A Victory in Trans* Legitimacy

When you’re not part of a marginalized group then there are certain things that you may take for granted; things that may seem commonplace or trivial, but really aren’t if you have certain kinds of identities that restrict your access to those “simple” things.

One of these things is safe and accurate healthcare. Do you ever have anxiety about a doctor’s appointment because you don’t want to deal with potential discrimination? What if they’re dismissive about a problem that you bring up because they don’t “understand” it? I mean, how do you know they’ve been trained to handle someone with your identity?

This week, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a statement addressing these fears from the trans* community and pushing for doctors to provide adequate services for individuals with these identities. Part of the reason for this improvement  is a discrimination survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force that found “nearly 30% of transgender and gender-nonconforming patients postpone care due to discrimination concerns.” The ACOG is now expecting its doctors the be knowledgeable of the health issues  that trans* individuals face. A Denver ob-gyn  sums up well what type of impact these changes implicate: “[b]y increasing the number of ob-gyns providing care to transgender patients, we can help improve the overall health of the transgender community.”

by Che J. Hatter

The Power of WMST - Reflection by WMST 202 student Faith Benson

I have always been interested in women's studies and issues, so taking the class was a no brainer. And it's true, most people who set foot in the center are people who are already feminists or aware of women's studies. However, taking WMST 202 last year with Prof Loe really changed me so I can't imagine what kind of effect the class can have on someone totally indifferent to the subject. So I asked Prof Loe to refer a student in her class this semester who experienced just that:

I enrolled in Women's Studies this semester largely because it was the only class I could get into during registration. My attitude towards feminism has always been passive at least, if not strongly anti-feminist. I was dreading a semester full of man-hating women telling me to burn my bras, stop listening to Beyonce and (God forbid) chop off all of my hair. I did not want to talk about how men are the evil race or how my actions perpetuate sexism. As a matter of fact, I did not want to address that sexism existed at all.

 

However, as the semester progressed, Women's Studies quickly became my favorite class. I was able to candidly share my thoughts about what it means to be a woman, especially at Colgate, without feeling like I would be labled a man-hating feminist. I began working events at the Women's Studies Center into my weekly schedule, and they were often what I looked forward to the most during the week.

 

One of the major turning points for me during the semester happened around midterms in a different class of mine. The class was having a discussion about the role of a woman in one of the texts we read, and I was very outspoken (as I always am) about the ways in which she was oppressed by the patriarchal society that was present in the storyline. After class, one of my classmates approached me and said, "Wow, Faith, I didn't know that you were such a feminist until now." I had a minor mental breakdown after that - what was happening to me?! Was I really stepping to the bad side and standing with the feminists?

 

After this experience, I was home for Thanksgiving break and spending time with my six best friends from home, all of whom are male. I told them what my classmate said to me and how I was terrified that I was being converted to feminism. I thought that they, of all people, would be able to feel my pain. However, they all seemed extremely confused. They told me that they had all thought of me as not only a feminist, but an OUTSPOKEN one since second grade when I made them read the chapter in our history book about women's suffrage. They then proceeded to recount every incident in our lives that proved me to be a feminist. How could these six men know more about what feminism truly is at the heart than I as a woman did? They made me understand that I had been so blinded by all of the stereotypes surrounding feminism that I couldn't see how I was defining it for myself. Taking a class in Women's Studies made me realize that it isn't feminists who are wrong, but instead their false portrayals; most people would sympathize with the feminist fight if they only knew what it was.

 

I am now proud to say that I can call myself a feminist without feeling at all guilty or ashamed, and I am working on building a Center for Women's Empowerment in South Sudan through my non-profit called The Women's Worth Project. Taking Women's Studies at Colgate has truly changed my life.

by Faith Benson

- posted by Catherine Yeh

12/6 BB Response: Body Talk: Messages Behind Mainstream Dance Moves

Today's brown bag was certainly different than most others, taking place in Ryan 212 instead of the Center.  Instead of a presentation per se, the attendees participated by doing dance moves as instructed by Tehmekah MacPherson '02 to show how we use our bodies to communicate and the gendered aspects of these communications.

As a trans woman, I'm very aware of body epistemology: what do we know about people and how from the way they are bodied and physically oriented?  Tehmekah had everyone demonstrate either a hyper-"masculine" or hyper-"feminine" image to show what physical cues we associate with those genders, with the implication that there are other cues that are less explicitly gendered, and therefore there exists language-- body language-- outside this binary...a transgender body language?

A bit of a stretch? (oh look a pun!) Perhaps.  But that was the explicit goal of this workshop: to create body language (a "body vocabulary") that does not explicitly rely on normative gender assumptions.  Although the message of the final dance was explicitly feminist due to the inclusion of lyrics (adding another epistemic layer), the process of deriving the dance steps was narrative (descriptive, not normative) in nature; we charaded emotions, then stylized them into two-beat motions, then strung them together, refined the transitions, and threw in verbal and musical epistemic layers.  The dance was a translation of experience into art in a gender-neutral way; people across the gender and body spectrums participated and made no explicit reference to gender archetypes physically.

One participant said she found herself adapting the moves to her own experience, trying to make them sexy or more feminine.  I found this an interesting observation.  Is it possible, or even advisable, for dance to be gender-neutral?  The dance itself is, but it's performance depends on the particular bodies performing it, each of which have a different gender positionality.  Thus the same dance had feminine flares in some people, masculine in others; some made it sexier, some funnier, some more technical, some more artistic.  In this way the gendered was melded into the dance on a particular (personal) level, and not imposed upon the subjects by the dance's nature.

Xavia Publius

WMST Party!

This year’s Women’s Studies Department party will be on Thursday 12/8 from 8PM to Midnight in Donovans Pub. Hosted by students from WMST 202: An Introduction to Women’s Lives and Beyond, this celebration will feature catered desserts and multiple performers from Poetically Minded, Spoken Word artists, and musically talented students. Celebrate the end of the semester with your fellow Women Studies enthusiasts! A guest DJ will be spinning the jams all night for those of you who love to get your groove on. All faculty, staff, students, community members, and age groups are invited to Come As You Are! 

Last Brown Bag of the Semester

Join us for this semester's last BROWN BAG. In a change of scenery, this brown bag will be held in RYAN 212, but still on Tuesday (December 6th) at 11:30am.  This week's title is "Body Talk: Messages Behind Mainstream Dance Moves" and is co-sponsored by OUS (Office of Undergraduate Studies).  Our presenter is Tehmekah MacPherson, who graduated from Colgate in 2002 and is currently a professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Syracuse University.  She will be performing and discussing popular dance movies today and the messages they give off.  As always, there is FREE LUNCH and EVERYONE is welcome!