Cunt (27 page)

I found out that, as a queer biological woman, I inherited a part in a legacy of totally
shunning and despising people like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. It seems that
in the 1970s, feminists, lesbians and gay men were vociferously intolerant toward
transgendered people. Before founding STAR, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson were
edged out of the GLF, an organization that they had been
instrumental
in forming. In a stunning betrayal, the GAA wrote an anti-discrimination bill to
the New York City Council, that excluded transgendered people.

Being totally, totally shafted by a community that you poured
all your activist genius into
would be incredibly heart breaking.

It seems to me that everyone in the queer community has a bit of accountability to
face up to here. I truly believe that if Ms. Rivera and Ms. Johnson were accepted,
respected and supported for the work they were doing (and continued to do, despite
setbacks like micro-marginalization within a marginalized community, poverty and homelessness),
it is possible that both of them would be alive today, helping younger generations
learn how to fight and kick ass and stand up for ourselves.

Due to our own ignorance, fear and prejudice, we have probably lost many leaders of
this caliber.

Another woman who fell prey to trans-exclusion was a recording engineer at Olivia
Records. In 1977, Sandy Stone was one of the most brilliant recording geniuses in
the business, and Olivia Records was an all-women recording studio. They were poised
to turn a profit for the first time that year, but a bunch of separatist types (which
comprised a very vocal demographic in the 1970’s women’s movement) found out that
Sandy Stone was transgendered, and threatened to boycott Olivia Records. The record
company reluctantly fired Ms. Stone.

This story is notably ironic:

During the 1999 Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, a rumor somehow got out that members
of the Butchies supported trans-inclusion while also respecting the Michigan Womyn’s
Music Festival’s policy that only “womyn born womyn” attend this yearly event.

This led to a nationwide trans-activist boycott of the Butchies, and all other bands
on the Mr. Lady record label. (Although, I must say, I don’t see how punishing Mr.
Lady for the MWMF’s policy is fair. Wouldn’t this reasonably lead to a boycott of
every band, performer and organization that attends the festival?)

I think it is very interesting that twenty-odd years after one women’s record company
was boycotted for
including
trans-women on their staff, another women’s record company was boycotted for honoring
a festival’s policy that
excludes
trans-folks.

That seems like 360 degrees to me, so it’s time to start another chapter of history—one
that is totally trans-inclusive.

The reason I didn’t know about Sandy Stone, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson or any
of these women is that they’ve been airbrushed out of queer, feminist and U.S. history.
To find out about them, one has to research
transgender
history. (And I highly suggest you do so, by starting off at transhistory.org. Many
thanks to Kay Brown for putting up this wonderful site.)

This answered the biggest question I was asking when I started getting my “trans-inclusion
position” email queries: why did I exclude an entire sector of the population when
I was supposed to be writing a book about freedom for all?

The answer is, simply, I didn’t know.

And why didn’t I know? Why did an avid reader like myself never come across references
to trans-history?

For the exact same reason that “feminism” and “vegetarianism” were peripheral to my
life in Santa Maria, California: it’s not—or at least, when I was writing Cunt, it
wasn’t—a topic that came up much.

It’s, uh, excluded.

The identities, realities, experiences, accomplishments and history of transgendered
folks are not acknowledged in the marginalized cultures of queers and feminists, and
are pathologically feared in the “general” culture of the United States.

Time after time, in its effort to appear “normal” to blindly heterosexual society
and thereby gain “equal rights,” the queer community has kicked its own in the ass.
Tranny folks have been the lightning rod for straight
and
queer wrath because they shake up ideas about—to paraphrase a talk-radio windbag—the
way things oughta be. Like Cynthia in Zabrina’s wedding experience, if you can’t put
someone in an easily identified box, then how do you know where
you
fit in?

Margaret Cho said something wonderful in the June 2002 issue of
Lesbian News
in an interview with Kathleen Wilkinson: “If you are a woman, if you are a person
of color, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, if you are a person of
size, if you are a person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then
you are considered a minority in this world.” Margaret Cho is always saying wonderful
things.

I would like to mention here that most of the people who have challenged me about
tranny rights have been white. I am not aware of the ways in which race factored into
Ms. Rivera and Ms. Johnson’s exclusion in the queer community (both were women of
color). I do not doubt, however, that it did indeed factor in.

For the past three years, I have been working on
Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil,
a book which deals with race and whiteness. I have had many conversations with many,
many people about how the white queer community exoticizes, marginalizes and stereotypes
queers and trannies of color. I am not paying lip service to racial complexities by
mentioning this. The infernally kaleidoscopic nature of race and the perception of
race is confounding, to say the least. Rather, I would like white trans-activists
to look at how they themselves may perpetuate ideas of exclusion and “otherness” by
taking whiteness for granted.

I don’t know how anybody—trannyfolks, queers of all colors, people of color, white
women, feminists, fags, retirees, farmers, workers, really, I could go on—can stand
around with our heads up our asses, expecting rights to be handed to us on a silver
platter, when we are so terribly busy oppressing as we are oppressed.

But this is, like I say, a subject for a book.

Throughout the annals of queer and feminist history, transgendered folks have been
misrepresented, feared and marginalized to the point of perceived non-existence.

Through dialogue, grassroots efforts and legislation, trans-exclusion seems to be
on its way out the door.

On April 30, 2002, the New York City Council amended the city’s Human Rights Law to
include transgendered people. Thirty-one years after the GAA royally shafted Sylvia
Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson and Angela Keyes Douglas, transgendered people have the
same rights to housing, jobs, benefits and justice as everyone else in New York City.
Similar laws have been enacted in Minnesota and Rhode Island, as well as thirty-seven
other cities and two counties in the U.S.

Unfortunately, on the state level in New York, a law that will probably be passed
this year called the Sexual Orientation Non-discrimination Act (SONDA) does not include
transgendered people:

“The decision of state legislators and the Empire State Pride Agenda not to include
transgender people is a real loss,” said [Paisley] Currah, who was part of the legislative
task force for the New York City bill and has extensively researched and written on
transgender rights legislation. “When the leading gay rights group in the state will
not support state-wide equality for transgender people, it shows the prevalence of
discrimination against transgender people, and just how necessary passing this kind
of legislation is for the transgender community.”

(Transgendered Law and Policy Institute Press Release, April 24, 2002)

In the spirit of Sylvia Rivera mythically instigating the Stonewall Riots by throwing
a brick/her shoes/a bottle at cops, things changed in 1999, by a single event in an
outdoor shower area, by the laughter inspired at the thought of people freaking out
and yelling, “There are PENISES on The Land!!!”

People may not recognize this as a historic event quite yet, but after the festival
that year, tranny-folks and their many allies started calling people (like me) to
task in the queer and feminist communities.

Trans-inclusion is spiraling out into the “mainstream” culture of the general public.

So be ready for that.

On September 12, 2001, 1, like most folks, was installed in front of the teevee. Since
I have never owned a teevee, and since I needed to hear news of what was going on
in New York City and the rest of the country, I had become a kind of temporary roommate
at a teevee-owning friend’s home.

During this evening, another friend popped by and began watching teevee with me. It
is difficult for people to watch teevee with me because my viewing criterion is inclusive
of infomercials, religious shows and non-English-speaking programs. The lifestyle
of not watching teevee makes watching it a very fascinating excursion into the collective
consciousness of America for me. And on this date, it was all about the news. The
friend who popped by wanted to watch a specific news program, deeming it “better”
than others. I thought they were all completely biased and full of shit, and wanted
to see what was on other channels.

During this time, the clicker stopped on a 714 Bible Show. Lots of such shows are
taped in Orange County, California, at Trinity Broadcasting, to be precise. On the
bottom of the screen, the call-in number to give them your money often begins with
the 714 area code.

I asked my friend (who had the clicker) to let me watch this for a minute.

Reluctantly, she did.

The show blew my mind.

It was set in a room made to look like a library, with “books” cleverly painted on
the walls. Four people sat around a table: an intellectual-looking, savvy black woman
whom I never got to hear talk; a white man who seemed to be hosting the show, as everyone
addressed their attention to him, a white woman who looked like a hippie gone New
Age and ever so subtly corporate; and another white lady who looked like Delta Burke
heralding from a Houston suburb. The Delta Burke type did most of the talking in the
short time that I saw the show. She emoted on birth control, about how god-fearing
Christian women can learn to monitor their cycles and figure out when they are ovulating
and practice “abstinence,” or use condoms so that they don’t get pregnant. The host
looked uncomfortable— slightly tortured, even—because the Delta-type uttered the word
“vagina” a number of times, but for a 714 Bible Show host, he was pretty goddamn stoic.

I could not believe what I was hearing.

Then the ex-hippie lady started talking about how god put a number of herbs on the
planet to help women keep their menstrual cycles “regular.” (This is a common euphemism
for saying down a bunch of pennyroyal tea if you think you are pregnant.) Then the
Delta Burke lady started chiming in about how God Gave Us These Gifts and it is WRONG
for us not to make use of them.

Then my friend changed the channel and, since I did understand her pressing need to
hear information about what in the name of Lordisa was going on in the world, I didn’t
raise a fuss.

I have, consequently, been kicking myself ever since because I have no way of backing
this story up, but I am telling it anyway because it is
the gospel truth.

See, this 714 Bible Show solved a huge mystery for me.

Since
Cunt
first came out, I’ve heard from a number of people who consider themselves “pro-life”
and have mystifyingly commended me on my “anti-abortion” stance. It seems my abhorrence
for the vacuum cleaner used in clinical abortions has been confused with a “pro-life”
position.

I assume a lot of the people who have congratulated me for being “pro-life” have been
young Christian women who somehow happened upon my book. I’ve often wondered how fanatics
like Operation Rescue manage to get so many young women out there on the front lines,
protesting at abortion clinics. Operation Rescue’s propaganda imagery focuses on the
“barbarous” nature of terminating a pregnancy and relies on harrowing images of third
trimester fetuses. The idea that women who opt for clinical abortions are heartless
“baby-killers” seems to be a cornerstone of this movement, and it certainly plays
on the emotions of young girls.

Since seeing the 714 Bible Show, I’ve been wondering how many young people in America
haven’t had a chance to critically examine this issue on their own, and instead have
simply seen too many grisly abortion films in the basement of their church.

The show informed me that there is a crucial distinction between the
way
one aborts a fetus and the actual end result. It seems that in the minds of those
subjected to Operation Rescue-style propaganda, taking herbs to keep ones period “regular”
is a lot different than going to an abortion clinic.

So when I lambaste the vacuum cleaner at abortion clinics and discuss how I induced
a miscarriage with herbs and other such “Gifts From God,” then to some “pro-lifers,”
at least, I may sound like an ideological ally.

To set the record straight, I consider myself a “pro-life baby killer.”

Last year, I was invited to speak at a Million for Roe benefit in Boston. While I
am increasingly concerned about Roe v. Wade being overturned, and wanted to support
this organization, I had a scheduling conflict. So, in lieu of an appearance, I wrote
them a letter.

It appears below.

Dearest Everyone at Million for Roe,

I hope you are having a fabulous time at an event “celebrating” the deaths of thirty
million unborn souls who have been systematically annihilated since the 1973 Roe v.
Wade ruling.

I know if I was there, I would be kicking up my heels that I made the decision to
murder three of these souls. Yes, it fills my heart with joy when I think about the
three kids (aged fifteen, thirteen and nine) I would have had right now had I not
been one of the many cold-blooded baby killers that live in America today.

But alas, I am a cold-blooded baby killer.

And I am walking free in society.

And one day soon, abortion may be illegal, and people like me will be criminals.

Today I read in the Los
Angeles Times
that a young girl was picked up by the police for placing her newborn child in a
dumpster. She will go to jail for this offense, and I don’t know who got her pregnant—whether
it was her stepfather, a priest or a neighborhood boy who promised her love.

She is a cold-blooded baby killer too.

In James W. Loewen’s book,
Lies My Teacher Told Me
, there is a quote from a 1517 letter from Pedro de Cordoba to King Ferdinand describing
life for the Arawak Indians under Spanish colonial rule:

By 1555, the entire Arawak nation had been annihilated. The pre-Columbian population
of Haiti is estimated to be around eight million people. The “natives” of Haiti now
are descendants of African slaves who were brought there by the Spanish and the French.
These slaves rebelled mightily, and Haiti has been in turmoil pretty much ever since.

When I read stories about Haitian history and present day upheavals, I often think
about the souls of those eight million Arawak Indians, and the many millions of Africans
and Haitians who have died horrifying deaths—both in slavery and fighting for their
freedom since Columbus’s landing. These souls are speaking to the world. They say,
“Colonialism is murder, colonialism is genocide, colonialism is now called things
like ‘free trade in the new world order’ but it is still colonialism.”

When rabbits find themselves pregnant in times of severe environmental stress, they
absorb their young back into their bodies.

After NAFTA was in force 1994, U.S.-owned factories called “maquiladoras” opened up
all over the border of Mexico. One place that is very convenient to huge U.S. corporations
is Ciudad Juarez, located just a few miles away from El Paso, Texas. The maquiladoras
offer jobs and money to people who operate in a more pronounced economic apartheid
than the one present in the United States. So people, primarily women—the poorest
people in the world—flock to these shitass jobs in huge factories where no one gives
a fuck about them.

Since 1993, at least 270 women have been found raped and murdered in Cuidad Juarez.
Another 450 have disappeared. They have primarily been factory workers, attacked on
the dark streets as they walk to and from work. (progressive.org)

Here is an excerpt from a February 2002 article on the Progressive Media Project’s
website:

In June 2002, the U.S. Christian Right, Catholics and Mormons announced the creation
of an alliance with Iraq, Iran and a number of other countries to create a powerful
bloc within the U.N. Their focus? Squelching all talk of rights for queers, women
and children throughout the world.

One imagines that Governor Garcia’s requests fell upon deaf ears.

I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where people became outraged over
the grisly murders of hundreds of women in Mexico. I wonder what it would be like
if Jerry Falwell and Operation Rescue went down to Ciudad Juarez to protect the lives
of people who have already been born, against the cold-blooded women killers and the
factories that take no responsibility for their workers well-being.

I wonder.

If I had three kids, I would not have been able to write
Cunt.
All the love I have for those three kids went into that book.
Cunt
fomented in my heart for years before I ever sat down to get it all out. I produced
Cunt
to serve myself and to serve other people who are already born.

I am very pro-life.

I wholeheartedly support the lives of the living. And life is a goddamn complex thing,
and it involves making difficult choices, and sometimes those choices lead to sacrifice.
And sometime those sacrifices lead to a woman waking up one morning, her uterus in
agony, and crying for the harrowing choice she has made.

Aborting a child is a painful thing to do, but in order to serve the living, it is
sometimes necessary.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, then where does that leave all the pro-life baby killers
like myself?

Generations of women have grown up with legal, safe abortions available, and this
has made us lazy. We have grown accustomed to living in a world where it is no one’s
goddamn business what insanely personal sacrifices and choices we make in our lives.
We have had the wool pulled over our eyes so tight, we have no idea what is going
on in Haiti and Ciudad Juarez. We read about little girls dumping newborn babies in
garbage cans, we sigh sadly, and we turn the goddamn page.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, then I am gonna celebrate because I know it will make
people get off their asses and take a look around this post-1973 world we live in.

It will mean war.

We’ve all been getting our asses kicked since before Columbus sailed the ocean blue,
and little “rights” like voting, working, freedom and abortions have blinded entire
generations to this fact. Abortion is not a “right.” It is not within the jurisdiction
of men to decide whether or not women will be “allowed” this “luxury.” We seem to
have missed this point entirely.

At least if abortion is outlawed, more people will understand that the exact same
war has been going on for over five hundred years, and there will be a lot more soldiers
asking where they can line up.

With warm regards,

Inga M.

I read a version of this letter in January, when I spoke at Western Washington University
in Bellingham. Afterward, a woman came up to me and introduced me to her three beautiful
girls. From youngest to oldest, they were the exact ages of the children I would have
had. There were tears in the woman’s eyes as she told me that she and all three of
her girls have read my book, and it has had a significant impact on their family.
She told me I was right—I would have never been able to write
Cunt
with three kids. I was stunned into silence. I wanted to cry and hug her and thank
her for putting those children on the planet, but there was a line of people waiting
for me to sign their
Cunts
, and I emotionally sandbagged the tidal wave of grief and joy that washed over me.