Recent questions related to queer topics
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2014 4:03 pm
I'm in an extremely grouchy place today, which is why I'm posting here and not in "Reader Response." This weekend was the reunion of the super-conservative side of my family and I'm in an uncomfortably grumpy mood toward the Church (I've officially decided to resign my membership rather than continuing on in less-active anonymity). Please do me a kindness and try to remember how I usually am, with my well-reasoned and charitable responses. I am not in the mood today.
This rant is not directed at the answers to any of the questions that I mention, as I've hardly been able to summon the patience to read or even skim the responses. It is directed solely at the questions themselves.
Who says something has to make you feel completely morally comfortable in order for you to show support to the people you love, especially the passive kind of support represented in attending a wedding? Why would you need to be able to put your complete stamp of moral approval on something in order to communicate that you are happy that someone else is happy? Why do you have such highfalutin ideas about your personal judgments? It's not a command to march in a demonstration for equal marriage rights; it's a wedding invitation. If you want to go then go, and if you don't want to go then don't. But if you're going to spend the entire affair uncomfortably puzzling over whether your attendance means you have made some ungodly pledge of approval, DON'T GO. The couple should get to enjoy their day and their happiness without your disapproval, however subtle. Attending someone's wedding means that you care enough about that person to dress up and spend a few hours of your weekend at yet another long, predictable party punctuated by a chocolate fountain and cake cutting in order to demonstrate that you love them and care that they are happy. It does not mean that you approve of every one of their life decisions or even of the union itself. Otherwise, I could not have attended many of the receptions I have attended in my life, including one of my best BYU friends. She met her husband while he was in town for a mission reunion and they never, in their six weeks of dating or two months of engagement, lived in the same state. He also would not move up to Provo for a semester while they continued to date because he didn't want to do that "in case it didn't work out." She was happy, and so I went to the wedding and then supported her through her tearful initial years of marriage. Get off your high horse.
And oh the trans* questions of late. Until you can't use either bathroom without fearing for your safety (as you've been violently pulled out of the one designated for use by you birth sex after being judged to not belong there), you probably shouldn't focus on your worry that laws meant to protect trans* people will allow scary straight, cisgender men to don a skirt in hopes of sneaking a peak at your unclothed excreting form. (Why are we afraid of men anyhow?) I can guarantee you that people who might sneak into the bathroom of the opposite sex for that sort of voyeurism would not be deterred by any laws. By the time it gets to that level for someone, they are going to do what they are going to do, and they don't need to fake a trans* identity to do it. Besides, in your fear, I think you're thinking too small. What about the lesbians and other queer women (like me) who already have access to female bathrooms, free and clear? How do you know they aren't leering at you? Maybe you've moved past that kind of extreme homophobia and have moved on to transphobia (give it 20 years and check back with me) or you forget about us queer women sometimes (you know a queer woman, whether you know it or not).
And as for the question whether someone can really be trans*, why anonymously ask this question to a whole bunch of Mormon cisgender folks? (Not that there's anything wrong with being Mormon or cisgender, obviously.) Why not go meet a trans* person (or several trans* people!) and ask them about their experience and judge for yourself? Nobody who is cisgender, including me, really understands what it is like to be transgender. What are you afraid of?
This rant is not directed at the answers to any of the questions that I mention, as I've hardly been able to summon the patience to read or even skim the responses. It is directed solely at the questions themselves.
Who says something has to make you feel completely morally comfortable in order for you to show support to the people you love, especially the passive kind of support represented in attending a wedding? Why would you need to be able to put your complete stamp of moral approval on something in order to communicate that you are happy that someone else is happy? Why do you have such highfalutin ideas about your personal judgments? It's not a command to march in a demonstration for equal marriage rights; it's a wedding invitation. If you want to go then go, and if you don't want to go then don't. But if you're going to spend the entire affair uncomfortably puzzling over whether your attendance means you have made some ungodly pledge of approval, DON'T GO. The couple should get to enjoy their day and their happiness without your disapproval, however subtle. Attending someone's wedding means that you care enough about that person to dress up and spend a few hours of your weekend at yet another long, predictable party punctuated by a chocolate fountain and cake cutting in order to demonstrate that you love them and care that they are happy. It does not mean that you approve of every one of their life decisions or even of the union itself. Otherwise, I could not have attended many of the receptions I have attended in my life, including one of my best BYU friends. She met her husband while he was in town for a mission reunion and they never, in their six weeks of dating or two months of engagement, lived in the same state. He also would not move up to Provo for a semester while they continued to date because he didn't want to do that "in case it didn't work out." She was happy, and so I went to the wedding and then supported her through her tearful initial years of marriage. Get off your high horse.
And oh the trans* questions of late. Until you can't use either bathroom without fearing for your safety (as you've been violently pulled out of the one designated for use by you birth sex after being judged to not belong there), you probably shouldn't focus on your worry that laws meant to protect trans* people will allow scary straight, cisgender men to don a skirt in hopes of sneaking a peak at your unclothed excreting form. (Why are we afraid of men anyhow?) I can guarantee you that people who might sneak into the bathroom of the opposite sex for that sort of voyeurism would not be deterred by any laws. By the time it gets to that level for someone, they are going to do what they are going to do, and they don't need to fake a trans* identity to do it. Besides, in your fear, I think you're thinking too small. What about the lesbians and other queer women (like me) who already have access to female bathrooms, free and clear? How do you know they aren't leering at you? Maybe you've moved past that kind of extreme homophobia and have moved on to transphobia (give it 20 years and check back with me) or you forget about us queer women sometimes (you know a queer woman, whether you know it or not).
And as for the question whether someone can really be trans*, why anonymously ask this question to a whole bunch of Mormon cisgender folks? (Not that there's anything wrong with being Mormon or cisgender, obviously.) Why not go meet a trans* person (or several trans* people!) and ask them about their experience and judge for yourself? Nobody who is cisgender, including me, really understands what it is like to be transgender. What are you afraid of?