Ok, I might as well admit up front that the question is somewhat rhetorical for trans women, at least. I've been misgendered so many times in epicrises it's not funny any more - it's just stupid. I have been able to have it corrected a number of times, and I think misgendering no longer occurs in my medical papers, but I've to admit I haven't checked for a while.
Think about it for a while, though.
Some trans women get referred to as "genetic men" in their medical records. Not only is it false (the whole term is so full of fail you just need to take my word for it if you can't think yourself through it), but it is also intensely demeaning - it's like the dear doctor's trying to drag you down to gender hell again.
In general, we're supposed to trust our doctors. Trans women, on the whole, don't. It's pretty damn clear why, innit? No respect or trust for us, no respect or trust comes back.
It isn't rocket science. Trans women are referred to as women. Trans women are given trans woman -specific medications (i.e. none of that stupid menopause-level HRT - most of us are definitely not in our menopausal age). Trans women are listened to. Our needs and wishes are to be respected. No stupid patronising. And if our doctor visits are not about our trans-related medical needs, leave the trans bit alone. It's just not relevant.
Monday, 1 February 2010
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Carto goes gender (and grows iden-titties), #3
This is partially a response to a discussion on active and passive identities, but this is where I was headed anyway: why I prefer, and rather strongly at that, no identity actively whatsoever.
Firstly, on a philosophical level, I don't think identities are very real, or anything you should attach yourself to. I consider my identity to be rather ephemeral and passing, and I can't pin it down anywhere. To me, the question "what do you identify as?" is a bit meaningless: what would it change even if I did identify, say, as a woman? It might be a means to an end for me, sure, if I felt like I wasn't a woman already - a means to map out possible ways of being. But I can do that in other ways, too. If I feel like putting on culturally coded stuff, be that behaviour, looks, anything, I already can, resources permitting. If I want to behave in a genderqueer way, there's nothing stopping me. The question of what am I, what do I identify as is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant to me, and if forced, I'll just say I identify as myself.
This approach has its caveats. Firstly, there's the question of resources, and safety. I can very well say I can do whatever I want, but the fact is that if I haven't the resources needed - say, social networks for going out and partying the night away - I, in fact, can't. So the freedom isn't quite as expansive as it could be, if given infinite resources. Secondly, there's the question of me doing stuff that provokes reactions from other people: I, for example, cannot fuck around with gender in just any way if I want to live unharassed. The two are not mutually compatible in practice.
Secondly, what people in linked posts call passive identities tend to trump any active identity any time you're dealing with potentially stressful situations with people not entirely respectful of you. What you're being passed as tends to overrun whatever identity you claim whenever it'd be really important for you to be recognised as, passed as what you are (or identify as, in identity-speak). Whenever there's a disagreement, the majority vote seems to hold the sway. Now I don't think this is right, or an agreeable situation, but I think this is the way it is, here and now. For examples, have a look at stories on trans women in your local newspapers. Are they misgendered? Sensationalised? In my corner of the world, those two things are almost a rule. When the local newspaper (Helsingin Sanomat, 24th of Jan, page C1 in case you're interested) did a whole page piece on Jin Xing (she's coming to dance in Finland), what did they write about? That's right - it was her transition that got the attention - dancing was mentioned in passing ("the best dancer in the world"), and the writer didn't connect the two in any meaningful way I could decipher. Why bring her trans status up at all, then?*
Thirdly, I'm not that hopeful on humanity. I really don't think we can stop other people clinging to their silly ideas about how everything in the world is easy to chop into discrete sets of stuff: men, women, girls, boys, sick, healthy. It might be possible to change it if there was the good will plus willingness to understand and the humility to accept we're colossally wrong every now and then, but I don't think that exists. We're not always good, we're certainly not humble every one of us and the willingness to understand people different from you is seriously lacking. So I don't think the respect for other people's self-declared identities is going to be the be-all, end-all solution to the problems of segregation, violence, oppression and discrimination.
I guess I'm less interested in frameworks, and more interested in solving practical problems, mine included. Like getting journalists (Wikipedia's another repeat offender) to stop shitting on trans women because we've transitioned every time one of us manages to do something wonderful and amazing and noteworthy - anything at all. Not everything we do can be derived from our transitions.
Writing the last sentence felt like talking down to someone particularly thick - I really think cissexuals should be able to get that bit on their own.
*yes, a trick question. Of course it's important to put the uppity trans woman in her place as a circus freak. God forbid they'd just write about her dancing when there's this unspeakable act of daring to raise against the gender forcibly assigned to her at birth. It's the modern-day equivalent of blasphemy.
Firstly, on a philosophical level, I don't think identities are very real, or anything you should attach yourself to. I consider my identity to be rather ephemeral and passing, and I can't pin it down anywhere. To me, the question "what do you identify as?" is a bit meaningless: what would it change even if I did identify, say, as a woman? It might be a means to an end for me, sure, if I felt like I wasn't a woman already - a means to map out possible ways of being. But I can do that in other ways, too. If I feel like putting on culturally coded stuff, be that behaviour, looks, anything, I already can, resources permitting. If I want to behave in a genderqueer way, there's nothing stopping me. The question of what am I, what do I identify as is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant to me, and if forced, I'll just say I identify as myself.
This approach has its caveats. Firstly, there's the question of resources, and safety. I can very well say I can do whatever I want, but the fact is that if I haven't the resources needed - say, social networks for going out and partying the night away - I, in fact, can't. So the freedom isn't quite as expansive as it could be, if given infinite resources. Secondly, there's the question of me doing stuff that provokes reactions from other people: I, for example, cannot fuck around with gender in just any way if I want to live unharassed. The two are not mutually compatible in practice.
Secondly, what people in linked posts call passive identities tend to trump any active identity any time you're dealing with potentially stressful situations with people not entirely respectful of you. What you're being passed as tends to overrun whatever identity you claim whenever it'd be really important for you to be recognised as, passed as what you are (or identify as, in identity-speak). Whenever there's a disagreement, the majority vote seems to hold the sway. Now I don't think this is right, or an agreeable situation, but I think this is the way it is, here and now. For examples, have a look at stories on trans women in your local newspapers. Are they misgendered? Sensationalised? In my corner of the world, those two things are almost a rule. When the local newspaper (Helsingin Sanomat, 24th of Jan, page C1 in case you're interested) did a whole page piece on Jin Xing (she's coming to dance in Finland), what did they write about? That's right - it was her transition that got the attention - dancing was mentioned in passing ("the best dancer in the world"), and the writer didn't connect the two in any meaningful way I could decipher. Why bring her trans status up at all, then?*
Thirdly, I'm not that hopeful on humanity. I really don't think we can stop other people clinging to their silly ideas about how everything in the world is easy to chop into discrete sets of stuff: men, women, girls, boys, sick, healthy. It might be possible to change it if there was the good will plus willingness to understand and the humility to accept we're colossally wrong every now and then, but I don't think that exists. We're not always good, we're certainly not humble every one of us and the willingness to understand people different from you is seriously lacking. So I don't think the respect for other people's self-declared identities is going to be the be-all, end-all solution to the problems of segregation, violence, oppression and discrimination.
I guess I'm less interested in frameworks, and more interested in solving practical problems, mine included. Like getting journalists (Wikipedia's another repeat offender) to stop shitting on trans women because we've transitioned every time one of us manages to do something wonderful and amazing and noteworthy - anything at all. Not everything we do can be derived from our transitions.
Writing the last sentence felt like talking down to someone particularly thick - I really think cissexuals should be able to get that bit on their own.
*yes, a trick question. Of course it's important to put the uppity trans woman in her place as a circus freak. God forbid they'd just write about her dancing when there's this unspeakable act of daring to raise against the gender forcibly assigned to her at birth. It's the modern-day equivalent of blasphemy.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Carto takes on gender, #2: It's Not About You, It's About Everyone Else!
It is.
Maybe there's gender inside your head, maybe there's not. I don't know. There's probably some gender inside my head, but it matters precious little in my everyday life. What matters, hugely, is gender other people ascribe to me, you and aunt Tillie. Most people don't seem to care about identities at all - they just slop a gender on you, and if you're lucky, it sorta kinda fits, and if you're unlucky, it's a match made in hell - not only does it not fit, but other people are hell-bent on making you fit the gender.
A big part of gender lives in the perceptions of other people.
I think that's often missed in queer studies: the preferred position seems to be looking in, not out. Prominent questions being gender identities (how do you feel, on the inside?), gender presentation (how do you like to present yourself? - instead of asking myself why do I see you the way I do?), gender transgression (how/why do you transgress? - instead of why do I see the way you are as transgressing?).
The point of view is from an unknown, "neutral" observer to a queer "subject" - but the questions asked, and the answers given to them betray something else entirely: it's the observing subject that gets to ask the questions, and it's not the observing subject that questions hirself, or sees hirself as a subject, even - that bit of subjectivity is, more often than not, entirely hidden from view. It's replaced with a "subjectivity" (within very strict limits - questioning of the questioner is definitely not allowed) for the queer transgressor and a mock objectivity for the "neutral" observer. For samples, go read almost any of the big names: Butler, Foucault, Sedgwick, Halberstam - the list goes on and on. These people tell almost nothing of themselves yet proceed to dissect queer lives from a supposedly neutral standpoint of academia.
Well, I beg to differ. It seems to me gender is made by the observers. It's not entirely independent of the observations, but there's a lot of room for interpretation of observations, and this room is used by the observers to build, model and create gender - and this is the but that interests me greatly. It's also a bit that, AFAIK, hasn't been studied much. I'd call it the hermeneutics of gender (well, being the Gadamer-loving humanist I am, this is hardly a surprise). Why do we see the things the way we do is, in my opinion, the crucial question.
This point of view has also the helpful effect of removing the onus of being observed from us trans/queer/whatever people. It's not us. It's the people questioning us that really need to be questioned.
Maybe there's gender inside your head, maybe there's not. I don't know. There's probably some gender inside my head, but it matters precious little in my everyday life. What matters, hugely, is gender other people ascribe to me, you and aunt Tillie. Most people don't seem to care about identities at all - they just slop a gender on you, and if you're lucky, it sorta kinda fits, and if you're unlucky, it's a match made in hell - not only does it not fit, but other people are hell-bent on making you fit the gender.
A big part of gender lives in the perceptions of other people.
I think that's often missed in queer studies: the preferred position seems to be looking in, not out. Prominent questions being gender identities (how do you feel, on the inside?), gender presentation (how do you like to present yourself? - instead of asking myself why do I see you the way I do?), gender transgression (how/why do you transgress? - instead of why do I see the way you are as transgressing?).
The point of view is from an unknown, "neutral" observer to a queer "subject" - but the questions asked, and the answers given to them betray something else entirely: it's the observing subject that gets to ask the questions, and it's not the observing subject that questions hirself, or sees hirself as a subject, even - that bit of subjectivity is, more often than not, entirely hidden from view. It's replaced with a "subjectivity" (within very strict limits - questioning of the questioner is definitely not allowed) for the queer transgressor and a mock objectivity for the "neutral" observer. For samples, go read almost any of the big names: Butler, Foucault, Sedgwick, Halberstam - the list goes on and on. These people tell almost nothing of themselves yet proceed to dissect queer lives from a supposedly neutral standpoint of academia.
Well, I beg to differ. It seems to me gender is made by the observers. It's not entirely independent of the observations, but there's a lot of room for interpretation of observations, and this room is used by the observers to build, model and create gender - and this is the but that interests me greatly. It's also a bit that, AFAIK, hasn't been studied much. I'd call it the hermeneutics of gender (well, being the Gadamer-loving humanist I am, this is hardly a surprise). Why do we see the things the way we do is, in my opinion, the crucial question.
This point of view has also the helpful effect of removing the onus of being observed from us trans/queer/whatever people. It's not us. It's the people questioning us that really need to be questioned.
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Carto takes on gender, #1
I guess I'll be writing more than one of these.
Let me start with two common words that describe parenthood. Namely, mother and father. Both are gendered. Sure, they can be queered, but I wonder how many other people get that, without, at the same time, ungendering the subject that utters the word.
I prefer mother. I don't think this is surprising at all to anyone who knows the least bit about me - I really intensely truly dislike anything masculine pushed upon me, and given the choice I tend to opt for the feminine end of the spectrum. Not always, but very very often. I am cisgender - I don't feel uneasiness with being a feminine woman: it suits me.
However, I also intensely dislike pushing things upon others. I don't think it's a good idea to attribute motives, or prescriptive roles to other people. Calling someone a "mother" (or a "woman") can be precisely that kind of attribution. I find there are at least two ways of using words; you can use them to prescribe, to say what ought, in your opinion, to be, or you can use them descriptively, to say what, in your opinion, is. But the wording is mostly similar, and the usages are very often concurrent and inseparable.
Trouble is, I approve of descriptions. I think they're useful. I think descriptions help us people connect with each other. And I do try to avoid prescribing, but end up nevertheless, because if I want words to have intersubjective meanings, they have to be limited in those meanings. A word can't mean just anything whatsoever if it's to retain meaning - if a word can mean anything it will mean nothing.
So. WRT common, gendered words, I try to limit my usage to more or less common usages. I use words like woman, and man, and I try to use them descriptively - if someone looks, acts and gives an impression of being a woman I describe her as a woman. It's a phenomenological approach. I supplement this phenomenological approach with an additional caveat - if a subject declares herself as a woman, I take her word for it as a starting point. This does mean I describe self-identified women as women even if they don't look like women are conventionally thought to look like, and it means the word "woman" is open to reinterpretation - but it also means I make judgments on what the word "woman" can mean, what it can meaningfully point to. I can, of course, be criticised for my judgments, and indeed I welcome such criticism because, obviously, I can be in the wrong. And, mutatis mutandis, I try to follow this approach for all other words, too.
This means I also prescribe some meanings: I accept that responsibility. I don't think that can be avoided, so my choice is to accept it and try to be a mensch and not fuck up too badly.
So much for words pertaining to sex and gender.
Let me start with two common words that describe parenthood. Namely, mother and father. Both are gendered. Sure, they can be queered, but I wonder how many other people get that, without, at the same time, ungendering the subject that utters the word.
I prefer mother. I don't think this is surprising at all to anyone who knows the least bit about me - I really intensely truly dislike anything masculine pushed upon me, and given the choice I tend to opt for the feminine end of the spectrum. Not always, but very very often. I am cisgender - I don't feel uneasiness with being a feminine woman: it suits me.
However, I also intensely dislike pushing things upon others. I don't think it's a good idea to attribute motives, or prescriptive roles to other people. Calling someone a "mother" (or a "woman") can be precisely that kind of attribution. I find there are at least two ways of using words; you can use them to prescribe, to say what ought, in your opinion, to be, or you can use them descriptively, to say what, in your opinion, is. But the wording is mostly similar, and the usages are very often concurrent and inseparable.
Trouble is, I approve of descriptions. I think they're useful. I think descriptions help us people connect with each other. And I do try to avoid prescribing, but end up nevertheless, because if I want words to have intersubjective meanings, they have to be limited in those meanings. A word can't mean just anything whatsoever if it's to retain meaning - if a word can mean anything it will mean nothing.
So. WRT common, gendered words, I try to limit my usage to more or less common usages. I use words like woman, and man, and I try to use them descriptively - if someone looks, acts and gives an impression of being a woman I describe her as a woman. It's a phenomenological approach. I supplement this phenomenological approach with an additional caveat - if a subject declares herself as a woman, I take her word for it as a starting point. This does mean I describe self-identified women as women even if they don't look like women are conventionally thought to look like, and it means the word "woman" is open to reinterpretation - but it also means I make judgments on what the word "woman" can mean, what it can meaningfully point to. I can, of course, be criticised for my judgments, and indeed I welcome such criticism because, obviously, I can be in the wrong. And, mutatis mutandis, I try to follow this approach for all other words, too.
This means I also prescribe some meanings: I accept that responsibility. I don't think that can be avoided, so my choice is to accept it and try to be a mensch and not fuck up too badly.
So much for words pertaining to sex and gender.
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Anniversaries of things past
Sometimes I wish there was a working selective amnesia pill. I'd use it to forget the past pain. Specifically, the occasions where I had to be complicit in my own oppression - I'd say it happened partly due to my ignorance of the alternatives, but mostly due to the impossibility of me doing anything to better my situation. My case in point being my wedding, some ten-plus years ago.
So I played the groom. It feels horrible to remember it. It was so wrong. I was powerless to stop it - I did want to get married (or whatever) with that woman - in fact, I'm still civvied with her - she's perfectly lovely. But I can't feel joy or gladness about that day. Remembering it fills me with dread and horror. It's kinda the pinnacle of forced masculinisation - a woman is forced to marry as a man if she wants to marry at all. She's also supposed to feel happy about this.
Well I bloody well tried. But I can't keep it up any longer, and I suppose it is a lifelong sequence of days like this that make us trans women want to kill ourselves. I'd really like to remember my wedding day (typing this makes me cry) as a happy day, but I just can't. It was a black day, a day of forced masculinisation.
So I played the groom. It feels horrible to remember it. It was so wrong. I was powerless to stop it - I did want to get married (or whatever) with that woman - in fact, I'm still civvied with her - she's perfectly lovely. But I can't feel joy or gladness about that day. Remembering it fills me with dread and horror. It's kinda the pinnacle of forced masculinisation - a woman is forced to marry as a man if she wants to marry at all. She's also supposed to feel happy about this.
Well I bloody well tried. But I can't keep it up any longer, and I suppose it is a lifelong sequence of days like this that make us trans women want to kill ourselves. I'd really like to remember my wedding day (typing this makes me cry) as a happy day, but I just can't. It was a black day, a day of forced masculinisation.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Trans Studies Reader #4: Serano
Yup, there's nothing from Serano in the book. Serano's Whipping Girl was published in 2007.
But it's effect on my reading is rather thorough-going and pervasive.
Firstly, there's the terms. Cissexism, transmisogyny, misgendering - all very pertinent, all very much unavailable when Trans Studies Reader was published.
Then there's the change of attitude. And boy, is there a change! I can tell that this change of attitude has made me realise I can reclaim my past from the cissexist, misgendered, misogynist narrative as it's been told to me, and have it for my own. My life, as the female I was born, forcibly masculinised, boy- male- and man-ified by the society hell-bent on erasing my experience. Oh, the power of words!
"Trans" is an adjective. "Transsexual" is not something I have to identify with - other people can and do use words in some ways I find totally unacceptable, but before Serano I didn't have other options. I did know my experiences couldn't be described in the language I had, so I had to make do with what I had, but that's no longer the case. I can describe myself as cisgender, trans-bodied woman - it just sounds right and correct. It doesn't have the idiotic insistence on me being male - which I, most empathically, am not. It describes me and my relation to other people rather well, and it's not too difficult even for cisgender cisbodied people to understand, once they can wrap their heads around the idea that yes, we humans do misgender people, and that there's no way of knowing that until the affected people say so - and we should stop the hurtful (and stupid) misgendering from that point on, pronto.
Subversivism is another fine addition: whenever I'm seen as subversive because of I've "changed sex" I'm like, "say what?" I haven't changed my sex. I was born female, into a female body - our dear cissexist society just couldn't grok it and promptly assigned me male, and fought me tooth and nail when I wanted the mistake corrected. There's nothing inherently subversive in getting your records and body straight. There's nothing particularly antisubversive about it, either: it's neutral as far as I can see.
Anyway, back to the Transgender Studies Reader - it feels quaint, even, because of this. The language sounds a bit ancient, faintly insulting: ungendering trans women and men is such a common theme that runs through the book, as is giving precendence to birth-assigned sexes and genders - the implied headspace is pretty thoroughly cissexist, apart from certain exceptions (Jacob Hale and Donna Haraway, for example).
I feel a sea change coming. Into something rich and strange, perhaps?
But it's effect on my reading is rather thorough-going and pervasive.
Firstly, there's the terms. Cissexism, transmisogyny, misgendering - all very pertinent, all very much unavailable when Trans Studies Reader was published.
Then there's the change of attitude. And boy, is there a change! I can tell that this change of attitude has made me realise I can reclaim my past from the cissexist, misgendered, misogynist narrative as it's been told to me, and have it for my own. My life, as the female I was born, forcibly masculinised, boy- male- and man-ified by the society hell-bent on erasing my experience. Oh, the power of words!
"Trans" is an adjective. "Transsexual" is not something I have to identify with - other people can and do use words in some ways I find totally unacceptable, but before Serano I didn't have other options. I did know my experiences couldn't be described in the language I had, so I had to make do with what I had, but that's no longer the case. I can describe myself as cisgender, trans-bodied woman - it just sounds right and correct. It doesn't have the idiotic insistence on me being male - which I, most empathically, am not. It describes me and my relation to other people rather well, and it's not too difficult even for cisgender cisbodied people to understand, once they can wrap their heads around the idea that yes, we humans do misgender people, and that there's no way of knowing that until the affected people say so - and we should stop the hurtful (and stupid) misgendering from that point on, pronto.
Subversivism is another fine addition: whenever I'm seen as subversive because of I've "changed sex" I'm like, "say what?" I haven't changed my sex. I was born female, into a female body - our dear cissexist society just couldn't grok it and promptly assigned me male, and fought me tooth and nail when I wanted the mistake corrected. There's nothing inherently subversive in getting your records and body straight. There's nothing particularly antisubversive about it, either: it's neutral as far as I can see.
Anyway, back to the Transgender Studies Reader - it feels quaint, even, because of this. The language sounds a bit ancient, faintly insulting: ungendering trans women and men is such a common theme that runs through the book, as is giving precendence to birth-assigned sexes and genders - the implied headspace is pretty thoroughly cissexist, apart from certain exceptions (Jacob Hale and Donna Haraway, for example).
I feel a sea change coming. Into something rich and strange, perhaps?
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Ideals and realities, BDSM, feminism and "safe"
Well, ideals and realities never live up to each other, do they?
I've been discussing BDSM plus feminism a bit at another place (in Finnish, sorry), and I thought it might be worthwhile to write a bit about ideals, and especially about our (that is, all humans) permanent failure to actually live up to them. Fact is, we can't. Most of the time, we won't, either, and the fail that is us doesn't stop even there - we, in fact, make excuses for our failures, too.
So, not only do we fail at ideals, but we often don't even want to, and when we fail, we try to cover up our tracks, too.
I think this has a number of consequences. It means, firstly, that anything and everything we do, especially stuff that we pronounce to be strongly good, or bad, is probably somewhat suspect. We may well be right in our proclamations, but there's a distinct possibility we're just acting on our own interests, and not in a good way.
Secondly, I think it means we shouldn't be too surprised to find out that humans are fallible. That we make mistakes, sometimes honest, sometimes not - that other people eff up and then proceed to make it look like a tiny, understandable mistake when it in fact is not - is a basic fact about the way life is.
And thirdly - this fallibility is firstly and foremostly about you and me. Look in the mirror first.
I seriously think this applies to everything we do. Feminism, BDSM, Christianity, you name it, we can fuck it up.
I also think there's hope. Many ideals have the seeds of self-criticism built into them - feminism being one fine example. If you start by believing it's important to have a proper look at how gendering and sexing works, and how it benefits some and others not so much, you already have the necessary tools for having a look at your own privilege. You probably have to own up to some privilege yourself, too - and that's precisely what makes you safer to be with, from my point of view.
I feel safer with people who have had, and are having, a hard look at themselves. Sure they're bastards like everyone else, but they know they're bastards, so perhaps they are able to do something about it instead of watching themselves just do stupid, evil things and then excuse themselves with whatever (the old saw was "the Devil made me do it", but substitute Devil with an excuse of your choice). Bastards like me.
This is why I find BDSM not entirely incompatible with feminism. As long as practitioners can own up to their fuckups, take responsibility for them, make amends, recognise their own fallibility in all matters on this earth, and don't blame others for their own abuses of privilege, they're mostly safe people. Just like feminists. Or Christians. Or anyone.
I've been discussing BDSM plus feminism a bit at another place (in Finnish, sorry), and I thought it might be worthwhile to write a bit about ideals, and especially about our (that is, all humans) permanent failure to actually live up to them. Fact is, we can't. Most of the time, we won't, either, and the fail that is us doesn't stop even there - we, in fact, make excuses for our failures, too.
So, not only do we fail at ideals, but we often don't even want to, and when we fail, we try to cover up our tracks, too.
I think this has a number of consequences. It means, firstly, that anything and everything we do, especially stuff that we pronounce to be strongly good, or bad, is probably somewhat suspect. We may well be right in our proclamations, but there's a distinct possibility we're just acting on our own interests, and not in a good way.
Secondly, I think it means we shouldn't be too surprised to find out that humans are fallible. That we make mistakes, sometimes honest, sometimes not - that other people eff up and then proceed to make it look like a tiny, understandable mistake when it in fact is not - is a basic fact about the way life is.
And thirdly - this fallibility is firstly and foremostly about you and me. Look in the mirror first.
I seriously think this applies to everything we do. Feminism, BDSM, Christianity, you name it, we can fuck it up.
I also think there's hope. Many ideals have the seeds of self-criticism built into them - feminism being one fine example. If you start by believing it's important to have a proper look at how gendering and sexing works, and how it benefits some and others not so much, you already have the necessary tools for having a look at your own privilege. You probably have to own up to some privilege yourself, too - and that's precisely what makes you safer to be with, from my point of view.
I feel safer with people who have had, and are having, a hard look at themselves. Sure they're bastards like everyone else, but they know they're bastards, so perhaps they are able to do something about it instead of watching themselves just do stupid, evil things and then excuse themselves with whatever (the old saw was "the Devil made me do it", but substitute Devil with an excuse of your choice). Bastards like me.
This is why I find BDSM not entirely incompatible with feminism. As long as practitioners can own up to their fuckups, take responsibility for them, make amends, recognise their own fallibility in all matters on this earth, and don't blame others for their own abuses of privilege, they're mostly safe people. Just like feminists. Or Christians. Or anyone.
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