Wow, It’s been a minute.
I am no longer a student.
I now work (volunteer through a social service fellowship) at a homeless shelter for 18-21 year olds in Philadelphia. I work on what is known as the “Boys’ Floor.” Let’s ignore that this is infantilizing and de-powering because there are no boys or girls (excepting babies) at the shelter–there are young women and young men. My main problem is that the floor on which I work has proven to be not the Boys’ Floor, or the Men’s Floor, but for all intents and practices the Penis Floor.
We live in a world where 1/5 of transgendered youth are homeless. This is a world where many of these youths, when they cannot find a safe shelter, turn to survival sex work where they open themselves up to dangers and conditions that make you cry. If you were to ever hear some of these stories you would cry.
Regardless, at the moment the shelter at which I work has an unprecedented number (for them) of transgendered women–all of them placed on the “Boy’s Floor.” I think this is a problem. Fortunately, I’m not the only one at my work place who thinks so; I’ve just somehow proven myself the loudest.
Recently a transgendered youth came into shelter. She provoked discussion of the trans-policy more than any young women before her. Why, you may ask: she’s white, she’s not urban, she is consistently “lady-like”, she was further along the transition process than any youth before her. She almost left.
You see, the place at which I work doesn’t seem to have any concept of outing. Or rather they have very specific notions of outing based on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning youth (In Philly no one in social services seems to acknowledges the use of queer by queer folks). You see, no staff would ever get away with making explicit the sexual orientation/preference of a youth. Yet, we consistently out transgendered youth by their placements between the “boys’ floor” and the “girls’ floor.”
This is why she almost left.
In fact the only reason she stayed is because she had nowhere else. Because administration met with her, and told her, in not so many words, this is how it is: she can not out herself and return to the streets, or we can shit all over her gender identity and the investments she’s made to protect it and give her a bed and food. Not exactly the loving-kindness this shelter purports to give.
She was outed. She stayed. On a floor where she, and the other women, don’t always feel safe, where they are open to rampant sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.
I went home furious that night.
The program I’m doing for the year, that placed me at this shelter, also provides housing. It is also a religious-based program through the Episcopal Diocese. I live with folks I would never have spoken to otherwise–the usual middle-class white savior types except instead of it being merely a social calling, they believe they are on a divine mission to save, largely poor, Black, urban folks throughout Philly.
I went home that night, and I hit the bottle with extra vigor. The healthiest way to unwind?–maybe socially if I had done it alone. But I didn’t, or not exactly. I wanted to rant, I wanted to complain. I wanted folks to agree with me. These weren’t the people.
“It’s such bullshit,” I say, “She–all of them–should be allowed on the girl’s floor.”
“But they’re men.”
What. The. Fuck.
“No. They are women.”
Half of my housemates are silent–these are the ones with unformed opinions, or who refuse to join a verbal fray. I take their guilt, in the heat of the moment, for agreement with the others. Silence has a habit of doing that.
“They were born men. They are men,” says the conservative Catholic.
“Yeah, they still have penises,” says the agnostic liberal.
Who the fuck cares.
“Who cares. It’s none of my, or anyone else’s, business what their genitals look like.”
“But! They have penises. They can penetrate the women. They can rape them.”
“Anyone can rape anyone–women rape women. It happens. It has nothing to do with genitals.”
“But the other women don’t have penises.”
“WHATEVER.”
I leave and slam my door, and fume, and drink, and fume, and text people obscure and abstract questions about penes, drink, explain that my housemates are transphobes/cryptotransphobes, drink. Black out. Wake up in the morning, go to work and meet with my supervisor.
His reasons for not allowing folks to live with their gender identity:
There are more beds on the boys’ floor. Yet we would never put a cisgendered woman up there because there is more space.
In the past our transgendered ladies have been some of the most violent. So what? The girl’s team staff is mainly small women. So are most of our transgendered population/Most of the women on the girl’s floor currently could kick their asses anyway.
They aren’t consistent. And sometimes its safer to perform male on the street. Asking for consistency is unfare.
And on and on with excuses.
And the words from my housemates ears ring: “They have penises they can penetrate.”
This is what it comes down to: the penis is a tool for penetration, for rape. Do my housemates, cisgendered women the lot of them, worry about living with me? Does my penis automatically make me a rapist-in-waiting? Can my penis be liberated from this social construction? Can anyone’s? If a transgendered woman’s potential penis, out of all penes, is already read as a rapist’s tool is there hope for any cock? Or is it the poor penis? The working-class penis? The black penis? The uneducated penis? Does my socio-cultural mobility: my love of Roquefort, James Joyce, and Philip Glass make my penis safer, or at least place it at a tolerable level of suspicion? Or is the trans-penis more dangerous than the cis-penis–is the transwoman’s penis read as a stealth weapon? These are the questions I ask myself now.
Those and:
Is the penis only for penetration?
Gender Agenda 
Yes. They are. But it’s not penetration, it’s what penetration CAUSES.
IMPREGNATION.
And only people with PENISES can do it to us. It is the entire BASIS of female oppression; it is WHY misogyny has an overtly sexual tone.
This is not about fweelings and shit, or gender I-dentity, it’s about WOMEN’S #1 VULNERABILITY in life, period. (no pun intended with the period thing) I’m sorry, but you can’t argue this. Only women are impregnable. Only men can impregnate us. Biological facts.
It’s very simple, and yet, our entire culture is built around denying the power of men to impregnate women. Women are overrreacting, it’s not that bad,we are hysterical and manipulative, we should just have the baby, we wanted sex last night why not now, on and on and on and on.
Rape is not JUST physical violence to women. Physical violence happens to all oppressed people. RAPE is the specific leveraging of IMPREGNABILITY to terrorize women, by those with penises. Don’t expect women to be OK with penises demanding entry to our safe places. If you do, you are being anti-woman.
I have a lot of trouble accepting that penes are only for penetration. If a penis is only for penetration, does it suggest that a vulva is only for being penetrated. Does the vagina become reduced to the sheath? And if it doesn’t suggest this, why not?
Penetration doesn’t cause impregnation, but impregnation can only be facilitated with the aid of some form of penetration.
I’m not denying that the penis can be a tool of the rapist, but it certainly the only one, and I wonder if it is always a potential weapon? The rapist has a lot of tools at their disposal: biochemical ones like alcohol or flunitrazepam, physical objects, social power, and on and on. Does not the refusal to consider anything rape, except that which has the potential for impregnation, discount the multitudes who have experienced rape by other means, or rape by other situations. Or are we to consider these other actions non-rape?
And its true–I will never know this fear of impregnation, this is a burden I will never have to bear. It is unimaginable to me. But is it not also unimaginable to a multitude of women trans- and cisgendered who for various reasons will never be pregnant, will never become pregnant? Can these women not be raped?
So forget gender identity and feelings. Obviously, for some those don’t matter. But why narrow the definitions so much that you eject women from the fold?
The techno-biological fact is that some people, who are largely cisgendered women with specific physiological configurations, can be impregnated by other people, who are usually cisgendered men with very specific physiological configurations. If the focus is on impregnation are there not ways in which the aid of machines allow women to impregnate women?
I don’t want to deny that our society is set up in a way that trivializes the power that men’s penetrative potential and potential for impregnation.
I only expected women to accept women into women-only spaces. I see this is not the case when we equate women with a certain reproductively able, cisgendered body. I also know that a ciswomen’s only space does not automatically a safe space make.
Royce, don’t be an asshole.
PENILE penetration of vagina=potential impregnation. Every single time.
Impregnation is the reason WHY women have been terrorized and “kept” by men for thousands of years. It is the POWER behind misogyny. I think I was pretty clear.
The possibility impregnation might NOT happen because one of us sterile, or you don’t ejaculate, or impregnation might happen some other way with a fucking turkey baster, or any other extenuating circumstance you can come up with doesn’t impress me and is not enough to justify this bullshit about how women (IMPREGNABLE women) should unconditionally allow trans women–who might still have PENISES– into our space.
Look at the numbers (rape and single motherhood, for starters), respect our collective trauma, and stop fronting like it’s no big deal. It is a big deal. Our lives are on the line. Cause if any one of us gets pregnant, it’s OUR ASS who is changed forever.
I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, in fact I was making a lot of effort into being as little of an asshole as possible. I can only go off the words that you say.
Also–I’ve never denied that impregnation is the reason that women have been dominated by men throughout history.
Nor did I ever say that transwomen should be allowed into these born-women/ciswomen only spaces. This is not my issue–I am not a ciswoman or a transwoman. I believe groups can separate themselves however they choose in their own spaces. I’m not anti-separatist.
My post, the one to which you originally responded, was not about letting transwomen into those spaces. It was about the inadequacies of how this institution, for which I work, deals with trans-issues and structures dispersion of constituents.
And it was me questioning this positioning of the penis as only a penetrating weapon or tool. Which it is not.
I’m not trying to disrespect the trauma–nor do I pretend it isn’t a big deal. It is a huge fucking deal. But I recognize that there are ciswomen and transwomen who, despite the impossibility of personal impregnation, suffer under a misogynistic social system–women who can still be raped by men with penes despite the impossibility of their own impregnation.
Ok, last time. You say, in the post, as an example of why you are so righteously incensed and feel entitled to assume the IGNORANCE/bigotry of others:
Well, IMPREGNABLE WOMEN care. A little unintended irony by throwing the “fuck” in there, huh?
FUCKING is the whole point.
As I said, and I hope that you are able to digest this, despite the fact that it may conflict with what queer theory (ie, “I am whatever I *say* I am” theory) worked so hard to convince you is *politically correct*:
vaginal rape of bio women by biologically functioning penises is not equivalent to other forms of rape or to ANY other form of physical violence perpetrated upon oppressed groups. BECAUSE OF the unique ability of MEN to impregnate WOMEN.
The number 1 cause of death for women, throughout history, has been pregnancy-related complications. (Gee, why don’t we fix that? I wonder!) Indeed, sex-poz heroine Jessica Valenti (of Feministing fame) recently experienced such an event, not 6 months ago, despite her comparative wealth and privilege.
Improbability does not decrease the severity of outcomes.
Being penetrated against one’s will is an act of terrorism. At the same time, being vaginally penetrated against my will by a person with the power to impregnate me is a GREATER form of terrorism.
As a FAAB, it matters WHO is raping me.
As a man, you cannot understand this. From your point of view, or even that of a trans woman, rape is rape is rape is rape is rape is rape. All the same, riiiight??
Wrong. Not all rape is the same when you have fallopian tubes and a uterus that are being attacked by rapist sperm. The invasion doesn’t end when physical penetration is over, ok?
You must respect bio female authority regarding BIOLOGICALLY female expereinces and potential threats to our bodies. If you don’t, you’re being an asshole. A misogynist asshole.
Penises have perpetrated more violence than you will ever know. You insist that it isn’t a weapon, but men do a “bang up” job of using it that way! Women *know* this; we are the primary victims penile weaponry. Women are not hysterical or bigoted or ignorant; we know exactly what’s at stake. I hope you do too.
Because I do believe these particular folks to be ignorant and bigoted not just of and towards transpeople, but all LGBTQQ folk in general.
I’d say fucking isn’t the point, if the point you’re making is rape.
I have no interest in political correctness, an invention of the political right, nor am I influenced by queer theory.
I never said the rape of a ciswoman by a penis is equivalent to all other forms of rape. You originally said, “RAPE is the specific leveraging of IMPREGNABILITY to terrorize women, by those with penises.” That is what I disagreed with. I do agree that rape of a ciswoman by a cisman with a penis is different than the rape of a transwoman by a cisman which is different than the rape of a ciswoman by a cisman who uses a non-bodily object.
Never did I say that improbability reduced decreased the severity of outcomes. Nor have I questioned that pregnancy and birth complications are a big fucking deal that need fixing.
There are differences in rapes, I’ve never denied this, nor posited such a rigid tautology of rape equating all forms of rape. I know that the invasion doesn’t end when the penetration ends.
I do respect ciswomen’s authority regarding their experiences and threats to their bodies. Also, I don’t really mind being called a misogynistic asshole, you seem to think me one anyway. It’s not about me, and I don’t need your praise.
Everything in the world is a potential weapon, and some things have been used as weapons more than others. I’m not doubting that penes have been used as weapons, more than anyone could ever know. But it isn’t always a weapon. And I personally want to know how to build a world where a penis is no more read as a weapon than a foot or a hand or a nose or an ear.
Ciswomen as a class know what is at stake for ciswomen, I’ve never questioned this. I like to think I know as much as I can about what’s at stake, but I will never know the details of a ciswoman’s life.
Royce, I loved reading this piece. It raises the question of whose discomfort as an oppressed person rules supreme and clearly, in this case, the plight of the oppressed woman who presumably gets raped by penises trumps the plight of the oppressed transwomen who presumably just wants to rape women. I believe it is a gross indignity to the people who your shelter is welcoming to assume that they are going to rape each other. It is even more disgusting that there is a presumption that the women of the shelter are ALWAYS victimized, susceptible to overpowering, but also incapable of defending themselves or even being aggressors and offenders themselves–that is, that penis-havers are the sole rapists. Why is it assumed that all women play the same role? Why is it assumed that all women are made uncomfortable, raped, and generally done to?
It seems that the shelter you work at just doesn’t recognize the fact that transwomen ARE raped, ARE fucked, ARE oppressed…
You also raise the question of whether the presence of a penis means the threat of rape. Of course this awards way too much power to the penis, in my opinion… =/ you know, just as not every woman with a vagina wants a dick, NOT EVERY MAN WITH A DICK WANTS VAGINA–that is where, undercover punk, you are grossly heteronormative, reductive, and just plainly ignorant of the gay male experience.
Perhaps the fact that I have never been impregnated against my will excludes me from commenting on the plight of Women Fearing Rape… but, to me, this perpetual-victim-hood thinking is only as nonsensicle and hateful as a white person who fears being beaten by the random black person on a street. White people are so scared of black people. Women are so scared of penises. It is binary thinking. There are a hundred shades of gray.
I assume that your shelter has checks and balances in place to make sure nothing rape-y is happening. Y’all don’t let in ANYONE… they have to be of a somewhat reliable character, yes? If y’all think you’re capable of admitting rapists then that’s a pretty big flaw in your admission policy, eh?
Undercover Punk distinguished the power of the dick from the power of the dick that ejaculates. Punk seems mostly concerned with the penis’s ability to impregnate women. Punk seems to think that a transwoman getting raped in the ass is of less consequence than a cis-woman getting raped in the vagina because there is a chance that the ciswoman will get pregnant. This is frustrating. To rate the gravity of a rape. To throw transwomen under the bus so that ciswomen can feel comfortable. I don’t think that is right.
And I will say for the record as a vagina-haver: I’m not scared of penises. =)
I’m gunna say penes are not just for penetration. They’re for a whole range of sexual and nonsexual experiences. And the folks who have them, whether they want them there or not, will probably have a unique relation to it. The idea that every person with a penis thinks of their penis in the same way and uses it in the same way is kind of ridiculous. As a person with hands I can break things and put them together. My hands can just as easily write a love poem as they can type a hateful internet comment. It doesn’t mean that as a person with hands they are “for” one thing or another (even if statistically speaking many a middle class computer literate 20 something like myself will at some point type a hateful internet comment). It’s not the genital that counts, it’s how you use it maybe? That said sure, sexism and violence and shit are there. And how that’s all related to the physical body is interesting I guess. But to me that’s so much more to do with the brain and not the phallus. And in any case I feel like it’s all totally not what’s going on with this young woman and with Royce as an advocate.
Also I wanted to say I’m sorry this is super sucky for you Royce and that I want to make sure you’re paying attention to self-care and shit. Sorry if this is socialwork-y school talking but it’s possible to have like secondary trauma when you’re working on such hard issues with such little support and it’s important that you take care of yourself (no judgement, just concern–if you wanna talk let me know).
ALSO ALSO, if any folks reading this are in NYC and have similar problems with folks they are working with (or maybe are experiencing it themselves) they might want to check out the Ali Forney Center: http://www.aliforneycenter.org/