Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Frustrated at NPR's imprecise language in "Pakistan's Transgenders In A Category of Their Own"
Hello All Things Considered,
I was troubled to hear the imprecise use of language in your segment from Monday's show about Pakistani hijras. Throughout the segment you use the word "transvestite" interchangeably with "transgender," even though the individuals interviewed clearly describe their gender identity as neither male not female. The word "transvestite" is widely used to describe people (usually men) with intact male gender identities who dress in women's clothing, as opposed to transgender people who usually identify as a gender different from the one assigned them at birth. While I appreciate that NPR is interested in covering stories from beyond the gender binary, I really wish you would have done your homework a little bit better. It is no small distinction to those of us who live with non-normative gender identities, and we deserve the respect of a few hours of research.
Many thanks,
R. E. H. Gordon
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Dan Savage Stereotypes Gay People
Dear Dan Savage,
I just heard your piece on “Fresh Air” and I hope you will give me an opportunity to voice my disappointment with a few of your comments. As an LGBT person, I am, of course, very grateful for the work you do and the ways that it helps LBGT youth who are in need of hope about their futures. However, I am very frustrated with the stereotyping of gay people that you engage in. In your segment on “Fresh Air”, and in other places throughout your work, you regularly equate youthful gender non-conformity with gayness. You talk about the “gay” behaviors you engaged in as a child—liking musical theater, being friends with girls, being in to typically girly interests—as indicators of your adult sexual orientation. While it may have been the case in your experience that these typically gay behaviors and interests were bellwethers of your homosexuality, you have a tendency to generalize this viewpoint, equating gender non-conformity with gayness. This widely held belief that gender inverted behavior is linked to homosexuality—girly boys must be gay men, boyish girls must be lesbians—is damaging and counterproductive for a number of reasons:
First, it promotes gay stereotypes in a way that hurts gay people. It hurts them because it sends strong messages to gay youth about what gayness looks like, how to be gay properly, and what their interests and behaviors should be. In those fragile years of trying to find themselves, many young gay men engage in performances of gayness based on extremely limited ideas about what gay men are like. What if you are a gay man who likes football, hates to talk, has no female friends, thinks Glee is stupid? There is no place for these people in your worldview, and they end up not fitting into the world twice over, once as gay and again as not being able to be gay “properly.” I see this all the time in young gay men—exaggerated performances of “faggyness” that stem, I believe, less from their true personalities and more from a desire to be recognized as gay in the eyes of the world according to extremely limited acceptable personalities for gay people. While there are many gay men for whom this behavior is completely honest, there are others who are in need of other models. We need to create a culture in which there are as many ways to be gay as there are gay people. Let’s not recreate the limited behavior norms that plague straight people.
Second, it promotes gay stereotypes in a way that hurts gender non-conforming straight people. How many sweet sensitive aesthetically inclined little boys have been labeled as gay based on their behaviors and had to struggle against endless assumptions about their sexuality based on the “gayness” of their personalities? The world needs more straight people who embody their heterosexuality in all sorts of different ways, and your stereotyping sends a message to these people that they must be confused, or in denial of their true orientations, making them the object of gossip and ridicule. There need to be more feminine straight men, not less, and your views make it even harder for these gender non-conforming people to be themselves.
Third, it injures transgender people by equating gender non-conformity with gayness, as opposed to with being transgender or gender queer. While there are of course links between gender and sexuality, they play out very differently for each unique individual, and your comments leave out the possibility that childhood gender inverted behavior might be primarily about gender identity and not about sexuality. Let gender non-conformity mean all the different things it can mean when it is not tethered to serving as a sign of impending homosexuality.
Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts on these issues, and I hope you will take them into consideration.
Sincerely,
R. E. H. Gordon
Chicago, IL
I just heard your piece on “Fresh Air” and I hope you will give me an opportunity to voice my disappointment with a few of your comments. As an LGBT person, I am, of course, very grateful for the work you do and the ways that it helps LBGT youth who are in need of hope about their futures. However, I am very frustrated with the stereotyping of gay people that you engage in. In your segment on “Fresh Air”, and in other places throughout your work, you regularly equate youthful gender non-conformity with gayness. You talk about the “gay” behaviors you engaged in as a child—liking musical theater, being friends with girls, being in to typically girly interests—as indicators of your adult sexual orientation. While it may have been the case in your experience that these typically gay behaviors and interests were bellwethers of your homosexuality, you have a tendency to generalize this viewpoint, equating gender non-conformity with gayness. This widely held belief that gender inverted behavior is linked to homosexuality—girly boys must be gay men, boyish girls must be lesbians—is damaging and counterproductive for a number of reasons:
First, it promotes gay stereotypes in a way that hurts gay people. It hurts them because it sends strong messages to gay youth about what gayness looks like, how to be gay properly, and what their interests and behaviors should be. In those fragile years of trying to find themselves, many young gay men engage in performances of gayness based on extremely limited ideas about what gay men are like. What if you are a gay man who likes football, hates to talk, has no female friends, thinks Glee is stupid? There is no place for these people in your worldview, and they end up not fitting into the world twice over, once as gay and again as not being able to be gay “properly.” I see this all the time in young gay men—exaggerated performances of “faggyness” that stem, I believe, less from their true personalities and more from a desire to be recognized as gay in the eyes of the world according to extremely limited acceptable personalities for gay people. While there are many gay men for whom this behavior is completely honest, there are others who are in need of other models. We need to create a culture in which there are as many ways to be gay as there are gay people. Let’s not recreate the limited behavior norms that plague straight people.
Second, it promotes gay stereotypes in a way that hurts gender non-conforming straight people. How many sweet sensitive aesthetically inclined little boys have been labeled as gay based on their behaviors and had to struggle against endless assumptions about their sexuality based on the “gayness” of their personalities? The world needs more straight people who embody their heterosexuality in all sorts of different ways, and your stereotyping sends a message to these people that they must be confused, or in denial of their true orientations, making them the object of gossip and ridicule. There need to be more feminine straight men, not less, and your views make it even harder for these gender non-conforming people to be themselves.
Third, it injures transgender people by equating gender non-conformity with gayness, as opposed to with being transgender or gender queer. While there are of course links between gender and sexuality, they play out very differently for each unique individual, and your comments leave out the possibility that childhood gender inverted behavior might be primarily about gender identity and not about sexuality. Let gender non-conformity mean all the different things it can mean when it is not tethered to serving as a sign of impending homosexuality.
Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts on these issues, and I hope you will take them into consideration.
Sincerely,
R. E. H. Gordon
Chicago, IL
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Letter to the NYTIMES Editor about Peggy Orenstein "What Makes a Woman a Woman?" published September 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/magazine/13FOB-WWLN-t.html?scp=1&sq=orenstein&st=cse
Dear Editor,
I would like to express my disappointment with Peggy Orenstein's piece "What Makes a Woman a Woman?" While I respect that the author's personal struggle with breast cancer has led her to feel that her feminine gender is rooted in some primal way in the physiology of her female sex, I wish she would have expressed this as her own individual experience. Instead, she generalizes her personal feelings onto everyone, using it as a way to claim that the experience of one's gender identity to be in accordance with one's birth-sex is innate, natural, profound, and extra-cultural. While it may have been "gospel" in the early eighties to understand gender as socially constructed, a view that has since, apparently, gone out of style, I was born in the mid-eighties and I am surrounded by a vibrant community of people of all genders who do not feel that "biology is destiny" in the least. Rather, we understand that there exists a wide variety of gender identities that correspond in every imaginable way with birth sex, body parts, reproductive capacities, and sexual preferences. It is, frankly, insulting how many people's lives Orenstien undermines with her ridiculous second wave feminist claims about the innateness and naturalness of gender identity. We would agree that gender identity is, indeed, a profound part of personal identity, but this by no means implies that is rooted in some predetermined way in our anatomies, chromosomes, and hormones. Her close-minded view-point is further evidenced by her repeated use of the term "disorder" to refer to the bodies of intersex people, a condition which is not as rare as people would like to believe and is completely medically harmless in the vast majority of cases. If intersex people tend to identify as either male or female, as stated by Professor Berenbaum, maybe it is because they live in a world that defines personhood largely on the grounds of "healthy" gender identity that corresponds in the expected ways to one's anatomy, and are medically, socially, and emotionally coerced into conforming to a gender norm in order to save them from the "unpleasant freakishness" of indeterminate gender. For someone who claims to be a feminist, Orenstein should be ashamed for this oversight, and about expanding her personal feelings about her gender into categorical claims. For us, feminism means granting everyone the right to embody and express our own unique genders, while respecting the validity of each other's experiences, even when they might contradict with our own conclusions. I shudder to think about all those people, teens especially, whose gender identity does not seem to innately relate to their birth sex and for whom Orenstein's essay might reiterate the societal imperative to have a correct and healthy gender, like she does, influencing them to continue to be ashamed of and hide their true gendered selves.
Thank you.
Rebecca Gordon
Chicago, IL.
Dear Editor,
I would like to express my disappointment with Peggy Orenstein's piece "What Makes a Woman a Woman?" While I respect that the author's personal struggle with breast cancer has led her to feel that her feminine gender is rooted in some primal way in the physiology of her female sex, I wish she would have expressed this as her own individual experience. Instead, she generalizes her personal feelings onto everyone, using it as a way to claim that the experience of one's gender identity to be in accordance with one's birth-sex is innate, natural, profound, and extra-cultural. While it may have been "gospel" in the early eighties to understand gender as socially constructed, a view that has since, apparently, gone out of style, I was born in the mid-eighties and I am surrounded by a vibrant community of people of all genders who do not feel that "biology is destiny" in the least. Rather, we understand that there exists a wide variety of gender identities that correspond in every imaginable way with birth sex, body parts, reproductive capacities, and sexual preferences. It is, frankly, insulting how many people's lives Orenstien undermines with her ridiculous second wave feminist claims about the innateness and naturalness of gender identity. We would agree that gender identity is, indeed, a profound part of personal identity, but this by no means implies that is rooted in some predetermined way in our anatomies, chromosomes, and hormones. Her close-minded view-point is further evidenced by her repeated use of the term "disorder" to refer to the bodies of intersex people, a condition which is not as rare as people would like to believe and is completely medically harmless in the vast majority of cases. If intersex people tend to identify as either male or female, as stated by Professor Berenbaum, maybe it is because they live in a world that defines personhood largely on the grounds of "healthy" gender identity that corresponds in the expected ways to one's anatomy, and are medically, socially, and emotionally coerced into conforming to a gender norm in order to save them from the "unpleasant freakishness" of indeterminate gender. For someone who claims to be a feminist, Orenstein should be ashamed for this oversight, and about expanding her personal feelings about her gender into categorical claims. For us, feminism means granting everyone the right to embody and express our own unique genders, while respecting the validity of each other's experiences, even when they might contradict with our own conclusions. I shudder to think about all those people, teens especially, whose gender identity does not seem to innately relate to their birth sex and for whom Orenstein's essay might reiterate the societal imperative to have a correct and healthy gender, like she does, influencing them to continue to be ashamed of and hide their true gendered selves.
Thank you.
Rebecca Gordon
Chicago, IL.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
NEEDING TO BASK IN THE QUEERNESS OF THE LYRICS TO THE HUMPTY DANCE
My name is Humpty, pronounced with a Umpty.
Yo ladies, oh how I like to hump thee.
And all the rappers in the top ten--please allow me to bump thee.
I'm steppin' tall, y'all,
and just like Humpty Dumpty
you're gonna fall when the stereos pump me.
I like to rhyme,
I like my beats funky,
I'm spunky. I like my oatmeal lumpy.
I'm sick wit dis, straight gangsta mack
but sometimes I get ridiculous
I'll eat up all your crackers and your licorice
hey yo fat girl, c'mere--are ya ticklish?
Yeah, I called ya fat.
Look at me, I'm skinny
It never stopped me from gettin' busy
I'm a freak
I like the girls with the boom
I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom
I'm crazy.
Allow me to amaze thee.
They say I'm ugly but it just don't faze me.
I'm still gettin' in the girls' pants
and I even got my own dance
People say "Yo, Humpty, you're really funny lookin'"
that's all right 'cause I get things cookin'
Ya stare, ya glare, ya constantly try to compare me
but ya can't get near me
I give 'em more, see, and on the floor, B,
all the girls they adore me
Oh yes, ladies, I'm really bein' sincere
'cause in a 69 my humpty nose will tickle ya rear.
My nose is big, uh-uh I'm not ashamed
Big like a pickle, I'm still gettin' paid
I get laid by the ladies, ya know I'm in charge,
both how I'm livin' and my nose is large
I get stoopid, I shoot an arrow like Cupid,
I use a word that don't mean nothin', like looptid
I sang on Doowhutchalike, and if ya missed it,
I'm the one who said just grab 'em in the biscuits
Also told ya that I like to bite
Well, yeah, I guess it's obvious, I also like to write.
All ya had to do was give Humpty a chance
and now I'm gonna do my dance.
Yo ladies, oh how I like to hump thee.
And all the rappers in the top ten--please allow me to bump thee.
I'm steppin' tall, y'all,
and just like Humpty Dumpty
you're gonna fall when the stereos pump me.
I like to rhyme,
I like my beats funky,
I'm spunky. I like my oatmeal lumpy.
I'm sick wit dis, straight gangsta mack
but sometimes I get ridiculous
I'll eat up all your crackers and your licorice
hey yo fat girl, c'mere--are ya ticklish?
Yeah, I called ya fat.
Look at me, I'm skinny
It never stopped me from gettin' busy
I'm a freak
I like the girls with the boom
I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom
I'm crazy.
Allow me to amaze thee.
They say I'm ugly but it just don't faze me.
I'm still gettin' in the girls' pants
and I even got my own dance
People say "Yo, Humpty, you're really funny lookin'"
that's all right 'cause I get things cookin'
Ya stare, ya glare, ya constantly try to compare me
but ya can't get near me
I give 'em more, see, and on the floor, B,
all the girls they adore me
Oh yes, ladies, I'm really bein' sincere
'cause in a 69 my humpty nose will tickle ya rear.
My nose is big, uh-uh I'm not ashamed
Big like a pickle, I'm still gettin' paid
I get laid by the ladies, ya know I'm in charge,
both how I'm livin' and my nose is large
I get stoopid, I shoot an arrow like Cupid,
I use a word that don't mean nothin', like looptid
I sang on Doowhutchalike, and if ya missed it,
I'm the one who said just grab 'em in the biscuits
Also told ya that I like to bite
Well, yeah, I guess it's obvious, I also like to write.
All ya had to do was give Humpty a chance
and now I'm gonna do my dance.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
Cyber Feminist Gif
This is the art to accompany Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto on the website of Stanford's Program in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
BITCH ASS DARIUS AT TODOMUNDO! I'M GONNA BE THERE!
http://www.myspace.com/bitchassdarius
http://www.myspace.com/lonewolflonewolflonewolf
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
I HAVE A SCULPTURE IN THIS SHOW
ABANDONED PLOT
Curated by Andy Meerow
June 15th 2008 and Onward
Opening reception Sunday June 15th, 6-8 pm
(Opening will feature guest performances by Charlie Looker and MPA)
For "Abandoned Plot", twelve artists create work for an abandoned plot of land in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The property is an undeveloped and neglected place which currently houses a tangle of weedy urban greenery, trash and debris, all of which will be left undisturbed. The exhibiton's agenda is malleable - the artists will enter an undefined area and respond to its properties (aesthetic, political, formal, mystic, etc) in whatever capacity they see fit. In other words, just as the plot of land is abandoned, so is the plot of the show. We will go to a place and we will do a thing, anything, because nothing in New York City can be empty. Time is compressed here. Things move quickly, and places like the abandoned plot become super-charged with the simultaneous energies of past, present, and future. Narratives have overlapped or have run parallel, some memorialized, some forgotten. Certainly, more will keep coming. The work in this show will collectively speak to that complexity – to the impossibility of a straight story. The artwork itself will also be abandoned. That is, the show will never officially close, it will only break down, or possibly grow. Please join us at its beginning.
The contributing artists in "Abandoned Plot" have exhibited widely, both internationally and nationally, as well as being involved in numerous other curatorial, published, and musical projects.
They are:
Darren Bader, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Leidy Churchman, Rutherford Chang, Alex Escamilla, Shane King, Rebecca Gordon, Brendan Harman, Frankie Martin, MPA, Andy Meerow, Reid Ramirez
Abandoned Plot
Key Foods Parking Lot
Intersection of Calyer and McGuiness
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Direct all inquiries to Andy Meerow ameerow@gmail.com
Friday, April 18, 2008
Discipline Problems at Alogon Gallery
I HAVE A SCULPTURE IN THIS SHOW:
DISCIPLINE PROBLEMS
Curated by Joseph Grigely
April 19 to May 3, 2008
Performance and Opening Reception
Saturday April 26th 7-10pm
Film Screening and Closing Reception
Saturday May 3rd 7-10pm
Sarah Alford, Katie Lennard, Zephyr Pfotenhauer,
AndrewandAndrea, Alicia Chester, Ellen Alderman,
Danielle Sommer, Rebecca Gordon, Kristi McGuire,
Mike Gibisser, Jesse Vogler, Szu-Han Ho, and Heidi
Neubauer-Winterburn, with a performance by Joey Orr,
and a screening program of occult shit films Channeling:
An Invocation of Spectral Bodies and Queer Spirits,
organized by Ethan White and Latham Zearfoss. The
exhibition will be accompanied by a pre-release of
Canon, a certain journal of uncertain disposition.
ALOGON GALLERY
1049 N. PAULINA APT 3R, CHICAGO, IL 60622
Hours: Sundays 1-4pm (Entrance on Cortez)
www.alogongallery.com
DISCIPLINE PROBLEMS
Curated by Joseph Grigely
April 19 to May 3, 2008
Performance and Opening Reception
Saturday April 26th 7-10pm
Film Screening and Closing Reception
Saturday May 3rd 7-10pm
Sarah Alford, Katie Lennard, Zephyr Pfotenhauer,
AndrewandAndrea, Alicia Chester, Ellen Alderman,
Danielle Sommer, Rebecca Gordon, Kristi McGuire,
Mike Gibisser, Jesse Vogler, Szu-Han Ho, and Heidi
Neubauer-Winterburn, with a performance by Joey Orr,
and a screening program of occult shit films Channeling:
An Invocation of Spectral Bodies and Queer Spirits,
organized by Ethan White and Latham Zearfoss. The
exhibition will be accompanied by a pre-release of
Canon, a certain journal of uncertain disposition.
ALOGON GALLERY
1049 N. PAULINA APT 3R, CHICAGO, IL 60622
Hours: Sundays 1-4pm (Entrance on Cortez)
www.alogongallery.com
Sunday, March 30, 2008
CAMEO-"CANDY" 1987
It's like candy
I can feel it when you walk
Even when you talk it takes over me
You're so dandy
I wanna know
Can you feel it too just like I do
(hoo!)
This stuff is starting now
It's the same feeling
I always seem to get around you
There's no mistaking; I'm clearly taken
By the simple mere thought of you
(oh!)
This stuff is starting now
This stuff is starting now
This stuff is starting now
(hoo!)
My eyes roll in my head
I toss and turn in my bed
In the morning when I think about you
(yes I do)
Simply put, you're the reason why
Even though I'm real shy
(real shy)
I attempt to look my best for you
(indeed I do - just for you)
Cause you affect me, fascinate me
I thank heaven for the things that you do (for the things that you do)
It's like candy
You sure are sweet - Sweet!
You're so dandy
You're taking my appetite - but it's all right
It's like candy
(ooh, vanilla! oh, chocolate!)
You look real nice, wrapped up tight
You're so dandy
(in the night, if I have a little bit more like that)
You're giving me a heart attack
It's the kind I like
It's like candy, you're so dandy...
(Why you do - why you do - baby)
You're like a brand new feeling (feeling)
In a special way
A surprise package
On a bright clear sunny day (you're so dandy)
And wrapped up tight
(so good - so good)
Strawberry! raspberry!
All those good THINGS!
Violets and gumdrops
That's what you're saying to me
(ow!)
(sweet candy - candy)
It's like candy
Sure seems like good candy oh baby!
You're so dandy
Just keep doing what you do
you know what i mean
baby
it's like candy ohhhhhh
your so tender sweet candy
your like your like ohhhhhh
its like candy
Monday, March 17, 2008
NY Times Article about Transgender College Students
Overall, I think this article does a pretty good job of realistically presenting the possibility of a society operating on the basis of a gender continuum as opposed to a binary. Not as interested in the parts about women's schools, but overall it makes me hopeful for the future.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16students-t.html?ex=1363406400&en=c7a5df9bbed13c29&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16students-t.html?ex=1363406400&en=c7a5df9bbed13c29&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
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