If I'm understanding id's point correctly, it's roughly that things are often a "both/and" not an "either/or." In other, more specific, terms: when your identity is threatening to a more dominant group, especially just as you're sorting out what your identity is, it's probably inevitable that you're going to be framing your identity in terms that are, in part, reactive to the interests of that more dominant group.
(E.g., feminists rejecting the patriarchal notion that all women MUST become wives and mothers...the ramifications of which are still playing out in the so-called "mommy wars.")
You are "finding yourself" in and through conflict.
I don't think this is necessarily a "bad" thing--or at least I (like id, I think) don't think it's useful for us to frame it as exclusively a bad thing. Every "minority" group that has asserted its identity in the face of oppression--and who has done so in order to reject the validity of that oppression-- has to deal with this as a fact of their own existence.
However, it's because of this problem that it's critical to create exclusive spaces, away from the conflict, in order to find ways of exploring one's identity that are not so tightly bound to that conflict, in addition to resisting and naming oppression. Both jobs are important, but they are different.
I.e., it would be very bad if the only "trans" space, or the only mtf trans space, were Camp Trans. Some re-ification of the hegemonic status of "biowomen" is probably inevitable in protesting that status. But I think id's suggesting that it's almost certainly not the only thing that's happening on the site. And, further, it's surely possible still to address that issue--but probably easier to do it in other, non-protest oriented spaces.
The critical thing is to be aware of this dynamic, as you, xk, are calling us to do, and to remember to do the necessary work to resist it--but probably, given that we're human and trying to do some important political work, to do so in other times and places. Because new, internal conflicts are likely to arise as the exterior battle recedes.
By the way, one thing I have been hoping we might explore a little, here, are generational issues. I need a little more time to ponder and articulate my thoughts on this issue, but it's rising in part from the fact that I've been feeling very "old" on barbelith of late. And that's been good for me, in many ways, even as it is kind of painful because I do not hold myself somehow removed from the age-ism of our culture. I don't want to feel "old"--and that's both good and bad.
What I'm thinking about, then, is running along the lines of exploring the way we stand on the shoulders of previous generations' work. The older generation, in any conflict, often feels like we've done a lot of work, much of which is now invisible/taken for granted. We may, ourselves, start feeling kind of invisible and taken for granted. And we may also feel they are at a time in life where we don't want to stretch more and change. And we may feel like we don't really need to; like we've done our job, we're passing on the baton.
We would all love to have our work seen and respected, but often what we're told is: you didn't go far enough. Or, worse, 'you totally fucked some things up with your "revolution."'
Meanwhile, younger generations get frustrated at the incompletion or even the horribly botched nature of older generations' work (here I've also been thinking about the groundbreaking but in many ways misguided work of sex researcher Dr. John Money, who recently died(he coined the phrase "gender role," was critical in resisting simple ideas about biology and gender, but was the surgeon responsible for the David Reimer case). [I was thinking of a possible thread on him].
I'm just hitting an age and confronting issues in such a way that I'm realizing that younger generations can never completely experience what it's like to have pioneered some of these issues, how confusing it can be to do all this with no guides. And I'm not sure how well we appreciate how hard it is to unlearn some of the stuff that we, personally, never had to learn & unlearn. How shaming that experience of unlearning can be--and alienating. And draining.
And, we've made the language-learning analogy earlier in this thread, and I wonder if learning a new understanding of gender or something equally intimate and fundamental, isn't something like learning a new language, which is so easy when your brain is four years old and set up to add language skills, and can still be doable at age 20, but which becomes much more difficult at 40 or 50....Not impossible, and some people will be at all ages more apt than others, and some will find better teachers than others.
But it often takes a very strong motivation, e.g., as in my case, having a child come out to you or a spouse or someone else whom you dearly love and feel some deep obligation and relation to. For the rest, how do we best approach them in a way that stands a snowball's chance of being heard? That's my question. |
