After completing the reading for Thursday from Leslie Feinberg's Trans Liberation, please take time to reflect on the central points that Feinberg makes. Identify the most salient or pressing issue that Feinberg describes, in terms of the injustices transgender folks face. How does sie (Feinberg's preferred pronoun) think we should respond to these injustices? What is trans liberation from hir point of view? Aim for 250 words in response, and as always, cite evidence from the test to support and illustrate your response.
Welcome to our course blog—“Justice, Gender, Sexuality”! In this space, you’ll have the chance to reflect on our course reading, ask questions, interact with each other and build a virtual community to complement our classroom space. For this first post, I’d like to invite you to do two things: First, tell us more about yourself. What do you think we should know about you as we begin this semester together? You might consider these questions: Who are you? How do you identify? Where are you from? To whom do you belong? What communities are you a part of? What values or beliefs do you hold dear? Or, share some other facet about yourself that you think is significant. You might also consider telling us more about why you decided to take this course, and what you hope to learn from it. Then, please reflect on the reading assigned for class. Given ...
For Feinberg, one of the most important things is for LGBTQIA+ folks to unite. Sie thinks that both trans people and LGB people can gain from helping eachother which I think is a very compelling argument. Feinberg asks us if anyone is really performing gender perfectly? Sie wants us to question what these two movements can’t gain from uniting as they did during Stonewall. Another important thing that sie highlights is that we need not forget people that don’t fit into neat ideas of cross dressing gay men or fit into those expected archetypes of LGB people or people who do drag. If these lines were drawn less dramatically then there might be ore acceptance and celebration of anyone who is trans.
ReplyDeleteAnother important injustice that Feinberg highlights is treatment of trans people as the lowest of lows. Sie highlights injustice with regards to healthcare, violence, poverty and being forced to live on the streets. One of the solutions to injustice with regards to healthcare according to Feinberg is to make healthcare free which is not a new concept for some.
Feinberg’s writing emphasizes the need to open our minds and our expectations in order to make any progress. Opening our mind to new expectations of gender expression, what sex means, how we interpret sexual anatomy and more will allow for more freedom and liberation. That is what sie is calling for within these narratives.
The central theme that Feinberg points out about trans rights are trans people feeling accepted in the community. In “Allow Me to Introduce Myself” they talk about trans people feeling accepted in their personal lives with family and friends. In the beginning of this chapter, many trans people and their families are at the Texas “T” Party to celebrate their gender identity. On page 17, Feinberg speaks of seeing men out of their drag after this T Party on their way home. They say, “[Men] will weep because these are the only days out of their entire lives that they could be themselves- and the event is over.” This expresses that while some transgender people have come out and are living their best lives, others can’t come out and be themselves because if they do it will destroy their personal life. However, them not coming out is destroying themselves on the inside, which can raise rates of depression and suicide. Another piece from Feinberg themself is explaining how they feel their private feelings and thoughts are out there for the world to see. The example that is used is the complexity of “explaining” your gender. On page 84 of, “I Can’t Afford to Get Sick” Feinberg explains how coming out to everyone, including even nurses and doctors, runs trans people into the risk of being discriminated against in a health care setting. “Maybe you feel you would treat this patient the same way once they came out to you. But when you put it in their chart, or mention it to the next staff member, the trans patient may be mistreated.” Feinberg believes that ways to respond to these injustices is to bring allies and the trans and the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community together. They believe with all of our powers, we can ask more from the government. This can include protection and funding.
ReplyDeleteFeinberg illustrates many central points that continue our conversation about injustices the LGBTQ community faces. I decided to focus on hir most salient point found in hir section "I Can't Afford to Get Sick" being the injustices faced in the health care system. Sie introduces his own struggles of being a transgender adult who would wait as long as hir body would stand before possibly facing hostility, humiliation, and uncomfortability that comes from a stranger examining hir body. The two obstacles the community runs into when dealing with the economic system that organizes health care as a money driven industry is bigotry and poverty (79). One point that resonated with me, having interned and worked with an insurance company, was the point on page 80 being, "Tens of millions of documented and undocumented workers, I had no health insurance". Our system holds this idea that health care is a privilege not a need. Such as other injustices, the root of the problem is that trans folks do not fit into a heteronormative box.
ReplyDeleteOur responses should be anger and action. I would have to agree with hir response to this issue as being active in helping create a zero tolerance for gender-phobia and trans-phobia in the health care industry but also demanding necessary governmental funds to meet affordable health care especially for the poor and oppressed (86). But I believe there also has to be education and proper training for everyone from employees to specialists about how to be consciously aware of injustices that may be disregarded in their workplaces.
One of the issues that I found to be most powerful in hirs writing was the topic of healthcare. On one hand there was this super frightening narrative element that explained hirs experience, but then as Feinberg developed hirs argument it was found that this is not just a person to person issue, but that access to healthcare when trans is a systemic issue. I think that we know that things like Feinberg describes happen to hir personally, but when we look at a particularly messed help health care system already, I think the holes in the system begin to show themselves a little more. And as Feinberg discusses on page 85, it is this exact transformation of a healthcare system into a business model that finds people that are experiencing poverty while trans (a lot of people in this world) invisible, unprotected, and scarred but helpless about their health.
ReplyDeleteThe central theme of Leslie Feinberg’s book, Trans Liberation is for all allies and people who identify as queer to fully accept people of any gender identity, especially transgender people who do not identify with a set binary. A lot of it has to do with adding more to our societal language instead of just the binary options: male or female. In “Allow Me To Introduce Myself,” sie talks about how the options in things as simple as a passport have only the binary, and that there should be more options for those who do identify with the non-binary.
ReplyDeleteThis also shown when sie talks about the healthcare system through the perspective of transgender people in “I Can’t Afford To Get Sick.” When Les was in Boston, his experience with healthcare was not a good one. People like sie, along with others who are not white, straight men have been discriminated against by the healthcare system for a long time, and Les is telling us to unite to create change around the language of LGBTQIA+ people in the healthcare system.
Lastly, when it comes to the struggle of LGBTQIA+ rights after Stonewall, Les is advocating for the transgender people to be heard equally to people who have a different sexual orientation. Sie explains in “In The Spirit of Stonewall” that at any point in time, people who are bisexual, gay, lesbian, and any other sexual orientation, they will struggle, or have struggled, with both gender and sexual identity. The movement affects more than just people who identify with their sexual identity.
Feinberg, speaking for their position as a trans member of the 'community,' applies apt pressure to the notion of unified community. Feinberg is comfortable pointing out that the notion of community is one of nominal importance when one considers the position of Trans individuals in this broader community. Feinberg articulates that many people who use more rigid labels around sexuality in the community do not always grasp or appreciate the role of those who use more fluid labels concerning gender. This is highly problematic given the nature of queer activism and progress; people must unify as a cohesive front against the social forces that work to distill queerness. Without this unification, people who identify as non-gender binary or trans do not have the same political and social clout. This lack makes it harder to push against codified forms of oppression such as access to healthcare. Trans individuals tend to not have access to quality healthcare, this becomes even more tenuous when one considers the role that intersectionality plays in the trans-sphere. In a stonewall-esque spirit, sexually non-conforming people and gender non-conforming people ought to work for each other, giving voice to the unified notion of Queer Oppression.
ReplyDeleteAfter reflecting on the issues that Feinberg points out in Trans Liberation, the injustice that stands out to me the most the the lack of decent health care. Feinberg titles the chapter, “I Can’t Afford to Get Sick” and states that bigotry and poverty where the two obstacles standing in the way of good healthcare, for trans folks. Feinberg tells of how sie feared going to the doctor because of the physical examination, leaving Feinberg open to scrutiny about hirs life choices. This vulnerability often lead to harassment by health care professionals. As a result, Feinberg would have to make up personas and IDs, just to feel safe, having to give up any sort of long term care with a personal physician. On top of this large companies were what was protecting these doctors and nurses that were mistreating trans patients. These large companies also had biased opinions about trans patients, and any person who wanted to speak out against a hospital, was slapped with a lawsuit, making these doctors and nurses untouchable. Another large issue for trans people in a hospital setting is whether they should have to legally tell health professionals their birth gender. Health professionals argue that they should because gender would effect how care is determined. Trans folks argue that it is not the health professional’s business. This tension leads to a hostile patient to doctor relationship, that can hinder care. All of these issues with trans folks navigating the health care system, stem from a place of bigotry and are infringing on transgender rights.
ReplyDeleteIn discussing the unique obstacles and causes for celebration of the broader queer community, Les Feinberg brings to light the battles yet to be fought as well as moments that brought tears of joy to her eyes. First at the Texas “T” party, an annual celebration of the transgender and cross-dressing community, Les explains that this space allows for shared joy that has not been created for them in mainstream society, saying that, “It creates a safe space to bring together people whose lives have been lived in isolation,” (18). She speaks on how this isolation is forced, how society shuns, dismisses, and belittles all ”deviant” groups of this nature, which also leads her to compel readers to conjoin liberation movements between trans folks, heterosexual cross-dressers, women, and members of the LGBQ community, as our liberations is necessarily tied. As Les points out, building ties between these communities encourages us to interrogate the essentialist understandings of sex and gender, and to fight for a similar access to self determination for all these groups. In our world today, so many hold complex sexual and gender identities but because of the social pressures, emotional and physical dangers, and pain lurking behind non-conformity, “A large segment of the bigender population has lived in airless, confined closets of shame.” (16). Les discusses the systematic discrimination that prevents self actualization for many, such as the forced, anatomically correct identification of biological sex which is conflated with gender. By law, individuals are required to divulge this information, and for those who do not have proof of sex-reassignment surgery, identifying as a gender that does not align to biological sex is a felony. Les concludes that despite all the hardships these communities endure, the beauty found within oneself and interpersonal relationships have still allowed for beautiful flourishing. As they explain, “True gender lies not in the appearance of the body but the workings of the mind.” (39). Until we can allow for the unhindered expression of gender and acknowledge where that comes from, we will all suffer.
ReplyDeleteLeslie Feinberg points out that one of the most pressing issue that trans people face is the health-care crisis. Not only are trans people often times discriminated against by health care professionals, but they simply cannot afford health-care. Feinberg points out hir hesitation to sought medical treatment because sie is scared of the “potential hostility” from healthcare professionals (Feinberg, 80). Feinberg recalls numerous experiences where sie was humiliated, from being called a “freak” to being accused that being trans is the work of the devil. Moreover, Feinberg notes that healthcare in this country is simply way too expensive and many trans individuals cannot afford it. In order to respond to these injustices we need to “open up dialogue with health care workers” and making healthcare a right, not a privilege (Feinberg, 82). As much as we want to get angry at health care professionals, that is not the appropriate solution. There needs to be discussion and education to help build alliances “between everyone who suffers from discrimination and prejudice” (Feinberg, 82). Furthermore, Feinberg add that these dialogues are not meant to hurt healthcare workers, but its a way to provide insight and feedback on the experiences and challenges that trans people face. At the end of the day, “the fight against bigotry must go hand in hand with the battle to make healthcare affordable” (Feinberg, 84). We’re all human beings and we all deserve to be treated with dignity and respect no matter how we choose to identify ourselves.
ReplyDeleteFeinberg makes points out the complications the trans community faces as far as their identities not being properly recognized. Hir talks about how trans people have to be afraid of being pulled over for a traffic violation because the gender on their ID may be different than how they identify. Hir also points out how difficult it is for trans people to travel because they identity on their passport may not match how they appear. What I think is the most important point that Feinberg makes an argument against is the injustice that trans and intersex people face while seeking health care. Hir points out that professionals in the medical field hold too much power and there isn’t enough focus on the individual needs of patient. She recalls stories of medical professionals calling her a freak or saying that she bends to the will of the devil. Hir could not name those people because the hospitals would sue her and protect their own staff in court, even when what they said was unjust and hateful. Hir points out how decisions medical professionals make are often based off of what they are comfortable with. They’re fear and discomfort of those outside the binary are often not questioned because that is what is considered normative. An excerpt by Cheryl Chase describes the discomfort in the medical field of those who do not conform to what is considered normal. She says, “transsexuals...violate standards for sex identity. Intersexuals are punished for violating social standard for acceptable sexual anatomy. But our oppressions stem from the same source: rigid cultural definitions of sex categories, whether in terms of behavior, identity, or anatomy.” (93) Overall, this quote points out that the LGBTQIA+ community needs to stick together and advocate for all of their rights because all of their oppressions stem from the same place. The cultural social norms that we have implemented in order to hold social order, even if it is at the expensive of many communities basic rights.
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