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mardi, août 12 2008
Par Elly le mardi, août 12 2008, 02:41 - English
Since it was a bit a pain to manage (and it wasn't possible to change the language of what was not in the posts, e.g. menus), I decided to separate the english version of "Red is undead", so this blog now becomes french-only.
My english posts are now on my "Traningrad" weblog.
lundi, juillet 14 2008
Par Elly le lundi, juillet 14 2008, 21:17 - English
While many feminists defend the rights of transpeople and even see "transgender" as something positive in the fight against patriarchy, there have also been feminist criticisms of "transgender" or "transgenderism" (a recent one being from miss Andrea, who triggered quite hostile reactions but who at least allowed me to find a title for this post :p). While the "transgender" term is quite large and groups different things (crossdressers, gender-queer, ...), the main reproaches are concentrated on people who physically "transition" (i.e., go through hormonotherapy or surgery) and/or who define as being in the "opposite" gender than the one they were assigned to. (For me, that would more or less correspond to the "transsexual" category, but since the debate has been launched on "transgender" and I prefer this term, I'll stay with it.)
Personally, I'd tend to divide those criticisms into two trends:
While I don't think the first is interesting, my opinion is that the second one needs to be adressed.
I think it raises interesting questions, one of them being: "are transgender people 'compatible' with social constructivism ?". I believe the answer is YES, and this is why I'd like to explain my (social constructivist) vision of "transgender construction" (i.e, how an individual can end up as transgender, not the construction of the transgender movement[1]). Since I am not an intensive reader, I don't know if what I say here has already been said elsewhere, or proven to be wrong. I guess that, for a tranny, it is a bit of a difficult exercise since it requires to have an analysis which is sometimes in contradiction with personal feelings ; I just hope I didn't get too wrong on it.
There is this expression, over and over: "a woman soul in a man body". There are other sentences to describe transgenderism which I find essentialist (e.g, "an error from Nature" or "being born in the wrong body"), but this one is #1. It has been repeated so much that the mere fact of saying that you're trans' can trigger reactions such as "Oh, yeah, a woman soul in a man body. Must be hard for you."
I don't like this expression. Actually, I hate it. First, I'm a materialist, I don't believe in some obscure soul. I don't think I was a woman who has been reincarnated or something like that.
And, what with the "man body" part ? My body is mine. So, if I'm a woman, it's a woman body. Since I rather define as a tranny, it's a tranny body. But it's not a "man body". It may be a biologically male body, but not a man one, since, well, "man" and "woman" are social constructs.
Now, I have to admit that there is actually some truth in this sentence, even if I don't like the formulation. Basically, it says that the person, though she has a biologically male body and is seen and assigned as "man", deepely feels being a woman.
I saw some constructivist feminists having problems with this (people feeling being of the "other" gender). Personally, while I don't remember I ever felt my "soul" was a woman's one, I think it is quite understandable.
In a nutshell, I would say that "transgender" exists because of gender.
Gender, for me, is a social construct; but I think the assignation process is not 100% reliable. I think part of the explanation is just "sometimes, things don't work"[2].
Basically, for a reason or another, transgender people end up "feeling" that they are not "true men" or "true women"[3]. Since there is a very high social pressure to be either man or woman, well, if you're not one, you're the other. And since men are supposed to have biologically male bodies, and women are supposed to have biologically female bodies, it ends up being easier to take hormones and have surgery.
Now, something which must be made clear before going further: what I say here is at an analysis level. When you live it, of course, you don't say to yourself "oh, I don't feel good as a man, let's say I'm a woman".
Personally, I am taking hormones, and I didn't do it because I thought "oh, it will be easier this way". What I felt is that I hated my body and it wasn't me and taking hormones to make it more "female" was making peace with myself. But that is at the "feeling" level; from a feminist analysis, I believe that the reason of these feelings lies not in a innate female brain or female soul, but in what society made me understand since I was born.
While I understand that some people find easier to say that they were "born" like that, I don't think it's less "respectable" to say that what you are and what you feel are the results of a social construction.
Now all of this doesn't mean that I think the biological body of a person doesn't play a role at all in the gender they determines themself.
What I don't think is that biological features of a body are per se "man" or "woman" features. Of course, if I live in a society where all men are expected to be physically strong, and I'm not, this can play a role in whether I can feel "man" or not. But it is not because being strong is in itself a man thing; it is because being strong is a man thing in this culture.
Now all of this doesn't answer the initial feminist criticism: by identifiying as the opposite gender and undergoing physical changes, do transpeople reinforce gender norms ?
Since I say that the feeling of being a "man" or a "woman" and the need to undergo physical changes are the results of social pressure, the answer could be: "yes", because, well, they just don't resist enough. And the same could be said of, well, non-trans people who define as "men" or "women" and don't resist gender norms "enough".
But I have trouble saying that the act in itself is "sexist" or "reinforcing gender norms" because it depends how it is seen. E.g., I think saying "I will be a real woman when I have surgery" does reinforce gender norms (in this case, the link "vagina=woman"), while I don't think it is the case for "I will accept my body better when I have surgery". It's the same thing for, say, high heels. I don't have a problem with a woman wearing high heels if she likes that, but I think there is one if the only reason to wear them is because she's a woman.
Now I think that, concerning transgender, the real way to fight gender norms is not to label some people or movements "subversive" or "feminists" and some others "gender reinforcing" or "reactionary"[4], but to fight the social pressure (starting by the one coming from psychiatrist teams) which requires people to be either men or women and to have a "sex" that match their gender. Which isn't to say that transpeople shouldn't be able to have hormones or surgery, but they should not be required to have them.
And I think that, for transpeople and everyone, the real question is not whether you wear lipstick or not, whether you had your breasts augmented or not (or whether you stuff your bra or not), or even whether you define as a man/woman or not. The only really important thing is what you concretely DO against (or for, but I hope that for most readers it will be against) patriarchy, sexism and all oppressions.
[1] Just a side note on the "transgenderism" and "transsexuality" construction as a whole. From what I understand, "transsexuality" was mainly constructed by psychiatrists (e.g., Harry Benjamin) who tended to be quite normative about gender norms. So, indeed, you could say that it is quite gender-reinforcing. On the other hand, the inclusion of "trans" in LGBT (and feminist) community and the development of transgender associations allowed to take some distances from initial psychiatrical and norms. I think that currently, "transgenderism" is still full of tensions and contradictions because of these two opposite forces pulling in opposite directions.
[2] Probably because of the contradictions in gender. The "true man" and the "true woman" concepts not only are impossible to reach and somewhat contradictory, but also depend on the cultures and even individual people.
[3] Of course, there are degrees in that. Many people don't feel they are "true men" or "true women" either, but on a scale where they can still cope with their assigned gender.
[4] And I think labelling them like this is also a bit of "essentialising" them, since it is equivalent to saying that homosexuality is in itself subversive and transgenderism in itself reactionary (or subversive too, depends who you are asking, but whatever). I personally don't think an identity or a sexuality is in itself politically subversive, revolutionary or anything. It is the analysis and the concrete struggles which are politically charged.
mercredi, juin 4 2008
Par Elly le mercredi, juin 4 2008, 21:31 - English
In France, there has just been a "scandal" after a married guy canceled a marriage after discovering his wife wasn't virgin. The real debate was concerning the judge's decision, funded on the fact that the wife knew it was important for him and lied and was eventually OK to cancel; however there have been a lot of protestations from political currents, causing the "Parquet" (I don't know the english equivalent) to appeal the decision (which, to me, seems a bit strange since, however dislikable the husband seems to me, both he and the wife actually want a cancellation).
This has quite nothing to do with the following; but it inspired me to write a very short fantasy story which is loosely linked. Or maybe not. And since I currently have some english curses, I thought it would be cool to translate it. So, here it is.
If some native english speaker could give me some feedback on the translation part, I would greatly appreciate it ^ ^
The prince Antoine de Mayr was carrying his wife Carimall in his arms when they entered in the room.
It was their wedding night; Carimall was gorgeous with her white lace robe, which had, alone, costed a small fortune; they were entering in a prestigious room of a royal castle in order to "consummate the marriage"; and yet, Antoine wasn't happy.
The reason was that their union wasn't a true love story. Antoine had know Carimall for some years and he liked her; yet, they still were marrying themselves so their two powerful families would get closer.
Antoine was feeling he just had lost his freedom and he was engaging, for the rest of his life, in a desperately boring routine.
'You don't look that much enthusismed', Cariamll noticed.
The young man shrugged and forced himself to smile.
'Excuse me', he said. 'The wine. I am a bit tired.'
He kissed his wife. Then, they both lied on an expensive bed canopy.
After they kissed again, Carimall sit down, turning her back to her husband so he could untie the knots of her robe.
'Hum', Antoine said while he was looking at the immaculately white sheets. 'There is something we didn't talk about...'
'Yes ?'
'Personally, I don't really care, but it is important for my parents. You know, there is this ceremony with the sheet, and...'
'Oh', Carimall said.
'So I was wondering... are you virgin?'
'I have a good news', Carimall joyfully said while she was standing up to remove her robe, still turning her back to her husband. 'I am virgin.'
'Oh. Good.'
'But,' Carimall added, 'I also a bad news. I am afraid it won't be that easy to deflower me.'
Antoine wrinkled while Carimall was turning herself. The husband noticed with a surprise that she had between her legs what he hadn't expected a women to have between her legs.
'Oh', he said.
'But again,' Carimall said, 'I also have a good news.'
Antoine raised his eyes toward his wife's face and saw she was smiling, exposing her teeth. What the young man especially noticed was the prominent vampiric canines.
'I think', Carimall said, 'that it is still quite possible that there is some blood on the sheet, after all.'
For a second, the young man rose his eyebrows, looking puzzled. Then, he smiled.
The wedding didn't look as much a desperately boring routine as what he had expected.
jeudi, mars 13 2008
Par Elly le jeudi, mars 13 2008, 13:16 - English
Two years after the brutal murder of Gisberta, a transsexual woman has again been murdered in Portugal. And once again, the media coverage strenghtens transphobia.
The Panteras Rosa launched an international call for action, which I relay hereby.
Two years after the brutal murder of Gisberta, in Oporto, another transsexual woman was murdered and her body placed in a rubble dumpster in the Lisbon area last month.
Other crimes followed, shocking the country. However, the surge of violence cannot hide neither the victims nor the nature of these crimes. This is the case of Luna, 42, partially deaf, of Brazilian origin, for many years resident and worker in Portugal, prostitute at Conde de Redondo area (in Lisbon).
Two years after Gisberta, transsexual people are still targets for hatred and violence based on prejudice and ignorance. The crime is under investigation and under justice secret, so we know very few about its circumstances or about its motivation; we hope the investigation undertaken by the Police can provide answers.
Nevertheless, we know that transphobia kills and that trans people are more prone to suffer violence than the majority. We know prostitution is often a job for those who have no other way of earning a living, and that it is hard to have a gender different from the one your body suggests. We know prejudice and discrimination are pervasive, that ignorance feeds hatred and generates violence. We know the State, society, all of us, have responsibilities towards the deadly victims, and mainly towards all those other people in whose life the fight for survival coexists with fear and the risks that cause it.
Luna was born a woman although her body suggested otherwise; her body, masculine, didn't fit her identity. She was being followed at Hospital de Santa Maria by the multidisciplinary team in charge of helping trans people change their bodies; she had projects, wishes and frustrations just like anyone else. She was dear to some people and maybe wished to go back to Brazil, where her family lives. Luna was a woman who fought against many obstacles and, according to newspapers, died victim of great violence, possibly fed by hatred, prejudice and ignorance. Her body was left in a dumpster, hidden by rubble and dust, as if it was garbage, as if her life had not been worth living.
Like all potential victims, trans people need forms of protection that guarantee equality of opportunities and the possibility of a dignified life. They need, like everyone else, of being able to exercise their rights to the development of personality and to self determination – of being able to freely choose their name; they don't need (nobody does!) identification documents that insist on the use of criteria so voided of real content such as "sex" (even if disguised only as "name" and "justify", e.g., placing a trans woman in a detention cell with men. Trans people need being seen as people with rights and duties, no more and no less than all other people. Trans people in Portugal need the pedagogy of visibility, way beyond the prostitution or night shows circles. And Portugal needs to see these people without prejudice and fear.
Gender identity is subject the State should have already legislated about; this delay aggravates many trans people's living (or survival) conditions. When will the legal amendments that allow the actual exercise of civil rights by transsexual and transgendered people come? When will we have legislation that overcomes many politicians’' retrograding and conservatism and stops to impose petty restrictions? When will we have legislation that stops feeding the daily psychological violence against these people? When will we have legislation that clearly considers that transphobia constitutes aggravating grounds for discrimination, harassment and violence? When will we have a serious commitment towards stopping cases like those of Gisberta and Luna, murdered out of transphobic hatred? When will police forces be provided with more human resources and more and better civic and technical training? When will cooperative approaches substitute the aggressive attitudes lingering among members of the various police forces?
Panteras Rosa – Frente de combate à GayLesBiTransfobia (Pink Panthers – Combat front against GayLesBiTransphobia) reaffirm their commitment towards fighting against transphobia in all of its forms and pay tribute to Luna, prostitute in our city, woman just because!
Lisbon, March 13 2008
That vigils are held, with candles, in special memory of Luna and all of the trans people victim of transphobia.
To be developed by numerous small and big groups in the most (small to big) cities possible.
With banners, just in front of Portuguese embassies or consulates in the cities where they may exist or, for other cities, in squares in front of European ministries, in front of psychiatric hospitals or whichever places contribute to transphobia.
We suggest the following phrases:
Luna trans 42 years old Brazilian, prostitute murdered in Lisbon.
Statistically, how many times more is a trans person in risk of being victim of violence compared to you? And murdered?
According to the context of each country we suggest the phrase:
Stop transphobic laws. How much longer for a law against transphobia?
Or for countries that still haven’t turned transphobia into law:
How much longer for a law against transphobia?
This case is not Portugal specific, it is international and the fight efforts should be done together.
(In practical terms, it should be simpler to organize small groups in different places instead of asking people to mobilize to the Portuguese embassies that are concentrated on the capital cities)
We ask you to publicize this action, to participate in big numbers and to forward testimonials, photos, articles, etc. to panteras.lisboa@gmail.com
After the recent murder of one more transexual woman, Luna, occurred in the area of Lisbon, the media focus on the physical aspect of the victims in the most sensationalist manner - thus making it more important than the murder itself. A few words about the murder follow, as if this is was a clear and natural explanation of the cause of such murder - lingering in the detaileded description of the unusual physical aspect of the victim. At the hands of the media the most important becomes the victim's unusual body, placing the murder on the background.
Speaking - depending on the attempt (or not) not to seem transphobic - of a transsexual with a man's body (a pruddish way to say "with penis", of a man dressed in women's clothes, or of a transvestite with breasts. Some even speak of homophobia.
The picture emerging of such articles is that the victim is a monstrosity displayed to feed the public curiosity, without any respect neither for her gender nor for the intimacy of her body, and giving the impression that it is almost (or even absolutely) normal that these people be murdered.
The other image conveyed in this way is that being trans is wanting to mislead "the world" by using a disguise particularly well arranged to give a misleading appearance of men and women... And if they deceive the world is of course natural that the deceived people react.
This kind of speech from the media is, unfortunately, far from applying only to murder -- it is used in almost all broadcasts, articles, and interviews on trans subjects.
The Portuguese media, with no exception, satisfy also with the description of the trans person’s precarity situation – wether it is on prostitution, drugs, having HIV, no papers, no house – as if these lives were a choice of the victims, describing them hiding that it is transphobia that generates this precarity, and presenting as scandalous not only the “choice” of being trans, but also the choice of the life style, turning the victims into immoral and chocking persons and continuing in this way to promote transphobia, the precarity of the trans lives, and the fact that they are among the persons most likely to suffer agression. The presence of the trans person in the Mental Diseases List, to frequently legitimates the media, when they concede expression to the trans, to credit or discredit it trough persons of the medical corps, reinforcing the idea that the word of a trans has no value for itself.
dimanche, février 3 2008
Par Elly le dimanche, février 3 2008, 14:18 - English
I wrote a post about transsexualism on the revolutionary left BB. Since it is pretty rare that I write in english and I think it could interest some readers of this blog, I copy/paste it here.
---
First, to answer a common argument that "saying you're something doesn't make it true, you are male a female, that's a biological fact": indeed, having a male or female sex is a biological fact, more or less. (Some intersex people who were mutilated at birth so they could be 'male' or female' might object, but on the other hand they are less than 1%, who cares ?socialism is for large proletarian crowds) Being a man or a woman, on the other hand, has pretty much nothing to do with biology. Being called "he" or "she" has nothing to do with your genitals. Human cells aren't blue or pink.
Some people feel better in the gender that is supposedly not the one corresponding to their biological sex. I don't know why. My personal hypothesis is that it's somewhat linked to gender repression : a man must be like this, a woman like that. After years of being told that men behaved a different way than you, it doesn't seem irrational to feel better being a woman. Now wether that does transform into "feeling a woman" or if "feeling a woman" is something which was caused by hormones at birth, or even if it was caused by the apparition of Jesus in a dream, I don't know. And I don't think it's particularly important to know, actually.
Now if you could just say "ok, now I am a woman" and people would respect it, it would be easy. Even if you could actually not say that but you could behave like a woman, I think it would be easier.
The real world is that there are asses who say "you have a penis so even if you say you're a woman, you're a man". There are different levels : it goes from saying that they are tolerant, but still trans(wo)men are not (wo)men, to torturing and murdering trannies that "tricked" them. At the end, it's the same result: there is some very heavy social pressure on trans people so they have a sex which match their gender, or vice-versa.
Hormones and surgery are a solution. It's not the only one (doing your best to be in your assigned gender is another one, as is suicide), but it's a solution. I actually think it's a bad one, but on the other hand it's pretty much the only one.
The fact is, it's not perfect, it has its limits (its surgery and not a magical wand) and so on, but it has the advantages that less people are prone to try to insult or murder you.
And it's then that, instead of analysing why transpeople need to go into surgery, why it becomes so important to them, and, more importantly, what could be done to supress this social pression , we have some lefty or feminist movements that either take a condescending look and explain that it's anti-feminist to have surgery, that it's reactionnary and all this, or at the contrary are completely enthusiast and say that transpeople are subversive per se, which, I think is a bit better since less offensive, but stays quite useless.
I'm not a marxist orthodox but I think that I could use the term "dialectical materialism". I think that, globally there is an oppression, and the answer to opression is submission and resistance. Some transpeople submit and try to be "more (wo)man than a (wo)man", actually reinforcing sexist stereotype ;some resist and struggle. Actually, many do both in their lives, as do workers, homosexual people, women, people of colour or every opressed group.
There is little sense in trying to judge whether it is progressive or reactionnary to work at macdonald to have some bucks, to undergo surgery to have an ID matching your visible gender so you can work at macdonald, to use a name and haircut which sounds and look less "maghrebin" so you can also work at macdonald, or to wear short dress and lipstick so the manager finds you pretty and you can still work at macdonald.
I believe all of these are bad solutions. Now judging people from this is just patronizing, specially when you are respectively rich, cisgender, white or male.
They are not bad solutions because they would be "reactionnary" or something like that, but because they come at a cost for the individual and because they don't really resolve the problem. It's a bit like morphine : it may be necessary to relieve pain, but it won't heal what causes it.
I think the role of revolutionnaries is to show that they are not real solutions, and that there is only a good one : revolution.
I'm not saying to wait until revolution to help workers, trans people, people of colour or women. What I mean is that really fighting for their liberation - our common liberation - imply fighting to radically change the society.
(Now some people may actually want to make hamburgers, undergo SRS, change their first name or be sexy without constraint ; but the only real way to be sure that it is without constraint is to supress the constraint)
And of course, changing this society begins with concrete revendications, e.g. for the transsexuality issue, allowing to have proper ID when it is needed, fighting against discrimination, giving the right to control your body instead of being submitted to paternalist doctors, and so on.
jeudi, décembre 6 2007
Par Elly le jeudi, décembre 6 2007, 16:27 - English
If, globally, the revendications for the rights of trans people start so spread slowly, there is some question which often comes back : "why ?". Why are there trans people ? Why are people unhappy with their biological sex ?
I can't answer to that. Some people do. I don't think they do it well. Usually they are psychiatrists who aren't trans themselves but pretend to know us better than we do, which seems logical since they also say we are mentally sick.
If I had to answer to this global question, I would probably come up with something like "it depends" or "because there are genders", and it wouldn't really be a helpful answer (though I actually like the second one).
However, I am not a psychiatrist but a blogger, which means I only have to talk about my egocentric self.
So the question will rather be "Me, in particular, why am I transgender ?".
It doesn't of course mean that it is a good answer for other people. It doesn't event mean that it will be a good answer for me in some years, since it is my opinion at this time.
So, why am I transgender ?
The reason can be summed in some words : "because I was raised to be a man".
It is not "because I was raised to be a man while I feeled a woman in the inside". While I can tell this sort of thing to a psychiatrist, it doesn't make it true[1]. I wasn't born with some female "soul". The answer is just "because I was raised to be a man".
What I mean is, if I had a vagina and had been raised to be a woman, I think it would be pretty much the same. Not exactly, since I would be ftm (female-to-male) instead of mtf (male-to-female), but I think I woult still be trans.
It is not a question of my soul's gender or nature or whatever.
It's just that gender assignation sucks.
Whether I am forced to wear a dress or forbidden to do so is actually the same thing : I don't have the freedom to choose. Society decides that I have a penis and thus I must be a "he". Society decides that I have a vagina and thus I must be a "she".
Fuck them.
It's political.
It is not only political, because I really dislike being considered as a man, I don't just pretend it in order to be more subversive or something like that. But it is also political. Being trans' is a reaction to the gender coercition.
Of course, that's a theorisation. Sometimes, I just happen to think "ah, if I were a cisgender woman" or simply "ah, if only I didn't have this corpulence and this low 'passability'".
But, I think the real source of this is gender coercition. $$Or even, to be a little provocative, gender totalitarism. Totalitarism sounds extrem, but I heard someone explaining that the difference between a dictature and totalitarism is that dictature imposes its law, while totalitarism goes farther: it requires you to agree with it.
And this is it. The simple fact of not showing love for your assigned gender can cause discrimination, going from some disdaining looks to murder through refusal to hire you.$$ If I sometimes would like to be a "true" woman (instead of wanting to be a transwoman, which is the case most of the time), it isn't because I have a female brain, because my parents forced me to wear dresses when I was a child or because I am some homosexual who doesn't admit it. It is because I am not a man. Oh, yes, I am biologically a male, but all my adolescence and life drove mo to think I was no real man. I don't think there are many who are real men or women. It's just that maybe I was a bit less than others. I wasn't effeminate. I just didn't like this gender. And that was already a problem.
I could have lived with it, I guess. Honestly. I don't live that bad as a man: it justs upsets me, and sometimes a bit more, but I suppose I could cope.
Only, and it is there where it is political, I think I had a choice. Choice between living as a man, not really well but not desperately bad either - I could have compensate with food, movies, video games or prozac - and between living as a trans' with all the problems it can cause be it in the employment or with my family.
The trans' way had two significant advantages: maybe allowing me to feel better, and saying to this damned essentialist, binary system that it could go to hell.
I don't think I would have made the same choice if I hadn't be revolutionnary. It isn't two things I can completely separate.
I acknowledge that there are many trans people who made different choices, or didn't have one. I admit that some people can have felt being of the opposite gender since they were 4 or 5. But I don't think the "reasons" for all transsexuality should be reduced to this. My reasons are a bit different, but I think they are as worthy and legitimate as others.
[1] At the best, you could say that I'm being Lacanian and telling truth trough lies. Or maybe just that I am telling lies.
lundi, octobre 8 2007
Par Elly le lundi, octobre 8 2007, 15:05 - Ludique
(Yeah, since the subject really is of the uttermost importance, I really needed to translate this post and not other ones.)
Birdo,
is a Super Mario Bros
2 character that also appeared in some other titles of the franchise, such as
mario super smash football and that sort of games.
Honnestly, I played Mario 2 at the time, and it wasn't really obvious that the character was a tranny. Yet, in the english booklet there was some note on the character: "He thinks he's a girl and he spits eggs from his mouth. He'd rather be called Birdetta".
I have some difficulties understanding if it was really wanted or not. It would seem that in the following games Birdo was then called "she" but that they want back to "him" in the latest football game featuring Mario.
Personnally, I'm quite sceptical at all this. Ok, you could say it's pretty cool to see a trans character in a video game, especially in 1988. On the other hand, it still is just some strange pink egg-spitter beast. And the booklet's sentence... "He think he's a girl" is typically the sort of sentence that makes me want to hurt its author with some huge pink egg.
Now if you think the tranny pink egg-spiter monster is weird, wait for the continuation.
The other trans character (at least, the only trans character that I heard)
of the 80s is called Poison. 
She appeared in the first Final
Fight and also made some apparitions (without being a playable character) in
some Street Fighters.
If I understood her history correctly, but from what I read things aren't really clear either, Poison wan't supposed to be trans at the beginning, but just a "normal" woman, that is, normal according to fighting video games: really sexy, with more "agility" than "strenght" and, most important, clothes reduced to the minimum: it looks like pixels were expensive at this time (and now, it stills look like, when it comes to female clothes, polygons stay expensive).
However, there was a problem: after being distributed on arcade stations, the game was also supposed to be released on a Nintendo console. At that time, Nintendo's policy was really strict: games were forbidden to contain violence against women (princess sequestration were obviously OK, though).
So, an argument (which actually didn't work) from the game editors was that the character was not a woman, but a non-operated trans.
As on Birdo, I'm a bit sceptical on all this, since I am not even sure the character was really trans. The positive value of a trans character in those condition isn't obvious either. But, on the manner, I think it still was showing some creative bad faith which should be noted :)
Faris is one of the main characters of Final Fantasy V.
and is the captain of a pirate crew.
At the beginning of the game, the other characters think Faris is a man, and Faris indeed lives as a man. It is then revealed that she was dressing as a man to be accepted from the pirates.
After being outed Faris is considered as a woman and she doesn't seem to define herself as a man. Still, it's some interesting example of character since even after that she still stays as she is: she doesn't start wearing female clothes (I think there is a scene in the game where she has to put an evening dress but she doesn't like it and doesn't keep it) and keeps her rude manners. I don't know if she counts as a transgender character but i still remember it as a really cool female character portrayal.
Bridget is a Guilty Gear X character. 
It's a bit the opposite situation of Faris: he's a boy who has to dress as a girl because he has a twin brother and in his village, two twin brothers are bad luck.
While I think it is some improbable story, it's also a playable character in a fighting video game who happens to be transvestite, and I think it's pretty nice.
I don't have the pretention to cover all trans characters. I know there are some other cases: in Chrono Trigger, Flea is a boss who seems to be a transgender ; in Final Fantasy VII the main character, Cloud, must crossdress in order to get in a place, and so on. There are also some examples of characters, specially non-human ones, whose gender isn't really defined.
The global impression I get, however, is that while some games features some more or less (for some, you really have to look at it on the right angle) trans characters, it mostly is for the "exotic" aspect. I also feel that their portrayal sometimes feature some rather transphobic stereotypes ("he think he is a girl", "is that a man or a woman ?"). On the other hand, when I started to look at this (limiting my search to wikipedia) I tought there would be actually less cases, and there is some positive or at least neutral portrayal, so I guess that's not so bad, specially given the sexist aspect of most videogames.
Post-scriptum (added december 14, 2007): Since I blogged this, pictures of Poison and Bridget from this post have been highly referenced in google images and I got lots of refferers from blog posts, etc. which use the image.
And, well...I think it is a bit representative of general transphobia. Takes this one for example, which apparently says that Poison's transgenderism have definitely been confirmed. The commentary is "it's a trap" and "Have fun fapping to "her" in the future.". Because, yeah, guys, being attracted to a cute trans-girl will render you sick, rotten and will destroy your virility; because yeah, trannies are deceiving you.
Too bad I don't have real control on the server where this blog is hosted, I would have loved to display different images for transphobic pages :)
That being said, I found the information interesting: "In North America, Poison is officially a post-op transsexual. But in Japan, she simply tucks her business away in order to look like a girl". So, we already had Schrodinger's cat which was be both alive and dead at same time; now we have Poison who is both "pre-op" and "post-op" at the same time :)
mardi, septembre 11 2007
Par Elly le mardi, septembre 11 2007, 14:53 - Politique
(English translation of a previous entry in french)
(Ok, this is my first serious post in english, and it is not as easy as I thought it would be. I hope I don't do too many mistakes, but I am not at ease with the tems. It's pretty easy to know what a term means, but much more difficult to see the connotations. I hope what I meant is still undertandable.)
In october there will be a march for transgender and transsexual visibility in Paris (saturday 6th) and Barcelona (sundayt 7th), whose main revendication is the depsychiatrization of trans' people.
Indeed, trans' people are currently considered as mentally ill. If you want to be correctly taken in charge by social security [1] you need, in order to make a transition, to go throug "official teams" whose psychiatrist will determine if the person is "really" transsexual or not, after a process which is sometimes very long (various years).
ID change is also a real difficulty, since you have to see a judge, either to change first name or the sex mention. In the late case, having undergone a so-called "Sex Reassignement Surgery" is mandatory.
The depsychiatrization revendication thus does not only consist in removing transsexuality (or "gender dysphoria") from the World Health Organization list of mental illness, but also and mainly in giving the right for everybody to do what they want with their body without having to justify to psychiatrists.
Beyond these short-term and urgent revendications, I think it is also important to re-think the gender binarity imposed by our society : if you have a penis, you are necessarily a man, you have to be attracted to women ; if you have a vagina, you are necessarily a woman, you have to be attracted to men.
In itself, I think it is just stupid ; but it becomes criminal when, in order to maintain this binarity at all cost, intersex babies are mutilated so they get a penis or a vagina and not something between the two ; when trans' people are denied the right to exist in the felt gender ; when lesbian, gay and bi people are still denied some right such as marriage and adoption ; when women are given less valorised roles and maintained in precarity ; and when, in a larger manner, all people who are not white heterosexual masculine male men suffer from not being, or not being enough white, heterosexual, masculine, male, or man.
[1] What I say here is France-centric. Sorry. But I think that in at least some other european countries (and proably US/Canada too) things are pretty similar, I guess.
jeudi, août 23 2007
Par Elly le jeudi, août 23 2007, 02:27 - Inclassable
Frow now on I'd like to have some posts in english. Indeed, while I talk from France and generally of the situation in France, I think some posts could interest non-francophone people.
However this post, while in english, is mainly here to test whether or not it is possible to have a multilingual interface with this system.
Well, it looks like it is more or less working: the english posts can be found here, while the french can be found there. However I didn't succeed in allowing to have the interface in english.
lundi, février 27 2006
Par Elly le lundi, février 27 2006, 21:23 - English
The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it is theirs. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes- between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.
Quellcrist Falconer, Things You Should Have Learned by Now. Volume II
(Richard Morgan, Altered Carbon)