vassae

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By vassae • 13 years ago

Passing Narratives and Street Harassment

I’m a transwoman who’s been out and full-time for about a year now, and a couple months ago I entered the androgyny phase–where I pass well enough that I don’t get male pronouns in public, but not well enough to get female pronouns. This is a little frustrating, because subconciously, I never know if I’m being clocked or not. There’s also nothing to push against–I can feel ways about male pronouns and female pronouns, but when I’m not getting either, I just kind of feel invisible.

This leads me to one of the happiest and creepiest moments of my life. A couple weeks ago, I was walking in town and a guy in front of a bar made a comment that got way too personal with me, and any normal response would have been to get creeped out and keep moving. I did that, but less than five steps later, I beamed. Not because I’d just been harassed, but because I’d just gotten my first instance of harassment that assumed I was a ciswoman.

I’m not the only one whose first instance of passing was hostile. A friend of a friend wrote a blog post about how the first male reading he got in public was attached to the word “faggot.” Is our society that afraid to call people what they’re presenting as? That the only strangers with the guts to err on the side of presentation being the ones who don’t care about our ...

By vassae • 13 years ago

News flash: DADT repeal is NOT going to help transpeople

Word around the campfire is that DADT will finally be repealed after many, many years of queer servicepeople being discriminated against. It’s actually been the main subject of the last two pages of my inbox, including many quotes like this:

"But as long as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are fired from our jobs, discharged from the military, denied marriage rights and immigration equality – as long as we are second-class citizens – I can’t be silent." ~ Recent GetEQUAL email, May 26, 2010

The problem? DADT does not apply to trans servicepeople. Now, I’m not sure whether it’s a result of people actually not realizing that DADT doesn’t apply to trans servicepeople, or if people are subconsciously tossing us ...

By vassae • 14 years ago

Thoughts on Trans Perception and Chasers

I am an openly, full-time, pansexual, polyamorous transwoman who attends a supposedly queer-friendly and "enlightened" liberal arts college. I’ve taken various steps to consolidate both my gender affirmation and perception, the most notable of which being the fact that I chose to move into the one women only residence hall (which had the added effect of reducing the frequency with which I was sexually harassed over my identity).

The problem is, after almost a whole school year out, I’ve started to realize that, although even the most uneducated of my peers are now at least paying lip service to my identity (while asking the typical insensitive questions, of course), and the administration and faculty have both been exeedingly supportive, when it ...

By vassae • 14 years ago

Why Addiction is the Master’s Favorite Tool

If the means of oppression are the Master’s Tools, then his toolbox must be quite large to hold them all. The hammer and nails of social constructs, the various pins of racism, sexism, and the like, which he uses to push us down, are just some of the many tools that the Master uses, and hands out among his children so they, too, may do the work of the Master. His power tools, though, he keeps out of the grasp of his children, because he uses them to keep them down and to keep them in his command, just as he uses them to keep us from becoming independent of him. While there are likely some number of these power ...

By vassae • 14 years ago

Why RAD isn’t so “rad” for people who are at the highest risk, and other tales of collegiate fail

(possible trigger warning)

My college, Vassar, offers a sexual assault prevention education program through http://www.rad-systems.com/index.html which is "women-only." I emailed the sign-up list less than an hour after it was presented, and didn’t receive a reply on it until 8am the day of the class, when I finally demanded a response. As I’d feared, the Security officer who ran the program had decided to exclude me, and had obviously been intending not to inform me. I’m a transwoman, and because our campus email service lists our legal names in our emails, I was forced to out myself to him. NY state law and college policy prohibits discrimination based on sex, gender, and gender identity/expression, but the officer is claiming that ...

(possible trigger warning)

By vassae • 14 years ago

Lady Gaga’s Speech Puts the “it” in “Hit,” but Takes Them From “LGBTIQ”

National Equality March was far more amazing than anybody I know had expected–I spent the whole day thinking that, when my rights as a pansexual transwoman are finally made equal with those of the straight, white, rich, able-bodied, and otherwise privileged cismen, I will look back on yesterday as the day that dream became a demand, rather than an ideal. Unlike many of the other students of my college who were lucky enough to get a seat on one of our two buses from upstate New York, I did not look at the list of speakers in advance, and I think Staceyann Chin, Kate Clinton, and all the rest of the speakers who really hit the notes, were that much ...