From: Joe My God ~ Camille Paglia On Chaz Bono
OK, Camille Paglia got interviewed about Chaz Bono doing the whole surgical gender reassignment thing on some TV show they are planning to air. She basically got quoted saying shit like “mutilating his body” on the video and flash point! Gay controversy and name calling has erupted all over the place.
BUT… Teddypig sticks a big old target on his back since he knows he is about to poke the hornets nest…
I sorta get what she is saying. Although I think she should have explained herself a little better.
Why Teddypig? Why?
Because I have been reading this same conversation being brought up over and over again especially among the lesbians online because a shit load of butch lesbians like Chaz seem to have been doing this type of surgery for years now and there are people getting a bit upset at the ease people are getting this stuff done.
The thing is as gay people… I am sorta generalizing here, but hang with me on this… We are different.
OK? We grow up drastically cockeyed sexually and gender identity wise to what is going on in “the majority” around us in the society we are raised in. So we get all sorts of pressure like this to “butch up” or “fem up” or change our behavior to be more NORMAL like everyone else.
The point people are making in the negative side of this conversation is plain… Are many of these people, maybe not all, but could many of these people be doing the surgery just seeking to physically “normalize” themselves for society to accept them instead of accepting themselves as they were born?
It’s the same argument you can make about people having these big time drastic altering plastic surgery binges and using it to “normalize” their appearance to be what they have been pressured into believing by society or their culture as beautiful.
Gay people especially are sensitive to all this type of pressure because we are born different so the conversation about this type of surgery generally carries with it a lot of baggage gay people have to social norms and peer pressure and cultural values etc etc. Which have not been historically all that great for a long happy life and even as of today they suck I must say.
I can relate somewhat to Camille Paglia’s point of view in this conversation but as I said it needed more explanation around her response.
I feel the same way about gay marriage really. I politically want the right to “get married” in this country and I socially understand the benefits of having that right. BUT! I totally disagree with how I see my own community conforming to make themselves more NORMAL like all those straight folks. With the baby and the house and the June Cleaver pearls blah blah blah. See my point? It’s chickening out and going along with the crowd instead of standing your ground and fighting for the right to be different in this society and be accepted for those differences. Maybe I really am a child of the seventies but Sheeple suck.
I do not want a life JUST LIKE mom and dad had. I want to live my homosexual lifestyle without kids and without white picket fences and I would rather make my own way in my own community without having to force myself into this sick pervasive image of Ward and June Cleaver to make the straight community more comfortable with me being one of them homosexuals. See the “mom speech” in Torch Song Trilogy for further reference.
So what Camille said is blunt and it is negative but she did not seem angry to me or seeking to be totally shocking about it all. She disagreed about this whole “wonderful example thing” because she questions if it is not just another way people are purposefully side stepping the real social issues and lack of acceptance in our society to anyone born different by using surgery.
Just because medical science can do something does not mean you should get it done. What if medical science can change your skin color or what if they can suddenly start allowing you to order the straight, white, male baby of your dreams? Custom made babies anyone? And this never works out the way you planned. Remember Michael Jackson and what happened to his face?
There are some questions here on the table I think many people would rather not talk about them openly because they are not NICE, but I don’t do NICE, and hell they are good valid questions. Camille Paglia never struck me as a stupid person or someone not to listen to when she says something and these are questions I believe should be asked because from what I have seen she is not the only person asking them in the gay community.
I don’t think calling her or anyone else names is going to make those questions go away.
Tags: Wank
James Buchanan wrote,
And yet, some of us are not lesbians, butch or otherwise.
I like my guys more than I like my girls (yea, bi but weighted as it were)…which is probably why I’ve never fit well in the Lesbian community.
Right now, as friend of mine says, my relationship with SG “looks good on paper.” But if medical science could get me a dick and balls that honest to god worked…I wouldn’t care what the cost was, I would make it happen. I don’t just need to “look” male, I need the plumbing to function ’cause at least right now sex happens, but I can’t see changing my outside just so that I can wear a perpetual dong.
So I don’t know what Chaz’s mental picture is like. I don’t particularly care what Paglia’s is like. All I know is when I hit puberty, I cried. I had this magical mental picture that maybe, even if I couldn’t be a boy, I at least would never end up with tits. Biology sucks sometimes.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 7:10 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Well my experiences with medicine leads me to be frankly unimpressed by all the flippant promises that get made. Hell I believe you are better off learning to live with it if at all possible because the “cure” can be worse than the problem itself. Maybe that’s wrong thinking but that is what my experience tells me and I have more than my fair share on that note.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 7:25 pm
James Buchanan wrote,
Just reminding folks that not all of those who want the outside to match the mental picture are doing it to be mainstream “normal.”
And just, FYI, ease? Yeah if you have cash, I guess. But no one would make me go through years of therapy if I wanted to take an A.5 to a DD. Any street corner plastic surgeon would line up the before and after photos of “happy” patients. But say you want to send a B to an A- …everyone freaks.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
But can you understand the questions being asked? There does seem to be a trend that is going on.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 7:52 pm
Louise Van Hine wrote,
full disclosure here: let me say I’m not lesbian, and I’m not trans, but I am what could best be described as ‘queer’ – original equipment intersex disorder, which is about as far from trans as you can hope to be… and it is well known, at least among the people I hang out with online, that you won’t find any greater hostility toward FtM transsexuals as you do among lesbians. Online communities are rife with it, and I think it is far deeper than the ‘sheeple’ gender conformity issue – they believe that the FtM’s are betraying their gender by ‘going over’ to the phallus-enhanced darkside. I don’t see it that way – I think there is another chasm between lesbian sexual preference and transsexual gender identity that is quite apparent. I’ve known a few, and most of them don’t get the surgery – mainly because the genital surgery still pretty much sucks, it’s not like sci fi – not yet anyway, and it’s more prosthetics than cosmetics. But just like the gulf between intersex and transsexual communities, there is another, just as wide gulf between lesbians and trans, one that the individuals themselves may have had to learn through growth and self-understanding, not gender betrayal. Just my two cents.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 8:13 pm
James Buchanan wrote,
I understand the question.
It’s weird.
It’s uncomfortable.
It blurs all sorts of boundaries people set out for themselves so they can function in the world (I once did a great deposition of a psychiatrist who talked about the level of functional psychosis 99% of the world lives in…and how poking a hole in that creates depression and anxiety).
What always amazes me…the anger surrounding how it’s often asked.
And that goes back (for me) to law school, the first time I really saw it. I had a professor who hosted a women’s book club, sponsored the GLBT student bar and frankly most other organizations that no one else would touch because they deserved “a voice.” Probably the most liberal person on the faculty and then one night completely flipped out about a transitioned wyman who “dared” try and compare “their reality” to a “woman’s reality.”
Yeah, there’s bad apples who screw up the world for all of us…but if you think how much hell the folks who transition go through from BOTH sides of the continuum: never accepted in the gay/lesbian community again and never accept as truly a guy/gal by the straight community either. THINK folks, most people who transition are screwed six ways to Sunday on the acceptance scale as a slim margin will ever really pass. They will always live on the outside of both worlds
Then you start to wonder where does the anger come from?
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 8:15 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Well I see the lesbian community bringing this up the most. In fact I have met a few men who did the surgery but not as many as women who have decided to go this route.
Could this also be part of the whole body image issues women are bombarded with already in our society that they feel more pressured to go the more drastic surgery route?
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Louise Van Hine wrote,
one could as easily ask where does homophobia come from? I think the surprise hidden in the ‘coming out’ of transsexuals who are seeking or have had transition, is that those who have suffered their entire lives from homophobia (I got all the misfortunes of being perceived as lesbian and none of the identification as part of a gay community, myself) don’t miss a beat in indulging an equally virulent transphobia when they meet a post-transition transsexual and deny them their place in the gender-nonconforming universe.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Louise Van Hine wrote,
the fact is, Teddy, that FtM is far more rare, as well as far more risky… I found some European statistics from 3 years ago that say the frequency of MtF is about 1 in 30,000 adults, and in FtM it’s about 1 in 100,000, yet it is the lesbian community raising a hue and cry about transmen most often… you may have an important point there.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 8:28 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Maybe there are less of them but I am only saying the FtMs I have met “more of” were involved in the lesbian community obviously because I met them at tons of functions in San Francisco. I have met a few MtFs but they were at work there were two I worked with at IBM or outside of the gay community.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 8:35 pm
James Buchanan wrote,
I think that does play a factor. Female bodies are a battle ground and have been for generations. I guess for some folks it’s almost the “if you can’t beat them, join them…” philosophy and it’s resented. Drag Queens, M2F and gender bending is far more tolerated in the male gay community than in the lesbian community.
And I hate to say, in another couple of generation there will be far more boys who feel this same pressure. Already, the rates of anorexia and bulimia in adolescent boys is on the rise. Body image is starting to cross the gender boundaries in a negative fashion.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 8:36 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Errr guys are not more tolerant actually. I would not go that far I know too many gay guys who are still hung up hating women and lesbians. So not so much tolerant maybe more likely to stick in specific groups.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 8:45 pm
James Buchanan wrote,
alright, how ’bout, less vocally eviscerated?
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Emilie wrote,
Teddypig, my first reaction to reading your post and seeing the video clip was, “Someone on the Internet is wrong.” I really don’t think too many people identify as trans and may have surgery because they want to fit in. Lesbians have been upset about the FTM community “stealing their butches” for many years. That’s ridiculous. The guys are more comfortable being men.
Transpeople get sh*t from straight and gay people. It’s not what you imagine about fitting in. Also, not easy — there are a ton of medical and psychiatric hoops to go through to get surgery.
There are a lot of people asking those questions. There are far fewer listening to the answers from transpeople themselves.
No, I am no expert. I just read about all kinds of things. Do consider that your online lesbian friends may not be experts on transgender issues either.
James said it all much better than I could, but I wanted to present it as I understand it too.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 10:15 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Well, I find it hard to imagine Camille Paglia’s reasoning is as simple as “stealing their butches”.
As I have been trying to point out here I think her main concern (from the words she herself used even if they were blunt) was about the surgery and the need to change yourself to fit a socially enforced norm not the gender identity part which she underlined in a following statement.
The change of looks is the part where it becomes less about personal identity and function and more about creating an image to find this supposed happiness based on social norms and that is where the dragons lay in wait.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 10:36 pm
Emilie wrote,
I didn’t say that that was Camille’s reasoning. It’s just a summary of how it sometimes gets expressed in the community. Her own reasoning seems way behind the times and reactionary.
I don’t think you need a white picket fence and to fit into a little box to make people happy so you get more accepted. The haters won’t accept you anyway, no matter how hard you try that. So I agree with you on that point.
I don’t believe that most transsexuals are having surgery to fit into a socially enforced norm. Matt Bernstein Sycamore (a.k.a. Mattilda) did a series of performances across the country called “Not Passing in [City Name]. I know Matt did a “Not Passing in Philadelphia.” From what I understand, it was about how a lot of people who have sex changes don’t pass as though they’d been born to that biological sex. How would that be fitting in?
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 11:07 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Oh, because even if the image you obtain is not perfect it still points to the fact you felt you had to change it and it points out that you think you need to change it even more to “fit in”.
The whole “not passing” thing underlines the whole problem of the need to surgically correct your body to fit some made up ideal outside of yourself.
Listen I am just a short bald gay man with a funny name and I spent many many years learning to accept all of that and working to feel comfortable with the hand I got dealt. So I have little sympathy for toupee wearing guys in fact I find them funny too.
I can see figuring out your sexuality and realizing who you are as a person since I share that measure of experience but maybe I just will never get the whole need of having to drastically change yourself on the outside to match because I have spent too much time with the whole “learning to accept who I am” thing that the gay community is all about.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 11:14 pm
Emilie wrote,
I just believe from listening to individuals that it was changing to match how they felt inside, not to do with an outside ideal. Most knew it wouldn’t be perfect, but they wanted their outside looks to more closely match what their internal identification was.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 11:37 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Well, Buck Angel I guess identified as a porn star on the inside good thing he seems to have matched it all up to the outside.
In other words Emilie, I think people say a lot of things to justify their obvious intent which is to make themselves feel better by making themselves look different. This is most likely why plastic surgeons will never run out of money or patients.
Link | May 7th, 2011 at 11:49 pm
Louise Van Hine wrote,
Hm, Teddy your point about living with being a short bald gay guy hits a little closer to the mark. I am somewhat with you on this point – I don’t ‘fit’ due to a genetic anomaly that makes me not a normal female, don’t have normal hormones, and a body that was altered by male levels of hormones so that I’m about the same strength and muscle mass as a 25 year old man. With the brain to match it. However, I can’t say it ever crossed my mind that I needed to cut off my breasts or have genital surgery so that I could fit in with the males I most closely resemble (in some ways), because I’m sort of not this and not that, and I’m as male as I wanna be. So like you, it’s been a long time accepting the hand I got dealt and to deal with the fact that people find me ‘off’ but they don’t know why. To hear the transsexuals speak of why they needed to surgically modify their bodies, they say that their attempts to ‘live with it’ failed miserably and drove them to the bring of suicide in most cases. So maybe it’s a different scenario for them, but it is hard to imagine it from where I’m sitting or maybe even from where a short bald gay guy is sitting, I don’t know. I can tell you that any attempts to question them more closely to get a better answer results in a whole lot of accusations of transphobia… and I think that because they get so much shit for doing it, they are hypersensitized to this lack of understanding. I’m not sure I will ever understand why anyone would have themselves genitally reformed, I find it gruesome, but they want nothing more in the world. Would it be unkind to call them genital mutilation fetishists? I really couldn’t say – I’m not them. the psychiatrists who recommend them for surgery apparently don’t think so.
Link | May 8th, 2011 at 9:58 am
TeddyPig wrote,
Despite whatever a paid for doctor says or even what a therapist thinks is healthy I think women in general have more to say on this topic than I ever will. That is why I wanted to bring it all up.
I think that is the whole reason Lesbians do talk about this topic like they do and why they have the most hard hitting questions regarding the use of surgery to change looks not functions but looks so dramatically.
That is why I think it is important to listen to them discuss this issue and I really dislike the attacks I have seen on Camille especially the derogatory name calling based on the fact she is a woman.
It bothers me because it is gay men I see doing that shit so the whole “women hating” gay guy thing is still alive and well it seems. I also do not get why it matters if she is a card carrying hard core feminist or not. Are “real” feminists the only ones allowed to speak about these matters in some official capacity or is her whole educational background in question too?
Link | May 8th, 2011 at 10:05 am
Louise Van Hine wrote,
I think that the surgery is the elephant in the room for transsexualism: when done to perfectly normal and functioning bodies, WITHOUT consent, it would be considered a heinous crime… and with consent, or if done on a child who doesn’t fit ‘normal’ anatomical parameters – perfectly acceptable and even therapeutic. And I think that what Paglia is saying is that because Chaz Bono is so public about it, it ‘puts it in the air’ and that if it was ‘in the air’ the way it is today, that she might have done it, whereas now she would not. I disagree strongly with her conclusion… because despite all of their convictions about their gender, the vast majority of transsexuals do NOT get the surgery for reasons other than cost. Doesn’t sound like it ‘being in the air’ is reducing that number by such a great amount. I only know one transman, he took the testosterone, grew the beard, and called it a day, breasts and all, and doesn’t believe in the body mutilation. These are not easy questions.
Link | May 8th, 2011 at 10:19 am
AM Riley wrote,
I only know transgendered people, I am not one. But what I have gleaned from our conversations and their brave attempts to explain themselves to my ever annoying curiosity, is that they don’t feel like their assigned gender. As in, if you, teddy, woke up tomorrow and someone told you to put on a dress and lipstick and date a woman. Nothing about it feels right to them and they are miserable.
It’s all so hard to understand from outside their skin and my original questions to one friend in particular came out of a concern that she was only trying to be a man because she didn’t want to be a lesbian. But that wasn’t it at all. In her case at least. I really don’t think sexual orientation is the issue for many trans people.
I also don’t think all gay people only want to do the June Cleaver thing to be like straight people. Some of my friends seem to greatly desire that institution and the ’till death do us part’ endlessness of it. Personally, you’d have to hold a gun to my head. There seem to be as many varieties of homosexuals as there are of heterosexuals. Go figure!
Anyway, now that medical science has advanced to this point, the issues will be argued over and over. I hope we all remember to do that with compassion.
Link | May 8th, 2011 at 5:20 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
Nothing I have said is against people having the right to change their gender or get married.
It’s more like I am asking is that really such a healthy goal in life? My only concerns are around why is conforming to heteronormative roles so important?
To me where the real hard work is though stepping outside those social expectations of what is “normal” and being unafraid of doing your own thing. But I also come from a time where that conversation was predominate of what we were trying to do obviously that changed with the whole AIDS thing.
It is sad but not unexpected the smart creative people imagining another way of living a homosexual lifestyle got taken out early and the prudes and stick in the mud traditional types who did not fuck around survived to promote their priorities over other avenues of expression.
I know I sound bitter and old but hey I know if the people I enjoyed hanging out with were still around I would not be the only one thinking WTF? Repackaging and merchandising heterosexual mores and ideals and values for LGBT folks is their idea of progress?
If you take what this whole discussion is about and really look at it from a distance… Turning Chaz into a fat, white, middle aged, guy is being promoted as an act of great courage.
Oh my my my my. We really have swung all the way over to the right.
Link | May 8th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
AM Riley wrote,
It’s true and tragic that many of ‘the great minds of my generation’ as the poet said, died young. Not only the social revolutionaries, but the artists, actors, musicians… it’s a horrible loss. I still want to cry when I remember Howard Ashman, or hear his music. I think of friends and what they were going to accomplish and it still makes me very angry.
I think I kind of get what you are protesting. My girlfriends got married both wearing white traditional wedding gowns and I thought, ‘NO! How hard did we fight to escape that role? The virginal blushing bride? The good wife? BLECH!’ But then all I can remember is how frickin’ happy they both were, so I don’t know…
Link | May 8th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
I am just stating what I think about when I see stuff like this. So I obviously reacted very differently to what Paglia said because what she stated was rude and bitchy just like what I was thinking was rude and bitchy but the questions behind why I thought what I did are still good questions in my opinion.
Link | May 8th, 2011 at 6:42 pm
drumstick wrote,
I know just a few FTM but a number of MtF and a couple in between. I feel like that gender dysmorphia (which was added to the DSM IV the same year that homosexuality was removed) is simply an expression of society’s efforts to confirm and control gender roles by medicalizing the issue. And now we’ve taken that badge and run with it. I can’t just be a boy-in-a-dress, I’m a a “transwoman”. I can’t just be a tomboy, I’m a “transman”. Even if it’s a “third gender” is still a constructed gender like the rest of them. Why this need to box people in?
One of my best MtF friends expressed it best: “If I had been allowed to express my feminine energy more freely in an accepting society, I don’t think I would have really needed to transition. Transitioning is looking for a mental space where is “OK” or “justified” to express your inner fluidity, and medicalization provides that rationalisation. But in the end, you only really find freedom and satisfaction in the complete acceptance of yourself as you are in any given moment. Cuttingoff my dick isn’t going to make people love me – even me.”
Link | February 15th, 2012 at 1:58 pm