damn. from voz

[maevele]

Is Cis A Dis? And other air castles to storm… « FemmEssay

a cis feminist making a damn strong point about cis privilege.

Comments

[guiltyred]

Thank you for linking this.

[lady-alyria.livejournal.com]

Julian Morrison Said:

Cis isn’t offensive. It’s a chemistry term for “on the same side” and opposed to the chemistry term trans, “on opposite sides”. It’s use for people is a non-insulting metaphor and a pun extending from the pre-existing use of “trans”. So basically, anyone getting het up about it is demanding to own the unlabeled default. They don’t want to be treated equally to trans people, they want to be the “normal” ones. Well at that point, there’s nothing more to say except “no”.

His comment was exactly what I was thinking on the subject and very well put.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Does this mean you've actually learned some things about cis privilege since, oh say, March, lady_alyria?

[lady-alyria.livejournal.com]

Nope. Still feel the same about that issue.

privileged cis lady is cis privileged

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Figures.

Trans lady thinks anyone that disagrees with her on anything is The Enemy.

[lady-alyria.livejournal.com]

Doesn't figure. I know that has more to do with you as a person than your trans status.

Thanks for the repost.

[voz-latina.livejournal.com]

The point she makes is an excellent one, but people are listening precisely because she is cis.

I had been saying the same damn thing for a long time along with many many other trans women, but, let's face it, cis voices carry farther and are taken more seriously than trans women's voices. This is why you see so many copies of this post floating around, and none of mine ;-)

People who deny it's existence usually have a rather distorted idea of what "privilege" really means.

Privilege is about what one DOES NOT have, and most misinformed folks think it is about what one DOES have.

Cis privilege is being able to take a shit in a public restroom without a court battle or a beatdown by the cops...or having to worry about it.

etc etc

Cis privilege is about a cis person stomping into a space and denying that it exists, or declaring that his/her experience trumps those who actually live this shit, rather than pontificate abstractly on an Internet forum.

Not having to fight every shithead from here to Lampansas for the right to describe yourself without interference is cis privilege.

I could go on, of course, but the article was pretty damn plain for anybody with open eyes.

Re: Thanks for the repost.

[maevele.livejournal.com]

I was thinking as I was reading it that it really was just a rephrasing of what you had said over and over, with a new metaphor, but it might seem more palatable for the privileged coming from the privileged point of view. Because that's just always how it works, innit? someone in the oppressed class says something over and over, and people don't listen, or claim they're too angry, or whatever. But once someone who shares the privilege in question says the same thing, boom, they get it.

I've been the white girl repeating things POC keep saying that gets it through to white folk before, so i'm kinda used to the pattern, and will use it, even though it pisses me the fuck off.

Hard words are often necessary ones..

[voz-latina.livejournal.com]

and it helps to have a privileged voice carry them.

Re: Hard words are often necessary ones..

[maevele.livejournal.com]

One of the privileges I think people don't think much about, is the privilege of just being heard.

ayup

[voz-latina.livejournal.com]

that's why I did the flawed maneuver of invoking a cis voice to say what trans women had said 1000000 times before.

Kynn makes alot of sense below. really. i knew this, and did it anyway, because, cis people are reliably stupid about trans women. Always.

For us, it's the cost of doing any business with you.

Re: Hard words are often necessary ones..

[maeveenroute.livejournal.com]

Hard words are often necessary ones..
and it helps to have a privileged voice carry them.

Yeah, I'm honestly pretty ambivalent about having played "cis chick explains it all" on that thread, but once the OP started talking more about Oliver's tone than his argument, it seemed like it was going nowhere fast. :c/

But hell, this is coming from the one who had to tell my boss that paying the cis chick to co-facilitate the campus "trans people and allies" group and not paying the trans guy was seven kinds of fucked up. Because when the trans guy said it, he was just being greedy. So I should be used to saying obvious things to stupid people, even though they should have heard them the first hundred times, when the right people said them more eloquently and from personal experience.

Sorry. I'm vomiting my irritation all over this thread, and I probably shouldn't be, but I'm coming off a migraine (partially Femmessay induced) and having trouble thinking of a more coherent way to put this.

Bottom line, privilege is a signal-booster, and while it disgusts me that it should be necessary to use it that way, I feel like cis people who are capable of doing so non-stupidly have an obligation to amplify the message where needed.

(We also have an obligation to shut up and realize when it's being broadcast load and clear without our help, which takes more work, at least for me.)

Re: Hard words are often necessary ones..

[voz-latina.livejournal.com]

Well, you have seen my posts on microwave lenses, haven't you?

If there's one thing I know, it's how and when to bust out the high gain equipment. Not getting myself nuked by the sidelobes is a lil harder.

Anyway, woman is engaging the trans men and not the trans women, for all the stupid, usual reasons.

Yeahs...who the fuck is your boss, and what is her major malfunction, anyway?

Re: Thanks for the repost.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's one thing I noticed about that post. Cis people automatically have more "credibility" when talking about trans issues.

I didn't link to it on my blog because of three reasons. (1) The people who read my blog already know (or should know) that from reading what I wrote, and they don't need some nice cis lady to explain it to them. (2) I don't want to endorse the idea that we need cis "interpreters" to be the good cops and explain things rather than letting trans people speak for ourselves.

And (3), which may be ironic, I really can't endorse the way in which she told off Autumn Sandeen. Autumn was clearly wrong and I said that, but it's also cis privileged -- in a post about cis privilege -- for a nice cis lady to take the role of scolding a trans woman and saying "it’s way too early in the trans-movement for a scab whose willing to sell the rest of the movement upriver just to keep the peace with the oppressors."

Yes, that's what Autumn was doing -- but coming from a cis person, this is again a cis person telling trans people they're doing it wrong in fighting oppression. Autumn's fuckups should be dealt with by trans people, and not by cis people saying she's hurting The Cause (which the nice cis lady admits to not being very aware of, due to her privilege) and sanctimoniously lecturing Autumn.

Even if that nice cis lady is correct, it's still wrong, just like it's wrong whenever I get worked up with my own white privilege and stupidly think I can lecture POC about being "house negroes" or whatever. It's not my place as part of the privileged oppressors to condescendingly tell the oppressed people that they're Doing It Wrong by not fighting (my!) oppression and instead going along with it to maintain what few perks are allowed to them under a bigotry-driven system.

And likewise, it's not cool for a nice cis lady, in the middle of making an excellent point about cis privilege, to launch into a criticism of how Autumn has chosen to maintain her status at PHB by appeasing the cis people with power. It's out of place and she has no standing (personal experience) from which to castigate Autumn on this point.

[maeveenroute.livejournal.com]

FYI, the blog itself has been taken down. I've copied the post, though, so if you want it for quoting purposes, lemme know. [Although I agree that the stuff about Autumn - and some of the comments afterwards - took the bloom off the rose a little, the gun analogy was powerfully written, and I'd like to be able to float it around, properly attributed, from time to time. Especially because my cis gay male boss is a jackass.]

Also, I was M.E. over there. ;c)

[maeveenroute.livejournal.com]

... sad, too, because it means I didn't get to thwack that Jesse "*I* don't think trans women are men, but other people do, which means they have male privilege, which means they are de facto men in the movement" character the way he so richly deserved. I had a nice little rant all written out and everything.

[voz-latina.livejournal.com]

Feel free to share over at my LJ...I put up a cap, and you can also add your own.

I swear...cis homos and feminists are why we can't have nice things, and it gets old. Come on over, and fire when ready.

Whoa...Your boss is a cis fag?

[voz-latina.livejournal.com]

oh lawd..why didn't you say so?

Cis fags are some of the most hateful close-minded people you ever did see. They are a bad scene for any civil rights endeavor.

Any way you can trade him in for somebody who treats trans women and men like, you know, human beings?

Re: Whoa...Your boss is a cis fag?

[maeveenroute.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, of the two people who interviewed for the job, it was him and a cis granola-dyke with time-management issues. Terrifyingly, he was actually the better person for the job. *shudder*

I'll point out that he wasn't paying my co-mod ("J.") because last year, J. was being paid under a separate budget - that of the campus Transgender Liaison, rather than the budget for the discussion-group facilitators. However, Mr. Bossman cut the position of Trans Liaison (after using J. all year as Photocopy Boy, and thus deeming him unnecessary to campus queer life), and didn't write him into the discussion-group budget instead.

::headdesk::

Honestly, to call him hateful would be to credit him with too much clue.

Re: Whoa...Your boss is a cis fag?

[voz-latina.livejournal.com]

well, that is exactly why cis homos scare me. We are not human to them, just expendable and exploitable.

Re: Whoa...Your boss is a cis fag?

[maeveenroute.livejournal.com]

Yeah, without getting into gruesome and derailing detail, I think I prefer situations in which I've experienced overt hatred to those in which I've experienced invisibilization. (<--- it's a word now!)

It's really the *personal touch* that counts, innit?

Re: Whoa...Your boss is a cis fag?

[lady-alyria.livejournal.com]

Cis fags are some of the most hateful close-minded people you ever did see.

If I ever uttered something like this about trans people every person in this thread both trans and cis would come down upon me like Armageddon. People have suggested defriending me for politely disagreeing with them. Yet you say something this hateful and people are nodding so hard their necks are about to break.

How is this any different than the assumptions made about trans people?

Go away, lil troll

[voz-latina.livejournal.com]

It's called the cold, hard voice of experience of deadly oppression at the hands of cis homosexuals.

so, while my assessment is backed up by histiry, and has had frequent deadly consequences for trans women, you are simply barging in here with hurt feelings.

That is the difference.

Re: Go away, lil troll

[estrobutch.livejournal.com]

BUT CIS PPL HAVE FEELINGS TOO!

sorry had to beat her to the punch playing the cis card.

Re: Whoa...Your boss is a cis fag?

[estrobutch.livejournal.com]

its about the relationship. voz has no institutional power to call in over a cis fag. with trans people, YOU do.