes* so many awesome people on the Toast aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh
This is fantastic and really enlightening to read.
(Disc golf is the worst, though.)
This was so interesting, thank you all so much.
I’ve always thought it would be interesting to compare whether bisexual women are less likely to say they wouldn’t date a trans woman than lesbians. My personal experience suggests that’s true – though not always for right and perfect reasons – but I don’t know if that’s borne out by facts in any way.
Another thing about queer communities and trans-ness: one of the reasons I was never tempted to identify as pansexual (rather than bisexual) was that the first few times I saw the term used, it was in a kind of ‘I date women, men, trans people, anyone!’ kind of way, which seemed kind of insulting. I think use of that term has evolved, as well as understanding of non-binary gender and the relationship that as an identity might have to being trans or cis, but I think it shows how even the supposedly progressive end of the queer community gets it wrong.
Anecdotally, I’ve dated a lot of bi and queer women, but often that’s just due to not many women in my area and my age range identifying as lesbians.
In some parts, pansexual also means “cis women have sex with other cis women for the amusement of their male partners” which makes my skin crawl off and hide under the bed. Just… No.
I haven’t seen that. That’s horrible.
Some of the kink scenes in Missouri are heavily infected with the idea that heterosexual partnerships are always primary and men shouldn’t be seen playing with men. Also, women should always date older men, on up to “I could be your father” age differences. It all gets twisted up with their definition of pan. 😐
My partner and I are both agender and frustratingly pass for a straight couple – we just don’t go near any more.
Yeah. I’ve been in a lot of discussions about identifying as bisexual vs. pansexual, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it mostly depends on which set of negative connotations/associations you’re willing to deal with. Call yourself bisexual and a lot of people assuming you’ll only date binary and/or cis people; call yourself pansexual and people think you’re trying to be a special snowflake, in my experience.
So many great people! In one place!
Oh MAN I feel like this just barely scratched the surface; I could have kept reading forever. Please consider doing a follow-up.
DITTO
I don’t know if we’ll follow-up to this specifically, but we’re planning to chat about more things sometime. I love my quiche.
my roommate later pointed out that “quince” was a chaucer term for vagina, but I think she misremembered “queint” as “quince”. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=…
i think quince *should* be a cool term for one’s junk though.
This was amazing and also very funny (seriously you’re all very funny I can’t believe you aren’t all long-time friends). Thank you all for doing this.
this was so great, thank you all for sharing!
(love when I get to see a surprise Autostraddle/Toast staff crossover)
I loved this. This stuck out to me, though:
I also felt distinctly uncomfortable with my first experience with a woman post-coming out because I was asked, innocently, if I could use my genitalia like a man, and I felt so awkward afterwards, this sense of being with a woman and yet being treated only partly as one by her.
Obviously this is TERRIBLE, but I’m struggling to understand one thing: it is considered the absolute height of offensive/rude to ask a trans person “how they have sex,” which is totally understandable for all the reasons. But as a cis person, I truly have no idea how a trans person (who has not undergone reassignment surgery) deals with their biological genitalia in a way that is true to their gender. Everyone deals with it differently I’m sure (life is a tapestry!), but would a trans woman typically just … ignore her penis?
I guess maybe the answer is “If you ever find yourself in a scenario where you are about to have sex with a trans person, you can ask that one individual at that time, but otherwise there is no answer.” Maybe?
Sorry for the ramble.
I think you’ve got the right idea. If you’re about to have sex with a trans person, a great question is, “What makes you feel good?” or “How do you like to have sex?”. It’s also possible that she will talk to you about this in the moment, or before. Like with all sex, communication is the key.
Also, trans or cis, not everyone uses their genitalia in the fashion mentioned on the packaging. Stone butches are a great example – in many cases, their genitalia just doesn’t come into the picture, as they are not interested in being touched. There are rarely hard and fast (see what I did there) rules, but you can find what works for you and your lover by talking.
Thank you! That’s sort of what I figured. I’m nosy/inquisitive by nature so I have to sort of stomp on that sometimes in the name of being a decent human being.
Totally. I mean, there’s a nosy/inquisitive side of me that really wants to know what literally everyone likes to do in bed… but it’s a bad plan. haha
I think the part that was painful to hear was “use your genitals like a man,” when the person in question was not, in fact, a man.
Oh for sure! Definitely got that loud and clear 🙂
This is so wonderful and intelligent and I hope everyone who reads this has a good long think about everything afterwards and we all become better people with better skin and disc golfing skills.
I love this so much. Thank you!
This was good. Thanks to all the participants.
I live in Tallahassee too! OMG I never see any toasties on here from Tally. Hi!!!
Yay, more Tallytoasties!
BUT WHERE ARE THE DYKE BARS IN THE EAST BAY? I keep hearing how the East Bay is the best place for queer girls but I cannot find them. Admittedly, I’m in the very suburban part of the East Bay past the tunnel, but highly specific directions to where the queer girls at would be much appreciated.
Also, Mey is one of my favorite writers at Autostraddle and it’s lovely to see her here!
There aren’t any dyke bars in the bay anymore – but there might be some unofficial hangouts or places like there are in portland.
Thank you so much! That’s really kind of you to say. I’m excited to be here!
woooooo
Loved this. I learned a lot. And May, I loved your “jajaja” laugh. To me (Mexican) there’s no other way to laugh 🙂
I think my Patronus just became a representation of this Queers of the RoundTable Discussion… Like … this was completely amazing. How does one get to be a fly on the wall of one of these events? I want to buy tickets to every showing of Quiche of Queers. I just spent the whole time I was reading this with my chin in my hands and hearts in my eyes. There’s nothing that brings me joy like queer women and non-binary folk sitting around talking intelligently about queerness and personal history. I just love this so much.
Also, I would totally read the Golf Disc Course Discourse with y’all. And I don’t even know anything about disc golf.
As a straight trans woman, I can confirm that being on the masculine end of presentation really sucks for us too, as does LGBT stuff being framed in a way that leaves me feeling like I don’t belong to the community.
Oh, totally! I wasn’t meaning to say that it didn’t suck for straight trans women – more that that narrative that I was seeing was one of “hide. stealth is your only option.” which is kinda icky imo.
I’m also super curious – as a straight trans woman would you want to bring your partner or boyfriend to queer events? Have you tried this where you are? Do you get shit from people?
I see trans guys with their lady partners at queer stuff all the time, though they are also ostensibly straight (in many cases), and it bums me out that trans women are usually excluded from the same type of thing – often because “OMG straight cis guy partner” which is also bull.
Is that because straight trans guys get to hold on to their inherent queerness by virtue of them being trans guys in women’s spaces whereas straight trans women lose queerness points by virtue of being straight women?
something like that – yea. but it’s like “no one is born queer” so we all join or leave these spaces at some point, and i dunno… there isn’t really a queer emeritus status imo
I kind of suspect that in either case, the most likely straight trans person to bring their partner to events is someone with a long history in LGBT (eg. they were part of it when ppl though they were a lesbian rather than a straight trans man).
In that case, it may say more about the inclusiveness of lesbians for those who transition to straight men, as opposed to the inclusiveness of gay guys for those who transition to straight women.
that said… the idea that trans guys were *once lesbians or straight women* or trans women *were once gay or straight guys* is also problematic and not always true for individuals ideation of their gender or life.
and the very inclusion of a trans guy who “used to be a lesbian” can be used to exclude a trans woman who “used to be a straight guy”
Yup.
Oh sure sure, I wasn’t saying you did say it didn’t suck, was just adding confirmation!
I have a bunch of social anxiety issues (trans with social anxiety? SO RARE), which pretty much results in anything that isn’t explicitly framed as being trans friendly (`queer’ won’t do), I think my maximum duration of attendance is around 10 minutes before I freak out about not belonging there.
So I can’t really answer your second question except as a hypothetical, which is that oh yeah I really would not relish that idea – not for expected open hostility, but more the `why are you even here’ vibe I would expect to receive. Which may say more about me than anything, but I kinda feel like its probably not just me.
like 100% trans women should be able to come to queer stuff, be in queer circles – but events and groups may also be specifically for dykes or women who date women or w/e, and then ymmv in how it feels to be there (even though by all means come)
we didn’t really cover this in a way, but i find one thing that can be tricky is for trans women (or folks who come out later) to not have cultural touchpoints in common with the queer/lez groups they are coming into. it can feel, really quickly, like everyone gets jokes and knows whats cool – and ultimately, it’s because we’re stepping into a new (to some of us) culture – one which we might not even like, or really want to be part of. but there are plenty of trans women, queer or straight, plus cis women queer or straight, that like just about anything under the sun – so the chances are high you will be able to find a group that makes you feel seen and heard
Yeah, that unclearness around how `queer’ is defined is why I don’t feel I can wear queer as a badge, which is tricky seeing as its sort of shifting to become a catch-all term for LGBT+. As far as I can tell anyway, its hard to know.
totally – and like, does queer include gay men? i don’t see many gay men using that term, but i also see queer used in so many different ways it’s really confusing. is it political? gender? sexuality?
I can’t work out whether the expansion of `queer’ to include the T is based in trans erasure or trans inclusion, and I kind of suspect that comes down to the specific individual using the term, which makes talking to `queer’ allies a potential minefield.
yea, i think it’s often specific to the group or person saying “queer” as well as the locale, and a bunch of other stuff.
I have definitely met people who identified as gay, male, and queer, simultaneously (though of course also people who identified as gay men but not as queer).
Wow, I was really happy to see this! Thank you all for sharing this discussion with the Toast.
I’d never heard of that idea of “treating queer community as your ex” before, and that really sticks out in my mind. I’m cis and bi so I know this is not the same at all or maybe even overlapping that much, but (and I’m a little ashamed to admit this tbh) I sometimes get sad thinking about how much more comfortable I felt in queer spaces when I identified as straight than after I began the process of coming out. I also know there’s no such thing as a completely safe space, but I’m also saddened to hear other queer women’s (y’all’s) experiences of being hurt and distanced from the places that are supposed to be better (for those of us under the queer umbrella in general) than where we came from.
I’m curious – did you feel more comfortable in queer spaces as a person seen as straight because you didn’t have to worry about being judged as a potential partner or w/e? or what was it that made it easier?
for a lot of trans women, the tricky thing is that we aren’t even allowed into those spaces until we are out or transitioned (if even then), because those spaces are often 0% ok with people perceived to be cis men (regardless of the reality)
Thanks for pointing that out, Brook. Being excluded that way pre-out/transition sounds really shitty. I hadn’t given that much thought, I’m sorry to say.
To answer your question, now that I’m thinking about it, honestly, I think that pre-out comfort for me was mostly about taking advantage of my privilege and moving in relatively privileged queer circles without realizing it. I’d always had queer friends growing up, but they were almost without exception cis gay boys. I think I thought of myself/was seen as a fun friend and ally, perhaps an outsider, but one who “got it” and wasn’t likely to be rude or fuck anything up for the cis gay kids. I felt comfortable around those friends, they seemed pretty fine with having me around, and everything was hunky-dory.
My discomfort now has a lot to do with a few things: being perceived/treated as/told I am straight because of who I’m partnered with, not having any other out bi folks in those spaces to relate with, and toooons of misogyny that I’ve encountered. I have trouble relating to monosexual queer women because I’m still not sure what to do with the idea of “bi passing privilege.” The queer scene where I live is incredibly heavily focused on white cis gay dudes, and I always thought that was a peculiarity of that place, but it sounds like lots of other cities have that problem too. I’m just not as interested in being a part of that anymore. Plus, my anxiety is a lot worse now than it was when I was younger, and I suppose that has a big role to play.
Yea, that sounds like a lot to unpack for sure.
For myself, I spend almost 0 time around men, gay or straight. I’ve had really bad experiences with both, and because I don’t lower my bar on intersectional feminism for them, I find very few (hi friends) that I like enough to spend time on.
I’ve found that so many women are bi/queer, but scared to talk about it for the exact reasons you mention, so if you meet a lot of rad women, you’ll maybe find out by talking openly about your sexuality that they feel similarly. This works for me pretty well, but ymmv. But yea, in short, I’d recommend spending less time and energy on the gay dude scene.
This is good advice, thanks again Brook. <3 I really admire that you set that bar so high!
This is fantastic and manages the wonderful combination of important and funny that the Toast is so good at, but also, did anyone else read this and think “there’s new Steven Universe where when how” and run to find the Steven Universe but not find any? Because I know I have terrible priorities but I’m sort of hoping I’m not the only one?
i mean, there’s a reason we immediately talked about it. i think it’s up on their site (the whole week was a “steven bomb”, but also available on your streaming or questionably legal site of choice
I, like the other people here, found this discussion fascinating at helpful.
I don’t mean to turn the discussion away from your experiences, but what can I, as a straight, white cis female, do to ensure that all women are included in my feminist communities?
it’s hard to say without knowing more about your communities, but removing biological essentialism from your vocabulary helps. also, look around and if you don’t know any trans women, or know of any of us in your groups, take a hard look at what you’re doing or not doing to exclude or include. one very simple way to say “yep, we’re not horrible” is to refer to groups as “trans and cis women” and never “women and trans”
One thing that I look for in feminist communities is the language used for “woman-only” spaces. It warms my heart when the language specified that anyone who identifies as a woman, or as a person belonging to a woman-only space is welcome. Of course, them is up to the community to back up those words by making the space actually inclusive (calling out and shutting down transmisogyny, for example.)
As a cis woman, I am totally open to correction on this suggestion.
Personally, I’m ok with “woman-only” but it’s important to specify trans and cis women. Woman-identified is sometimes vague or misleading, and still doesn’t feel inclusive to a lot of trans women. It really helps to specifically name that trans women are included.
Totally! What I meant to say, but didn’t actually say, is that I like it when a group says, “This is a woman-only space for cis women, trans women, and anyone who feels they belong to this space. We don’t police your gender!”
But, apparently, I thought using vague words was a good idea. I hadn’t had much coffee yet, so I’m using that excuse.
😀 no worries. I figure that was the intent for sure.
This is delightful, I hope you make it a regular feature.
I imagine that if the five of you founded your own church it would be a variation on the Femme on Femme music video.
As a lesbian/queer cis woman, thank you, thank you, thank you for being so open about your experiences in queer spaces. I am super grateful that you would allow us to read and learn from this conversation.
I’ve really been bothered by that all-too-common disclaimer from quuer women that “I date women and transmen” because it seems to erase the identity of trans men. And, too often, when they say “women” they mean cis women. It feels like a really transphobic way to try to score points as a good, radical, queer.
yep. so true. ultimately, we can’t change the folks who are jerks, but if more of us are great about dating and loving trans women, we can make sure those jerks are increasingly rare.
In general, I think it's probably best practice to just ask your partners what they like and not make assumptions? And if you're not fooling around with someone, it's not really your business.
I mean, I'm an AFAB nonbinary person and I know I don't like all the same things as every other person with a clitoris and vagina. It doesn't usually come up in casual conversation.
This is something I also wonder about, as an AFAB nonbinary person. To what extent do I belong in women's spaces? I feel like I do belong in some, but perhaps not all, women's spaces, and I worry about intruding or trying to have it both ways.
I think that's a great question, but I think you have to answer for yourself. IMO as long as you're not centering NB issues in women's spaces, you're good. I think it's also rad when NB spaces are created for AFAB and AMAB NB folks. In an ideal world, we're all centering trans women of color, working for legalized sex work, and prison abolition – we're all intersectional feminists.
Can it really be that this post is 3 days old and no one has mentioned the play 5 Lesbians Eating A Quiche?
My (butch, cis, queer) anecdotal experience in the last 20 years is the same – more bi/pan women say they are willing to date a transwoman than your average cis dyke.
Yes, I know specifically queer-identified cis gay men, so there's that.
I do think it's a political label as much as anything else. And without getting into a rabbit hole of "what is queer", my basic feeling is it's about visible difference in terms of gender identity and sexuality, and being just fine with it (being different).
Ask me tomorrow, and I'll probably say something completely different, like many of us, I suspect!
"GABBY: You’re damned if you do and if you don’t: act too feminine and you are a ‘stereotype’ of womanhood, and don’t act ‘femme enough’ and you are not legitimate as a trans woman."
Thank you for putting this so concisely. And there's cis privilege for me, right there. Other than some fun times in the mid-eighties, when I was accused of being "male identified", no-one challenges me at all about how butch I am. I'm perfectly acceptable in the queer community. There are some outer extremes of heterosexuals who would probably say I'm a "man-woman" or something unfortunate, but they would be the real whackadoodles.