nalec: should we talk about performing
gender?
Hanna: I think that's what I'm referring to.
nalec: i'm wearing leather pants, it feels right. :)
Hanna: Heh. :)
Hanna: I am wearing jeans and a sweater. Feels right.
nalec: oh, i meant those are good clothes to talk about performing
gender in.
nalec: i'm planning to do that tonight.
Hanna: Oh, okay. ;)
nalec: so, are jeans & a sweater good clothes to talk about performing
gender in?
Hanna: Sure.
nalec: ;)
nalec: okay.
nalec: here is what i am thinking about:
nalec: (2 bullets will appear in a few minutes)
Hanna: :)
Hanna: As long as they don't come through the window. :)
nalec: --it is hard to be pro-trans when you believe gender is a
question of performance, it is hard to justify the expense of srs
if it isn't about the body in some way. --sometimes i feel like all
the genders i have are performance. that when i am not performing,
i don't have a gender.
nalec: not through the window, hon.
nalec: there is tension for me between those two ideas i just said.
Hanna: What is that tension?
nalec: well.
nalec: that for me, perhaps gender is performance sometimes.
nalec: but that to say that, can be anti-transexual.
Hanna: Can be yes.
Hanna: Can I say something?
nalec: yah!
Hanna: k.
Hanna: Okay, here is the way I see things.
Hanna: And I have talked with many people about this, and I don't
think it is all that _personal_.
Hanna: So, there is sex and there is gender.
Hanna: And people are using "gender" to refer to both, because academic
people use gender when referring to either sex or gender.
Hanna: Because to say "sex" is a bad thing, there is prudishness inherent
in acfem language. I don't think that many people talk about this,
but it is definately there.
Hanna: So, there needs to be some admission of that, that their language
is flawed, and that a lot of the work they have done needs to be redone
in a sex-positive way.
Hanna: So, there is sex and gender.... and gender is all about performance.
Hanna: But sex is all about body.
Hanna: i was talking with an interesexed person the other day, about
body and about gender.
Hanna: And asked her if she thought that transsexual people were maybe
just another form of intersexed people.... that in many transsexuals,
the intersexed part is less apparent.
Hanna: And reading K's page, there is a lot of echoes of that conversation.
Hanna: Then the conversation is not about gender at all.
Hanna: Because I feel that I have a right to be femme or macho or
whatever, just the same as anyone else.
Hanna: Yet it is more of a struggle for me, because the "gender roles"
of a transsexual woman are even more limited than they are for non-trans
women.
Hanna: Same goes opposite for trans men.
Hanna: So, that is why, i think, so many trans people talk about
"gender liberation" because we feel that intense pressure to conform
more than anyone else does.
Hanna: So, of course, we're going to rebel against that.
Hanna: But to rebel against that, puts us into some skeery places,
if I want to be a top and fuck people, and wear jeans and a t-shirt,
what is different from me and a guy?
nalec: that you're a woman!
Hanna: So, the part of our politics that is lacking (not flawed)
but lacking, is that we don't make a very good distinction between
body and performance.
Hanna: My body is female and I have a right to do anything I want
to my body to do whatever the fuck i want with it.
nalec: yes!
Hanna: It is about my Identity, not about my gender.
Hanna: My gender, though it is hard to say this, is separte from my
body....
Hanna: Even though that separation is purely theoretical, in reality,
it is impossible to separate them.
Hanna: Which is what makes it so impossible for non transsexual people
to understand us.
nalec: so, the distinction yr making.
nalec: is it that sex has to do with the body, and gender has to do
with the roles?
Hanna: Yes.
nalec: see, then i wonder about the words, transexual and transgendered.
Hanna: Which is why there are trans men who are happy with their
bodies the way they are... happy in female bodies but having man genders.
nalec: well.
Hanna: And same the opposite.
nalec: see, that's hard.
nalec: because for me....
nalec: okay, first off i don't always experience my body as female.
nalec: & second, i never experience s's body as female.
nalec: including before he had surgery.
nalec: something i have been struggling with, is what happens if
i say my history is a male history?
nalec: that going to slumber parties with girls is a male experience?
Hanna: I'm sure a lot of men wouldn't mind that. ;)
nalec: that trading stickers, & participating in this intense female
world, was an experience of boys....
nalec: oh, yes, there is sex.
nalec: (as in, the desire, and the act.)
nalec: but there is also the division of people, the fact that i
have had access to lives i would not have had access to.
nalec: that i was not told girls were other.
nalec: that i was told boys were other.
nalec: i'm not sure if this conflicts with what you were saying, but
i sorta feel it does.
nalec: that for me, the body is involved, but the body may be ambiguously
gendered.
nalec: (damn! is that an academic sentence or what?)
nalec: discourse discourse discourse...
nalec:
Hanna: Okay, bodies... many bodies are ambiguously gendered....
and many bodies are ambiguously sexed.
Hanna: Which are you talking about?
nalec: which part of it is how i perceive my body?
nalec: sex or gender?
Hanna: Right.
nalec: when i think my body is male, or female, is that sex or gender?
nalec: i'm asking; i don't know.
Hanna: If one says that gender is performance.... if it's (to be
all discursive) contextual.... then does that help?
nalec: i don't see how to make the split, in my life.
nalec: i see the split in theory.
Hanna: And that sex is likewise, not contextual.
nalec: when i look down at myself at an angle and i see a boy, i
don't know if thats performance or biology.
nalec: i'm not sure it's either.
Hanna: Well, like I said, it is near impossible to separate sex
from gender.
nalec: okay.
Hanna: I think these conversations would be fun if we lived in a
world where trans people weren't hunted down and murdered for being
ambiguous.
nalec: yeah, i'm getting really tense.
nalec: i feel like something is at stake when i talk about this.
nalec: which is the other thing that i think ideas of performance
and play doesn't reflect.
Hanna: Because I don't think we are going to come up with a single
sentence that we both go "Ah! This is great, let's publish it and
solve all the world's problems!"
nalec: heh :)
nalec: if anyone could, it is us. :)
nalec: may i edit this & put it on my webby page?
Hanna: Yea, sure. :)
nalec: if i send you a copy first to approve?
nalec: i want this to be the intro page.
Hanna: Aw, just go ahead and put it up.
Hanna: Also, I would like to state that I am single and looking!
Hanna: *LOL*
nalec: and i would like to state, she is a babe, she is a catch~!
nalec: talk to me if you wanna be hooked up. :)
Hanna: Please, use no hooks.
nalec: no hooks!
Hanna: :)
nalec: only velcro fishing apparatus.
Hanna: Yea!
nalec: gol
Hanna: I will wear a fuzzy sweater, you'll know it's me!
nalec: you heard the lady....