Mostly, I think I was (am) fixated on language and what it would mean not to be able to function in the kind of language I’m used to using, and I prefer to see going deaf as migrating from the hearing community to the Deaf one, rather than living in a hearing world while not able to hear. But that doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the global economic and political realities that cause people from some countries to move to other ones, nor with the economic and political realities that they encounter when they get there. I guess I need a new metaphor.

It’s not like disability metaphors are not similarly appropriated. I think that it can be illuminating to explore mechanical similarities–like, for example, contemporary media coverage of the struggle to extend the franchise to dudes who weren’t white with that of the struggle to extend the franchise to people who weren’t dudes. Or looking at actual vs. assigned borders. But I think that’s different from reaching for someone else’s suffering to make your own sound more poignant.

And given that those people suffer from the same trivialization that you people are trying to overcome from the same people you people are trying to reach, it’s not like it works. You wind up assuming the rationalizations for the crimes perpetrated upon them, too. If I’m a gender immigrant, I must be really happy to have gotten out of Womanistan.

That is a good compromise, though. …I have reservations in general about exposing spaces that are established by unsafe people for safety purposes. A women-only message board, for example. Perhaps he himself wouldn’t consciously characterize his blog that way, but I still don’t want to take it away from him. Even if I can’t agree with what he’s saying.

i think you got it right on piny–
:-)

…and he mentions a white-queer tendency I’ve noticed and followed before: the tendency to appropriate the problems we don’t have, particularly those problems connected to racism. Take, for example, the oft-used immigration metaphor. If our audience sees national, geographical, and cultural position as fraught on a hundred different levels, then maybe it’s not so far off. If they’re locked into the hierarchical/aspirational picture of immigration, we wind up trivializing both groups. But whether we praise the terms offered or condemn them, we obliterate those people in the service of us: our legitimate citizenship, our legitimate fury. Me, me, me.

That’s interesting. I fell back on immigration metaphors when my doctor told me I might go deaf, I think because I really desperately needed a way to think about that possible future that involved reinvention and transformation and not just loss. It was just less depressing to think about leaving one place and going to another than to think about staying in the same place but not being able to function in it. But yeah, it was definitely me, me, me, and also a kind of strange reading of the immigrant experience. Mostly, I think I was (am) fixated on language and what it would mean not to be able to function in the kind of language I’m used to using, and I prefer to see going deaf as migrating from the hearing community to the Deaf one, rather than living in a hearing world while not able to hear. But that doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the global economic and political realities that cause people from some countries to move to other ones, nor with the economic and political realities that they encounter when they get there. I guess I need a new metaphor.

Hope that isn’t too off topic/ totally solipsistic.

No use looking at racism if you can’t understand your patriarchal ways or your sex negativity or your ableism or your lookism or your binary gender constructed self.

All these and more work together to create a complex matrix of power and domination. At this point in the histories and herstories of all our various struggles, we would do well to be able to tussle with all of it.

i wouldn’t link him piny–i would engage him on his own blog :-)

Well, but then it’d be him, me, and the virtual crickets. Where’s the fun in that?

That is a good compromise, though. …I have reservations in general about exposing spaces that are established by unsafe people for safety purposes. A women-only message board, for example. Perhaps he himself wouldn’t consciously characterize his blog that way, but I still don’t want to take it away from him. Even if I can’t agree with what he’s saying.

i also want to see your rant!!! is it linked somewhere or is it still in your head?

Head, spleen, whatever. Some of it has to do with intracommunity conflicts not directly related to sexism. I’ll put it up, then, and leave him out of it.

Have you deduced why this is so? I have a theory that many white FtMs don’t feel particularly empowered or privileged. From that feeling they conclude they are not privileged.

Um, I have a whole rant on this, I swear. I think it ties into a lot of impulses, some slightly more noble than others.

I saw a primo example of this on some poor transguy’s blog, and I’m very tempted to link to it, but I don’t know if I feel comfortable doing that.

There’s some stuff on ignoring male privilege itself, because hey: why insult just some people?

This statement made me laugh out loud. For whatever that is worth.

I’ve done much thinking, and no writing, on white masculinity. Richard Dyer’s work has been helpful with some of my thinking. And, if I understand your statement correctly, white FtMs also ignore male privilege.

Have you deduced why this is so? I have a theory that many white FtMs don’t feel particularly empowered or privileged. From that feeling they conclude they are not privileged.