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kimabutch · 4 years ago

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On butchness in the Locked Tomb Trilogy

So I started reading Gideon the Ninth as an act of Butch Self Care (TM), having encountered almost no butch lesbian protagonists ever, and despite my high expectations, I can honestly say I was super impressed. I feel deeply represented in a way I rarely have and that I’m struggling to articulate.

A tiny moment that struck me fairly early on was the narrator describing Gideon as “emasculated” by a favour that “Dulcinea” asks her to do — I suddenly realized that I’d never (to my recollection) seen a book use that adjective for a woman before. I mean, most fiction I’ve encountered is hesitant to call women masculine (and even more rarely as a positive or value-neutral term), even when they’re discussing butches, many of whom, though not all, consider ourselves masculine.

And “emasculated” feels like a step further — not simply an acknowledgement of a butch’s masculinity, but of her experiences with masculinity, how her masculinity affects moments that outwardly have nothing to do with her gender presentation. I don’t think the feeling of being emasculated is necessarily a emotion worth cultivating — it’s usually a product of insecurity, of worrying that a small action could take away one’s masculinity — but it is something that a young butch might feel, something many of us do feel at times!

That moment, though very short, felt so honest and true and reflective of the series’s approach to butchness: completely unafraid of portraying the real and messy thoughts of a young butch lesbian, while also completely respectful of her identity. It gracefully walks the line between shamelessly portraying her sexuality and not falling into the old ‘predatory butch’ stereotypes — Gideon is super horny and loves a good sex joke, but also is incredibly respectful and careful of bodily and romantic boundaries, to the point of literally running to apologize when she thinks she’s flirted with a woman in a relationship and promising to take fully clothed showers in Harrow’s body.

Similarly, Muir has no qualms about describing Gideon as physically strong, tough, and proud of it, while obviously not making this her only character trait, and also portraying her swordfighting as a legitimate art and talent — Gideon literally does study the blade, and Harrow notes how Gideon analyzes and understands swordfights in a way she absolutely does not comprehend.

And in that vein (heh) of balance, the series also lets Gideon have the frankly Butch Mood of wanting to be useful, wanting to care for and defend those she loves — while also letting her be cared for, wanted, reassured, and protected. This happens in the first book (I will be crying forever about Palamedes trying to convince Gideon that she’s not responsible for Harrow’s parents’ suicide), but struck me even more in the second, which revolves around Harrow’s silent, unaware yearning for Gideon.

Every butch I’ve ever talked to about this has struggled with the idea of being wanted —the idea that any woman could want us, especially want us as ourselves, without having to tone down our butchness. So I can’t tell you how emotional it made me to read an entire book about a woman’s desire — need — for her butch. About the overwhelmingness of her grief at losing Gideon, so much that she cuts her from her brain to cope with the pain. So much that she’s undone without her, even unconsciously. To see a butch being the object of desire — not just sexual/physical desire, though it’s clear that that’s there from Harrow’s fantastic coffeeshop AU, but soul-shattering romantic yearning — it just fucks me up beyond belief. It’s really, really good, and honestly just thinking about it makes my heart feel so full.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but just — thank you Tamsyn Muir. Thank you so much.

#locked tomb #butch #my stuff #meta #book adventures

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queerlyhalloween · 4 years ago

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Here's the email I sent to my fucking cringe government's stupid transphobic proposal, and here's the template i adapted it from along with the email address if you want to help us out over here. The hardest part was pretending ive ever been proud to live in the UK and civilly appealing to some tory aid's sense of moraility as if it fucking exists. Ugh, hell government.

"To the poor sap reading all these,

I'm a person who at one point was proud to live in this country, but after reading yet another constitutional change proposed by a government seemingly invested in making the lives of the UK's most vulnerable actively worse (more specifically the proposed changes outlined in ‘Toilets for men and women’) you've forced me to write a long email.

This consultation is, once more, a violent attack on the rights of transgender, intersex, and Gender Non Conforming (GNC) people.

There is no evidence that cisgender people face increased violence in gender neutral toilet facilities. In fact, as every gender neutral toliet I've used consists of an individual room (always with the inclusion of sanitary bins, since I have a feeling whichever speaker drafted 'toliets for men and women' has never used a gender neutral toliet outside the one in their own home. Or perhaps not even realised the facilities they're using are gender neutral), I'd argue that they're safer than the traditional stalls avalible in F/M toliets.

On the other hand, a poll conducted by the UK charity stonewall revealed that almost half of trans people (48%) that were polled, don’t feel comfortable using public toilets, as a result of verbal abuse, intimidation, and physical assault (LGBT in Britain Trans Report, Stonewall UK, 2018). I, personally, have been attacked in a woman's toliet, by a cis woman, despite being assigned female at birth because I am non-binary and GNC. The culture of rampant transphobia in this country is so strong that transphobes are willing to contradict their own rules "only those assigned female at birth should use women's toliets" if it means they can harm a transgender individual.

I am an allumni of *MY UNIVERSITY NAME* and it's LGBT+ society, I have worked with this group, the LGBT+ homelessness charity GISDA and the wider local community both during my studies and now, years after graduating. I cannot count how many times I've escorted my trans friends home from a pub, cinema or other places that are supposed to provide joy, because they're been threatened both verbally and physically, for simply needing to use the loo. I know a woman who's been unable to use a public bathroom since she came out due to fear of being killed, except in the local Costa Coffee which has a gender neutral bathroom. Is this culture of violence one you want to encourage in the UK?

The policing of gender in toilets is a wasteful use of government funds, that could be used actually helping the groups 'toliets for men and women' claims to be helping (if you really want to provide more toliet facilities and assist those with disabilities, then ban toliets with turnstyles which require a coin to enter and make radar keys more accessible/ remove the need for radar keys entirely by having accessible toliets... accessible). This is yet another piece of conservative legislation that hinders rather than helps, by bringing unwarranted attention to a biased, prejudicial ‘debate’ resulting from a wider climate of sharply rising transphobia in the UK.

As stated in the consultation: ‘The Equality Act provides that sex, age, disability and gender reassignment are protected characteristics.’ I would like to highlight that the Equality Act of 2010 also serves to protect those who are discriminated because they are wrongly perceived to be trans (including many Black women, butch women and lesbians, GNC people and intersex people), many of whom face abuse and discrimation due to a combination of racism and gender policing, and therefore rely on gender neutral toilets as a safer alternative. Whilst this is not yet in the Equality Act, GNC and nonbinary people (including disabled nonbinary people) should also be entitled to gender neutral toilets, or to their personal preference of gendered facility.

The consultation also states that “Women need safe spaces given their particular health and sanitary needs (for example, women who are menstruating, pregnant or at menopause)”. The cisnormative and intersexist nature (implying that gender always equals which reproductive organs and hormones a person has) of this statement statement completely excludes the experience of trans men, intersex people and GNC people who menstruate / are pregnant / at menopause, such as myself and countless others. It also harms cis women who may have different/ non-functional reproductive organs and hormones due to medical conditions such as PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). The government’s continued erasure of already marginalised groups of people serves to reiterate the inequality in distribution of public resources privileging cisgender people. Which in turn coincides with a rapid rise in fascism in the UK.

As a nonbinary person, I have not only felt safer using gender neutral toliets, but the UK government's continued attempts to make the lives of transgender individuals harder (the recent ban of transgender children being allowed to transition until they're over 18, even with the support of their doctors and families, is going to cause a rise in child suicide, by the way) has actively made me feel like my fellow countrymen, the BBC - who insist on hosting 'debates' giving transphobic individuals with no knowledge of our struggles a platform - and westminister despise me.

The consultation states that you want to ensure that everyone is fairly served. I'd urge you to seriously consider the negative effects that the removal of gender neutral toilets will have on the following groups - Black women, lesbian / butch women, trans and nonbinary people, GNC people, and disabled trans people - all of whom experience adverse levels of violence due to the effects of gender policing, and the compounded effect of racism, which threatens many women of colour due to racist ideas of femininity, but I have a feeling this is what our conservative government wants in the first place.

It is apparent that through this consultation the government has aligned itself with groups who intend to curb the rights of transgender people in the UK. It is dog whistle politics, focusing on the scapegoating of marginalised people rather than the issue at hand; increasing access to public toilet facilities. Gender neutral toilets are beneficial for a range of people and situations - for example, parents with children of a different gender (including same sex couples and single parents who don't have the option of "waiting for their partner to do it"), those who care for people of a different gender; some disabled people who have a carer of a different gender, and both cisgender and transgender people who experience gender presentation scrutiny in public spaces.

So I implore you to prove me wrong for once, to prove you care about every person in the UK - not just the people that fit into a narrow-minded view of what it means to be British. The easiest way to do this is to NOT steamroll ahead with the removal of gender neutral toilets, but to understand that these spaces are not only safe but absolutely vital in the protection of so many people’s basic human rights. These spaces simply must exist for the benefit of marginalised peoples who already face disproportionate levels of violence and abuse across the four nations.

The government claims that the intention for this consultation is to provide ‘dignity and respect for all’. I demand that they truly provide this dignity and respect by listening to the voices and needs of trans people and others who'll be caught in the crossfire of this not so subtle transphobic legislation.

I implore you to do the right thing.

Adryn *SURNAME*."

#uk politics #transphobia #trans rights

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theramblingonesie · 6 years ago

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Facing Our Making, Part 3: Makeup and Gender

Welcome to Part 3 of my makeup blog series! This week we’re going to poke at gender and makeup. But before I begin, let’s review parts 1 & 2, and check in about where we’re at:

1. Beauty standards are impossibly harsh and cause a lot of unnecessary pain.

2. Let womxn decide what they want to do with their own damn bodies and stay out of it. Unless they hire you for a consultation.

3. Wearing makeup is awesome

4. Not wearing makeup is awesome

5. Your gender presentation and basically any presentation of your body and behavior do not determine who you are and aren’t attracted to sexually. And no one is the (*^*^%^$#%$#&*&^&%% authority to determine that for you. If they try, remember that they’re judging and labeling you in relation to their own internal gender/sexuality struggles. More on this in today’s blog below.

6. How toxic masculinity ruins the day in relationship to makeup or not makeup needs to die, and YES womxn also support and host this behavior (internalized misogyny). Just because a person has a vagina or presents as femme does not mean they are exempt.

7. Womxn who wear makeup are not whores unless they are, in fact, professional whores. Professional whores keep the world turning, and bless em for it. The problem isn’t sex work. It’s violence against sex workers. Consider your complicity.

8. Womxn are reclaiming the hell out of the word “Slut”, so don’t get caught being a dumb idiot who uses the outdated, violent, misogynist definition. 1000 years vagina dentata upon your entire household.

9. If you want sexual attention because you enjoy sex, then FUCK YEAH GIT IT!!!

10. “Pretty girls are dumb” is a myth that our society desperately seeks to nurture and maintain. This is rooted in dominance, power, control, and whorephobia. Stop it.

11. “Ugly girls are smart” makes no damn sense. Okay, yes I can see the backwards logic, but also if you listen to flat-earthers long enough you could even be like, “ok, I see where you’re coming from with that”.

It is not lost on me that certain beauty trends and habits can trigger and enable body image problems, ranging in severity. After attending a panel discussion that featured a speaker from Media Girls Boston, I learned that girls as young as 9 are learning that they essentially need to brand themselves through social media so that they can merely exist. Saying this is a problem is an understatement.

I support makeup and rituals of adornment. I support a lot of things that, if used improperly with dangerous motivations, can result in severe consequences.

Understand that there’s a lot of nuance in subjects like this, and utilize your critical thinking brain when exploring such topics. Continue your personal research if you’re curious about any subcategory in this series that I have not addressed.

If issues of beauty standards and pressure are uncomfortable or triggering for you, or if you or a loved one believe they may be suffering from a body-image related disorder, please know you are not alone, and there are people out there who are ready and available to support you through this. Links and hotline numbers are available in the resource section at the end of this blog. -------------------------------------------------------------

“If we are all members of one body, then in that one body there is neither male nor female; or rather there is both: it is an androgynous or hermaphroditic body, containing both sexes [...] The division of the one man into two sexes is part of [our] fall.” --Norman O. Brown, in Love’s Body, 1966

Okay! Let’s talk about this super important element of the art and ritual of beauty:

Gender!

To Marie Kondo this: This subject does not bring me joy, and I do not want to write about it, but I feel that I have a responsibility to not play floor-is-lava about it. It does not even bring me the type of righteous rage that fuels me to furiously complete a post. It fills me with doubt, insecurity, self loathing, trust issues, and a desire to disappear.

I need to say this because I know I am not alone in my feelings and experience. But I will keep it very brief because I’d like to move on.

I have experienced a lifetime of pain from the bullshit pressure the heteropatriarchy puts on female bodies. I never anticipated the heartache I would experience as a result of being judged and denied by fellow queers.

I am too butch, too unfeminine to be accepted as the right kind of woman in heteropatriarchal society. I make men question their sexuality, and I am the one made to suffer for it. I am too feminine for queers to believe and accept me when I tell them I’m genderfluid (which I have been, quietly and privately, my entire life). I am not feminine enough to be femme.

Too much woman. Not enough woman. Not woman. Not human. Once again, my body and my soul are everyone else’s to judge, determine, and own. Not mine.

And no one wants to listen when we say the world hates women.

I highly suggest looking up the toxic concept of femme invisibility in queer communities. You can start by reading this great article by Bust:

https://www.bustle.com/articles/166081-what-does-femme-mean-the-difference-between-being-femme-being-feminine.

For the record, I still use she/her pronouns. I stand by my allegiance to the fullness and diversity of womxnhood in a deeply ferocious way. My reasoning for that is both very simple and very complicated. So I guess that just makes it very complicated. Ask me how.

Mood.

Anyway, makeup.

About a month ago, I had wrapped a film shoot with some friends who flew up from Mexico. It was an incredible weekend that filled me up with so much bliss. On the drive back to Boston, I was chatting with my beloved friends and fellow Scarlet Tongue artists, Creature and Cass, about how much I enjoy the company of Mexican men. A large part of that is because it is refreshing to be around men who so easily embrace and express feminine qualities of articulating their emotions, accessing their emotions, gentleness and nurturing. Creature presented the important argument that such qualities don’t need to be classified as feminine or masculine; they’re simply personality and behavioral traits that anybody can have.

Such a point is absolutely crucial in untangling the oppressive nature of the gender binary.

Exercise:

The following traits have been classically designated as “masculine” or “feminine” behavior, but I’ve jumbled them together in the list below. Which traits do you believe belong to whom?

Reserved Warm Sensitive Utilitarian Deferential Apprehensive Reactive Emotionally Stable Serious Lively Socially bold Shy Rule-conscious Expedient Private Perfectionism Anxiety Group-oriented Self-reliant Tolerates disorder Vigilance Extraversion Traditional Grounded Agreeableness Neuroticism Excitement-seeking Attraction to aesthetics

Answer:

Hahahahah, I’m not going to give you the answer. It doesn’t matter.

Yes, hormones do impact some behavior. And YES, how we’re socially conditioned impacts which traits are more dominant. But the point is, there is an imaginary line between the two categories. The saddest reality is that, even though any human is capable of any of these traits on the list, society has determined that consequence and punishment must befall anyone who strays from their category. An enforced gender binary is dangerous.

Enter makeup.

Makeup has served infinite purposes throughout the course of history. It’s an incredible vehicle for expression, as well as radical social and political rebellion. Makeup has shaped entire movements of art, social justice, philosophy, and construction/deconstruction of body politics.

Your lipstick is more than patriarchal pigment in a tube. It is a tool for revolution.

Most people assume that makeup is only for clowns and cisgender women, and anyone else who uses it is simply a deviant who has “stolen” it.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Nononononononono

This probably won’t come as a shock to most of you, but yes-- Christianity also temporarily ruined makeup. Once upon a time, it was quite normal for men to wear makeup. Then the Jesus toe-suckers made up a whole bunch of arbitrary rules about what we currently observe masculinity and femininity to be, and here we are in this stinky pile of crap rules.

I highly recommend reading this article to learn a tiny bit more of the history of men and makeup:

https://www.byrdie.com/history-makeup-gender

Who wears makeup and how people wear makeup has shifted so much throughout history, and the struggles we experience around this today have only been relevant for a hundred years or so. One of the most common forms of rebellion we hear of is when women reject traditional femininity. Whether “burning our bras”, shaving our heads, or growing out our armpit hair, this is not an uncommon experience for a lot of women. The scandal!! The pet has escaped her cage!! So many women I know have experienced an anti-femininity phase at least once in their lives. Sometimes this “phase” transitions into a permanent rejection of gender norms, but it really varies from person to person. Often it’s set off by an overwhelming awareness of how much women are defined by superficial characteristics, traditionally determined and enforced by men. So we attempt to take ourselves out of the system by wearing neutral and aggressive clothing, switching up which parts of our bodies are hairy and which aren’t, and avoiding anything “girlie”. Revisiting my conversation with Aepril, my high-glam friend who inspired this blog and was mentioned in Part 1, she made a good point about honoring such an experience: “I went through a miserable phase in my feminist youth where I thought I was being uber feminist by not shaving or wearing makeup or wearing heels, etc, because to do so was giving into the patriarchy. I was miserable of course. It took my drag queen friends to wake me up to that, as I realized that they were willing to give up family, social status...their safety and even their lives for the privilege of expressing themselves in a glamorous, feminine way. While I had that privilege because I was born in a female body. I might be criticised by both men and women, but I wouldn’t be beaten in the street for transgressing gender roles. I realized how much it meant to me through seeing how much it meant to them. Why should I give that up either? Why should anyone have to?” In Aepril’s situation, she found that her place of authenticity was through femininity. In a world that is so divided between the shoulds and should-nots of who we’re supposed to be, I find it important to squeeze ourselves through and experience all sides so we can settle on what’s true for us. Then it’s no longer conformity; it’s an outlet.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the use of makeup norms has been subverted to amplify voices that demand human rights and fair treatment. Its application has been largely linked to LGBTQ+ visibility and gay rights movements. The anti-Vietnam movement in the late 60s and 70s utilized makeup to display over-feminization and homosexuality as a way to avoid being drafted. The glam rock movement gave us icons like David Bowie, exposing and exploding restrictive gender norms through outrageous clothing and makeup, utilizing pop culture to spread ideas and acceptance of androgyny. “Female impersonation” has origins dating back to the 19th century in Europe, and the art of Drag Queens & Kings is alive and well today, celebrating, mocking, questioning, and expanding gender in clubs and theaters, in film, and right in our homes through TV favorites like Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

For our trans-sisters, the decision to wear makeup could have life or death consequences. As a transwoman friend of mine disclosed a few months back, when she’s walking down the street and hears a man call after her, her immediate thoughts turn to, “will I experience violence because I’m a woman? Or will I experience violence because he thinks I’m a faggot?” There is a lot of discussion in the trans community about the privilege of “passing”, and I believe these conversations have further supported the struggles womxn generally face-- does wearing makeup make you more or less of a woman? As writer Lux Alptraum points out, “the idea that external appearance is what makes someone a “real” woman is the very thing that many trans women have committed themselves to fighting. To the extent that makeup is an essential part of any trans woman’s gender identity or notion of her womanhood, it’s largely because that’s the message the rest of the world aggressively forces upon her.” Read the rest of this article at https://www.racked.com/2017/3/23/14937266/trans-women-makeup

Makeup is incredibly powerful. It can be used for protest, and it can be used for comfort. It’s daily wear, and it’s political. It’s an expression of freedom, and a bold face confronting restriction. It’s transformative, giving people the opportunity to live in the bodies and images that feel right and true for them. Makeup is art, an embracing of life and physicality, a way to show up, be counted, and be present. It’s an act of defiance, and an act of love.

I recently read that Facebook now has 56 gender identities one can choose from. Facebook blows, but wow that’s actually really awesome! Within that list, some of the more frequently used terms include:

Agender/Neutrois Androgyne/Androgynous Bigender Cis/Cisgender Female to Male/FTM Gender Fluid Gender Nonconforming/Variant Gender Questioning Genderqueer Intersex Male to Female/MTF Neither Non-binary Other Pangender Trans/Transgender Transsexual Two-spirit (Important: this is Native American. Don’t pull a Jason Mraz. Don’t appropriate)

Out of this list, the following folks are allowed to wear makeup:

All of them Everyone Anyone Everybody The General Public The Whole World Human Beings Aliens Animals but only if they’re actually humans in animal costumes

If you’re interested in following makeup artists on IG who are trans or gender non-conforming, here is a great starter list (partially sourced from wearyourvoicemag.com):

@ brownbeautystandards @ vlad_theunicorn @ jade_poncee @ makeupby_bran @ rosalynnemontoya @ miles_jai @ completedestruction

Again, there are infinite reasons why people of any gender do and don’t wear makeup, and I’m not going to be an authority on the matter. But I hope some of this information helps you on your journey to understand yourself better, and hold space of greater allyship and tolerance for others.

Below are some links and phone numbers if you feel you need greater support for the topics being discussed in this blog series. Being beautiful is cool, and so is being safe. You deserve to be here, and you matter.

Enjoy your week, and we’ll see you back here next week for Part 4: Performance Artists and Makeup!

National Eating Disorders 24 hr Hotline: 1-800-931-2237

https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/body-image-0

TransLifeline Hotline: 877-565-8860

https://www.translifeline.org/

LGBT National Hotline: 1-888-843-4564

https://www.glbthotline.org/

National Suicide Prevention 24hr Hotline: 1-800-273-8255

http://sexworkersproject.org/resources/

#makeup #nomakeup #gender #intersectional feminism #revolution #queer #drag #androgony #expressyourself

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