So Jay at Jay Sennett Jaywalks has done some interesting thinking around race and superficially inclusive language, and has decided to do some w0rk on the problem through his own voice:
Which leads me to the title of this post. Henceforth, I will probably use quotation marks around “trans.” Why? Because trans really means white. Because to use “trans” and mean folks other than white folks, we then use “trans/men/women” of color. And when we use that term we are thinking of a very narrow set of behaviors and affects that probably conform to mostly white notions of “trans.”
This is all true. Look at The L Word: “lesbians” mostly means “white lesbians.” Inclusion is a whole ‘nother separate enterprise off of the main discussion, the main taxonomy. A kind of annex to the word that works only insofar as the people covered follow ingroup definitions of the word. A Very Special Episode: presented not on behalf of the people they represent, nor as subjects within the story, but as object-lessons for the consideration of the ingroup. Try, for example, to find a way to refer to “female-to-male” people that doesn’t imply that they’re less or other than male. Try to read “male” in most contexts as referring to transmen. Try to find an idea of transmasculinity that doesn’t represent “real” men as the default and trans men as aspiring (with qualified success) to their position.
I respect the impulse and admire the contemplation, but I’m skeptical as to his chosen strategy. This is one of the comments I left on his post:
I’m saying that your whiteness will inform those scare quotes, too.
Here’s an analogy.
Let’s say there’s a progressive non-trans male feminist blogger–we’ll call him Sugo Pfizer–who starts doing some interesting thinking around transmasculinity and transphobic hegemony. He realizes that when he uses words like male, man, men, and masculine, he’s using them to refer to cisgendered people and traits traditionally associated with cisgendered men. So he decides to use scare quotes around all of them from then on, so as to challenge the idea that these supposedly inclusive terms are actually inclusive or agreed-upon.
A few days or weeks later, after doing some more reading, he links with all positive intention to a transmale blogger–we’ll call him Kay Tennett. Kay Tennett sees the trackback and wanders on over to Sugo’s blog, where he sees Sugo talking about Kay Tennett, a trans”male” blogger who writes all about his “manhood” from the stance of a “guy” who was assigned female and transitioned to “male” and now lives as a “man,” etc. etc. etc.
This isn’t merely about how Kay Tennett feels when he reads those words. What about Sugo’s decision to strip those words of meaning when he’s using them where Kay uses them in reference to how Kay uses them, if not with the same inflection? What rushes in to fill the vaccuum left by the overthrown word?
There are a lot of different ways to interpret “‘butch’ of color,” particularly when you’re referring to a person who describes herself as butch sans scare quotes for any reasons of her own. I don’t think that Jay has any reason to expect an enlightened reading on the part of the people he’s attempting to snap out of unconsciousness, and I don’t think he has any right to expect a generous reading from the people he’s attempting not to negate. It seems like the problem he wants to solve is following him right along.
I don’t think Jay has any right to expect a generous reading from non-readers. His stuff isn’t meant to be read; it is meant to be intuited. Why reduce a complexus to lexical ambiguity?
What does cisgendered mean?
Apparently, it means, “people who have never heard of wikipedia or google.”
Look, congratulate yourself for asking about one of the most abstruse terms people have ever asked me to define, and please don’t think I’m mad at you, I swear I’m not. I do it myself sometimes. But.
Why do I get so many questions like this from people who are talking to me via the internet, the medium that answers questions you didn’t even think of asking? Why not see what you can do, and then come back to the discussion?
Piny, you’re a smart guy, and I think you’ve got it. The inclusion problem may be one that cannot be addressed from the language end. Whatever unmarked term we try to use as the inclusive one will morph into the exclusive unmarked term for the majority or mainstream default. It may be that the only way to change that is to keep the language and challenge its use, e.g. “do you mean lesbians, or white middle class lesbians from the coasts?” “do you mean men, or do you mean cisgendered het men?” After a point at least, the language doesn’t create the assumptions. People use the language to replicate their own assumptions. Changing the terminology can’t make people recognize their assumptions; only making people recognize their assumptions can make people recognize their assumptions.
(About Wikipedia, I could spend forever learning new stuff. The other day I saw a chopper show — build or bust – where the TIG weld. I didn’t know how that was different from MIG, because I have no metalworking background. So I looked it up on Wikipedia, and now I have a good layperson’s understanding of TIG, what it is, what its problems are and why they use it.)
“Cis” is the opposite of “trans”. Not just in reference to gender but any time that you can use the prefix “trans.” For instance, promoter genes that can block or promote genes at other sites on the chromosome (or on other chromosomes) are said to be operating in “trans”, while genes that can only promote sequences they’re directly inline with are said to be operating in “cis.”
In Star Trek, a transporter would take you someplace else, whereas a cisporter would have the useless function of leaving you right where you are.
whereas a cisporter would have the useless function of leaving you right where you are.
We’ve all owned that car.
I feel that disclaimers are your friend if you go the “scare quote route“.
A good ol’ fashioned* star after the first quote “male” unquote and you’re sorted and can slap silly people sillier if they fail to read the explanation that gives the scare quotes the suitable context needed to grok how you’re intending it to be read.
*no offense intended to old people, or non-old people, which ever that might offend.