Friday, February 24, 2012

Dianics, Discrimination and the Dust of the Dying

As is not infrequently the case with me, I find a comment that I made in anger actually pointed the way toward a better understanding of the problem at hand.  Responding to a Dianic who has repeatedly posted anti-transgender comments, I said:
Eruca:

So how does it feel to be poor, aging, reliant on government charity to sustain your existence, and rejected as irrelevant by all but a few similarly poor, aging and equally irrelevant bigots?
 
Your curse, should you choose or not choose to accept it, is to watch the rest of the world pass you by as they take the achievements you and yours gave them into directions which you never anticipated and which you are powerless to control. 
Have a happy walk to the shadowlands.

Oh, wait... you're already there.
Perhaps I could have phrased it a bit more gently, but it's never a good idea to expect tact at 3:00am when I just changed a dirty diaper and have had my fill of early morning excreta.  And as I counted to 50, thought about editing the comment and then decided it was fine the way it was, I realized just how much painful truth there was in those paragraphs.

By her own admission, Eruca is a disabled Dianic lesbian. Should her hated patriarchy decide to stop sending her a monthly check, she would starve in the street.  She is forced to rely on whatever scraps The Man throws in her general direction. The sisters of her generation are as powerless as she, and the sisters of the generations which came after her have left eldercare to the tender mercies of Uncle Sam.  The Great Womyn's Communities the separatists dreamed of in the second wave never came to pass: all that is left are a few lonely old dears remembering better days and buying day-old produce with their food stamps.

Which brings us to Z Budapest.

I said in another comment that I felt it was tragic that Z has chosen to tear down her legacy like this. Instead of being remembered for the 40+ years of work she did for the Womyn's community, she's going to be seen as a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Transgender bigot. But then I realized that hateful statement on someone else's blog has brought her more attention than she has received in a couple of decades.  Were she not remembered as a bigot, she'd be remembered as a quaint curiosity... if she were remembered at all.

In his blog post on the topic, Devin Hunter hit the nail on the head:
The simple fact that for every nine people there that were protesting there was one attendee to her ritual made it all clear! She does not represent the majority of us, we represent the majority. She is not a leader that can be voted out of office, she is not a politician who lobbies for the exclusion of trans individuals, she is a woman who comes from a particular world view that we as a greater community no longer feel to be valid in our modern times. She is the past and we are the future.
This is the path Z and her followers have chosen to stay in the public eye: this is the way they hope to remain a vital part of the community which has outgrown them.  They stumble about the terrain wondering why the earth no longer shakes for them and why those damn little furry creatures keep eating their eggs.  Instead of hatred, we should treat them with pity. Their time has passed and their appointment with the Devouring Mother draws nearer each day. When they have returned to the dust, those who come after them will bleach the rot from their bones and exhibit them as a display of our continuing evolution.

5 comments:

R said...

I can't feel a sense of victory over Z and her ilk (in regards to the majority of the community rolling their neck collectively and going "Hell no") or take joy in the conquest; they are just too small and weak of an opponent in a much larger battle. It's like kicking an elderly person in the shins, laughing as they cry, and cutting off their head. It wasn't really a victory or an accomplishment. If anything it was a failure, because the community let it happen in the first place, and waited until it was fashionable to get outraged.
I think Z and people like her have gotten hooked on being not just "a" group of victims, but THE victims. They feel threatened by a group that is more marginalized than they are. If they were truly interested in fulfilling the desperate, protecting the weak, and empowerment for the silent, they would have saw the pain that is so much like what they feel and found unity in it. Instead they are covetous of it. Their wish to be victims has made them victims; but their lack of empathy ensures no one is going to feel sorry for them.

Kate LBT said...

I for one do not feel any sense of victory. Only sadness, frustration and deep pain that once again trans women's bodies and lives are being placed under a microscope and that we are being demanded to absent ourselves from spaces we rightfully belong in. If there is any consolation, it is in the fact that we are beginning to make a difference and move things in a more accepting and respectful direction.

Miss E. said...

I realize the majority of your post is not about the post from the Wild Hunt that you share here, but I can’t resist saying “WTF” to that first paragraph! Many representatives of “The Man” would be more than happy to cut safety net benefits to everyone possible. And an awful lot of people in the wider Pagan community may find themselves needing public assistance someday, if not now, and if they are disabled or elderly they’d do well to find their way to advocates that will assist them in being far from helpless.

Trans gender issues are feminist issues, and these are not issues of people with full privilege in our society – so all the “privilege” remarks I read around the blogosphere seem like so much “Oppression Olympics.” Maybe there can be a PCon event/party game where everyone, income statements and educational credentials in hand, (in addition to their personal characteristics) can line up in order of perceived privilege.

I do wish commenter’s all over the blogosphere would decide if they are talking about gender or sex and stop conflating the two (I’ll wish for a pony while I’m at it.) And have the organizers of PCon made any public statements about why they agreed to unleash this on their community? Does any of this come out of trying to take a large group of people, (those who identify as pagan,) but whom actually subscribe to different magical and religious traditions and blend them in to one, perhaps artificial, community?

Andrea said...

While I really, really do agree with you, which you can see my full response to Z's bigotry at http://pagannews.tumblr.com/post/18189032321/trigger-warning-discussing-cissexism-ill-do-what-i

I wish you weren't mocking feminists at the same time. What Z and her ilk are, is NOT feminism. It's a fucking joke, and it's bigotry, but just as she does not represent the majority of Pagans, she does not represent even close to the majority of feminists, and I should hope you realize that.

If you don't want people to judge Paganism by Z. Budapest and people like her, I'd really appreciate if you didn't judge feminism by Z. Budapest and people like her. There are issues feminism has, yes, and there are just as many racist and cissexist issues in feminism as there are in Paganism.

Unknown said...

> I think Z and people like her have gotten
> hooked on being not just "a" group of
> victims, but THE victims. They feel
> threatened by a group that is more
> marginalized than they are. If they were
> truly interested in fulfilling the desperate,
> protecting the weak, and empowerment for the
> silent, they would have saw the pain that is
> so much like what they feel and found unity
> in it. Instead they are covetous of it. Their
> wish to be victims has made them victims; but
> their lack of empathy ensures no one is going
> to feel sorry for them.

Yes. Couldn't have put it better, myself.

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