Summary of the Semester

        Throughout the semester, we read many articles, books and watched quite a lot of films. Some of them can be traced back for decades and some of them are so recent that they give critiques that are spicy and useful for future reference making the gender non-normativity "normalized" and the population blend in. Along the way, I myself was first interested in the topic, then got surprised and challenged by new ideas. Up to now I am more and more comfortable with the new ideas and can give my opinion on various topics with reasons that I might be once ambiguous about. Thinking and rethinking from different prospectives with all the cases we have is crucial because that is how we analyze the issues and decide what we can do to help gender non-normaltive people. 

    My interest was caught up by the topic on day one. At first, I was thinking the class would cover topics on female rights. However, apart from reading about non-white female discrimination, being exposed thoroughly to the gender non-normaltive world, it reminded me to rethink this topic in a more detailed and rational way. I am never a fan of unfairness, so for me, people in LGBTQ groups are just the same as ourselves and they deserve the same rights as we do. Yet, it is one thing to say and another thing to make it happen. In the past, people such as myself are more exposed to homosexuals and talk more about rights of different sexual orientations. It is good news that Rhode Island just passed the law admitting gay marriage in the state, but what the society covers is far more than merely sexual orientation. It is a great starter for changes but we have to remember it is not everything. In this course, we are more focused on sex non-normaltive individuals themselves, and then after that is the rights the groups of these individuals deserve. That is to say, in order to help them position themselves rightly in the society, we started from the identity of the individuals. I can see from the first few blogs of mine as well as the first few readings about raising children etc. that individual positioning is a significant topic since we have so many kinds of sexes and sexual orientations. If these people can find a spot in the spectrum they will feel secure and find a route to go. Yet, positioning is not the same as labeling and categorizing since labeling is judging by others but positioning is finding who oneself is. 

    Talking about one's identity, it is important to think of whether or not this identity should be revealed. That is why we watched the film of Two Spirits about hate crime, the documentary of three F-to-M transgenders who face difficulties on a daily bases because of the inconsistency of their look and behavior. Since there might be misunderstanding for some other people what gender this person is, it can cause some potential disrespect or offense. If revealed, the process of revealing can cause discrimination and people might think it unnecessary. Yet, if not revealed, the reaction by not knowing might also offend the person of gender non-normaltivity. So which one is essentially better? And further more, is gender really important information that we need to know? 

    As we discussed in most cases, gender is what we "do." They are human-invented social conventions. What we should be like are ruled before hands, yet it actually doesn't really matter because except for restrooms and change rooms, it doesn't affect any a thing. I think I still need more research on the topic why sex/gender is so important that we care so much about each other. 

    For individuals who successfully find their best way of living, they are always happy to share their experience with other people who face the same struggles and give them some suggestions. I wrote about some example figures in the blog who struggled through the process and made it to help others, whom I found very inspiring because they always have their own ideas that can make their own gender work in nowadays society. Individual inspiration is particularly important for me since they are the cases we can refer to as to guide LGBTQ groups how they can find their own way of living. However, it is also important to see things critically since everyone has a different case. For example, Julia Serano and Hida Viloria are definitely not the same since one of them is trans and the other bisexual. They both have a choice of whom to be as we said gender is what we do, but how to do that gender to make oneself feel right is another story and individual cases should refer to the role models separately, and we might need more brave people who stand out and offer their thoughts, like Julia Serano herself and people/scholars like Dean Spade. 

    Though individuals in gender non-normaltivity study are important, and they are everything we are working for, it is inevitable to look at how we react with these people, where they are segregated and their rights violated. Gender non-normaltivity has been more and more accepted honestly. To take the example of myself, I haven't heard of this new term until middle school, and first had the conscious that it is something totally OK. After several years, I took this class and finally got to see deeply how this certain group of people suffer and really urges more support and help, rather than thinking that since they are nothing different, why paying more attention and offer more so-called help. I got my answer because we haven't reached that stage yet, where we can say like that little girl in China who was told gays and lesbians are normal and we shouldn't discriminate them: "so why treat them differently?" The stage of 100% treating them as the same is so hard to reach that female population haven't achieve that either. That is why people who realize the significance of helping gender non-normalitive people should step up and act. It is going to be a long process before LGBTQ groups are accepted like "women" in the society for ordinary individuals, but it is worth the time and effort, and we have to be prepared that the true equality lies way farther than that which means more time and effort are needed. 

    The last but not the least is the reviewing of what we are doing to help gender non-normaltive people. Like what we read in Stranger Intimacy about gender policing and what discussed in Dean Spade's Normal Life about problematic non-profit organizations and prisons in Captive Genders, the LGBTQ groups always faces more violations and threats no matter in the process of normal day-to-day life or in special cases even when they are trying to receive help. What's more, the media play a significant role in describing these people and the image can be good and bad solely depending on how the media choose to present it. It is just like women in the photographs and woman, especially non-white women who run up against a stone wall when they want desperate help, gender non-normaltive people not only face the prejudice and mock through day to day by how they act, they also face hurdles and difficulties built up by authorities and those are the things really affecting and damaging them to live a normal life in the community. As long as you are not famous and rich, the LGBTQ group faces way more troubles and awkward enough, the situation turns upside down if the person is famous, rich, even good-looking. That is exactly what we want to eliminate and offer a justified society for everyone. 

    I did see much of my own growing in terms of what I can do to get myself involved and offer real help, rather than sitting in front of a computer and retweet something on Twitter. It is important to find a balance that will not offend the gender non-normaltive people as well as helping them and there are a lot more we can do to accelerate the "normalization" of these people. Hopefully in a few decades, we will abandon the use of gender "non-normaltivity" and only keep "non of the above" in the gender box to check apart from male and female. 

Should We Add a New Category in Our Information?

    Yesterday we had a debate on whether institutions like colleges and universities should somehow ask the students whether they are LGBT students. 

    I was going to vote for no at first but was accidentally put into the yes group. 

    After carefully thinking and discussing with other people in the group, I started to think that it actually is a better choice adding this category as a check box upon personal information. 

    Although some people might think that given this information, students' chances of admission might be jeopardized since people involved on decision making might set different standard on these students. However, I think this is a not only good but even necessary process to identify these students as who they are instead of merely male or female. Otherwise, what is the point of identifying students as male or female anyway? Some might say that people might need statistic data to balance proportions etc. Yet, isn't it important also to add this one other category since people might also want to be informed of this population distribution? Anyway, male and female categories are not enough now so why letting those belonging to neither having a hard time struggling? It took years for women to be admitted to universities and it has been several decades for them to have the same opportunities going to institutions like these. Although there are still unfairness and invisible discrimination in other areas, women's first being allowed in universities, in works and all other areas started by having them being allowed on the application and this process takes years. So, the earlier we start putting a new category in gender variation, the shorter we will have to wait for gender non-normative people to be treated like everyone else.

    Also, as institutions with the world's most important foresights that are leads all prospective changes, universities have the responsibility to again be the pioneers that leads the society to this improvement. Like what we read in Riki Whilchin's essays, people are constantly doing gender because we need that in our daily interactions with other individuals. However, we live in a society that cannot simply ignore the gender issue as we presented in the last paragraph that people do care about it. Also, what we "do" about gender not only stands for who we are but also gives other people a hint to act with respect to each other by avoiding misunderstanding and offense out of ambiguity. So, for people neither male nor female, or people who have different sexual orientations, being able to present it in a "personal info" form is a way of knowing themselves. Secondly, by adding the new category, people will take it as a routine and be more and more comfortable with it and eventually seeing it as everything else we possibly have in today's forms that we have to fill. We even present our race to institutions so why not LGBT? Why are people interested in the distribution of races then? The new category not only give those people who need it a right position but also can make other people simply feel it normal. We have "hard to tell" on Facebook and "other sexual orientation" on Chinese twitter, because people do need that and there is nothing to be shamed of. So why are universities still acting so conservative? Sensitivity? 

    Upon the above, I really think the only categories of "male" and "female" are not enough. Yet, including everything in LGBT or LGBTQIA is not a perfect idea either. In the gender column, we should first add "none of the above" and people really don't have to decide each and every part of the spectrum so  precisely. Also, asking sexual orientation is not necessary in official information collecting. It can be involved in secondary surveys or poles or just simple presenting it as we like, not only is it because people don't actually need to report who they like to be admitted to academic institutions and we don't have to release that information for most occasions now so adding everything together is not only inappropriate but also too fast in a short time. 

ps. The internet broke this morning and it was uploaded unsuccessfully. This is a re-uploaded one. 

Hida Viloria

    

    Yesterday, we saw a video on an unusual woman—Hida Viloria, who was born a girl biologically but had high level of testosterone and an enlarged clitoris. She was suggested to have her clitoris removed like other girls, but her mother, as well as her father who was actually a doctor from Columbia chose not to have their baby girl operated. She grew up as a girl who is more like an aggressive tomboy without knowing anything about her different genitalia and found it out one day in the locker room. She was, unlike most intersexual people, actually very outgoing and popular as a girl in school. Although Hida dated boys at a young age, she found out later that she actually was lesbian at the age of 19, since she “has sex drive that seems more male.” She didn’t found out the word ”intersex” until the age 27, on a bus, where she read this new word and felt like the rest of the world stopped. She then found the right identity and place for her and lived along with it, happily.

    Although she grew up feeling like a different type of girl, she developed fantastic personality and didn’t experience any difficulties interacting with everyone else around her. Her parents, who “didn’t say anything,” raised her up like any other normal girl and it “turned out to be fine.” Hida is a special case in the intersexual individuals. She did experience difficulties finding her identity, though, but that didn’t trouble her as it does to most intersexual people. For her “one of the biggest things to embrace intersex is not choosing a side. Society pressures you to choose a side just like they pressures mixed-race people.” And as Operah said, she “walks between both worlds.” She now owns a degree in Gender and Sexuality from Berkeley(which surprises me), and is living her life on being herself, making money as a public figure who writes articles and books.

    Hida is absolutely a positive case and can be a role model for a lot of intersexual people. A lot of young girls who were born with the problems she has experienced had surgery right after birth because doctors believe the operation is “psychologically better to be done at an earlier age. Children not operated on will have problems in society as we know it today.” This seems quite absurd for me, as well as more and more people who experience function deficiency due to the surgery. Cheryl Chase, who wrote Hermaphordites with Attitude is one example. She was one of those baby girls who experienced the operations, and it turned out that she couldn’t reach orgasm in intimate relationship since her nerve is somehow damaged during the surgery. She didn’t find out the operation until she was 21. Like a lot of people who had this experience, they blame it on the doctors and feel like they, as well as their parents are victimized.

    For Hida, being born as an intersex is blessed right now as she feels people like her are extraordinary. This is really a good inspiration of many intersexual people who are caught in between and need an identity. Hida can be a living role model and her case actually proves it unnecessary to give those operations right after the girls are born. They have a right to choose, and they can be raised normally without worrying about it at the early age. 

    However, although we are happy for Hida, not everyone in her shoe feels the same. She is living her happy life because she has supportive parents with one of them a doctor. She was born confident and outgoing, which other born gender-nonnormal people might not be. She had a friendly community and was able to use media to express her idea. She has a degree from well-know university. Most importantly, she is good-looking. It seems more “forgivable” in her case for the wide public, and she is adored as both a woman and a man, which can be totally different from many other people. She can even be offensive for those who struggle to have one sexual identity and don't want to "embrace both" as they want to be just a woman or man. 

    Anyway, we are happy for Hida to find her place and it is a good thing for her to use her stories to make money while expressing herself and helping other people. Yet, the process of embracing new gender identity can be hard for the society, and painful who are living their life in it. It is going to be a long but necessary process since every evolution takes time and every idea needs it to develop. What we are doing now for sex-nonnormative people today is a bless for the future. All the pain and struggle right now is to let our children and grandchildren avoid them. 

Video:

Credit-Hida on Operah-youtube

SHE is Lijing

    Taiwanese celebrity Lijing is a famous hostess known as one of the "three queens and one king" in the area of hosts of Taiwan TV world. As one of the queens, Lijing is know for her biting style that stimulates the audience's reactions.  Although all of these seems quite normal, what's different about her is that she was actually born as a bisexual child to a fairly rich family in Taiwan. She was initially raised as a boy with an ordinary boy's name since she was the only boy after her sister. It didn't take that long for her to feel uncomfortable living as a boy and she developed tremendous worship for the feminine characteristics she got from observing her mother. Like most bisexual kids, she had a horrible life being unable to live as who she wanted to be in the early years. What's more, although she confessed everything to her parents, it was hard for them to take that, not only because she was the only "boy" in the family to take on responsibilities, but also because she was born in the year of 1962, when it was quite early for people to accept the existence of bisexual kids in China. 

    After long time of depression, she finally decided to commit a suicide and swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills at the age of 19. Fortunately, she was saved afterwards. She cried and said to her dad that maybe it is better to have a good daughter than losing a son, and that was when her father finally realized how much he loved her and agreed with her surgery to remove the male organs. She was then reborn. 

After only a short period she was discovered to host a TV shopping show and got outstanding achievement. She then also started her own TV shows and were loved by the audience. She was still loved by the public even after an accident and her voice cord was hurt, changing her voice not as attractive. She dated boys and really had a normal life as a woman afterwards by keeping fighting. When Lijing was forced to reveal her sex-changing past by the media, her husband came out and strongly supported her in the public. Also, the audience didn't care much about her history and went on loving her and her shows. Although she faced incredible pressure but things went on just fine. It was a shocking fact how much people can actually take at that time and Lijing, as a person who had experienced difficulties with her sexual identity, helped the whole Taiwan sex-nonnormaltive society as a role model. 

                                                       *Lijing with her husband

    Lijing's case is a typical one in the area. Her unremitting fight eventually brought her success and rights to live happily as herself. Yet, there are still a lot of things for us to think about. What if she didn't have the money to do the surgery? What if her dad didn't accept her as who she was? What if she didn't become a beloved celebrity? Would people still accept her just as they did when she was famous? What's the public's tolerance on the case when it was a normal person around them? How is Lijing's case going to be like in the U.S. society? 

What I think is that, maybe things are not that complicated. If we don't put pressure on sexual non-normal people and don't put over policing on them, they would't form any threat to everyone else as they are normal people and they have no reason to do so. Also, in that case there is no need to feel fear about them. To make a change, someone has to start up first with confidence and trusts in each other. Why do they have to be the ones who tries first? Maybe it is time for us to make a big change. 

Protests and Riots

    On Feb 12, 2013, a transgender woman know as Kayla Moore died in the police department of Berkeley after "violent resistance", just across the street from where I live. Yet, we didn't know this since today, more than a month later that such a tragedy happened around us in our neighborhood, especially in such a "liberal community" as we proudly regard it as, and there was only a little protest near People's Park. We cannot yet judge too much about this case, because in the report the police said that the "man" violently resisted to cooperate and then died under constraint and we can't conclude whether it is a case directly related to the fact that Kayla was a transgender.  I think what is important right now is to let the public know what exactly happened and thus show respect to the dead. What's more, trans group nearby have the right to know why one of them died in the police department, where they should trust. Such a thing may cause great distrust and even more violence to happen. So why hasn't anything else released after the protest?

    Talking about resistance, in the film Screaming Queens, we saw a page of the history of drag queens, gays and transgender in San Francisco. The films documents the riot raised in Compton's Cafe, and introduced how the trans group were forced to Turk Street and have their unusual life there. The main conflict the trans group faced were the  harassment of the police, which did not lead the trans group to reach the state of resistance after very long period. As one of the transgender woman said, "I have the freedom to be a big sis on stage, but I don't have the freedom to live my life off stage." It is not that there family didn't support them. They were "disgusting", hated and unacceptable. Why are these people thought to be threatening? Why are they treated so just because they look different? Why are such things still happening today?

    Looking at the riot itself, we should notice how important it is and remember it. As San Francisco Bay Area is one of the leading community of gay/trans rights, the riot can actually be seen as the event that push to what we have here today. Yet, after a short period in 2008, gay marriage became illegal again in the whole state of California. It was the riot that started to let the trans group have their life with basic needs. The ID card, the surgery, the celebrity effect… They became more and more accepted by the community and the riot was exactly the turning point. 

    So right now, do trans only face the fear of coming out and telling their family? Absolutely not. Not to say that they still face the invisible discrimination and prejudice, gay/trans group is not really accepted by every community in the world. Remember, gay marriage is sill illegal in the US except in Washington D.C. Even in Mexico you can get married in Mexico CIty and the whole country admits your marriage then. When gay/lesbian couples go out of Washington, they are legally "unmarriaged" then. Even the UK parliament had the vote and most people said "aye" to gay marriage. Although the problem today of gender non-normativity is far more than just gays and lesbians, we should see how slow in improvement we are that even the basic right of them getting married is illegal in most part of the U.S., the country that is believed to be the most liberal and free. No wonder the trans group has to face more than legal wise unfairness. 

BOY I AM

    This week we watched the movie BOY I AM. It is a movie on this certain FTM group that is actually less covered in all the topics we saw than others of LGBT groups. 

    What's special about this movie is that, these people are not necessarily lesbians. They simply want to live their lives as a man, no matter they have done any surgeries or not. One of them is a lesbian who is happily living with his girlfriend, and decided for himself that he wanted to become a man with the help of hormone and surgery. Another one is born feeling himself a man instead of that "strongest woman" as in his friend's words. The last but not the least is a person that lives with a boy heart,  a boy way, a boy look yet a girl's voice. Every time people hear his voice, they would say sorry to him and that is the thing nauseates him like hell. 

    The movie is short, yet it recorded almost 6 months' process of the changes of the three of them, and after that long waiting and looking forward anxiously, they finally did what they had always wanted and were came out of the hospitals like new-borns, with confidence and happiness. They were constantly trying to convey to us how natural they feel that they want to, or more precisely, they ARE boys, because "it just feels right." They are mistakenly born and trapped in this girl's body and is definitely not living the way they expected. They, in common, obviously suffer constantly from the pain of binding their breasts. Yet, they still want to take that physical pain because the way they look and people's response to how they look absolutely hurt more. What's more, because people don't understand this certain group, they are constantly labeled, misunderstood, evilized and even suffer from violence. That's what's really unfair because others shouldn't decide how anyone else live. For me, I think they are really brave and all of them must have a strong heart to be like this. Otherwise, with this much pressure and obstacles, how can they be so sure that they will take whatever it takes to live their lives regardless of all those social conventions, and most importantly, shout out loudly "BOY I AM."

    Luckily, things are better than expected sometimes. I was deeply moved by the fact that the doctor actually does 3~5 times of surgeries and 90% of them are about moving away breasts. This means that more and more people are becoming  more open to who they want to be. Also, the change of their family and friends' attitude really speaks a lot. For example, one of the three who took the surgery was introduced and accepted by every single relative as a man although all of them are Catholic, who are "supposed to be old-school and disagreeing with trans and other similar stuff." 

    Actually, for this certain group of people, misunderstanding can sometimes be inevitable. However, they do deserve respect and it is really important for us to think what we should do since we are kind of different and we do get privilege for being "normal."

    Another thing that impressed me was the fact that there are actually people who don't want to put themselves in certain categories, and not accepting any surgeries is not being a coward, because they want to live the way like a man and at the same time absolutely comfortable with their body with female second characteristics. 

My Blind-Spots

    I was really stunned by how clear and consistent the author expressed her ideas in the book, sometimes even a bit wordy, in order to express herself thoroughly, but in a way I actually like. 

Another thing I like about Serano's book is that after she describes her feelings, she can not only boil the intrinsic theories down for transsexual people like herself, but can also analogously apply the logic for cissexual people, in a way we can hardly see as being "normal" since we never bother to look at, which was explained as our blind-spot in the passage. 

    Like the all the other people who are concerned with this topic, I did ask a lot of questions even before I took this class. For example, I had the exact question Serano asked to cissexual people, such as myself, "how do I know that I am really straight". What's interesting is that in China, there is a popular way of answering this question by the young people. "You never know whether you are straight or not until you met the one person who is meant to be". Well, you can just think this is another lame novel plot, but what I want to say is that when these questions are raised, it may show even more misunderstanding than those who don't ask--just like it was indicated by the author. People ask this kind of question because they can't even put themselves in the shoes and imagine the way transsexual or homosexual people feel. It might not be because that they don't want to do so, but instead they are not able to imagine and feel it by themselves. This can also be boiled down to the fact of the existing blind-spot. We are blind since we are blocked to see the things we have in common, thus unable to find what's truly different and what are the same, that is why they can't have the empathy to understand. 

    

    That is why Serano explained the concept of subconscious sex and conscious sex and use them to give the blind-spots a location. For cissexual people, we have the same subconscious and conscious sex that's why we don't have to worry about the inconsistency. Yet, for people who have inconsistent subconscious and conscious sexes, things can be very miserable because they are not able to find their right position and at the same time they have to struggle to make efforts ignoring all the labels other people give them. After figuring most things our, transsexual people would take the sex-changing process after the long-term fight because they know where they really want to be in the end. However, that is to say, for cissexual like myself, I have the same reason not to change my sexuality as those who choose to do so--to stay consistent with one's subconscious sexuality, where the preferred positions lie for the most of the time, not for any external reasons.

    One thing to add is that, as the author described, cissexual people are kind of hardwired to expect their bodies to be male or female, which made me understand how our thoughts function more. Combining with the theory that we still subconsciously discriminate femininity in a way we don't realize, I get to understand that some girls want to become boys for the reason of receiving privilege and advantages, instead of feeling as a boy from the beginning. 

    P.S. I always had the doubt whether I should feel sorry for some transsexual people since they were born with more struggles and mind sufferings that most cissexual people might not have. Is that a kind of discrimination? Or it is "understanding?"