in conclusion...

[subjective]

things i liked about the "transecting the academy" conference on saturday:

+ lots of different people with different perspectives.
+ not hearing any transer-than-thou discussions.
+ i got to shake hands with zach. i got to meet dean from makezine. i got enough courage to go & be a dorky fan to joelle ryan who gave basically the only speech i liked at the boston day of remembrance this year.
+ joelle's amazing poem that included the phrase "revolutionary spree." (who wants to screen patches?!)
+ hearing this kid zane talk about trans bodies in a really smart way, & denouncing the standards of care "checklist" & being really sincere about demystifying the process of being trans. (not just demystifying it for non-trans folks but among ourselves as well.)
+ not feeling invalidated for not (currently) medically transitioning.
+ getting to hang out with yumi & ilana all day.
+ pauline park going "we're here, we've been queer for 3,000 years, & you've been used to it." also, like, her complete unshakeableness even in the face of really stupid or offensive questions. it was fucking impressive.
+ the "toilet trained" presentation about bathroom issues.
+ feeling excited about the work i'm planning to do & how much good stuff can come from it & how many rad people there are to meet & talk to.


things i didn't like:

- people who said transwomen can never be "real" women (ditto transmen/"real" men) & it's not fair of them to ask people to see them that way. and called this analysis RADICAL.
- people who said you can never divorce the body (physical sex) from gender.
- people who said you have to completely divorce the body from gender.
- people who wanted us all to just get along. (yes, everyone is entitled to opinions & yes, we can all self-identify however we want but that doesn't mean those opinions aren't oppressive & it doesn't mean we need to skip the part about identities being co-opted, appropriated or invalidating.)
- people who talked about bodies as if they are either male or female.
- people who made fucked up race/gender analogies that didn’t even make logical sense.
- mods who did not bring the panels together in a cohesive way & who did not direct discussion at all.
- a white person speaking waaaaaay over the allotted time on a panel about race/ethnicity when the only person of the color on the panel was waiting to talk.
- the panelist who i think was talking about representation of transpeople/trans bodies in porn, but whose argument i could not even identify, let alone follow, & who passed around a really loaded & potentially triggering picture without giving any context or warning.
- the ensuing porn is good!/porn is bad! discussion that went nowhere as usual & really had very little to do with trans issues.
- not knowing where the fuck to use the bathroom. i'm hoping i just missed the announcement in the welcome speech, since we arrived late. (zach?)
- missing our intended bus home.

also, providence is terribly cute & i liked it there. also, i might try to present at this conference next year (if there is one next year?). also, if grad schools don't start sending me letters soon i might implode. the end.

ps. happy to discuss further any of the above notes.

also ps. even though i seem very critical of a lot of stuff that went down at said conference, i am really glad i went because getting pissed off forces me to articulate clearly why i disagree, & hearing things phrased badly or offensively reminds me how not to talk about things, how important it is to be specific, how easy it is to get comfortable, how hard it is to make yourself see past your own experiences. hi i'm an optimist.

Comments

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

- people who said you can never divorce the body (physical sex) from gender.
- people who said you have to completely divorce the body from gender.


these opinions are like the bane of my existence right now. and i can't believe that there were not CLEARLY MARKED trans-friendly bathrooms given the subject of the darn conference. heck i've done that (made sure there are bathrooms for the recognized two genders that include transpeople who identify with one or the other and also several single stall bathrooms for folks who might not want to identify with either gender, for whom having to walk through "one door or the other" is invalidating/scary/etc.) and that was at just a general queer event. grr.

[subjective.livejournal.com]

apparently there were "all kinds of genders" in the "women's" bathroom (according to friends who used that bathroom) but i was really hoping to use the "men's" bathroom without feeling freaked out about it. since i never found a "men's" bathroom i thought maybe they announced at the welcome that just everyone should use the "women's" room. but like, why would you not just tape over the gender & have it say "restroom"?! i did find a single-stall downstairs after a while. and i mentioned the confusion on my evaluation form. eh.

[unclevampire.livejournal.com]

race/gender analogies= ewwww!

[adrienmundi]

Eek, this is the kind of thing I really miss in academia. I'm such a dialectician that getting pissed off at the semi-articulated idiocy of others really kicks my brain into higher gear and gets me really excited. And, I'm finally (hopefully) at a point where insecurity about trans/gender crap doesn't silence me from within. If there is such a conference next year, I will likely just have to attend, or explode with jealousy and frustation.

[subjective.livejournal.com]

yes you definitely should attend. we can write pissed-off notes to each other during presentations.

[easilyirritable.livejournal.com]

Damn, what were the people mentioned in numbers 1-6 under "things I didn't like" even doing there in the first place? Not that I'm in favor of silencing people I disagree with, but I'm so confused as to what they thought they were accomplishing.

It sounds like the conference was really interesting, though! And Providence is an awfully cute city.

How long ago did you send out your grad school apps?

[subjective.livejournal.com]

well all the folks who said those things (along with some other fucked up stuff) were transpeople. we all have our own ideas about how to deal with bodies, how race figures into gender & vice versa, etc. it was interesting i guess, but also kind of upsetting & invalidating sometimes. and exacerbated by the fact that q&a/discussion periods required lining up at a microphone. it made sense in some ways because they were recording the whole conf, & because it helped organize who got to speak when. but it sucked for really getting into issues because people basically had to make a statement & sit down. it wasn't like a "conversation" at all.

the apps were due between 12/15 & 1/15. it has been almost two months since the first ones were sent in & i'm getting antsy. plus the conference just made me want to be focusing my energies on these kinds of discussions/issues all the time. so i'm even antsier (antsyer? more antsy?).

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

the apps were due between 12/15 & 1/15.

Mine too, and many say don't expect to hear anything till April. Argh!

Re:

[easilyirritable.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I suppose I was lumping transpeople into one big monolithic group with the same opinions and all. It just seemed like those opinions in particular were very invalidating, like you said.

(Just to let you know, As Nature Made Him had the effect of causing me to question my beliefs on gender and consider ideas that go against what I had believed my entire life, which was that gender is entirely a social construction. Now, I don't know what to think. Part of me is like, Protect your feminist agenda! And then the scientist part of me is like, Fuck your agenda! I'm listening to the scientist part of me, and scrapping all of my assumptions and starting from scratch, so to speak.)

The grad schools you applied to would be insane not to accept a smarty-pants like you. Maybe they are just busy passing your essays around the department and glowing with the anticipation of having you at their institutions? *shrug* Just a thought.