We're here in Chicago, and thanks to the generosity of our hosts (laurakeet and her partner), I'm able to post despite having cleverly left my laptop power cord at home.
As we drove down yesterday, we were stopped briefly at the border, when the lovely gents at DHS decided I didn't have enough on me to prove that I was coming back to Canada.
I thought, briefly, that it might be funny to point out that my Health card provided a pretty good incentive for me to go back, but thought better of it*.
We pulled over into the inspection bay. And we went inside, as asked, and waited to see an officer. Meanwhile, they're searching the car behind us.
While it's happening, I'm thinking, "Oh...I really hope that I didn't put my stash or one of my pipes in my bag on autopilot while packing the last-minute stuff!" And the_pixie_mouse is thinking, "Please don't let them question about my pill bottle."
Because when she visits me, she tends to bring along a single bottle with enough of each of her regular meds to cover her for the time she's visiting - much easier than carrying half a dozen little pill bottles, y'see? Only of course it's not specifically legal. By law, if you're crossing the border particularly, you have to have the labelled prescription bottles.
So where does the privilege start? When the border officer comes back inside from the car search, and calls us over to the counter, where he asks the_pixie_mouse about her meds. She decides to play dumb a bit, say she didn't know she wasn't supposed to do that, and he let us off with no more than a short lecture.
That's the privilege, right there, in being two middle-class white women, and not, say, two middle-class brown women. He said he didn't think it looked like we were likely to be aiming to sell the narcotics we were bringing in, but was unspecific as to how he came to that conclusion. I find it difficult to believe that at least one factor that went into that conclusion wasn't race.
See? That's how privilege works. You don't have to want it. You can even hate having it. You can be someone who spends a lot of time and effort on trying to eradicate unearned privilege.
But you can't make other people not give it to you.
Even if we'd both stood there and insisted they treat us as they would someone who didn't have our privilege, all it would have done is make them think we're a bit less than totally secure in our sanity. It wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to how they will perceive the next brown folk who come along. We can't make them suspect us as they would those brown people.
Having privilege doesn't make you a bad person. It's out of your control, for the most part.
Taking advantage of it, when you have a choice?. That's where being a bad person starts.
* In the end, they believed me, basically because I said so. More privilege. Also, they said that having a phone bill or cable bill would have sufficed in showing I intended to return to Canada. I leave to the reader the job of assessing the logic behind that decision - that my several pieces of government-issued picture ID wouldn't convince them, but the fact that I have once had cable service would.
Illustrating Privilege
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: Poop Bubble. lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Mods Get to See the Darnedest Things
From an enormous comment, which I had the pleasure of deleting a few minutes ago:
See back then (pre agricultural society like 4000 BCE+) when we were hunter gatherers we were equal. We had specific roles but then as we reached a step in complex society virtually in every example women's status degraded fast. The more advanced a society got, it seems that the more ornamental women become. We are right now are on the other swing of the pendulum in the past century but luckily it won't be significant enough to affect me too bad before I pass. Do you not think that every male has a streak of his brain designed to be the Alpha male, get as many fertile females as possible in his possession, and defend/protect them and his territory?!Thanks!
...Believe me, I would be MUCH happier if you guys were still ornamental and society allowed us complete power over you guys. It would make focusing on education and career much easier because you wouldn't have to worry about appeasing an equal.
Oh well, good luck with your blog posts.
USA: Beacon of Stupid
Add Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-AZ) to the growing list of people who are getting non-terror death threats. I particularly like the content of this message left for him:
Caller: You are going to have to look over your f*&king shoulder because people in your district hate your f*&king face. I love my insurance company and to have you come between me and my f*&king doctor. I cannot tell you how much I wish a panty bomber would come in and just f*&king blow your place up.The problem that we're experiencing now is quite possibly the biggest indictment against our educational system. The level of ignorance and outright stupidity, and the absence of critical thinking skills, are only helping to cultivate a totally details-illiterate mob that is easily susceptible to any suggestion, no matter how ridiculous or how not grounded in actual fact. And if you take a mob that has no value for information or any capacity to debate an issue, the mob resorts to violence to defend itself.
"I love my insurance company"
I'm at a loss as to how one could love their insurance company. If I was 100% healthy and never needed to see a doctor, I don't think I'd love shoveling my money to them for no reason. If I need to see a doctor, I can't say I love the fact that I must choose a doctor that's within my carrier's network or else I pay through the nose.
"and to have you come between me and my f*&king doctor"
WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK AN INSURANCE COMPANY IS, YOU IGNORANT FUCKING DIPSHIT?! WHO DO YOU THINK DECIDES WHETHER OR NOT THEY WILL PAY FOR YOUR TREATMENT, EFFECTIVELY COMING BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DOCTOR??!?!
I know I can yell 'til I'm blue in the face and that it won't help. Heck, these people are even lost on the fact that Mike Vanderboegh, leader of the Window Smash Movement, collects social security (aka government handouts). They don't even understand or know what they are fighting for.
They claim they are against big government and government intervention, yet they still manage to come up with this award winning stance:
70 percent of those who sympathize with the Tea Party, which organized protests this week against President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, want a federal government that fosters job creation.Sure sounds like bigger government and government intervention to me!
They also look to the government to rein in Wall Street, with almost half saying the government should do something about executive bonuses.
But hey, what does it matter if something makes sense?
I Was Just Thinking...
...the other day that living in Indiana would be so much better if only the state had some giant poop bubbles. Huzzah!
[H/T to Shaker Constant Comment.]
Quote of the Day
"I have said from the start that my goal was to see health-care reform pass while maintaining the long-standing principle of the sanctity of life. ... I and other pro-life Democrats are pleased that we were able to hold true to our principles and vote for a bill that is pro-life at every stage of life."—Democratic Representative Bart Stupak, in a piece for the Washington Post titled "Why I wrote the 'Stupak amendment' and voted for health-care reform."
I never cease to be amazed at how the life of a woman who is pregnant and doesn't want to be always fails to be part of pro-life calculations, how her quality of life is missing utterly from these discussions.
What is so goddamn sacred about a life lived in a body of which ownership is denied?
Reminder: Subscription Renewals
We first made the Subscribe to Shakesville page available last March, which means most of the subscriptions are running out this month.
At the time the page was set up, a bunch of Shakers asked that I please post a reminder around this time, so, as requested, here's the reminder to renew your subscriptions!
Or the encouragement to start one, as the case may be.
As always, my profound thanks and gratitude to those who have donated and subscribed to Shakesville. This community couldn't exist without your support.
And let me reiterate, once again, that I don't want anyone to feel obliged to contribute financially, especially if money is tight. Aside from valuing feminist work, the other goal of fundraising is so Iain and I don't have to struggle on behalf of the blog, and I don't want anyone else to struggle themselves in exchange. There is a big enough readership that neither should have to happen.
ô,ôP
[Why Shakesville needs subscribers is explained here.]
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, maker of Butch Pornstache's Action Mustache Wax, for the Hero on the Go.
Recommended Reading:
Andy: Zimbabwe President Mugabe: Homosexuality Destroys Nationhood
Echidne: The F-Word
Jill: Iceland Bans Strip Clubs
Macon: Stuff White People Do: Describe Racism as Political Incorrectness
Tami: What makes a literary classic? Is there a place in the canon for POC?
Melissa: Interview with Erin Cressida Wilson, Screenwriter of Chloe
Leave your links in comments...
Today in Transphobia—Dateline: Missoula
by Shaker Lydia Encyclopedia
When I moved to Missoula three years ago, I was told that this town was a liberal oasis in the conservative desert that is Montana. University organizations and groups like the Student Assault Resource Center, The Curry Health Center's Transgender Therapy Group, and The UM Allies program promote this image, and do good work in the community to assist GLBQTI students and Missoulians. As a queer pansexual woman, I felt welcomed and hopeful getting in touch with a community that felt safe and welcoming.
However, when stories like bigots protesting "a city ordinance that would protect people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity" strike Missoula, I'm not surprised. No amount of candlelit vigils, rainbow bumper stickers, or welcoming posters can change the fact that Missoula and Montana at large remains a highly homophobic, transphobic society. Each instance is a painful prod, reminding us that we are still second-class citizens who are not considered worthy for protection under the law.
Onto the measure itself: It's familiar enough already. According to the article:
In a news release available at MissoulaRedTape.com, NotMyBathroom.com notes a lengthy list of concerns with the ordinance. The group fears the law would create "a government assigned sex," cost businesses money "to provide toilet facilities," and possibly "force ministers to perform homosexual marriages."Sound familiar? Every time a measure to protect trans and genderqueer people comes up, the bathroom fallacy is almost inevitable to follow—as though sexual predators will wait for the bureaucratic red tape to be cut and the smoke to clear before busting into the women's bathroom to assault cisgender women and children.
But NotMyBathroom.com chairman Tei Nash said the chief concern is the safety of women and children in public restrooms. He said the ordinance would give a man who "is female affirmed" the freedom to use women's restrooms.
To be clear...a predator is a predator. A sign with a stick figure wearing a dress on it is not going to stop a sexual predator. This legislation will not fling open doors across Missoula inviting them in.
As for creating a Government-assigned sex...well, isn't that ironic. Labels of gender are assigned to trans and genderqueer people from a young age, whether it fits them or not. Once we break away from these assigned labels, we become vulnerable to attacks from people like Tei Nash.
Trans and genderqueer people of Missoula are already using the bathroom, the one they feel safest using without having management called on them, not the one they may feel expresses their identity correctly. This is nothing new. But with this legislation, trans and genderqueer people of Missoula can breathe easier knowing that they have some basic protections under the law to express themselves without being in a perpetual limbo of homelessness or joblessness.
NotMyBathroom is trying to turn this protective measure that would ensure safety and equality for Missoulians into a battle, but after three years, I'm ready to fight for my rights, as well as the rights of my fellow queer, trans, and genderqueer Missoulians.
This is not about bathrooms. The only thing remotely related is the possibility of flushing away legal vulnerability for a community that has been trampled upon in Missoula for too long.
Shakers can email Missoula Mayor John Engen condemning bigotry and supporting protective laws here and write letters to the editor of the Missoulian here.Out of Control (But Still Totally Not Terrorism)
Mark Duren picks up his 10-year-old daughter from school, and in short order, Harry Weisiger, another driver, is flipping him off and honking his horn. But it doesn't stop there. His "road rage" continues to escalate:
Weisiger honked his horn at him for awhile, as Duren stopped at a stop sign.The precipitating event? Duren's car was sporting an Obama-Biden bumper sticker.
Once he started driving again, down Blair Boulevard, towards his home, he said, "I looked in the rear view mirror again, and this same SUV was speeding, flying up behind me, bumped me."
Duren said he applied his brake and the SUV smashed into the back of his car.
He then put his car in park to take care of the accident, but Weisiger started pushing the car using his SUV.
Duren said, "He pushed my car up towards the sidewalk, almost onto the sidewalk."
Police say Harry Weisiger is charged with felony reckless endangerment in the incident.
[H/T to Shaker Thunderbird.]
South Korean Navy Ship Sinking; Investigations Begin
Reuters and CNN, among others, are reporting that a South Korean navy ship is sinking after an explosion, and South Korean officials are investigating whether it was hit by a North Korean missile.
A rescue operation is also currently underway.
I'll update as more information becomes available. Please also drop any new information into comments.
Ron Swanson Kicks Butt
Listen up, you collection of tree-hugging limousine liberals, pinko Commies, dope fiends, queerbaits, ladyboys, fat chicks, feminazi castrators, and assorted freaks: Ron Swanson is the greatest character in the history of television.
[Click on that shit to make it bigger.]
Just look at him. Ain't nobody can convince me that ain't the most beautiful suit that's ever been made. And his mustache is nothing short of fucking majestic.
I haven't watched NBC since they made Tina Fey the lady president of television, but then I lost this bet with my stepmom Cheryl about the name of our high school science teacher. She was right—it wasn't Mr. Mister; that was the name of the band who sung our prom theme my second senior year, "Broken Wings."
Anyway, so I lost this stupid bet, which meant I couldn't watch my WWE Greatest Jon Cena Moves tape for a whole week. And one night I got so bored that I watched what Cheryl was watching, and she was watching this show for losers, some documentary about some rejects who work for some city government in Indiana, and I was just about to leave when Ron fuckin' Swanson came onscreen. And I was all, "What the fuck, Cheryl? Why didn't you tell me about this HERO?!"
So then I started taping Parks & Recreation, or, as I call it, The Ron Swanson Show—and you know I really like it, because I taped over an Ice Road Truckers marathon I'd only seen halfway through, 'cuz I couldn't find a blank tape.
And although that Amy Boulder lady is hot and shit, I really watch it for Ron Swanson, because that guy's a genius. He works for the government, even though he hates it, and he loves breakfast food more than any other kind. Ha ha—that's so ME. Words of wisdom drop from Ron Swanson's mouth like words of wisdom would drop from a wisdom waterfall. Check this shit out:
On my deathbed, my final wish is to have my ex-wives rush to my side so I can use my dying breath to tell them both to go to hell one last time. Would I get married again? Oh, absolutely. If you don't believe in love, what's the point of living.That reminds me of another thing I have in common with Ron Swanson: We both have two ex-wives, both named Tammy. Except his were two different ladies. I just married my fiancée Tammy twice before. Third time's a charm!
Man, I wish Ron Swanson could be my best man, because he's the best man there is. ANYWHERE!
Proof? I dug out my old Murdock action figure and drew on a mustache and turned it into a Ron Swanson action figure.
And now it's ten million times more awesome. That's the power of Ron Swanson.
[Previously by Butch Pornstache: Happy Taxes and Teabags Day, I'm a Proud Teabagger and Real American, Men and Trucks and Shit, Cats and Shit, Books and Cupcakes and Shit.]
That Itawamba County School District Is Really Something
Mississippi's Itawamba County School District has recently become notorious for canceling a high school prom rather than letting a lesbian couple attend.
Turns out this wasn't the first discriminatory, hostile act they committed with regards to a student this year. When a trans student enrolled earlier this year, he* was virtually kicked out after attending only one half-day:[T]he next time [Juin] Baize came to school, according [to] Kristy Bennett, legal director of the ACLU of Mississippi, Baize was given a suspension notice and sent home. When Juin returned to school after his first suspension, he was suspended again.
This school district seems to be in the business of teaching heteronormativity, homophobia, transphobia, the "appropriateness" of gendered clothing** and the need to maintain narrowly-defined gender expressions.
“Juin’s case was a situation where a transgender student wanted to attend school dressed in feminine clothing," said Bennett, "and the school district would not even let him attend school."
And yet, they accuse Constance McMillen and Juin Baize of distracting from the educational process.
The hostile environment that the school district is fostering is disheartening. McMillen speaks of it here and the article about Baize includes this description:Baize's appearance and the fact that he, unlike Constance McMillen, was perceived as a trouble-making outsider made living in Fulton increasingly impossible. Beverly [Bertsinger] couldn't find work because, she believes, Fulton is a small town and people disapproved of her son. Juin was harassed when he left the house, according to Beverly [Bertsinger], so she stopped letting him go out alone and then stopped letting him go out at all.
The result is the continued isolation [and endangerment] of LGBTQ students, expressed so poignantly here:
“I’m so afraid for him,” Bertsinger told me last week. “I support him. I buy him the clothing to wear as a female. I just want him to be safe.”Whether she intended to or not, McMillen has inspired others -- not just nationally but in her home state, said Izzy Pellegrine, 19, a student at Mississippi State University.
The ACLU is not pursuing Baize's case, in part because he has had to move:
"I thought for a long time I was the only gay person in the state of Mississippi," said Pellegrine. (emphasis mine)“Juin not being in Fulton makes it difficult for us to pursue any kind of legal action here,” says Bennett. "And personally, I feel it may be a better decision for Juin to relocate and move on with his life.”
That last line leaves me particularly upset; people always suggest that we, who exist simultaneously as southerners and members of marginalized groups, should just leave and move on.
Sometimes, we can't. Sometimes, we have no desire to do so.
In any case, we shouldn't have to.
___________________________
*The article indicates that Baize prefers male pronouns for now.
**Remember, one of the issues in the McMillen case was the fact that she wanted to wear a tuxedo.
The Grand Old Party
Sometimes it really is difficult to see a difference between the two parties, like when you're searching for sunlight between members of Congress and corporate lobbyists.
And sometimes, as Paul Krugman notes, it's not difficult at all:
What has been really striking [about the Republicans' response to the passage of healthcare legislation] has been the eliminationist rhetoric of the G.O.P., coming not from some radical fringe but from the party's leaders. John Boehner, the House minority leader, declared that the passage of health reform was "Armageddon." The Republican National Committee put out a fund-raising appeal that included a picture of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, surrounded by flames, while the committee's chairman declared that it was time to put Ms. Pelosi on "the firing line." And Sarah Palin put out a map literally putting Democratic lawmakers in the cross hairs of a rifle sight.And it is, of course, not merely Republican Party members. After three decades of fear-mongering, scapegoating, and wedge issue politicking, they've conjured a voting base that is, at its core, a seething conglomeration of intolerant bullies whose stubborn refusal to evolve ideologically is matched in astonishing obduracy only by their unjustifiable hatred. And for three decades, the Republican Party deliberately, cynically, and unapologetically fanned the flames of that hatred, which served as the fuel for the base's single-minded crusade to protect their privilege and thus the rationale for voting Republican.
All of this goes far beyond politics as usual. Democrats had a lot of harsh things to say about former President George W. Bush — but you'll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials.
No, to find anything like what we're seeing now you have to go back to the last time a Democrat was president. ... President Clinton, declared Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, "better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard." (Helms later expressed regrets over the remark — but only after a media firestorm.)
...[The GOP is] a party that fundamentally doesn't accept anyone else's right to govern.
In the short run, Republican extremism may be good for Democrats, to the extent that it prompts a voter backlash. But in the long run, it's a very bad thing for America. We need to have two reasonable, rational parties in this country. And right now we don't.
This dangerous game doesn't have anywhere to go from here that isn't terrifying. To paraphrase one of the classics, the only winning move is to stop playing.
This Is Totally Legit, Right?
In my inbox this morning:
From: Internal Revenue Service <security@onlineupdate.com>It's the IRS logo that really seals the deal.
To: deeky@gashlycrumb.net
Subject: You are eligible for $182,50 refund.
Date: Mar 26, 2010 2:53 AM
After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $182,50. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 3-9 days in order to process it.
A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons.
For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.
To access your tax refund, please click here
Best Regards,
Tax Refund Deparment
Internal Revenue Service
[Cross-posted.]
On Being a Woman, Not "a Female"
by Shaker Maud
When I first encountered at Shakesville the idea that using "female" as a noun was insulting and depersonalizing I was kind of puzzled. I thought of it as a perhaps inelegant but serviceable usage which was in the process of developing into an alternate meaning. I thought people used the words "woman" and "female" interchangeably without thinking about it and that, while it does technically remove the designation of "human being" from the description, that that was not what was meant. There are a lot of shorthands in daily language use where some important element is not actually stated, but is taken for granted as included, rather than excluded. And I do think that unthinking interchangeability of these two words has become somewhat common.
But language is a force which shapes us all, whether we're thinking about it or not, so I've found that when people are thinking about some usage you never saw the need to give thought to, it's a good idea to start doing so.
Thinking about it caused me to remember an incident which happened more than 25 years ago, which stuck with me despite my not fully understanding the import of what I was hearing at the time. In response to a comment from me about a newspaper story, my mother told me that "two large females" (said in a tone of contempt, which was striking enough for me to still remember it, but which was common enough from her for me to take it for granted at the time) had brought into the newspaper office where she worked a press release about the theatre company they had moved into the area.
As it happened, I ended up going to work with and becoming friends with them. One of them became my best friend at the time, and I sometimes brought her to my mother's house. As I was grown by then, and my mother was fully capable of controlling her behavior when it was in her best interest to do so, she never said anything negative about this woman or behaved in any way rudely to her (which she would not likely have done to a guest in her house in any case). But I could always tell that Mother didn't like her, which was interesting because my friend was quite a charming woman whom most people took to very quickly. (My friend knew this about herself, and used to kid about how she was charming my mother. She wasn't.)
I hadn't worked out then my mother's unspoken relationship with fatness.
I subsequently realized that when my mother made the grand announcement to my sister and me that, thenceforth, I would be permitted to drink only skim milk, which she would have to buy specially for me and which I was always to choose at school for lunch because I was (ugh) fat, while she and my sister continued to drink the Whole Milk of the Virtuous, that I was not actually fat—yet.
It was only later in adulthood, when I saw photos of myself at that age that I realized that I had only begun growing fat after that. Of course, since I was seven then, and the only food I ate was given me either by her or by the school at lunch, the whole "Maud is condemned to drink skim milk ever after, as punishment for her immoral, disgusting fatness" was perhaps not an adequate plan to correct whatever gluttonous, self-indulgent behavior had made it necessary if, you know, that was actually the goal.
I did, as it happens, subsequently develop disordered eating and become quite fat. (I know, you totes didn't see that coming, did you?) What I realized, as an adult, after working out the timeline on all this, was that Mother's condemnation of my disgusting fatness at a time when, though I had chubby cheeks and a slightly round belly like a lot of 7-year-olds, I hadn't actually started getting fat yet, also came at the time when she, in her mid-forties, had begun to gain weight. I was the designated family sin-eater (uh-huh), so…
I don't recall hearing my mother overtly fat-shame anyone but me, even privately; I think she would have considered that vulgar. And she did have a couple of social friends (not close) who were obese. So it sort of didn't dawn on me that she extended that particular form of contempt to others.
To me, it was just part of the totality of what was wrong with me, specifically.
So I had to unpack the connection with her feelings about her own aging and weight gain, plus the still later realization that she probably suspected these two women of being lezzzzbeans, based on the known fact that lezzzbeans are women too fat or otherwise unattractive to get a man and why else would they be living and working together, before I finally realized what-all I'd heard in those words "two large females" and the tone in which they had been uttered.
I also realized that one of the reasons it had stuck in my head was that using the word "females" to refer to women was absolutely not something my mother would normally have done. It was a deliberate choice; and yes, it was intended to dehumanize, and specifically to "dewomanize". In my mother's view, these two people did not deserve the appellation "woman" . They failed to qualify for it by being "large", i.e. fat and disgusting.
All of which just brings home to me again that the stuff which is hardest to see is the stuff that gets carefully packed into your own self-image from the outset.
I was probably well into my forties before I first referred to myself, specifically and personally, as a woman. I always felt that I didn't qualify, somehow, because a woman is someone who has physical attributes which I didn't have. This wasn't just about being fat; I felt that way even when I wasn't fat. My breasts, for instance, did not qualify, because we all know what a woman's breasts are supposed to look like, right? And mine utterly failed to meet the standard.
My physical flaws were specifically sexual, in my mind, so clearly I did not qualify as a woman. But this way of viewing my body certainly began with growing up fat. I would never have applied that standard to any other woman, and I'd been calling myself a feminist for several decades before I finally began, rather timidly, to claim the personal identity of woman.
It's probably not coincidental that I was by then at the age at which women's sexuality is strongly devalued in general.
I felt entitled to self-define as a feminist, a designation which is held in low esteem, if not contempt, by those who don't so identify. But 'woman' was a designation that my feminist self did not feel entitled to claim, as an individual, as opposed to as a member of a larger group, because I understood that I failed to meet the "approved" version of what a woman was.
Politically I was a woman, as I was treated as one for political, employment, health care, etc. purposes, but sexually I was not a woman, as I would not be considered by much of the surrounding culture as adequate to that role, although unfortunately that did not disqualify me as a target of sexual harassment (the but-I'd-still-hit-that syndrome, the operative words being 'hit' and 'that'). I also recognized this way of seeing myself as "unfeminist" (Bad woman! Bad feminist! Can't you do anything right?).
But this wasn't a way of thinking, it was a way of feeling, and I knew that changing that wasn't a matter of some internal process of aligning how I thought with how I felt, but of changing the way I saw myself in relation to other people, both men and women, which I could only do by how I chose to live in the world. And I think I was doing a pretty good job of that, until other difficulties made it less and less possible to live actively among others.
The process I embarked on, as a young woman, was one of merging these two disparate versions of what a woman was—woman as female human being, which includes political being, which I felt entitled to define for myself, and woman as sexual being—the larger culture's, and my mother's (unspoken, but clearly communicated), definition of which I was still struggling to emerge from into self-definition.
I realize now that I had a very limited understanding of how broad a political issue this is. Though I identified as feminist, my only exposure to feminist thought was itself quite limited, mostly via Ms. magazine. I was a high-school dropout and, while I read a lot, my reading was limited to what I happened to discover. I knew no one else who identified as feminist. I had certainly never encountered the word "heteronormative." I had a number of gay relatives and some gay friends, a few of whom were even out. I had friends who identified themselves (privately) as bi, one of whom did so at least in part out of fear of the dread woman-failure of lezzzbean-inism. I took for granted that I'd never known a trans man or woman, a person who I assumed only came into being post-surgically and was extremely rare.
So the difficulty in reconciling these two ideas of myself, politically as a woman, sexually as merely female, lay both in unpacking and learning to live outside of my early programming, both at home and in the larger culture, and in a lack of a great deal of information about gender and the spectrum of sexual possibilities which are part of one's self-definition.
One thing my days in theatre taught me, though, is that there's no such thing as "just a word." Speech and writing are actions one takes in the world. They are meant to have impact, and they do, whether we've thought through that impact before taking action or not.
And the language which distinguishes holders of privilege from the less privileged is always rooted in who gets to define the identity of the less privileged. Referring to women as "females" defines them solely in terms of gender, denying them any other attributes of personhood, and specifically denies them womanhood, marking that as a condition which is the speaker's to confer or withhold based on their list of qualifications, whether those be physical attributes at the moment, physical attributes at birth, or whether the female human being is behaving in a manner approved of for women.
So now I get it. I am not a female. Nobody is "a female." I am a woman. Thanks for making that clear.
