Tilly Q sent me this commentary on the spoonboy “sexy dreams” video and the conversation that surrounded it and asked if i would post it here. i’ve been archiving the conversation around the video here and some of that conversation is referenced below. if you’d like to get in touch with Tilly, her e-mail address is tillyqtillyq@gmail.com.
So I get the feeling that this conversation might’ve already come and went, but I still want to weigh in a bit. First, a bit about me, I’m a white trans woman who currently lives in a place that calls itself names like “the dyke capital of the world” of course what that really means is it’s the cis white upper-class dyke capital of the world, and I share many of those identities and privileges. I’m white and I have lots of class privilege, meaning, among other things, I’ve had access to a private college education (where I learned to use words like privilege, oppression, trans* etc), and when I can’t find any jobs that will hire a trans woman I can still get financial support from my family and survive comfortably. Even still, in this “dyke capital” I often feel super isolated and unwelcome, because although I am a dyke, other dykes don’t always believe it. Incidentally, this place which is NOT accepting/welcoming of me is also often way accepting of (white) trans men and (white) trans masculine genderqueer people.
I feel this is important to talk about because looking at the criticisms and comments so far, most folks are just using words like genderqueer and trans* to describe themselves, but I get the feeling that only transmasculine people were criticizing the song. I get this mostly cuz’ve the talk about binders and the familiar cursing spoonboy as a cis man (which, keep in mind, spoonboy has said isn’t actually an identity that spoonboy holds).
My feelings and I have a lot of ‘em:
To me, this song has been very important thru out my life. When I was a boy, it was a song that I would listen to over and over again, with the volume turned as low as I could to still hear it without being afraid my parents might hear it as well. I didn’t know what it meant to me back then, but it was a song that let me understand my deeply hidden gender dysphoria and it was a song that had someone who sounded like me singing about gender confusion, a topic I couldn’t find the words to talk about with my own voice. I sang along to it a lot.
I was unaware of the video, but found it yesterday and saw all this controversy about it. I got really worried. I was like ‘OMG this music video will be offensive and make me hate the song’, but then I watched it. For me, the video was fine, it seemed silly and playful, but it didn’t at all feel like trans people were the butt of the joke (how rare!). I think it’s fun to be silly with such an intense thing as gender! Afterward, I read thru all of the criticisms and saw some really valid points there.
It sounds like it was way hard for folks who experience gender dysphoria that they deal w/ using binders to see the part with the binder, I feel that makes soo much sense, and I missed it because that’s not part of my everyday dysphoria. I hope the trigger warning helps people later on.
I want to talk about the things that some of the critics said about appropriation. First, from my own experience, it took me months after I knew I was trans to admit it to myself, because I kept saying “I don’t want to appropriate anyone else’s experience, how do I know I’m reallly trans*?” Especially thinking I was a cis boy in dykeworld (which supports trans boys without question…). Something about being hyper critical of cis men felt like this community wasn’t giving me the possibility of having a complex gender. When I found the strength to explore that gender without much support from my community, I found out that I am trans. When I went outside with a dress, at the in between phase where I didn’t know if I a was a boy or a girl, whatever my identity was, I was always putting myself in emotional and physical danger. Notice how at the end of spoonboy’s description of the video they had to tell people not to sexualize them in the video. That is a transfeminine problem, whatever spoonboy’s identity is.
The other thing I want to address relates to what I read in the critiques and also what I read in lizz mazer’s post. Everyone talked about appropriation a lot, but I wanted to bring up something which I have been trying to learn that complicates things. Basically, can we keep in mind that different oppressions like race and gender, although they are linked, are NOT the same and can NOT be talked about in the same way. Personally the first time I ever heard the word appropriation was about cultural appropriation, and that’s where I think it’s origin in radical communities is (if not, plz correct me). I think that for a lot of people who are oppressed by racism, white people culturally appropriating is always harmful. No ‘understanding each other better,’ no ‘doing it with respect’. We, (white people) still do it a lot, but we can remember that it causes harm and we can work on it. I’m getting this from things that I’ve heard folks of color say, and I hope I am not misinterpreting.
This stark barrier, as I understand it is because there is a long history of cultural appropriation being used as part of colonialism. I do not think this rings true for gender. I do not think there is a long history of cis people appropriating trans people’s experiences (there are comedy movies in which cis men play people like me and I’m the butt of the joke, but I don’t think that compares to the history of cultural appropriation in colonialism). I do not think it is possible to appropriate gender, and it feels really unfair to use a word like “appropriate,” which I think is a word that holds power because cultural appropriation can be so harmful, to serve a white trans interest. Please also question words like cis supremacy. Cissexism does not work just like racism, and white trans people have a lot of work to do working through our racisms.
Back to the video, like I just said: to me, appropriation of gender identity is a non-thing. I saw spoonboy walking around public places as a lady and all I was thinking was ‘Aw they look really pretty.’ I also just want to bring up the way that spoonboy kept being criticized as a cis male. I have to admit that while I’m not a man-hater, I don’t really trust men a lot of the time. That said, my community (remember dykeworld) can be super critical of cis men. To me, isolating cis men is isolating potential transfeminine people. For my community and lots of genderqueer/trans communities, trans men can get away with being much more harmful than cis men can, and still be loved by the community. This is transmisogyny and it creates a community where trans woman and other transfeminine people feel isolated and unsupported. Masculinity is violent to people growing up male, especially if those people do not fit the box of male as we were supposed to.
The part that really hurt me in the video is some of the lyrics of the song, but I’m happy they’re in the song all the same. The lines are:
me and Jenny had a good time laughing,
taking off our clothes to explore each other’s bodies,
she said I don’t wanna disappoint you,
but you could never be my girrrll.
I sing along with them all the time because the hurt they cause is also validating. They hurt because I’ve heard those words (maybe not exactly) from my community of dykes. I know that as trans as I am, because of my genitals, there are ways in which I may never get to be accepted as a dyke, there are many dykes that I could fall in love with, but I know that I could never be their girl (until they work thru some trans misogynist baggage). This is because of my community’s own failings, and I am responding to these critiques because I think that this conversation here is an example of that same exclusion that surrounds me.
I’m happy this song exists and I’m happy the video exists (though I get less love feelings from it than from the song itself, tbh). I get that as trans people we always have to be prepared for someone to do something harmful to us, but please leave space for allowing everyone to explore their own genders, I think we’ll all be better for it.
Anonymous asked: I AM SO EXCITED FOR SUNDAY
i know, right! (i assume you are talking about this:)
SUNDAY, MAY 19
doors 9pm | tickets $15
TITUS ANDRONICUS
nj springsteen punk - http://www.titusandronicus.net/
THE SO SO GLOS
brooklyn garage pop - http://www.thesosoglos.com/
THE MAX LEVINE ENSEMBLE
dc awkward punk pop - http://themaxlevineensemble.bandcamp.com/
@ THE BLACK CAT
1811 14th st. NW
tickets - http://www.ticketalternative.com/Events/22977.aspx
Anonymous asked: you've been doing a lot of these lately so i'd like to ask if you could say something about "this is war"?
“this is war” is about how fighting against a status quo will always be perceived as violent and aggressive, even when that status quo itself is a culture built on violence and aggression.
it’s about how in not challenging that status quo, we passively accept that violence and endorse it implicitly. we may not agree with the drone attacks that the u.s. regularly carries out against civilians in the middle east, but we are paying for them with our tax dollars. we may not agree with the kind of economic and psychological violence that capitalism enacts on us daily, but we still need to work to pay rent, we still buy cereal that’s produced by a conglomerate that is also a weapons manufacturer. there is already a war happening between the interests of those who hold power and the rest of us, and unless we decidedly take action against it, we are already acting on behalf of the oppressors. we take part in a system that is set up to benefit them.
the u.s. is waging war against us constantly and taking action against imperialism and capitalism is self defense, not aggressive violence. people are starving and kicked out of their homes because of a government and economy that protects the financial industry before it helps its own citizens. that is violence, not the actions that are taken to challenge that status quo. that’s what the song is about.
Anonymous asked: You mention nihilism in more than one song, and I wonder what your thoughts are on the topic of nihilism.
against essentialism. i pick and choose my negations. in those terms, i find nihilism alternately useful and self-defeating.
Anonymous asked: Could you talk a bit about "Hegemonic Blowfish"?
SUNDAY, MAY 19
doors 9pm | tickets $15
TITUS ANDRONICUS
nj springsteen punk - http://www.titusandronicus.net/
THE SO SO GLOS
brooklyn garage pop - http://www.thesosoglos.com/
THE MAX LEVINE ENSEMBLE
dc awkward punk pop - http://themaxlevineensemble.bandcamp.com/
@ THE BLACK CAT
1811 14th st. NW
tickets - http://www.ticketalternative.com/Events/22977.aspx
this is gonna be a lot of fun! you might need a ticket. just sayin.
Animating.
bepstein, looking kinda sketchy.
(via themaxlevineensemble)
anybody else getting a ton of spam every day about “expanding garden hoses?” strangely, it’s not a euphemism, these e-mails are actually selling garden hoses.
i was literally this close to taylor swift this weekend.
yes, she touched my hand. yes, my guitar playing just got 100 times more country/pop/dubstep. yer gonna like it.
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