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?"