Machatunim

I had wanted to see S Bear Bergman speak at Bar Wotever, where I was sure he would be far queerer and less 'family friendly' than he would be at JW3, a Jewish community centre in North West London. But I was away for that event, so off to JW3 I went, along with another queer Jew of my acquaintance who was in a similar position, although more worried than I about drinking the tea of the occupation. (It was Oscars night at JW3, and my friend and I were surrounded by opulently dressed, exquisitely-groomed Jews who politely skimmed their eyes over us, the raggedy queers drinking g&t and peppermint tea in their midst. Apparently there was a real Oscar statue there, but I didn't see it.)

There were maybe 40 people in attendance, and I assumed that people had taken the write-up seriously, and brought their parents and grandparents to the event. It was nice, I thought. Bear's storytelling was marvellous, of course, and there was a lovely jumble of queerness, Jewishness and family in every story. 

It wasn't until the q&a at the end that things went awry. The very first question was "So ... you mentioned the word 'transsexual'. What ... er ... can you ... say more about that?" Bear answered that he is transsexual, and apologised (in a gloriously polite 'sorry not sorry' way) for not including the information as part of his introduction. Then he quipped that the line about his grandma asking him, as a youth, if he had a boyfriend yet, would have made a lot more sense with this information, and something about the amount of head-nodding in the room must have given the game away.

On going round the room, Bear discovered that there were 3 separate groups of people who had had no idea what they were coming to: about half the audience in total. At least one of the groups was a work outing. And in another group, one man explained their presence thusly: "Well, it was this or Wolf of Wall Street."

Another man, sitting right at the back, tried very hard to be polite as he explained that queer means homosexual, and that we don't really use the word here, as it's derogatory. (Outraged gestures no it doesn't! yes we bloody do! from the queers in attendance.)

Bear, to his credit, handled the whole thing tremendously. He was nothing but polite and sympathetic to the confused and they, for their part, were mostly respectful and seemed genuinely interested. There were some awkward questions ("So how long ago were you a woman?") but Bear handled them all with aplomb, and at the end, while the queer side of the audience huddled together to recuperate, it was wonderful to see that the other half of the audience had gathered around Bear. I was in the other half, of course, but I hope they were being nice to him. Maybe apologising a bit, or asking more questions, or just getting to know him.

On our side of the room, we were conducting shaky post-match analysis. I don't think I was alone in finding the q&a quite traumatic: for much of it I was near hysterical with a laughter which wasn't always happy, and others were acting similarly; I can't know their feelings, of course, but my companion confessed afterwards that she had felt the same. After things had calmed down, I found myself so shaky and short of breath that I recognised the sensation of an anxiety attack. Texting each other afterwards, S and I discussed the strange feeling of 'coming down' that we were both experiencing; S said her immediate response had been to want to get drunk, and that she knew she'd feel very tired soon. That's not how I processed it, but it certainly feels familiar! In the immediate aftermath, there was a feeling of euphoria amongst the leftover queers - we were laughing and talking, greeting old and new friends, bonding in a way that reflected the strange intimacy of what had just happened. I'm not overstating the post-traumatic feeling, for myself at least. It felt like we'd survived something together.

The leftover queers

And that brings me to machatunim. Properly, this Yiddish word means 'the parents of your child's spouse', but in his book Blood, marriage, wine and glitter, Bear expands it to refer to a kind of 'chosen family' which resonates particularly with his queerness: whilst queers might not have uncomplicated access to the traditional family framework that most people operate within, in its place we can access a different kind of family - a deliberate family. Bear's most recent book is all about this kind of family: mixed in with tales of his parents and grandparents and brother are stories about people tied to him not by blood but by love and kindness and choosing - wine and glitter, in fact. I've written before about the homo head nod, the sense of safety and support that can come out of being similarly marginalised, and this is what machatunim means to me. 

It means silent, fleeting recognition on the street, and heartfelt welcome in a hug. It means webs of connectivity across facebook and tumblr and gay bars and queer book readings. It means the shaky, euphoric release felt as we exchanged with one another broken fragments of the strange thing that we'd experienced. The ease with which we opened up. Becoming more than a handful of strangers in an anonymous room. Becoming, just for a moment, family.

Context Is(n't) Everything

Just found this in the Draft folder. Many moons out of date, and clearly unfinished, but I actually didn't mind my own voice in it, which is rare enough that I'm going to publish it anyway.

So, that Suzanne Moore, eh? She wrote a little article in the New Statesman, and all hell has broken loose. There are accusations of Islamophobia and language policing, there is sympathy from Caitlin Moran and Frankie Boyle, and there are defensive responses from Moore herself as well as the Julies Burchill and  Bindel (two people that everyone wants on their team). There are also a lot of responses from within the blogosphere; some are thoughtful, and some, like this one, are less so.

I think we can all agree that the attempts by Burchill and Bindel are nothing more than disgusting hate speech doubling down on Moore's own exposed hatred of transsexuality. For me, though, it's the subtler support that is the most upsetting.

I don't want to pick on Stella Duffy, but her argument seems to boil down to her feeling sad that she is now scared to say "trans", even though she ought to be exempt from criticism because 20 years ago she wrote a "lovely, loving, sympathetic trans character". She seems to be proud of the fact that she, a professional LGBT-focussed writer (by which I mean LG-focussed), wrote a trans character twenty years ago. Is this like the I-have-black-friends approach? Or its lesser-know cousin, the my-best-friend-in-nursery-school-was-black? As if the longer-ago something happened, the better your claim to progressiveness is. I see where Duffy's trying to go with this, but really she's just highlighting the vast disconnect between how much insight she has into transgender issues and how much insight she thinks she has. That in itself speaks volumes, and doesn't even take into account the fact that Duffy claims to be "the only person [she] know[s]" who has written such a character. I don't even know where to start with that. Suffice to say, Duffy is not the expert that she thinks she is. And perhaps she ought to hesitate before speaking on trans issues, particularly when "speaking on trans issues" means "coming to the defence of an unapologetic transphobe".

Now, for a more nuanced take on the issue, take a look at Pissers vs Wankers: The state of left-wing feminist debate?. I'm going to throw myself into the quoted circle jerk here, and to hell with the consequences. Here's a quote from glosswitch's worryingly relevant post:

"I wouldn’t have known the word “transsexual” alone could offend. I might have used it – I probably have – in a different context. Now I won’t. But if I were called out on it, I might have thrown a strop."

I think the point about this is that although the word 'transsexual' alone is often used in a purely descriptive (although outdated) manner, one's use of it can be something of a red flag, pointing to worrying attitudes towards trans people (almost always, and not at all coincidentally, trans women).

Partly this is because of the fact that it's outdated: generally, if one has engaged with trans issues at all over the past decade, one knows that the word "transsexual" now has a much more specific meaning and isn't used as a catch-all, having been replaced (ish) by transgender. So I generally assume that if someone uses "transsexual" as a catch-all or a punchline, they haven't bothered to engage with current trans issues and debates, which can be (although isn't always) a red flag.

Secondly, Moore's use of it ("a Brazilian transsexual") is indicative of some nasty attitudes behind the flippancy. For me, using "a transsexual" is unpleasant (like calling people "gays" or "blacks"), and the word "Brazilian" simply reinforces the idea that Moore has only one stock image of transgender people, and it just happens to be the most outdated, racist one of them all (bar perhaps going with the Thai version of the same 'joke').

And the point about context is important. The word "transsexual" is innocently descriptive in certain contexts, and is wildly offensive in others. An article about gender and feminism and the beauty myth and anger is not an innocent context for a throwaway one-liner about "a Brazilian transsexual". 

In my opinion, people's ears pricked up when they caught that usage of a word that isn't always on its own offensive, but can be when used in a certain way. Those of us who have to be alert to transphobia may have picked up on those little signals, and prodded a little, and unhappily discovered the seething pit of anger and disgust and condescension that lies beneath. That, sadly, isn't uncommon. It's like hearing the word "homosexual": inoffensive in itself, but often indicative of offensive attitudes.

Context is everything, but some words create their own context, and use of them can be a handy warning that someone is about to blow your mind with their factually inaccurate, morally indefensible "opnions". They'll probably also be quick to tell you that everyone is entitled to their opinion, and that haven't you heard of free speech?

I see you

Queers and weirdos can spot me a mile away and for some I’m a safe space to gush about a secret girlfriend or the good old “I see you, you see me” homo head nod.  The speakeasy undertones of my queer existence are so badass, I love the code-switching and the acknowledgment of my existence from others like me.

An article popped up the other day and this bit jumped out at me. It's a great article - nuanced and perceptive and far-reaching - and there's a lot of it that I can relate to. Words for clothes aren't always foolproof, so I don't know if leggings are the same thing as skinny jeans (they could be jeggings, which I think are slightly different?), but I definitely get the point. Figure-hugging bottoms, whether they be skinny jeans or jeggings or 'yoga pants' or (good lord) meggings, can be a minefield to navigate gender presentation in. Luckily for me, I live in a city where people of all genders and sexualities wear the stupid things, and that's probably why it wasn't a huge deal for me when I bought my first ever pair last summer. I loved them (I have two more pairs now) although that much figure-hugging took some getting used to. Angsty little queer that I am, I can make a big deal out of anything, particularly clothing, so you know skinnies can't be that much of an issue if my main takeaway is "super comfy, great for drawing attention to amazing shoes and colour-pop socks, and I can get away with wearing them at work".

(Who ever thought I'd care about socks and how they go with my outfit? Amazing.)

Anyway. My point (I don't really have one) is the quote above. ""I see you, you see me" homo head nod." Now, I'm not a homo, but that head nod? I am all about that. Luckily for me (again) I live in a city that's full to the brim of queers of various stripes, and god, sometimes I live for that head nod. There's zero queerness in my new industry, but out and about at lunchtime and in the evenings, we're everywhere. Yesterday I shared a bench outside a coffee shop with one of them, and although we didn't even really look at each other, and not a word was said, that fleeting moment as our eyes met when I got up to go was unmistakeable.

You know that moment of fizzing connection you feel when you flirt with a stranger? Not flirting like witty repartee and flipping your hair, but flirting like an extra moment of eye contact or a slight smile across a room? Recognition. A secret, sparkling pulse of promise. It's like that, but quieter. Comfortable, and comforting. Recognition - allyship. I got you.

I love being a safe space for the secret-girlfriend-gushing, or the "so, how do you know you're ... ?" tentative push for understanding, but what I love most of all is the quiet camaraderie of the homo head nod. I got you. We're here.