1. Sometimes blog posts and comments make me wish to react in a blog post, but it is not very relevant to put it on my french blog
2. Because my french blog is now relatively known by my friends IRL, which sometimes make it difficult for me to put personnal interrogations
3. Because my english really gets rusty rapdily when I am not writing some stuffs :o

Me: Hi.

RFF: We were talking about creating a new non-mixt feminist group since there is a lack in this town.

Me: Cool.

RFF: Do you want to come ?

Me: Am I going to get kicked out ?

RFF (looking suprised): Uh… No.

Me: Oh, pleeeease, come on !

RFF: Well, if you want to, we can kick you out, but then you come back.

Me: Fine, but tied up.

RFF: Great. See you next week, then ?

(Yes, I was supposed to stop blogging here, but since one of the reasons I started this blog was the “radfem VS trans blogwar” (I lack a better term), I thought it was circling the circle)

I initially hoped I could get the time and energy to make regular posts but… well, let’s humbly say I overestimated my english level. It takes me hours to get a single post, and I am not able to translate posts from my french blog.

I find it frustrating, because the french trans (and even feminist) blogosphere is quite reduced and I find it interesting to share informations with english-speaking people, even if sometimes we don’t have the same culture (e.g my feminist references are not quite the same and, well, the trans vs radfem debate was a new thing  for me :o ), but I guess I will just use the comments most blogs allow to do that, because I don’t have time to make this blog live and the only thing I can do is copy/paste press release, which isn’t very passionating.

Anyway, thanks for every people who did read or comment this blog (and sorry for english mistakes).

The Decision to Close Down Lambdaistanbul was Overturned !

27/11/2008
72 kere okundu

Our process towards becoming an official association that started in May 2006 was carried to the court due to Istanbul Governor’s Office’s decision that our name and our constitution is against the law, morality and Turkish family values. We survived six hearings, and Istanbul 3^rd Principle Court has decided to close us down despite the expert opinion supporting us. Today, our case was heard at the Supreme Court of Appeals. As witnesses to a late-arriving justice we shout out that our organizing is not immoral.

True, justice arrived quite late. A similar criminal complaint was filed against our sibling associations in Ankara, Kaos GL and Pembe Hayat (Pink Life), by Ankara Governor’s Office, claiming that they were against the law, morality and Turkish family values. However, things worked out differently in their case, and the local courts and prosecution office decided not to close down these associations -a decision that is opposed to the decision made by Istanbul 3^rd Principle Court. How come there are two opposing verdicts based on the same law?

We repeat: Decisions influenced by prejudices will remain inevitable, and inequality, discrimination and intense human rights violations will prevail as long as “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” are not added to the equality clause of the constitution.

Yet finally, justice has arrived. We are stronger now with the overturn of the decision to close down Lambdaistanbul LGBTT Solidarity Association. As people who face violence, who get expelled from our jobs, who are excluded and isolated, who are denied their legal rights, our voices will now multiply; and as the LGBTT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transvestite, transsexual) movement we will be louder when we shout out our right to equality.

The Platform for LGBTT Rights

Izmir Transvestite and Transsexual Initiative

Kaos GL Association

Kaos GL izmir Formation

Lambdaistanbul LGBTT Solidarity Association

MorEL eskisehir LGBTT Formation

Pembe Hayat LGBTT Solidarity Association

Piramid LGBTT Diyarbakir Formation

Another transgender friend was murdered!

Press Release by KAOS GL – 11/11/2008

Baris Sulu – Ankara

Translated into English by Sedef Cakmak

Edited in English by Oner Ceylan

As we were getting ready for the “November 20th, Remembrance Day for Transgender victims of hate murders” we were devastated by a news we received. On November 10, 2008, around 9 pm in Etlik, a district of Ankara, our friend Dilek was attacked with a pump action shotgun, and passed away at the Ankara Diskapi Education and Research Hospital at around 0:30 am on November 11, 2008.

According to an eye-witness; while they were in the car with Dilek in the Etlik-Iskitler district, they were startled by a shot and the sound of a shattered window coming from the back of the car. A few minutes later, another fire was opened from the side of the car aiming Dilek’s head, who was sitting in the driver’s seat. When she was taken to a hospital where she was taken into intensive care. Eight shots were found in her head. This verifies that the assault might have been done with a shotgun. It was told that the assaulters ran away with a dark colored car and they were more than 2 people.

Dilek was one of the transsexuals who had filed complaints against the attackers in the Eryaman incidents. During the trial, she had also sat at the witness chair and testified against the assaulters. The suspects of the Eryaman incidents were released during the hearing on October 17, 2008.

Condolences to all of us…

And another press release, from LGBT Rights Platform, which was delivered during a protest, on the 12th of November :

Gay and transsexual murders are political – We now the killers!

LGBT Rights Platform
15/11/2008
26 kere okundu

On November 12, 2008, after the funeral service of Dilek, LGBT Rights Platform has delivered a press release followed by a protest march in Ankara. You may find the press release below.

LGBT Rights Platform – Press Release

12 November 2008, Ankara

We are in sorrow and anger.

We are in deep sadness, because one of our friends has been a victim of the heterosexist hate and murdered once again.

Transsexual Dilek İnce, who has been attacked with a shotgun on 10 November 2008, died on 11 November 2008.

We are in anger, because we came here from a cemetery. We are in great anger because we cannot know which gay or transsexual friend of ours is the next.

Who killed transsexual Dilek İnce in a shotgun attack? And will the murderers be found?

Who killed gay individual Ahmet Yıldız with a machine gun? And why could İstanbul Police Department not find the attackers?

Who forced Ege Tanyürek, a young gay person, to commit suicide in Adıyaman?

We are in fear and fright!

We would like to know if gay and transsexuals are not citizens according to Mr. Prime Minister?

Isn’t it a crime to discriminate citizens?

We want to know

If the police will find the murderers?

If prosecutors and judges will give up freeing the killers under grievous provocation.

We are in fear and freight because we do not know how many other gays and transsexuals will be killed by the Prime Minister’s citizens who “got out of patience.”

We want to know if Mr. Prime Minister will create a just and peaceful society by consternating and disquieting.

We will not change, you will get used to it!

We knocked your doors, we screamed, we wore shrouds, do you think we are playing a game?

We are being killed just because we are gay or transsexual. We are looking for justice and we cannot find it.

What we want is not too much; it is only not to be killed because of our sexual orientation and gender identities.

How long will you watch us being killed by empowering homophobic and transphobic hate?

Hitler sealed us with pink triangles and killed us in holocaust, but could not destroy us. You, the watchers! Do you think that you will be able to destroy gays and transsexuals through hunting one by one?

We announce it!

Gay and transsexual murders are political – We now the killers!

We will not let it go!

Shame on your morality soiled with gay and transsexual blood!

I see no comment to add to this sad news, but even if it isn’t directly linked, I think it is important to remind that the association Lambdaistanbul is facing dissolution and that the final appeal of the case will be held in Turkish supreme court on november 25th. A petition to protest the dissolution decision can be signed here. I don’t know much of the turkish situation but I think it is currently difficult for LGBT people and there was much violence directed to trans peole, so it would be really dramatical if the sentence was to be confirmed, shutting down an association defending LGBT people.

But before, let me introduce myself a bit. I am (legally) french, even if I might have some, well, let’s call it language dysphoria. I mean, I speak french nearly all the time in real life, with my friends, family, and so on; but on the other hand, most culture, or at least entertainment I got, came from english-speaking countries, most of it being USA. Most of the movies I watch are american movies – I find that french movies suck. Same things for TV series, except french ones suck even more. Novels I read? Mostly from UK and USA. At least for movies (for books it’s more difficult), I prefer to see them in english version. I’ve been using computers and video games since I was 4, at a time where there wasn’t much internalisation, so I used english too. And I am a PhD student, in a field where all my communications must be in english.

Of course, I am not the only one in this case. Many middle-class people of my age probably share the same influences and relation to english, but there are some mechanisms I find quite interesting to compare with being transgender; and in particular, one which is important for me, the “language switch”. I don’t know if there is a proper term to designate this, but for me it is the fact that I am in some mental “state” to speak and think in english, and in some other to speak and think in french. I need some adaptation to switch between the two: I need more effort to get myself to think in english, since it is not my native tongue, but when I have been speaking english for a while, I need some seconds to go back to french.

I feel the same way going from masculine to feminine in french (of course it would also work for any other heavily gendered tongue, french is just my personal example).

In french, you use variations of the same words when it is masculine or feminine: for example, to say “I am happy”, a man will say “Je suis joyeux” and a woman “Je suis joyeuse”.

This isn’t very complicated: female form just usually takes an additional “e”. There are more tricky things, because french is quite a complicated language, but that’s basically it.

The thing is, when you are in an everyday conversation, and you don’t think a lot about what you are talking about, what you say comes very spontaneously, and it is difficult to go from using a female form to speak (or, worse, think) about yourself to a male form, or the opposite.

I remember when I transitioned, the first step of it wasn’t my clothes, it wasn’t facial hair epilation or hormonotherapy, it was… well, “gender switch”. Speaking and thinking about myself in the female form, whereas I had been taught to use the male one since birth.

Adding a “e” to some of the words you say doesn’t seem that difficult, but let me tell you english-speaking trans people that you have it easy not having to go through this :p

The thing that I found really frustrating is that I felt like I was deluding myself: if I had been a true trans, I thought, I should have been thinking of myself in the female form spontaneously. I shouldn’t have to make an effort about this. And I am not the only one to think that: once or twice, I saw trans people wondering if they were truly trans because they were still sometimes thinking of themselves in the wrong grammatical gender.

Of course, the facts is it’s perfectly normal to need some kind of adaptation. I usually think and speak of myself in the female grammatical gender when I am with friends, but I have more trouble after a week with my family who still call me “he” and by my birth name. That doesn’t make me less a woman, in the same way that, after a week in UK, the fact that some words came more easily in english doesn’t make me less french.

(On the other hand, the fact that I am both lesbian and quite fond of Monique “Lesbians are not women” Wittig does make me less of a woman, and the fact that I reject my nationality does make me less french. But it’s another matter.)

I think the fact that my native tongue is quite heavily gendered affected how I defined myself: I tend to define as “female gender” because… I use female (grammatical) gender to speak. But maybe if I was speaking in a less gendered language in everyday life, I could use “ze” or even don’t care much if I was called “he”.

On the other hand, I’m happy sometimes to use female grammatical gender to spaek about me in order to subtly tell that I am not a man, without having to directly correct someone. And when I am with someone whose I don’t know the preferred gender, it helps me if that person use the masculine or feminine form to speak about him/herself.

I think language, which is linked to culture, have an influence in the way we think about ourselves, because we need this language to think, which is why feminists try to change the language: e.g., inventing new neutral pronouns instead of using the masculine one as neutral.

Which also means that differences in language can cause differences in the way we act and construct ourselves, both individually and collectively. Of course, I don’t think that e.g. trans people who speak french are very different from trans people who speak english or spanish or deutch or whatever (at least I can speak for western tongues and cultures that I vaguely know); but I think it can be interesting to see how the strategies we use to resist the forced genderisation that comes from language can slightly differ.

The global punchline is “Neither men, nor women, binarism make us ill”, but there are variations according to cities (e.g. Paris is centered on the question of “rights”). While I personally quite like the radical tone, I am, with the reflection, afraid it could be wrongly interpreted and not the easiest way to gather all trans’ people (it’s like “lesbians are not women”, I like the sentence but I wouldn’t necessarily put in the head of a lesbian demonstration), but well, we’ll see.

The common revendications (there are, again, variations between cities and countries, as they have different situations) are the following:

• Removal of transsexuality from lists of mental illnesses
• Access to hormons and surgery without requirement of psychotherapy
• Removal from the mention of “sex” (or “gender”) from official documentations
• Suppression of the reassignations at birth of intersex people

Here are some visuals for Barcelona, Paris, Bruselles and Vitoria-Gasteiz:

For some history, Existrans – a demonstration for the rights of trans people – has taken place in Paris since 1997, and it is the 12th time this year.

Last year, there were also demonstrations in Madrid and Barcelona, and this year it has spread to more cities.

I hope there will be many people present in those demonstrations this year, and that they continue spreading in other cities and countries for the following ones :)

I have always been very shy, and never have socialized much (as a boy or a girl) and I think it did play an important role in my relation with male privilege. Many typical things constitutive of “boyish” identity were quite out of reach for me.

Now I am reluctant to say that I was shy because I was trans’ (I certainly didn’t feel like that at the time) because I feel like it’s reinterpreting the past a posteriori. It might also be the contrary: being trans because I am shy, since I don’t think I would have transitioned If I had be able to fully socialize as boy/man. Or maybe it’s just quite independent, though linked.

This being said, I think I had some male privilege. Maybe even the fact that I didn’t socialize as a boy, because I escaped  “reality” through books, tv and videogames, has something to do with male privilege. On the other hand, I don’t think I internalised it much. There again, I am reluctant to say that I had a complicated relation to male privilege because I was going to define as trans 10 years later. On the other hand, there again, maybe it is the other way around: I ended up being trans because I wasn’t able to identify with male and internalize male privilege.

But I don’t think transitioning was the only possible outcome of my life. True, as child/teen, I don’t think I was ever integrated to “boys” club, even if there are periods where I did make some efforts ; b ut I could deal with that. As a young adult (18-2x), I did it by being a complete geek with a very neglected look. There were times when I was a bit less neglected and tried to be more “masculine”, e.g., having beard or sideburns (I was quite fond of that) and actually chosen clothes. (Strangely, I was the more masculine just before I decided to transition. And I realized that my supposedly masculine boots took a new dimension when associated with a skirt, but that’s another story.)

I think that, in the absolute, I could have lived like this. I didn’t see transition as a matter of life or death (I have been quite depressive at a time, but that was after I decided to transition, seeing all obstacles rising in front of me).

What started to make me change was when I started activism (which was in 2003, because of the war in Irak and also, in France, a reform of the age of retirement). I soon became involved in a tiny trotskyst group which quicly entered the LCR, Revolutionnary Communist League, which you may or may not know because of his popular spokeperson, Olivier Besancenot. Activism forced me to meet people in real life and not “escape” through fiction, and of course it also made me think about lots of stuff.

Particularly, I was very interested by the feminist and LGBTI issues.  I remember a feminist formation about how the differences between men and women were socially constructed and not innate. I don’t know how to put it, but it felt like it was very important to me. And transgender was presented like an example of that, that you were not a man or a woman according to the form of your genitals.

(A parenthesis about feminism and transgender. In the groups where I went, which were not women-only, and were constituted of young people (I think it is of importance), transgender was always seen as a very positive, subversive thing. I have observed in english blogosphere many radical feminists think the contrary, and it is also probably true in France (though I never actually saw it theorised here, at least not in the same way), but I only encountered anti-trans feminism long after, so at this time I really felt included in feminism.)

I think my encounter with feminism was very important for my decision to become trans. And by “feminism” I also include LGBTI issues, and particularly lesbian and trans ones. In particular, the affirmation of some lesbians to be lesbians because of political decision, by “choice”, was important for me.

I know for some people it is everything but a choice, but when I became trans’, that’s how I perceived it. As a way  to say that I rejected patriarchy and didn’t want to be a man anymore (if I was one either). Now I don’t want to say it was a “pure” choice, a “pure” political decision: but there was a time where I thought there was two possible ways: continuing being seen as a man, albeit in an “alternative way” (it was clear for me that I could never be a mainstream heterosexual man), like being a punk, a fag or something like that. Or try… being “trans”, that is, not really identifying as a woman but more or less seen as one.

Now, I don’t mean that I became trans only by “feminism” ; but I think that without feminism, the obstacles to transition (losing social status, the fear, but also the internalised transphobia) would have led me to “stay being a guy” (even if, maybe, ten or twenty years later I would have realised I couldn’t cope with it anymore and would have transitioned, but it’s hard to say).

I don’t regret my choice, because I feel quite happier now, even if I went through faaaaaar more shit during the two years since my decision than during the rest of my life. And I identify as “trans”, and “transgender” (though I am questioning myself about the “modifying my body” part).

But sometimes, I feel like I am not completely legitimate because, though I certainly didn’t fit completely in male gender role, I don’t think I ever had the level of “dysphoria” other trans people had. So when I try to speak as a trans person, which I think is important for visibility and fighting cissexism, I speak with my voice, but I wonder if people won’t see it as representing all trans people, which of course I can’t pretend to be. And it’s not always obvious to understand the intensity of what other went through since I didn’t experience it, even if I make efforts.

This is why I am sometimes a bit confused on where I stand in the cis/trans definition. Because, well, yes, I can understand a cis person who doesn’t fit well in gender and actually I feel closer to this kind of “some trouble but not complete ‘dysphoria’” than most experiences described by trans people. And I can understand also that they don’t like the term (even if it is ‘cissexual’ and not ‘cisgender’).

(The fact that I don’t think there is a clearly determined line doesn’t mean that I am against using the terms, but I feel more at ease using it for a population (like “cis people don’t have to worry about XXX”) than at an individual level.)

Now, I was asking myself some questions, like “am I really ‘trans’ ?”, “were my reasons for transitionning wrong?” and such, but the truth is, I don’t think that’s very important, actually. I know some transsexual people would say that I am not a “real trans”, but I don’t care much. My reasons may have been wrong, but even that isn’t important. The thing is, I think I am quite happier this way, and I don’t think I could “detransition” at this time. I couldn’t be a cis man. Maybe I could be a cis woman, but… well, technically this might prove difficult.

So, well, I don’t say this is gonna be for life, and maybe in some years I’ll “de-transition”, but for now, I guess I’m going to keep being (more or less) trans for some more time.

(Thinking about it, when I was at the beginning of puberty, there was a time where I sort of saw my body as “girly”. But it was completely frightening me, and I was afraid that e.g. would grow breasts and be “gay” (yes, I know, the stoopid confusion). Similarly, when we were playing “let’s pretend to be cowboys/cops/bandits/…” I often wanted to be a girl. But I interpreted this more as fetishism or perversion. In my blurred memory, it doesn’t look very much as a desire to be a woman at that time, but well, maybe I’m wrong and it shows I am actually a “real” trans, after all)

(Updated the 2008/10/02 in order to add more information about childhood)

Before and After: Gender Transitions, Human Capital, and Workplace Experience

Abstract

We use the workplace experiences of transgender people – individuals who change their gender typically with hormone therapy and surgery – to provide new insights into the long-standing question of what role gender plays in shaping workplace outcomes. Using an original survey of male-to-female and female-to-male transgender people, we document the earnings and employment experiences of transgender people before and after their gender transitions. We find that while transgender people have the same human capital after their transitions, their workplace experiences often change radically. We estimate that average earnings for female-to-male transgender workers increase slightly following their gender transitions, while average earnings for male-to-female transgender workers fall by nearly 1/3. This finding is consistent with qualitative evidence that for many male-to-female workers, becoming a woman often brings a loss of authority, harassment, and termination, but that for many female-to-male workers, becoming a man often brings an increase in respect and authority. These findings challenge the omitted variables explanations for the gender pay gap and illustrate the often hidden and subtle processes that produce gender inequality in workplace outcomes.

Submitted: August 8, 2007 · Accepted: July 29, 2008 · Published: September 11, 2008

There is also a NYT article that talks about it.

Via Feminist Law Professors.

Edit: I found a PDF version of the article freely downloadable.

Trans demonstration in Barcelona

Neither men, nor women, the binary makes us ill

Demonstration of Transgender, Transsexual and Intersex struggle

11 of octobre in Barcelona

They have a more extended leaflet available on their website in castellano (spanish) and catalan.

I quite like the headline even if I understand it could be wrongly interpreted (saying trans men and women are not real men/women).

And I don’t know what the specific headline each city will take (in Paris it will be “right, laws, that respect our choices”), but there will be demonstrations for trans’ rights on the 11th of october in :

• A corunha (Galicia / Spain)
• Barcelona (Catalonia / Spain)
• Bilbao (Basque Country / Spain)
• Bruselles (Belgium)
• Donosti (Basque country / Spain)
• Gasteiz (Basque country / Spain)
• Lisboa (Portugal)
• Madrid (Spain)
• Paris (France)
• Sargoza (Aragon / Spain)