Zombie represents a polyvalent cultural trope without any singular interpretation – perm
is the best option to studying the evolving notions of the zombie – we don’t universalize the
zombie but instead let it be.
Cohen, ‘12 [Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Professor of English, Director of Institute for Medieval & Early Modern
Studies at Columbian College of Arts & Sciences, Ph.D., English and American Literature and Language, Harvard
University; “Undead (A Zombie Oriented Ontology)”; Vol. 23, No. 3, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 2012]
Despite the propensity of its audience and even its authors to subvert its pedagogical impetus, children’s media serve as form of diminishment
and control. Because monsters make us uncomfortable we reduce their power by rendering them cute or otherwise abjecting them as infantile
things, fears to be left behind as we assume our mature identities. Bram Stoker never imagined that Dracula would be transformed into Count
Chocula, cartoon spokesmonster for sugary breakfast food, but such juvenilization is inevitable. The adorable little pixies now marketed so
successfully to young girls under the Tinkerbell product line have as their grandparents medieval fairies whose crimes included rape, abduction,
and murder. Is it cute or shocking that children can place decapitated zombie head lollipops in their mouths?6 Horror, comedy, and children’s
culture reveal the same saturation. The
zombie apocalypse
is not to come. In our collective fantasies it has
already unfolded , and we dwell in its aftermath. Just as the zombie swarm has captured various
film, games, books and television, so the critical explanations for the zombie’s recent ubiquity are legion. Some
excellent scholarship has been published on the embodied undead, from Jeffrey Weinstock’s prescient essay “Zombie TV” to the recent and
insightful collection Better off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human and Kyle William Bishop’s American Zombie Gothic. Like
the undead themselves zombie studies relentlessly continue to appear: no sooner is one essay or edited volume processed than another demands to
be taken into account. Studying zombies is yet another mode of enjoying them, and this paradox inheres in their
analysis: to understand the zombie’s cultural significance it is necessary to transform a creature that is all
body into a
cerebral puzzle . Or maybe it is to admit that the division between corporeal and
intellectual pleasures —and phenomena—is not sustainable. The zombie apocalypse—or what Kyle
Bishop more positively labels the Zombie Renaissance—has dawned for numerous reasons,
many of them
contradictory. The zombie is a monster polyvalent enough to incorporate a multitude of fears,
desires, traumas and hopes. Because the word zombie migrated from Africa to Haiti to the United
States and thence to Europe, zombies might seem transnational and epochal, but that does not mean they are
not historicizable. George Romero’s ghouls in Night of the Living Dead, for example, offered “an allegorical
condemnation of the atrocities of Vietnam, violent racism, and the opposition to the civil rights movement”
are metaphors for that which disquiets their generative times. But
while it is clear that images of the violence in Vietnam resonated with the early viewers of Romero’s film, few
who watch today will associate that war with the movie’s profaned bodies. Yet Night of the Living Dead remains
(Bishop 14). Like all monsters, zombies
powerful forty-four years later.
No single interpretation can capture a monstrous totality , no matter
how persuasive that analysis might be. Monsters are more than the contexts that attended their
births.
Survivalism of Disaster – survival education pits heteronormative, white male bodies as
acting within the good of the political while all other actors are amoral and coded by their
bodies – only the perm’s criticizing of these categories allows for questioning of
domineering survival narratives of the status quo.
Preston, ‘10 [John Preston, Professor of Education, Cass School of Education and Communities, University of
East London; “Prosthetic white hyper-masculinities and 'disaster education'”; Ethnicities 2010 10: 331]
Fixing visceral bodies: The
Zombie Preparedness Initiative (ZPI) As considered earlier, for white hyper-masculine bodies to
become transcendent, the bodies of people of colour must be ‘fixed in place’. With respect to this, Emergency is not just about
Stauss but about how he foregrounds his journey as being part of a wider narrative between those who have the personal, but primitive, qualities to survive and those
who do not. More
generally in the personal preparedness literature there is a setting of those who have the ability
to transcend corporeality and genres of conventional masculinity and whiteness against those who are inert
and inactive or in need of protection. I will give two examples to illustrate this. First, in the preparedness literature terms
such as ‘walking wounded’, ‘living dead’ and ‘zombies’ are used in describing those who do not have the
ability to survive. The use of the latter term is particularly interesting as the historical relationship between
‘zombies’, ‘zombie films’ (and monster movies generally) and ‘race’ has been very well documented in a number of
academic and popular accounts (McIntosh and Leverette, 2008). In terms of the personal preparedness literature, there has recently been
an explosion in films, graphic novels and other media depicting a fictional ‘zombie apocalypse’, that is, rather
than an isolated or localized outbreak of zombies, a catastrophic event that brings the status of the survival of
humanity into question occurs. The films 28 days Later (2002), Shaun of the Dead (2002), Zombieland (2009) and remakes of zombie films such as
Dawn of the Dead (2004) are examples of this genre. In these zombie apocalypse films, ‘preparedness’, or learning to survive disasters ,
frequently appears as a trope. A real organization, the Zombie Protection Initiative (ZPI) organizes zombie
preparedness activities in the USA and there are a number of (tongue-in-cheek) ‘survival manuals’ available
(Brooks, 2004). The ZPI also crosses over to the mainstream in that its members take part in real Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) preparedness and survival activities in the USA. Newitz (2006) links monster films with the ‘monstrous’
nature of capitalism, but there are globalized racial as well as capitalist themes in these movies and events. There is an obvious congruence between fears of global
terrorism, pandemic or other major crises and these films which build on white fears concerning immigration (the threats often come from ‘outside’), biotechnology
(from within a laboratory that modifies genetics) and globalization (as the zombie pandemics are frequently on a global scale). Zombies
and the zombie
metaphor also play a role in official simulations of preparedness. In preparedness exercises in the Cold War
‘zombie’ was used as a term for subhumans who would ‘contaminate’ local residents (Preston, 2007b: 149). The
zombie metaphor is also used in disaster simulations for those people who are inert, and in air
crashes/radiological incidents for those ‘walking dead’ who were already contaminated. The zombie
apocalypse is doubly coded in that, although horrific in every sense, zombies are not responsible for their
actions and they are also completely innocent – their death is considered to be a salvation for them. More generally,
survival and preparedness are contextualized against a passive (and racially coded) ‘other’. As media and
official accounts of Hurricane Katrina show, people of colour were classed as being amoral, subhuman and
helpless whilst white people were labelled as heroic and humanistic, as going beyond what would normally be
expected (Marable, 2008). The metaphor of the zombie is a useful category ‘in play’ in preparedness. The zombie is
non-transcendent of ‘race’ and utterly locked into the visceral unable to mentally escape from bodily
entrapment. The use of the zombie metaphor in disaster education, simulations and fictions enables other (white, masculine) bodies to be mobile and free of the
constrictions of embodiment: they are active and rational citizens and survivors. Second, there is a heteronormative discourse in
preparedness concerning the control of the bodies and activities of women and children, presenting them as
immobile and fixed. Preparedness as an initiative frequently requires the bodies of women and children to be
under the control of white masculinity. Much of the literature on fallout shelters, for example, is connected with
the maintenance of the family unit with the male taking control of the bodies of women and children in an
almost Fritzl-esque1 fantasy of control and basement holding. In the public information film Occupying a Public Shelter (1965) there
are many references to the fear of promiscuity and the need to maintain gender separation (aside from married couples) as well as strict racial segregation. Shelter
is concerned with entrapment by the male and by the masculinist state. Additionally, the idea of ‘shelter in place’
in contemporary disaster education makes assumptions regarding substantive private property (a shelter)
and extensive private resources that can be used to secure and inhabit such a property for some time. In doing so,
the ‘outside’ is constructed as unsafe, insecure and wild. Outside of private property contamination cannot be controlled. In the case of
the recent swine flu pandemic containment is also used to construct local and national conceptions of safety and anxiety – that people are only safe inside their own
The figure of the white child is predominant in survivalist
literature, which uses the child as the reflection and fear of the demise of all whites. For example, in the public information
homes and that other bodies are ‘unsafe’ (viscerally contaminated).
campaign for swine flu in the UK, Catch It, Bin It, Kill It (2009), it is ultimately white children who are the victims of swine flu, being ‘contaminated’ with the virus
by a black couple in a lift. Here then, the
bodies of others are presented as (potentially) uncontainable and in need of
control. Whilst white hyper-masculinity may desire transcendence of categories, the potential of ‘others’ to
also transcend categories (of heterosexuality, of the ‘nuclear family’, of the home) presents a potential threat
to these notions and in contemporary ‘disaster education’ there is an emphasis on the control of the bodies of
‘others’.
Zombified Slavery – Without the permutations grounding of the zombie in our analysis, we
ignore the key metaphor utilized to create historical basis for the social death of
antiblackness – the alternative’s exclusion of this discussion means anti-black racism goes
unchallenged.
Fay, ‘8 [Jennifer Fay, Associate Professor of Cinema & Media Studies and English Director and Program in
Cinema & Media Studies at Vanderbilt, Ph.D., Film Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison; “Dead Subjectivity:
White Zombie, Black Baghdad”; Michigan State University Press. CR: Th e New Centennial Review, Vol. 8, No. 1,
2008]
What is a zombie exactly? And what is the connection between its ontology and its representability, between
its legal status and its position in the occupation workforce? Seabrook offers us this definition, one the White
Zombie press books again quote verbatim: The zombie . . . is the soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the
grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life—it is a dead body which is made to talk
and act, and move as if it were alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time
to rot, galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or a slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as
a drudge around the habitation of the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens. (1929, 93) Taken with the
penal code above, this definition presumes a distinction between life and its semblance. The unearthed body, like an animal and without a soul, is
humanity’s mechanical nature come to life. Or, it
is the
biological remainder of politically and legally
denuded existence. Already dead, the zombie can experience neither life nor death, nor is it
beholden to categories of justice. Rather, it is pressed into the service of nonexistence so that its
master may live well. In Haitian cultural history, the zombie has long served as an allegory for slavery and
emancipation from colonial rule. As Markman Ellis explains, the zombie perfectly encapsulates the slave condition,
especially as produced in colonial wars. Captured by the enemy, the slave is sentenced to perpetual labor in
exchange for life.
Slavery is the condition of execution deferred (2000, 209). And though the zombie was
also a figure of slave rebellion —a coming into consciousness of one’s state of desocialized life—it was as
an allegory of slavery that the zombie myth found new application during the occupation. “In Haiti,” writes Joan
Dayan, “memories of servitude are transposed into a new idiom that both reproduced and dismantled a
twentieth-century history of forced labor and denigration that became particularly acute during the
American occupation of Haiti. As Haitians were forced to build roads, and thousands of peasants were
brutalized and massacred, tales of zombies proliferated in the United States” (1995, 37).
Intersectional Analysis – Single-axis identity politics fractures political coalitions –
intersectionality is key to overcoming conflicts and reconciling splits in political struggles
Chun et. al 13 (Jennifer Jihye - Department of Sociology @ the U of Toronto Scarborough, George Lipsitz Department of Sociology and Department of Black Studies @ UC Santa Barbara, Young Shin - Asian Immigrant
Women Advocates, "Intersectionality as a Social Movement StrategyL Asian Immigrant Women Advocates," Signs,
Vol. 38 No. 4, Intersectionality: Theorizing Power, Empowering Theory, (Summer 2013), pp. 917-940)
In both academics and activism, the concept of intersectionality can be used to clear up the confusions about sameness and difference that
dominant ways of knowing both permit and promote. It can
be a tool for refining understanding of the relationships that link
individuals to social groups. No individual lives every aspect of his or her existence within a single identity category.
Every person is a crowd, characterized by multiple identities, identifications, and allegiances. Yet the process of racial formation
set in motion by dominant racial projects brings individuals together in particular groups with shared and linked fates ð Omi and Winant 1994 Þ .
Collective political struggle requires the creation of strategic group positions adaptable to
forging coalitions within and across identity groups.
These positions are always partial, perspectival, and
performative. They never encompass all dimensions of people’s identities. Yet as an analytic tool intersectionality can
be used
strategically to take inventory of differences, to identify potential contradictions and conflicts, and to recognize split
and conflicting identities not as obstacles to solidarity but as valuable evidence about problems unsolved and as new
coalitions that need to be formed. Group identities are vital for collective mobilizations for rights, resources, and recognition, yet
every collective identity expressed through solidarities of sameness runs the risk of
occluding differences within the group . In its most sophisticated articulations, intersectionality acknowledges both the
plurality and diversity of identities that comprise any group and the common concerns that create aggregate identities. In Crenshaw’s deft
formulation, the utility of intersectionality flows from its ability to mediate “the tension between assertions of multiple identity and the ongoing
necessity of group politics” ð 1991, 1296 Þ .
Without intersectionality, group unity threatens to degenerate
into a compulsory uniformity that benefits some members of the group at the expense of
others. For example, employment opportunities and promotions for Black workers do not necessarily provide justice for Black women. Antiracist organizing can be uncritical about misogyny. Homophobia can seep into feminist and antiracist mobilizations alike, while race and class
privilege can be unexamined within queer politics. Still, Crenshaw does not advocate the abandonment of identity categories
and the embrace of a disembodied universalism. Instead, she recognizes that identities can contain situated
knowledges with valuable vantage points on power . In the tradition of Aime ́ Cesaire, she
rejects
both
parochial
particularism and disembodied universalism . Instead, she argues for a “universal” that is contingent,
provisional, and rich with particulars, that entails the dialogue of all, the autonomy of each, and the dictatorship of none ð
Cesaire 2000, 25 – 26 Þ . Crenshaw’s intersectionality promotes struggles that are race-based but not race-bound, feminist but not essentialist,
always pro-Black and pro-woman but never only pro-Black and pro-woman. Seeking unity without uniformity, mobilizing
identities without demanding that people be identical, intersectionality matters from Crenshaw’s perspective because it is
an indispensible tool for creating new democratic institutions, identities, and practices.
---Disability and Rage
Anger is problematic for people with disabilities – it is behavior that is seen as not normal
and because society has infintalized people with disbalities it is seen as inappropriate
deviant behavior. Rage and anger will be suppressed by the care takers, doctors and people
around those with disabilities as a way to keep status quo behavior
Boyle 8 - Geraldine Boyle (2008) Controlling behaviour using neuroleptic drugs: the role
of the Mental capacity act 2005 in protecting the liberty of people with dementia, Disability &
Society, 23:7, 759-771, DOI: 10.1080/09687590802469255
However, application of the
biomedical model to the behaviour of people with dementia¶ has led to a wide range of
feelings and behaviours being pathologised. In particular, these¶ ‘symptoms’ are deemed to include anxiety, agitation,
aggression , depression, restlessness,¶ wandering, apathy, ‘ purposeless’ activity and ‘abnormal
vocalisations’, such as shouting ¶ (Finkel et al. 1996; Margallo-Lana et al. 2001; Ballard, O’Brien, James, and Swann 2001;¶
Macdonald et al. 2002). Yet, behaviours
such as agitation may represent alternative attempts ¶ by people with
dementia to communicate their unmet needs when they cannot fully verbalise¶ their feelings (Ragneskog et al.
1998). ‘Symptoms’ such as depression may also be indicators¶ of poor quality of life (see, for example, Boyle 2005), rather than symptomatic of¶
dementia. In addition, the frustration and distress associated with a lack of privacy, receiving¶ assistance with
personal care and inadequate attention from, and conflicts with, staff can ¶ lead to aggression (Ballard, O’Brien,
James, and Swann 2001; National Institute for Health¶ and Clinical Excellence and Social Care Institute for Excellence 2006). Yet,
defining¶ manifestations of anger as inherent to a disease process fails to recognise that
these expressions¶ may represent adaptive responses to maladaptive environments (see Goodley
2000;¶ Godfrey et al. 2005). Therefore, the concept of the ‘behavioural and psychological symptoms¶ of dementia’ is inherently problematic,
particularly as it assumes a priori that deviant¶ behaviour is indicative of brain pathology (Godfrey et al. 2005). In
contrast, proponents of¶ the psychosocial model of mental health have pointed to the role of inadequacies in psychosocial ¶ support in explaining
the behaviour of people with dementia (see, for example,¶ Godfrey et al. 2005; Fossey et al. 2006). Nonetheless, the psycho-social model neglects
any¶ consideration of the rights of people with dementia.
Feminist Rage may be beneficial for them, but fails for disabled women – alt replicates
sexism and ableism.
Schriempf 1 – Professor of philosophy at Penn State ( (Re)fusing the Amputated Body: ¶ An Interactionist Bridge¶
for Feminism and Disability ALEXA SCHRIEMPF 2001 ebsco)
have¶ missed the fact that disabled women’s issues are
different from able-bodied¶ women’s issues. Michelle Fine and Adrienne Asch (1988) point out that disabled¶ women in general
do not deal with the same oppressions that non-disabled¶ women do primarily because disabled women are not seen as women in this
Why should feminists care about disability theory? Because feminists
society. For example, “women with disabilities have not been ‘trapped’ by many¶ of the social expectations feminists have challenged. They have not been forced ¶ to
get married or to subordinate paid work or childbearing or housekeeping” ¶ (Fine and Asch 1988, 26).
By failing to pay attention to
disability theory,¶ feminists whose theory presumes to include disabled women under the
general¶ rubric of “woman” fail to recognize the different experiences of disabled women¶
in a sexist and ableist society. Disabled women are, of course, women. But given¶ that the feminist
critique is not just about “entrapment” but also about the ¶ oppressive attitudes that normalize that
entrapment, feminism needs to turn¶ to disability theory in order to deconstruct the normalizations that
oppress¶ disabled women as disabled women. However, as disabled feminists have pointed¶ out, disability theory has not developed adequate
resources to explain the lives ¶ of disabled women either. The reasons for this slippage between disability and ¶ feminist theories, I believe, has to do with the use of
overwhelmingly materialist¶ approaches to explain gender and disability identities. In this introduction, I ¶ provide an overview of the two primary examples I will be
using to illustrate my¶ points. The second section uncovers the diffi culties in using present feminist¶ and disability theory frameworks to account adequately for the
problems posed¶ by these examples. The third section is a description of an alternative framework ¶ that provides us with a way to think and act responsibly in dealing
with theseand other similar scenarios. In the epigraph, the example of the young woman with spina bifi da presents ¶ us (feminists and disability theorists) with a
disruptive moment. There is a¶ complex set of assumptions and disruptions occurring here that is not fully ¶ explained either by feminist theory or disability theory. It
would seem that this ¶ young woman’s experience ought to be framed simultaneously by two biases—a¶ sexist bias and an ableist bias. Let me explain. The young
woman’s question¶ is prompted by a fear that her disability will cause her to be unable to have ¶ satisfying sexual relations at all because a) no one will see her as a
fully adult¶ (and therefore a sexual) woman and b) her impairment will make sex diffi cult or¶ unpleasurable. This fear undoubtedly originates in society’s general
assumption¶ that disabled people are unable to have sex. At fi rst glance, it seems that the ¶ doctor does not seem to participate in this view, but rather in the view that
a¶ woman’s role in sex is to provide satisfaction to the male partner. This second ¶ view clearly offends feminist sensibilities. Additionally, those of us in disability ¶
studies and in the disability rights movement also take offense at what we¶ have learned to label, albeit somewhat vaguely, as an ableist attitude. But if we ¶ examine
the doctor’s position carefully, this doctor-patient scenario does not ¶ merit a critique of ableism because despite the sexist bias, the doctor apparently¶ never assumes
or suggests that the young woman’s disability could play a role, ¶ negative or positive, in shaping her sexual life. Thus, we are left with only a ¶ partial explanation of
this woman’s oppression. ¶ I
am suggesting that we experience cognitive dissonance when we hear¶ or read of examples
like this one. The moment of disruption stems from our¶ inability to identify what is wrong with this picture
in a language that is not¶ limited by the framework and logic of a particular theory. What is wrong with¶ this picture is not
just that the doctor is sexist or that he is ableist; what is ¶ wrong here is that this woman has to ask this question at all. How many of the ¶ able-bodied feminist readers
of this paper, because of their embodiment, have¶ asked their doctors if they would be able to have satisfying sexual relations? This ¶ question prompts the recognition
that there is indeed some kind of ableism¶ occurring here.
At the same time, there is an uncomfortable recognition
that¶ feminists have not provided the means for their disabled sisters to participate¶ in
feminist solidarity.
---Transphobia DA
Their essentialism of female identity and silence on gender identities outside the
male/female binary causes the erasure of transgender populations.
Rankin 13 (Lauren, feminist writer and activist for Policy Mic, "Transphobia Has No Place in Feminism,"
http://www.policymic.com/articles/38403/transphobia-has-no-place-in-feminism)
Bigotry is often born out of fear and confusion at those whose identities we don’t understand. We fear that their difference reflects on our
sameness, and in a rush to blanket ourselves in the comfort of conformity, we demonize their difference. Progressives often bemoan the bigotry
underlying the policies and political positions of those on the right, but the sad truth is that
bigotry exists even in progressive and
feminist spaces . And nowhere is that more evident than in the transphobia , both latent and outright, that
underwrites many facets of the feminist movement¶ The Twitter hashtag #RadFem2013 is littered with a small but acerbically
aggressive sect of online feminists who have hijacked radical strands of feminism, rooted in challenging patriarchal structures and oppression, as
a means to belittle, condemn, and berate members of the trans community. They contend that because trans women were born
male, that they are not women. They actively exclude trans women from feminist spaces. They demonize trans
women as female impostors and violently libelously label them as supporters of “corrective rape.” They harass trans women online and
often publish the full names and addresses of trans women in online spaces. And yet, while they are perhaps the most visible perpetrators of
transphobia within feminism, they are not the only ones.¶ Often,
mainstream feminists simply avoid talking or
writing about trans women . Trans woman and activist Sophia Banks emphasizes that while she identifies as a feminist, her
experience within the feminist community has been largely mixed. “ Intersectional
feminists have been great but
many radical feminists have been really hurtful towards me,” she says, highlighting that many feminists
work within the confines of gendered language, and, perhaps unknowingly, operate from an assumption that cisgender
women (cisgender means someone who identifies with the gender they were born with) are their target audience. ¶ Any assumption
that cisgender women are the only true women is a blatant form of bigotry. And honestly, it’s in direct violation of Feminism
101. After all, Simone De Beauvoir said more than half a century ago “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”¶ Feminism
is predicated on the idea that gender is a social construct, that women are not defined by their biology , and that the
category of “woman” is informed and constructed by social gender norms. If women are more than what’s between their legs, why do some
feminists continue to perpetuate a patriarchal notion that biology is destiny? ¶ Feminism cannot be a movement to
create boundaries about who is an acceptable woman and who is not. Feminism cannot be a means of promoting bigotry and
isolation. Feminism is a movement for social change, one that challenges the gender binary and works to end the patriarchal oppression of
women. Feminism is supposed to critique and combat bigotry, not perpetuate it. That is precisely what “rad fems” and any other
transphobic feminists are doing;
perpetuating bigotry against trans women while cloaking
themselves in feminist rhetoric.¶ Any time that cisgender feminists fail to include trans women, that is
transphobia. Those within feminism (or anywhere, for that matter) that perpetuate the demonization of trans people are purveyors of
it’s the fear of losing privilege , of confronting the reality that we are not women
because we are born that way, but because we choose to be. But those “Rad Fems” who dwell in the blind comfort of their own
transphobic bigotry. Perhaps
bigotry, who attack and stigmatize trans women, and who maintain that feminism is only for cisgender women, they need to understand that their
bigotry will not be tolerated within feminist spaces. ¶ Cisgender feminists must include and advocate for trans women. Rather than
maintaining a
myopic focus on trans women’s bodies , one that reiterates the same biological
determinism we are trying to avoid , Ph.D candidate and queer activist Ricky Hill advocates that cisgender feminists
should “focus more on highlighting and engaging the experiences and accomplishments of trans women into the
rubric of feminism.” Cisgender feminists must not only make space for trans women within feminism, but enable
their voices, perspectives, and stories to be disseminated and promoted . And as Sophia Banks emphasizes, it is just as important
that cisgender feminists refute transphobia whenever they hear it, whenever they see bigotry and hatred pointed at any member of the trans
community. ¶ Trans women are women. How do I know that? Because they say they are women. Because they identify
as
women. Because your gender expression is not dictated by the gender with which you were born. Because I, and many other cisgender
feminists,
trust trans women when they say they are women. Because women are women, and that’s really all there is to it.
---AT Dworkin
Dworkin is transphobic – reject her hate literature
Bettcher No Date Talia Bettcher Professor at Cal State LA, works on Trans Studies, Ph.D., UCLA, Philosophy.
“Lesbian Separatism and The Transsexual Empire” http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Raymond.htm
Janice
Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire: The Making of The She-Male (1979) is generally considered (by
many trans folk) a classic example of transphobic hate literature. Why did she write it? What explains it? It is
tempting to represent Raymond as having “personal issues” with trans folk. This may be true for all we
know. However, the transphobia manifested in her work also comes from two larger sources: (A) Mainstream
society’s transphobic attitudes; (B) Key tenets
of a Lesbian-Separatist feminist framework . By
focusing only on “personal issues ” we lose sight of the larger social and political issues. So it’s worth
noting that Raymond’s book was enthusiastically endorsed by feminist writers such as Mary Daly,
Andrea Dworkin, and Robin Morgan. Moreover, Raymond’s book is not the first example of transphobia in
feminist politics and writing. For example, in 1973, Robin Morgan expelled transwoman Beth Elliot from the
West Coast Lesbian Conference in Los Angeles. Here already, we see the classic accusation of trans deception
(which is equated with rape). Again, Mary Daly accuses trans women of deception and equates it with rape in Gyn/Ecology. In Empire,
Raymond explicitly attacks Sandy Stone (who was working as an engineer at the feminist collective, Olivia Records). This resulted in
considerable controversy. Feminists who supported Raymond’s views put pressure on Olivia Records to have Stone expelled. However, those
feminists at Olivia (those who actually knew Stone and had experience working with her) supported her presence there. Finally, for the good of
the collective, Stone left. (After studying with Donna Haraway, she writes the foundational piece for Trans Studies – “The Empire Strikes Back –
A Posttranssexual Manifesto”)
Reject transphobia – their logic perpetuates violence
IGLHRC No Date, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) is a leading
international organization dedicated to human rights advocacy on behalf of people who experience discrimination or
abuse on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, “Reject Transphobia,
Respect Gender Identity: An Appeal to the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the States of the
World”
Every day, people
who live at variance to expected gender1 norms face violence, abuse, rape, torture and hate
crime all over the world, in their home as well as in the public arena. Though most cases of violence never get
documented, we know that in the first weeks of 2009 alone, Trans women have been murdered in Honduras,
Serbia and in the USA. Trans men are equally victims of hate crimes, prejudice and discrimination despite
their frequent social and cultural invisibility. The basic human rights of Trans people are being ignored or
denied in all nations – be it out of ignorance, prejudice, fear or hate and Trans people overwhelmingly face daily discrimination, which
results in social exclusion, poverty, poor health care and little prospects of appropriate employment. Far from
protecting Trans citizens, States and International bodies reinforce social transphobia through short sighted
negligence or reactionary politics:
Because of the failure of national law and social justice, in far too many States Trans people are being forced to live a gender which
they experience as fundamentally wrong for them. In most countries, any attempt to change one’s gender can
lead to legal sanctions, brutal mistreatment and social stigma. In other countries, legal recognition of gender
change is subject to sterilization or other major surgical intervention. Trans people who cannot or do not
wish to submit to this, cannot obtain legal recognition of their preferred gender, and are forced to ‘come out’ whenever they
cross a border, run into a police patrol, apply for a new job, move into a new home or simply want to buy a mobile phone. Contributing factors include that current
International health classifications still consider all Trans people as mentally “disordered”. This outdated vision is insulting and incorrect and is used to justify daily
discrimination and stigmatization in all aspects of Trans people’s lives. Recently though in some countries with very different social and cultural contexts significant
legal advances have been made. Following in the wake of bold judicial decisions, State action has led to increased acceptance of Trans people within their society.
This demonstrates that understanding and progress is possible. Currently Trans people everywhere in the world rise up to reclaim their human rights and freedom.
They carry an unanimous message that
they will no longer accept to be labelled sick or treated as non human beings on
the basis of their gender identity and gender expression.