About

“You have male privilege, so shut up”
“You dominate conversations, so shut up”
“We’re the invisible ones, so shut up”
“You take up too much space, so shut up”

No.

This is a blog by a Chicago transsexual queer/woman who’s tired of making herself as small as possible to fit the demands of trans misogynistic feminism and trans activism.

It’s also a blog about gender theory & activism (simultaneously feminist and trans), misogyny (trans & NOS), transphobia, anti-racism, intersectionality, sustainability, privilege, language & terminology, power, body sovereignty, gender/sex self-determination, radical politics, “radical” politics, bad allies, accountability, BDSM, violence (domestic, intimate, sexual, emotional, physical, stranger, hate, racialized, institutional, systemic, and more), disabled, fat, & survivor politics, healthcare, and whatever else ze feels inspired to write on.

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The struckthrough paragraphs that follow are no longer current (my personal life pronoun preferences changed a couple months prior to this update) but I’m keeping them around for history’s sake.

I’m genderqueer, and a woman, and trans(sexual). Don’t like it? Tough. Both “she” and “ze” are good pronouns for me–unless you’re using “she” out of ignorance of or disrespect for my genderqueerness, or using “ze” because you’re unwilling to validate my womanhood. My genderqueerness and my femaleness/woman-ness have–and have always had–an uneasy coexistance (which should be clear from the strikethrough portion), and more than an actual change in my own perception of my gender, this reflects a change in how I communicate it through language, or a change of emphasis.

Several bloggers have used female pronouns about me during the period in which my about page specifically designated “ze/hir” (up until 8-27-2009). In case it’s not clear, I don’t think that’s any more ok because I now choose them.

How to refer to me

I am not a trans woman. I’m not a woman at all. That is, unless someone is contesting my right to that term, in which case I am, fuck you. Similarly, to people who accept that all gender and all sex are self-determination, my pronoun is ze; to people who would avoid using pronouns about me or call me ‘he’, ‘it’, ‘they’, or even ‘ze’ in order to avoid calling me ‘she’, my pronoun is ‘she’. This is because those people tend to get the wrong idea when I say I’m not a woman if they know I’m transsexual, and that ‘wrong idea’ is a broader stroke against my gender-/sex-/body-sovereignty than placing me in the status ‘woman,’ which I have need to do myself on occaison:

I am, however, a woman in a functional sense–I am targeted by misogyny, including trans misogyny. As far as the cis world is concerned, I live my life “as a woman” (as if that wasn’t super problematic as a phrase anyway). For this reason, I sometimes have to put my ‘woman’ cap on, actually pretty frequently, and have need of a lot of resources designated ‘for women’ or ‘women-only’.

Look, Monique Wittig did it in 1978, ok? (Albeit for entirely different reasons) I’d like to see someone accuse her of violating women’s space. I guess I can’t be both consistent and complete.

I have a dummy account for comments on livejournal called “tutms” and a syndication feed “takinguptmspace”. Things written on this blog should be credited to ‘Cedar’ only; things written elsewhere (e.g. in Yes Means Yes!) you can obvi use the name credited there.

You can contact me at takesupspace AT gmail. I can’t promise to respond in a timely fashion, tho.