Misgendered, again.

What's a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.. I don't think Bill Shakespeare was thinking about Transgender People when he wrote that line for Juliet. As a masculine presenting transgender woman, I get called "Sir" all the time, especially when I travel (something I've been doing a lot of lately). Fortunately, for me, I don't get dysphoria from being called Sir or He/Him. But I do get a hit of Euphoria when I am refered to as Ma'am or She/Her. I have gone to great lengths to indicate my preference. I have worn many pronoun pins, I have two sets of earrings with my pronouns, I have it tattooed on my arm: >

What does irk me is I bother to correct someone and they persist on calling me Sir or he/him. I generally don't correct people who I will only encounter once: staff at restaurants, airline desk agents (although they persist in this behavior despite my reservation being under Ms Erica Wolf and my passport, which is in their hand, saying "Sex: F".) I have started to take advantage of being misgendered because I get slightly better service as "Sir" than I would as "Ma'am" (I see this when I compare the service I get when I am surrounded by cis-female customers.)

The enemy of my enemy is my friend!

The enemy of my enemy is my friend (more Wikipedia link love). This relates to my prior post. Transgender women and TERFs make strange bedfellows. But our in-fighting only strengthens our shared enemy: The Patriarchy. By "The Patriarchy", I specifically refer to the way our culture has made male leadership normative. I'm actually not a fan of how Wikipedia presents "patriarchy" in terms that sound like an aspect BDSM culture. I much prefer the language of Critical Theory, that male leadership is normative in our culture. This is visible in two clear ways: 1. We rarely have women leaders. Yes, there are some, like Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, immediately come to mind. 2. Women who exhibit charisma and natural tendancy to leadership are frequently labeled with derogatory terms. My best friend's daughter is "into" cheerleading. This friend is a cis-het male who identifies as a feminist. He loves his daughter in that way that cis-het men commonly do - almost to the point of irrationality. As a feminist, the thought of his daughter being a cheerleader is abhorrent to him. I suggest that he emphasize the "leader" in cheerleader. Young women get so few opportunities to lead in any fashion and rarely ever in a way that is attractive to them.

Not a zero-sum game

This is where I stand on the TERF wars: This is not a zero-sum game. In a zero-sum game, the inputs into the game are limited and the outcome requires both a winner and a loser. Think of Monopoly or Chess. Both games start with limited resources which the players trade back and forth. In the end, there is only one winner and at least one loser. This is not the case with most things in life. In life, it is possible to expand the size of the game to allow for multiple winners. In my opinion, the position of TERFs is that transgender women take away from feminism. But feminism, as I see it, is not zero-sum. Transgender women add to the equation. I am now going to speculate a bit... Feminism grew out of a nascent philosphy of Critical Theory. After feminism, critical theory turned to Queer theory (I'm linking to Wikipedia because this is one of the areas that Wikipedia excels at). I wonder if the pivot to Queer theory was from the homosexual community feeling the need to create distance from certain branchs of feminism? But we are all queer. Some more queer than others. And we are more alike than we are different from one another. Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog: TERF Wars. I will not be waging wars on TERFs. Instead, I'm just go to try to ramble on about being a transgender woman and my experiences with Life, the Universe, and Everything. It is likely I'll ramble about feminism and Roller Derby. probably more feminism to begin with and ultimately more roller derby as time goes on.