![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[33/366] re-do, and some queer theory
Feb. 2nd, 2020 06:20 pm2 If you could redo today, what one thing would you do differently?
I'd have stayed asleep between 6 and 7:30 am. I was so tired when my alarm went off for work. I had lots of sleep but it still wasn't enough. I dozed a bit this afternoon and I'm still so tired. And tomorrow, instead of an 8:30 alarm for uni, I'm going to have like a 6am alarm for work: my employwer has a hospital appointment tomorrow, in a city a two-hour train ride away. It's gonna be a long day.
--
A thing happened this morning that I felt kinda weird about but it also helped me coalesce some thoughts. A friend asked on social media for the opinions of her trans/non-binary/genderqueer/etc. friends. She's starting a new event for women and all those sorta of people, and she wanted to know how we felt about a proposed logo, if it'd make us less likely to go to the event or if it'd feel unwelcoming to us. I happened to see it just as she'd posted it and I said that it would make me less likely to go; the logo was just the "female" symbol ♀️ in a thing relevant to the event. (I don't want to make it about this one instance, and some of my friends might know this so to avoid singling my friend out, let's just say that it's not a knitting group but if it were, the ♀️ symbol would've been made with yarn. That type of thing.)
But the more I thought about it, the more my real problem wasn't (just) with the logo, it's the whole idea, not just of this event (which is why I don't want to pick on it particularly) but of the whole "women and non-binary people" thing. I've never felt great about it but couldn't articulate why. Talking with some friends about this was realy useful in helping me realied that it makes non-binary identities into "just another kind of woman." It reminds me so much of when queer women's projects stopped being just "lesbian" and started being "lesbian and bisexual women" and thinking nothing else would have to change about their group. "Women and non-binary" makes it sound like non-binary identties are "just another kind of woman," and while there are non-binary people who (as an agender friend of mine put it) "caucus with the women," there are also plenty of problems caused by this: it risks invalidating AFAB (assigned femaile at birth) people by sending the message that they're "still just women really," and often these spaces are still hostile to AMAB (assigned male at birth) people who have beards or deep voices or whatever as not the demographic that the people describing this space as for women and non-binary people were really after.
But my biggest problem isn't even with any of that. It's that people are doing an unreasonable thing in order to achieve a reasonable goal. I'm sure any of us could think about times in our lives that cis men were horrible to us, all the way from #EverydaySexism to actual trauma. And especially when it comes to groups for people who are queer/kinky/polyamorous/anything about sexualities and relationships, safety becomes even more important. But keeping all the cis men out isn't the way to do that. I'm not even saying "not all men," I'm saying "not only cis men." Not all predatory, boundary-crossing, consent-lacking behavior comes from them. Keeping them out is not necessary or sufficient for a space to be safe or welcoming.
The last time I felt really objectified and dysphoric about the landscape of my chest was at a "women and trans" event. Some of the people who said the thing that made me feel that way are good friends of mine who'd be mortified at the effect they had on me (I haven't talked to them about it and I don't feel up to doing so), but I also would bet a lot of money that they felt more like they could say what they did because we were at a "no cis men" event.
For much longer than I've been one, but certainly explicitly in the time that I've been one, LGBT+ activists have stressed the difference between identity and behavior -- be that in HIV prevention, who can give blood, the definition and subsequent outreach of bisexuality, on and on. And that's all I want here: to police behavior, which is what matters, and not identity.
Anyway I didn't say this in reply to my friend about the logo, I just said it would make me feel less welcome. And when I went back a bit later to see if there were any more comments, the entire post seemed to have been deleted or disappeared to where I couldn't see it. I don't know if anything else happened or my immediate negative reaction was enough to put my friend off asking. But I feel weird about that. But I'm glad I got to have the conversation that I did elsewhere, it really has helped make sense of why I've been so wary of "women and non-binary" type descriptions. Here I thought it was just because I really don't consider myself either of those things, heh. (I know anyone who doesn't have a binary gender can technically be said to be non-binary, and it's not a description I argue with if someone else uses it for me. But I don't really use it for myself. Anyway, that's a whole other complicated queer quibble, for another day!)
I'd have stayed asleep between 6 and 7:30 am. I was so tired when my alarm went off for work. I had lots of sleep but it still wasn't enough. I dozed a bit this afternoon and I'm still so tired. And tomorrow, instead of an 8:30 alarm for uni, I'm going to have like a 6am alarm for work: my employwer has a hospital appointment tomorrow, in a city a two-hour train ride away. It's gonna be a long day.
--
A thing happened this morning that I felt kinda weird about but it also helped me coalesce some thoughts. A friend asked on social media for the opinions of her trans/non-binary/genderqueer/etc. friends. She's starting a new event for women and all those sorta of people, and she wanted to know how we felt about a proposed logo, if it'd make us less likely to go to the event or if it'd feel unwelcoming to us. I happened to see it just as she'd posted it and I said that it would make me less likely to go; the logo was just the "female" symbol ♀️ in a thing relevant to the event. (I don't want to make it about this one instance, and some of my friends might know this so to avoid singling my friend out, let's just say that it's not a knitting group but if it were, the ♀️ symbol would've been made with yarn. That type of thing.)
But the more I thought about it, the more my real problem wasn't (just) with the logo, it's the whole idea, not just of this event (which is why I don't want to pick on it particularly) but of the whole "women and non-binary people" thing. I've never felt great about it but couldn't articulate why. Talking with some friends about this was realy useful in helping me realied that it makes non-binary identities into "just another kind of woman." It reminds me so much of when queer women's projects stopped being just "lesbian" and started being "lesbian and bisexual women" and thinking nothing else would have to change about their group. "Women and non-binary" makes it sound like non-binary identties are "just another kind of woman," and while there are non-binary people who (as an agender friend of mine put it) "caucus with the women," there are also plenty of problems caused by this: it risks invalidating AFAB (assigned femaile at birth) people by sending the message that they're "still just women really," and often these spaces are still hostile to AMAB (assigned male at birth) people who have beards or deep voices or whatever as not the demographic that the people describing this space as for women and non-binary people were really after.
But my biggest problem isn't even with any of that. It's that people are doing an unreasonable thing in order to achieve a reasonable goal. I'm sure any of us could think about times in our lives that cis men were horrible to us, all the way from #EverydaySexism to actual trauma. And especially when it comes to groups for people who are queer/kinky/polyamorous/anything about sexualities and relationships, safety becomes even more important. But keeping all the cis men out isn't the way to do that. I'm not even saying "not all men," I'm saying "not only cis men." Not all predatory, boundary-crossing, consent-lacking behavior comes from them. Keeping them out is not necessary or sufficient for a space to be safe or welcoming.
The last time I felt really objectified and dysphoric about the landscape of my chest was at a "women and trans" event. Some of the people who said the thing that made me feel that way are good friends of mine who'd be mortified at the effect they had on me (I haven't talked to them about it and I don't feel up to doing so), but I also would bet a lot of money that they felt more like they could say what they did because we were at a "no cis men" event.
For much longer than I've been one, but certainly explicitly in the time that I've been one, LGBT+ activists have stressed the difference between identity and behavior -- be that in HIV prevention, who can give blood, the definition and subsequent outreach of bisexuality, on and on. And that's all I want here: to police behavior, which is what matters, and not identity.
Anyway I didn't say this in reply to my friend about the logo, I just said it would make me feel less welcome. And when I went back a bit later to see if there were any more comments, the entire post seemed to have been deleted or disappeared to where I couldn't see it. I don't know if anything else happened or my immediate negative reaction was enough to put my friend off asking. But I feel weird about that. But I'm glad I got to have the conversation that I did elsewhere, it really has helped make sense of why I've been so wary of "women and non-binary" type descriptions. Here I thought it was just because I really don't consider myself either of those things, heh. (I know anyone who doesn't have a binary gender can technically be said to be non-binary, and it's not a description I argue with if someone else uses it for me. But I don't really use it for myself. Anyway, that's a whole other complicated queer quibble, for another day!)