Being propositioned ... or flirted with at a conference will not make most women feel devalued. Being propositioned several times, or feeling like most men only approach you for the purpose of getting in your pants, can.This reminds me of an anecdote, which may seem only tangentially related. I have a friend who one time told me about her experiences looking for women. She said that she had been rejected many times because she is trans. This is not too surprising, because plenty of lesbians and bisexuals are transphobic. And even among people who are not openly transphobic, many of them still feel uncomfortable actually dating transgender people.
And I, ever the skeptical thinker, commented that in any particular case (excluding cases where people were being openly transphobic), there was no way of knowing that people were rejecting her because she was trans. People could just be disinterested for whatever reason, and it doesn't even necessarily reflect on her.
But she explained to me, individual cases may be uncertain, but if you look at the whole series of rejections, it's reasonable to claim that some of them were caused by transphobia, though we may not know which ones.
I had been thinking of it superficially, looking at an individual case, weighing the evidence for and against transphobia, and I concluded it was uncertain. But I should have thought about the deeper implications. What do you actually do with this uncertainty? Will you just sit back and take it? Hope that everyone involved has good intentions, rather than concealing bad ones?
The uncertainty just makes it worse. When every case is uncertain, you have no one in particular to blame. You can't complain about any particular case without people dismissing the case as uncertain. You can't complain about rejection, because by itself there is absolutely nothing wrong with rejecting a trans person. The problem is in the pattern.
Similarly, by itself there is absolutely nothing wrong with hitting on a woman. There are more or less awkward ways to hit on people, but if it were just a one-time thing, I think most women could tolerate being hit on in even the most awkward situation. The problem is in the pattern.
And yet, every time the internet blows up over sexism, the focus is on a single case study. What's up with that?
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6 comments:
Brilliant post. And, thinking about it, it's not an SJ thing, with commenters in the atheosphere, saying 'Well, was elevatorgate man REALLY that bad? There are so many unknowns. Let me speculate...'.
It's also a problem I have with how the media/politics machine handles things. When, for example, social workers mess up (picking the example closest to the top of my head), they don't say 'Lets look at the patterns. Social workers mess up in _% of cases, this is what could solve a lot of that', they pick one case and say 'This is OUTRAGEOUS! How does the government propose to stop this one case happening again?!' and then all the journalists and politicians massively overanalyse the precise facts of that one case for weeks. And I think a lot of people really don't realise that these sorts of things aren't stand-alone stories. Take that onto the internet, where over-analysis and anecdata reign supreme, and you've got a pretty painful experience.
There would be ways to know she was rejected for being trans; for instance, maybe she was rejected shortly after disclosing her trans status, or perhaps the person rejecting her actively told her that they couldn't be with a trans person. Which would suck, but it has happened. Of course knowing nothing about the details of your friend's rejections, I have no idea if this is even remotely applicable.
And even among people who are not openly transphobic, many of them still feel uncomfortable actually dating transgender people.
Even if it were absolutely true, why should this be a problem? Sexual affinity is very deeply personal; I don't see it as any kind of right that anyone ought to be attracted to anyone else for any reason.
Some trans guy,
It was indeed applicable to some of her experiences, but not all of them.
Larry,
That's true, but a lot of the time people aren't interested in trans people because of beliefs that happen to be false. For instance, a person may be attracted to a trans individual, but refuse to act on it because of the trans status (one person had said exactly that). This isn't always the case though, and that's where the uncertainty comes in.
The solution, of course, is not for people to express interest when they have none, but for people to not be transphobic in the first place and then follow their own will.
A lot of the time people aren't interested in trans people because of beliefs that happen to be false. For instance, a person may be attracted to a trans individual, but refuse to act on it because of the trans status.
I don't see how that's an example of a false belief. If I'm otherwise attracted to a person, but not attracted because they are trans, and they really are trans, where's the false belief?
There are, for example, some smart, kind, good-looking people who are religious; I might well be otherwise attracted to a person until I find out she is religious. Would I then be laboring under a false belief?
I don't like religion, I find it very unattractive, but I don't think I'm "bigoted" per se against religious people: I don't think they are inherently or ineluctably inferior, and I believe they warrant all ordinary civil rights.
Oh, I didn't mean that as an example of a specific false belief, just an example where false beliefs may play a role. Examples of false beliefs would be along the lines of "transwomen are really men", and so forth.
I'm trying not to say too much more than this, because I'm not really an expert on trans issues.
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