Month: September 2024

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Thinking about Transmasculine Feminism

Last semester in my Theories of Feminism class I read “The Transfeminist Manifesto” by Emi Koyama. This text spoke out to me as a trans person, and it introduced me to Koyama’s additional work on disability, sex work and intersex advocacy that has greatly increased my knowledge of other parts of the field. However, one thing I noticed throughout the text was the focus specifically on trans women and minimal reference to the experiences of trans men, apart from a couple of paragraphs in the gender-based violence section along the lines of “trans men also have something like this problem, we should also advocate for them.” Koyama herself at the end of the paper points out that while she did have the intention of transfeminine focus due to a higher visibility of injustice within transfeminine experiences, there is more information she could have covered on trans men’s experiences, and invites the reader to think more on the topics she did not discuss (e.g. intersectional analysis, trans men).

I did some Google scholar and library archival research after reading this paper and found out there is indeed not very much overlapping scholarship on feminism and transmasculinity, specifically discussing how feminism applies to – and can be done by – transmasculine folk across the gender and sex spectrums. In response to this deficit I thought, “they should make a transmasculine feminism,” and then remembered that I am in fact someone who has a say in that!

What comes to mind (at least from my perspective) as an avenue to explore transmasculine feminism is the idea of recontextualizing our lived experiences from embodied “feminine,” non-hegemonic-male experiences that feminism applies to. Examples I’ve thought of include socialization growing up, the treatment of our sexed bodies in the medical sphere (spaces commonly designated as “women’s” care), and ongoing experiences with how we are treated based on the gender others perceive us as.

I admit that while some may be comfortable discussing the controversial point of socialization, not all transgender folk may be as willing to critically discuss their socialized experiences in their assigned gender growing up, which could be due to dysphoria that could come from this recollection. While there are perfectly valid reasons for avoiding exploring this vulnerable topic in depth, I would argue that in the process of developing my transmasculine feminist thought thinking about my own girlhood, my medical encounters with my own biology, and how I have been gendered based on appearance, I have become more in tune with how I live gender than I ever have before. This might just be me growing up, but I think embracing the gendered aspects of earlier parts of my life is genuinely so constructive to thinking on how I wish to improve as a person, and more relevantly, as a feminist and activist.

So, from thinking about Koyama’s call to action to include more transmasculine thought on feminism, my personal goal in my GWST academics is to formulate something along the lines of a “Transmasculine Feminist Manifesto.” It feels like a very big task to come up with a personal Big Word for an Academic Thing and then justify to Big Academia why you think that should be a Thing, so I am quite daunted by that, especially considering I’ve been experiencing some intense burnout and for whatever reason have been having more and more of a difficult time putting words to my thoughts. But in the case of arguing for this from an embodied, phenomenological perspective, I suddenly have a lot more faith in my words than I have before, and I am very excited to get into putting research together and synthesizing that with my own life as a transmasculine person.

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Sweet Treat

As a feminine presenting person, I’ve often felt the weight of societal expectations placed on my body, and it’s a pressure that seems to evolve over time but never truly disappears. From a young age, I became aware that my body was not just my own, but something to be scrutinized, judged, and valued by others. There’s a constant narrative surrounding what a “perfect” body should look like; slim but curvy, toned but feminine, attractive but not overly sexualized. Around 8 years old, my father took this to heart. I was put on a diet and had regular weigh-ins to make sure I was not “getting fat”. At birthday parties and holidays I was denied cake and desserts, forced to watch all the other kids enjoy their sweets. This mental strain was and still is exhausting. Present day, I dare say this “trauma” has taken its toll on my body image. Even when I was at my most toned and fit it was still not enough. No matter how long I looked in the mirror, all I could see was someone too fat and not good enough. For years I struggled, and still do, with accepting myself and my body and not fearing the occasional sweet treat. The journey to reclaim my body as my own has been gradual and ongoing. I’m learning to love it for what it is; its strength, its ability to heal, and the ways it supports me. I try to remember that my body is my identity.

We’re all Sado-masochists: An Exploration of The Gendered Implications Behind BDSM
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We’re all Sado-masochists: An Exploration of The Gendered Implications Behind BDSM

BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sado-Masochism) I think is heavily misunderstood by the majority of people how don’t participate in the practice or have only heard about it on tv. I think when people think of this concept, they have vague images of bound up women, leather clothing, various ropes and chains, and a vanilla 50 shades of grey imagery is often conjured. However, as someone who is an enthusiast of the practice, Many of the themes in BDSM are just mirror reflections of how we implicitly think about sex and gendered relations (hetero or queer gendered relations) made emotionally explicity, physical, and desired rather than implied, silent, and obligated as they are in everyday life. I could go one about this forever, but lets keep it small and start this journey bit by bit.

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Foucault and Environmental Justice

This semester, I’m taking the course Environmental Justice. Although I wasn’t quite prepared for the amount of reading I’d be doing this fall, I was pleasantly surprised at what we read for Week 4 – Nadia Kim’s Fighting for Breath in the Other LA, an introduction to the book Refusing Death. Kim’s work analyzes the intersectionality of environmental injustices through a framework explicitly including gender. Something that stood out to me, however, was her discussion of Foucault.

Read more: Foucault and Environmental Justice

In Week 2 of Unruly Bodies, we discussed Foucault’s idea of biopower; the power of life and how it is controlled. Kim is critical of this concept, however. She argues that Foucault focused too heavily on biopower’s dimension of making life, and not enough on the ability to “let die”. She states, “[Foucault] does not tell us about a state that circulates deadly air.” (p27). Here, she proposes the term bioneglect, not to replace biopower, but to instead add to it. Essentially, the term bioneglect stands to emphasize the “…process of ‘letting die’ waged by neoliberal racial capitalism and the racial state.” (p27). What this means is, where biopower represents the power of life, bioneglect represents the power of discriminating against and neglecting life. Kim discusses how communities made up of low income individuals and people of color are targeted by bioneglect, leading to problems such as health disparities caused by higher rates of pollution, among other issues. This is perpetuated by the (in)actions of the government as well as large corporations.

I think Kim’s addendum to Foucault’s concept of biopower is important when discussing environmental injustices such as these in particular. The struggles faced through environmental injustices are inherently tied to our bodies and how we experience them, as the forces that control our bodies – whether they be large corporations and governments or on smaller community scales – also have the power to control the environment around us; they control everything from the policies we keep to the norms we follow, for better or for worse. The work we are expected and forced to do under capitalism is also directly intertwined with environmental injustices, as it is inherently unsustainable, though not through our own fault. All in all, I believe Kim’s concept of bioneglect is a useful addition to the conversation of biopower proposed by Foucault, one that is necessary to consider when trying to understand the full scope of the effect of larger powers on life.

Image source: https://www.sustainableprinceton.org/explainer-series-2-environmental-justice/

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A Puppet: Follow the rules I make about YOUR body! (TW: eating disorder, body image, parental issues)

It’s such an odd concept, isn’t it?? My mother started controlling my body image when I was in elementary school. 6 years old and already practically dieting. She would give me specific low-calorie, thin ass bread for my sandwiches with a single slice of cheese as my lunch for the day. 10 years old and already posting long workouts that I did on social media so my mother would be proud of me that I was making an effort to make my body more acceptable for her. I developed an eating disorder in elementary school. I was always so scared of my mother seeing me eat that I became so secretive. Binge eating disorder isn’t taken seriously, she knew I had it, admitting she knew, but I guess it was another way of controlling me for her to not help me. I remember hiding snacks under my bed that I was given at school so I could have them without her seeing and judging me. Halloween as a kid was pointless, she always gave my candy away to people at her work because I “didn’t need it”. I was a kid. My mother snapping at me to pull my shirt out, “suggesting” (the things she told me were never a suggestion: you don’t go against what Vicki says, your body is her puppet) that I take my selfies at a higher angle to hide my double chin, telling me to wear shapewear so my clothes would “flatter”… the best they could that is as she looked my body up and down in disgust. I was a child.

I have always been her puppet. Wear this, don’t wear that you can see how fat you are, god don’t sit like that you can see your fat rolls, when does it stop?? The answer? Never.

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Shy Girl Workout

Photo by Ivan Samkov on Pexels.com

Imagine you walk into a gym, a not-quite 20-year-old feminine presenting person. After months of working out in the peace of your own home and improving your self esteem, you finally build up the courage and confidence to work out in public for the first time. You sign in and find the weight room. You look up and…wow that’s a lot of men. You struggle to even find one girl. Just a bunch of grunting gym bros with all their buddies lifting weights that are probably too heavy for them to safely lift. Not to worry though! You’ve been training for this moment. All the (Instagram) research you’ve done has led up to this moment. You take a deep breath, grab your 2 dumbbells and find a corner to begin your Shy Girl Workout…

Your Shy Girl Workout allows you to stay in one place with one set of weights the whole time, taking up minimal space so as not to draw any attention to yourself. To be virtually imperceptible. Invisible.

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Put a Finger Down…

Put a finger down if you got out of a five year toxic relationship that ruined your self confidence and body image so you spend a whole year rebuilding yourself and loving who you are just to find out your role model “loving” parents who were married for 30 years are getting a divorce because you learn that your father is actually verbally and physically abusive towards your mother and has assaulted your brother on multiple occasions. So you become the rock in your family and keep everyone grounded while the worst case scenario is going on around you. During this time period your mentally ill father tries to take the house from everyone threatening that everyone will be homeless so you and your brother brainstorm ideas on what you can do to keep the house, and come up with this brilliant idea that if you both buy the home together and buy out your father you will have somewhere to live with the small cost of being in debt for a long time. 

Additionally you are working a full time job and balancing a full time college student schedule during your parents divorce mess because your college loans never cover a full semester so it is your responsibility to come up with the remaining balance which is typically thousands of dollars and you don’t qualify for any kind of financial grants since you “make too much.” (aka 35k a year) So then you add on a paid internship which counts as a second job but this second job is located in DC so it is a farther commute then your commute to school which means you have to pay more in gas and tolls but bite the bullet because it is what you want to do for your future job so you try your hardest to not complain and to just be grateful for the opportunity. 

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How Our Bodies Shape Our Experiences

Theories of embodiment explore how our physical bodies influence our thoughts, emotions, and interactions with the world. At its core, embodiment emphasizes that our experiences are not just in our minds but are deeply connected to our physical being. For example, when we feel nervous, our bodies react—our heart races, our palms sweat. This connection between mind and body shows that how we feel physically can impact our mental state. Similarly, the way we carry ourselves, like standing tall or slouching, can affect our confidence and how others perceive us. In everyday life, embodiment helps us understand how culture and society shape our physical experiences. Different cultures have varying norms about body image, movement, and expression. For instance, in some cultures, personal space is highly valued, while in others, close proximity is common and comforting. By recognizing these differences, we can appreciate how our bodies communicate social cues and navigate relationships. Ultimately, theories of embodiment remind us that our physical presence is a vital part of who we are and how we relate to the world around us.

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I am but I’m not

In Alcoff’s piece we learn about the three basic pastimes for understanding race and one of them being essentialism. In essentialsim the key piece is that racial identities are stable across time and space. And that is not true. And I say that is not true because of factors like time period and location. Identities like African-American, Afro Latino/Caribbean are new identities. They are literally only identities because of the transatlantic slave trade. 450 years ago African-American Afro Caribbean Afro none of those things were being used by anyone because they were not terms until mid 1600s . As an African-American woman myself one thing me and my Caribbean or Latino friends always talk about is that there’s somewhat of a disconnect between us and Africans because Africans are like lucky in a way. They are going by the original term. Yes there was death and destruction and colonization for them but they have that tiny fact that they didn’t get shipped off to other continents. They got to keep the OG term. Technically we should just be African or even like the term black woman back in 1191 and 1347 no one was using that. Same with people in Malaysia and they weren’t saying oh I’m Malaysian/ I’m a south east Asian they went by their tribal identification. All those terms like black girl, asian girls, etc…

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