I’m hesitant to write this diary for a number of reasons. I don’t think I’m the best person to write it. For one, I don’t personally identify as transgender. I’ve never quite felt the gender dysphoria reported by many of transgender friends and acquaintances that impelled them to fully transition. Or at least, I’ve never been formally diagnosed, or offered transitioning as a treatment—I’ve considered going to specialists before, but have been afraid to for a variety of reasons that stray too far from the point of this diary. So to be clear I’m not speaking for transgender people, but only for myself as someone whose gender identity is often confusing to strangers.
That said, before I get to Coulter, I think it’s worth exposing a bit more personal background to make it clear how I feel affected by this. When I was around 15 I was put on a cocktail of anti-depressants some of which are known, as a side-effect, to somewhat inhibit testosterone absorption. Around that time I started getting fleshier in areas where I wasn’t previously before, that I don’t think is normal for boys—I looked slightly more feminine and wore baggy clothes to hide it. (Ironically, there’s some evidence—albeit preliminary and uncertain as is much endocrinology—that if I had gotten more estrogen at the same time it would have helped more with the depression, which the anti-depressants alone did not). It was also around that time I started experimenting more privately with dressing “as a girl” and feeling like I wished I looked more like a girl all the time, and more importantly that I would be seen that way by others. (I put “as a girl” in quotes, because it’s a very binary attitude, and assumes one’s gender identity must dictate how one dresses—a most common attitude yes, but also wrong.)
Maybe if there had been better information available to me at the time I would have considered transitioning—I honestly just didn’t know it was an option, or at that it in any way applied to me. Eventually I want off the anti-depressants. I can’t say for sure if they were really responsible for anything, but I have my suspicions.
me, in a recent photo
Anyways, although it took constant and still ongoing questioning to arrive here, I currently identify as “gender queer”. I prefer to go out in the world as “femme”, and so quite well. But my name is still Erik, and I don’t tell people I’m a man, or a woman, or anything in particular, though I haven’t tried to change my legal status either—there’s no available legal status to me that I’d be comfortable. Nevertheless people often see me as “female”. Frequently, and too my annoyance, when I’m not even trying to appear “femme”. As a result of I’ve shared and experienced many of the same day to day troubles of some of my trans acquaintances (certainly not even close to all—my chameleon-like identity still affords me many cisgender privileges).
But my own experience includes quite a bit of bullying and harassing over the years over my appearance. It includes people freaking the fuck out at me when they assumed I was a “woman” until I spoke. It includes people not being quite sure what to call me, and resorting to nasty (but often merely ignorant) slurs like “it” and “heshe”. And perhaps most frequently anxiety-provoking, when I go out I have to worry about which bathroom to use when faced with no choice but to use a gendered bathroom. I have to consider, at the moment, which one I’m more likely to be seen as “appropriate” in. Sometimes the women’s room—where I go to pee, poop, and/or wash my hands like anyone else—is by far the safer choice, though certainly not without risk. Though I’ve actually never had a single problem using the women’s room when I’m in “femme”-mode. All the public restroom problems I’ve ever had come from using the men’s room, when I mistakenly I assumed that I was too masculine that day to be mistaken for anything else. I’ve had people freak out and leave the room, quietly and politely mansplain to me that I was in the “wrong” room, and handful of experiences not all dissimilar to this one.
The fact is, most people make extremely snap judgments about people’s gender all the time. They usually base their judgments on no more than one or two outward features. I can forgo shaving for a week and still be called “ma’am” because someone sees I have long hair and nail polish. (This happens to me almost every day—usually with service industry workers—though I forgive them for having to deal with hundreds of people daily and having no choice but to make snap judgments, but it’s still wearying). Sometimes this also just results in snickers and mockery from other strangers—I pretend not to notice but of course I do. One day this could very really land me in serious danger, though because I do have ability to adopt cisgender privileges when I want to, the probabilities are more in my favor than they are for trans people who have no choice but to live this every second of every day.
Now finally, getting to Ann Coulter, anyone who’s been around liberal circles long enough knows that it’s not uncommon for people to “joke” about her supposedly looking “like a man”. Back in the Air America days I used to enjoy listening to Randi Rhodes for her take-no-prisoners ass kicking of wingnuts, but she often put me off with this—she could not bring up Coulter without mentioning her supposed “adam’s apple”. This shit is common and it has been for 15+ years. And in that time I know I’m also not the first to complain about it.
First of all, what are you 5 years old? We lefties like to hold ourselves to such higher moral and rhetorical standards all the time, but we cede all of that the moment we resort to such childishness. But when it comes to this specific claim—that she “looks like a man”—by saying this as an insult you’re saying both that it’s okay to make snap judgments about a person’s gender and/or gender identity based on small collection of vain features, and more so that it’s okay to insult someone when those features don’t line up with your gender-binarist expectations.
Even when you just mean it as a light jest, what you’re doing legitimizing gender policing. Even if you’re an oh so enlightened lefty who believes everyone should be treated the way they want to be treated, you’re giving cover to those who really do want police people into gendered standards. If it’s okay to slur someone as “looking like a man”, you’re saying it’s okay to tell a woman she isn’t feminine enough for not wearing high heels (or indeed that she should be “feminine” at all), or to tell me where it’s correct for me to pee (please, tell me, I’m not sure because I’ve been given so many different suggestions/demands!) And when you stay silent when other people around you make those “jokes” you’re also giving your tacit approval for making fun of anyone for not fitting your personal gender stereotypes.
And no, it isn’t magically okay to make fun of Coulter because she craps on trans people herself.* How is it in any way turning the tables on her by saying “Oh yeah, well you look like a man, and I agree with you being a woman who might be mistaken for a man is a bad thing.” You’re just doing her job for her by legitimizing fearmongering over people’s secondary and even tertiary sex characteristics. If you want to cry about “political correctness” go ahead, but all “political correctness” is is asking you not to give cover to people who would do harm to marginalized people.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Ann Coulter is ghoulish, but that’s entirely a function of her odious “beliefs”—if she were on my side politically I’d probably even find her fairly attractive. (I put “beliefs” in quotes because I’m not entirely convinced she isn’t a professional troll, not that that excuses her.) But yeah, Ann Coulter is awful. Which is why I abhor having to constantly defend her, much less on this site. And after more than a decade of it it has gotten positively exhausting. After all it’s not really her I’m defending, but anyone who’s had gender stereotypes used against them as an insult. Unfortunately it won’t stop with this post, but at least I’ll have one response to link people to rather than having to write the same response over and over again.
Thanks to those of you who’ve actually listened.
* With apologies to levitron for calling you out specifically. You are hardly the first person I’ve seen do this, and will probably not be the last. This just happened to be the post that pissed me off enough to write this diary. This isn’t personally against you, a random stranger who I have no beef with aside from this.
Update: Just to be clear, I hope I haven’t made this too much about me. Although I wanted to connect this to my personal experience, the message I’m trying to send is not “Don’t insult people this way because it hurts me”, but more generally don’t make sexualized insults in any way. Gender identity issues aside it’s just plain sexist to dismiss a woman, no matter how awful she is, for her appearance.
