So, who's heard of Julie Burchill and her
"censored" article?
Coming to the defense of her maligned feminist
friend, columnist and author Julie Burchill
wrote an article about trans women.
Apparently, her friend Suzanne Moore's latest
article contained a faux pas.
In Burchill's words: "She wrote that, amongst
other things, women were angry about 'not
having the ideal body shape – that of a
Brazilian transsexual'."
At best, this is simply a poorly constructed
byproduct of the aged-out argument that idealized
beauties are expected to be voluptuous in
ways white women can't achieve (Brazilian!)
and skinny in a way that cis women can't achieve
(transsexual!) simultaneously.
It juxtaposes the hyperfeminized (big boobs!)
and masculinized (skinny hips!) to demonstrate
the absurdity and impossibility of beauty
ideals.
It's aged out because modern feminists can
generally agree that however rare these body
types are, shaming the women who possess them
as plastic and/or masculinized is just repackaging
the same old worms.
Moore's statement was poorly thought out.
It was also a microaggression.
It was clearly not intended to upset or dismiss
transsexual people, but to make a cheap and
thoughtless argument.
The problem was that she completely disregarded
trans people in doing so.
She decided that their opinions or their audience
was not worth acknowledging and that their
identities were therefore free and available
to use as a brazen and absurd example of what
not to be.
Not surprisingly, some trans people didn't
like this.
Moore was apparently harassed quite a bit
on Twitter and felt forced to delete her account.
Julie Burchill to the "rescue!"
I won't bother going into the specifics of
the article, because it's all ugly.
There's some stuff about bed-wetting and bad
wigs and a hilariously sophomoric display
of Burchill's feeble grasp of How Words Work.
For example: "having recently discovered that
their lot describe born women as ‘Cis’
– sounds like syph, cyst, cistern; all nasty
stuff".
Why but Burchill rhymes with Churchill, so
if I call her Burchill, am I calling her a
wrinkly old white guy who hates Lady Astor?
What an idiot.
It was originally published in The Observer,
but the editor didn't take long to realize
their mistake and took it down.
Of course, any editor worth their salt wouldn't
have published it to begin with, but don't
tell that to Toby Young!
Why he was so offended at this "censorship"
that he chose to republish this snot on The
Telegraph, proving that British and American
conservatives have at least one thing in common:
they really have no grasp of the concept of
censorship at all.
But why did Burchill do this?
To defend Moore's honor?
I once found myself in Moore's position, and
I can sympathize... almost.
Not too long after my marriage went downhill
and my ex lost his main source of income in
the flailing economy, I was forced to take
a job - literally any job I could get.
My skills and experience were pretty okay,
but at every job I applied for, I was competing
against literally hundreds of thousands of
unemployed people in my area.
It was taking forever and I had children to
feed.
I was about to get evicted.
So, I took a job I wouldn't otherwise take
at a call center that hired anyone that came
through the door: felons, addicts, anyone.
Every day after work, I would apply for more
jobs, but for a while I was stuck there.
Well, as anyone who has seen any of my videos
on Zinnia's channel or any of our live shows
on BlogTV knows, I present in a fairly masculine
manner.
I stand well above average for a woman at
5'10".
I'm also very obviously a lesbian, and it
didn't take long for my coworkers to notice,
but I am not trans.
I do identify as a woman.
As one of the few people at the office who
didn't show up to work on a lot of drugs every
day, I was also fairly successful.
I worked my way up a rank fairly quickly and
soon found myself on a level that very few
women in that office ever achieved.
My coworkers and bosses were all men.
This privilege of being promoted, I was often
told, had something to do with my "being one
of the guys."
Never mind my performance, I guess.
There were frequent jokes about how "manly"
I was.
They called me by my last name rather than
my first.
I think this was all meant as showing respect
by defeminizing me.
As a feminist, this was extremely offensive,
but driven to feed my kids and not really
in a position to hire a lawyer, I kept my
mouth shut.
One day, we came to work and discussed the
dress code.
They were tightening it up, they said, and
men would be required to wear collars and
slacks.
Somebody asked about women's blouses.
Could women wear shirts that didn't have collars?
Of course, they conceded.
Women's blouses are appropriate.
I asked if I could wear shirts without collars.
They said no.
Somebody made a joke that I would look like
a man in women's clothing.
I grimaced quietly.
So, along comes Halloween and there's a costume
contest at work.
I thought it might be a good idea to up the
ante, so to speak, on their crap.
I put on one of my old dresses from back when
I used to try to look femme.
I did not shave my legs and had not in over
a year at that point, so I let my fur fly.
I also stuffed some tissue in my bra and put
on some makeup to look like a five o'clock
shadow and some chest hair.
I wore a pink feather boa.
I was a bad drag queen.
My trans girlfriend thought this was hysterical.
So did I. I did not make much money.
We rarely had enough to survive.
In the absence of the resources to hire a
lawyer and draw any real kind of line, I'd
asserted my femininity and shone a spotlight
on the absurdity and inappropriateness of
my coworkers' jokes.
I felt liberated and empowered for the first
time in a very, very long time.
I carved a pumpkin with a feminism symbol
on it and took a picture sans the boa, which
was itchy by then.
I posted it on reddit.
At first, the thread went fairly well.
People thought it was funny.
Then, somebody pointed out that this was transphobic.
There was much anger.
A trans woman who goes by the internet handle
LifeInNeon wrote an essay about how offensive
I was.
This essay become quite popular.
My inbox was filled with death threats and
sundry vitriol.
I was humiliated and exhausted.
I responded defensively.
Because this was an empowering statement of
my gender during a time when I had very little
to feel good about, I would not apologize.
The joke, as I attempted to explain to people,
was that I looked like a man in a dress.
But the way they saw it, I was mocking trans
women as looking like men in dresses, simply
by looking like a man in a dress.
Individually, Zinnia and I managed to explain
this to those who would be willing to listen.
When I calmed down a bit, I apologized not
for doing what I did, but for irresponsibly
posting it without the very necessary context,
thereby setting into motion the inevitable
consequence of appearing to be another one
of those transphobes, of which there are more
than plenty.
Those who were willing to listen, LifeInNeon
included, agreed that while I certainly could
not have expected to be perceived as anything
other than a transphobe, this was not bigotry
and mostly a horrible mistake.
I hold myself and no one else responsible
for whatever offense I caused, and I hold
the authors of the death threats and no one
else responsible for their violent behavior.
That's the end of that.
Due to my experience, I have a unique understanding
of what Suzanne Moore must have endured when
her words went roaring through the trans activist
circles online.
People can be really awful.
Over a year later, I still sometimes get replies
to old reddit comments about how I'm a transphobe.
People still post that picture whenever they
disagree with me, their version of the ultimate
ad hominem.
But however vitriolic and sometimes violent
those who responded to me may have been, I
would never resort to transphobia.
I would never denigrate an entire group of
people who are just trying to go about the
business of living their lives and achieving
the same amount of respect that even Moore
and Burchill implicitly receive with crass,
base insults about the genitalia of an entire
group of people, most of whom probably have
no idea who Moore even is.
Did Moore have to apologize to every single
person who ever got offended or sent a rape
or otherwise violent threat?
No.
Frankly, I'm not a fan of demanding remorse.
Apologies taken are not the same as apologies
given.
But when you're calling yourself a voice for
equality and social justice, there are some
basic rules that people will generally expect
you to follow, if for no other reason than
to demonstrate that, while you may mess up,
and may not always practice what you preach,
you at least have some kind of idea of what
you're preaching.
I wouldn't say that I necessarily handled
my personal debacle with the utmost of grace
and dignity, but I can say with certainty
that Burchill's handling of Moore's debacle
was beyond the pale.
Burchill claims she did this in the spirit
of feminism, aggressively claiming women's
voices in a sea of men, in which she includes
trans women.
But what she's demonstrated is that her version
of feminism has less to do with equality of
the sexes, and more to do with making sure
sewage just rolls a little further downhill
than herself.
Armed with the same body-shaming, shallow
insult tactics that have been used against
women since the beginning of time, Burchill
is nothing more than a common hypocrite, and
would do well to remember that the master's
tools will never dismantle the master's house.
