In Canada, our largest food retailer, Loblaws, has just had a majority strike vote. “More serious” discussions are supposed to come of this, though I am hesitant and uncertain where to buy food if or when most supermarkets are closed due to strike.

In recent years, I’ve watched Loblaws create two-tier wages, and, in its superstore–created in response to Walmart’s incursion into food retailing–have no union at all. Loblaws is now not majority organized.

A woman I know, who was in the top tier, took a buy-out, took training, and now has a new career as a library technician.

Over the years, I’ve watched as its major competitor, Steinbergs, disappeared, an early victim of Conrad Black. In my local mall, Billings Bridge Plaza, there used to be both a Steinbergs and a Loblaws. The Loblaws now there really isn’t a Loblaws anymore, it is an “independent supermarket,” though it is supplied by Loblaws and remains filled with President’s Choice products.

When it changed “shingle,” they changed the layout; after 25 years of knowing where things were, several years later I’m still not quite sure where everything is.

Today in the mall, there is a Cole’s Bookstore, the original Canadian chain, and the foundation for what is now the Chapters-Coles-Indigo mega-chain including the Chapters superstores; I work at the Ottawa flagship Chapters. My mother was, for a short time, secretary to Cole, the founder of the Cole’s chain, at the end of World War II.

Up until about 2000, there was another small, local chain store, Prospero, the Book Company in Billings Bridge. The owner of the Chapters chain already owned Prospero when she bought Chapters and Cole’s, so, after she became the owner of virtually all Canadian bookselling, the Canadian Competition Bureau required her not to have stores within certain geographical limits; so Prospero’s had to leave Billings Bridge.

I watched the growth of Chapters.

I saw it not only take over virtually all bookselling in Canada, I saw it take over the largest book distributor in Canada with the result, rather like Walmart, it controls what it doesn’t own, i.e., Canadian book publishing. Its effect on Canadian publishing was also a matter in the Competition Bureau’s ruling after the current owner bought Chapters.

I never really expected to be working in the belly of the beast. But, in bilingual Ottawa, it is one of the few retailers that doesn’t require completely fluent bilingualism of its employees.

What is my point for all of this?

I’m not convinced of the effect of personal, individual choice to stop, or even slow, the inexorable march of the political economy and its oppression; I’m not sure what choice is, President’s Choice, or any choice now that it is the core of capitalism, and, as far as I can see, the core of our oppression.

When I was an undergraduate in the early 70′s–the first time–a young woman whom I was very attracted to left school for a commune; I have long lost track of her. In those days, the commune out of which Perth County Conspiracy was formed also flourished–you can get its record, a beautiful collection of songs, on YouTube;it is unclear whether this commune still exists, either.

I have long not been able to accept the idea that one can escape the monetized, late capitalist society, get off the grid.

I don’t own a car, never have; I never really bought the argument such a possession/commodity would bestow freedom.

I don’t buy water in plastic bottles. Its not because of the dependence on oil, and its detrimental effect on the environment, nor even the thought of selling water to Americans and others as part of some export-led recovery (we’re always trying for an export-led recovery!); its simply the idea of selling something that’s part of the Commons, even to Canadians. The whole idea just seems wrong to me, always has; guess I’ll never be a capitalist.

I remember watching Ground Zero of 9/11 how, in an earlier age, barrels or trucks of water would have appeared, but then there appeared “boxes” of water bottles; I’m sure someone received a tax credit for providing a “commercial good,” a commodity.

My current computer was a gift from a friend who built it–though with mass produced parts; I don’t think there are computers built with handmade chips, etc.

What is my point in writing this?

I think the model of individual action works less when there is no competition, when elites have crafted a world in which there is no competition, the world of late capitalism in which we live–and cannot escape.

This oppression is hard to conceptualize, particularly for those raised on the ideology of competition–that no longer exists or includes them, if it ever really did.

I have no details, but I struggle with what must be the new model, one whose very conception is militated against by the very fabric of what/how we are permitted to think–the oppression of late capitalist political economy.

It will have to be a collective model.

[Another blog from TGV_Advocacy.]

There is not a different process for gendering of intersex persons from transsex persons. Even if one rejects O’Keefe’s point about the intersex nature of transsex persons, there is not so much space/resources in people that there can be subject-specific processes for intersex persons, transsex persons, gay and lesbian persons, cissexual persons, cissexual, cisgender persons. Besides, Occam’s Razor would militate against such.

The point about intersex persons is their existence is an overt challenge not only to the gendering process, but to the way we all are sexed–which is the more fundamental status: gender privilege is erected upon sex status and privilege.

The point about transsex persons is their existence is a covert challenge, not only to the gendering process, but to the way we are sexed–the consequences to the gendering process are on display all the time in the controversies around [trans]gender ideology.

In social work we are taught about praxis, which is itself derived from the work of Paulo Freire; it is really a simple concept:

action-reflection-action/reflection-action-reflection.

Abstraction is itself not evil, it is just reflection; it becomes evil when it is divorced from action.

When it becomes estranged from action and experience.

The question in the lives of gay and lesbian people has made the fundamental contribution to understanding, even creating, the notion called heterosexual privilege.

The question in the lives of feminists has made the fundamental contribution to understanding, even creating, the notion called sexism, based upon gendering.

The question in the lives of intersex persons has made the fundamental contribution to understanding the overt nature of sex, what it is, how it is conceptualized and reified.

The question in the lives of transgender(ed) persons has made, along with gay and lesbian people and feminists, the fundamental contribution to understanding, even creating, the notion of gendering. This question illuminates cisgender privilege.

The question in the lives of transsex persons has made, along with intersex persons, the fundamental contribution to understanding the nature of sex–rather like bisexual persons, transsex persons appear to be one thing when they are another (before and early in the process of transition). What is illuminated by this question is cissexual privilege.

What is common to all these apparently disparate processes is that questioning of what is apparently fixed, determined by “science” and the way people are, moves what is apparent understanding beyond what the “normal” “majority” experience and understand.

When we are embedded within something, like heterosexuality, misogyny,  cisgenderism, cissexuality, we cannot see or understand it. We must move outside–be forced outside; this allows us to raise the question, to abstract.

To understand we must abstract, rather like unravelling a rope to see what threads make it up, but then, as part of our praxis–which is, of course, a dialectic–we must ravel the threads back together.

The evil comes when understanding is stopped at any of these stations: people, as part of the human condition, find it quite natural not to understand life questions that are not their own.

This is why we are a perceived threat to the “moral majority” crowd, and even to others who are part of what some have called TBLG. The “moral majority” is, of course, neither “moral” nor a “majority” because we, all of us, throw the light of truth not only on our own lives, but everyone’s life and each other’s.

I can only say that advocacy evolves out of analysis and theory, which must themselves be grounded in lived experience and return to lived experience:

action=>reflection=>action=>reflection . . . . .

This is the dialectic of praxis; praxis is the only challenge to oppression.

It seems rather arrogant to dismiss the struggle(s) of all those who subscribe to this list–at the very least it is a very broad stroke–that all the “most radical trans advocacy” is happening in Spanish, elsewhere.

It is interesting you hold up for admiration Venezuela and Ecuador, both countries that have elected progressive, if not radical presidents in direct opposition to the wishes of their media, their elites and against the wishes of the United States, its leadership and its elites. Nicaragua, of course, felt the heel of the US when it elected the Sandinistas. One might also include Cuba, which has made quite startling advances in recent months for transsexual people–and is also Spanish speaking.

There is one, dramatic, political economic difference between these countries and the US; they elected presidents who kept their word regarding radical change.

Most Americans, including many on this list, are quite satisfied with the American political economy, and can see no connection between their own oppression, the oppression of others, and the political economy they are content with.

Much of this can be laid at the feet of a generations long explicit policy of changing the frames people think with, as George Lakoff, Robert Parry, among others, have repeatedly pointed to.

However, all politics is local.

The kind of revolution that occurred in Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Cuba, the necessary pre-requisite to the kind of “most radical trans advocacy” you advocate is not yet possible in America.

The inability to grasp the overarching political economy of oppression demonstrated by the Upper Branch Coal Mine Disaster, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the financial disaster–the Great Recession–the opposition to stimulus of the American economy is both a demonstration and cause of the failure of American politics.

To grasp what is common to all these inevitable disasters.

David Dayen has pointed out how even the presentation of objective fact, such as in each of the cases above, actually lead the misinformed to believe lies more strongly; this is increasingly a defining characteristic of America.

It also shows the failure of the really quite run of the mill centre-right kind of Democrat Obama really is–he refuses to rally Americans as Ecuador’s Correa, Venezuela’s Chavez, Bolivia’s Morales have done, against their own elites, and, of course, there is Cuba; he simply refused to keep his promises, as Democrats always do (don’t); this lays the groundwork for a far more reactionary, energized Republican resurgence.

What happens to transsexual and transgender people is part of a larger picture of oppression painted by political economy, the very thing that is rendered so invisible by media, elites and leadership.

Most Americans, given the generations long reframing project of the Right, simply will not accept the idea that these countries, and their presidents, might be the model for positive change in their own country.

My argument is quite simple: this revolution of thinking, let alone action, will not happen in America or on this list, or in Canada, until the larger question of oppression is asked; it cannot be answered until it is asked.

This continued refusal to recognize transsexual people takes some, obviously absent, understanding. An understanding also absent when one sees that same-sex sex, unsurprisingly to me at least, is gender non-normative, that is, transgender; this is quite different from those whose quest is for body congruity.

So, analytically, LGBT has become gay/lesbian people, and those people who, like gay/lesbian people, are gender non-normative, challenging what society imposes.

The dominant discourse is to exclude transsexual people because our lives are incomprehensible: our challenge is not to societally imposed gender norms, but to the physical dissonance of morphological sex; our challenge is to our own bodies.

LGBT=sexual orientation and consequential challenge to gender norms

transsexual=physical dissonance with anatomical/morphological sex, a challenge to our body’s sex

This might seem to be a challenge to society’s imposed gender norms, but only for an analysis that lacks both depth and sincerity. It is so obviously inconvenient even to say the word–transsexual–let alone demonstrate understanding of it; it is something quite different from sexual orientation and gender non-conformity.

UPDATE: I have recently come across this report purporting to be about GLBT health in Washington D.C. which does not include “transgender, transsexual and gender diverse” people.

If there is a legal situation, as there was in Canada, as there might yet be in the United States, where medical treatment trumps identity, why is it unreasonable?

In Canada, under human rights law, there is a duty to accommodate to the limit of undue hardship.

For whom is the hardship undue? This is a balance between each employer and each employee, between each individual and the public.

The balance is different when one is on Real Life Experience than when one is not; this was specifically addressed, and with respect to washrooms, in the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal decision in 1999, Sheridan v. Sanctuary Investments.

It is undue hardship for an employer to fire an employee who crossdresses on their own time, but is it undue hardship for the employee not to crossdress on the job?

It is undue hardship on the person who is required to take medical treatment for the medical condition of transsexuality not to use the washroom that conforms with the sex she is working towards; is it undue hardship for someone who presents cross gender part time to use the washrooms that conform to their birth-assigned sex, not their part time gender presentation?

The line between medical requirement and full time presentation regardless of medical status seems to have dissolved in Canada which would address the concerns of those who, for whatever reasons choose NOT, or are not able, to physically transition.

Employers and club/gym owners still have the duty to accommodate pre-op transsexual people, yes, those who can prove they are on Real Life Experience, to the point of undue hardship, which means providing alternative, family, or whatever, changing/shower facilities–but there are limits.

Some will argue this net isn’t wide enough, and those who are not full time must also be included.

I understand that the onus of showing undue hardship lies on the part of those who endure it. In a legal environment where the duty to accommodate is the expectation, this showing is not the barrier those who seek absolute edicts fear.

I am increasingly curious and concerned about the lack of concern for those not part of our populations: those neither transsexual nor transgender–though the latter population can be construed to be an enormously large number of people, including gay and lesbian people and those neither homosexual nor transsexual.

One of the things I see all the time in discussions by Americans on these issues is the absolute position they take–their belief is the only permissible one.

Agreement among our populations is difficult to achieve, is so hard even to think, possibly growing out of struggle with the rabid views of those who will never agree with us, but what about the broad mid ground? I actually believe there is still something left of the mid ground, between our populations and those who will never agree with us, despite the ongoing polarization of America and its ongoing infection of Canada.

With extreme polarization no agreement is possible; the only possible solution is elimination, edict will not suffice.

Duty to accommodate to the limit of undue hardship is a very workable way to bring all people of good will, on all sides–they do exist–into the discussion, the education, and the solution I had assumed people who subscribe to equality also subscribed to.

It is so hard for people to realize that gender is something people grow into, rather like a total body suit, that differs from age to age, from geographic location to geographic location.

And then there is the sex of a person.

Most discourse on transgender email lists suggests sex is something solely determined by the genitalia observed at birth by the doctor who exclaims, “Its a boy!” of “Its a girl!”

What we know from intersex people is that this is not always possible–not the baby’s gender but the baby’s sex.

And the ambiguity is not always at the level of visible, morphological anatomy/sex. So why would we make the assumption that birth-assigned sex is always correct?

While a baby may grow up to be uncomfortable with the body suit society shoves the baby into, there are those whose body itself is uncomfortable, from the moment of birth, but the baby has not the words. And, from the moment it does have the words, it is not permitted to use them.

Anymore than the person the baby grows into is permitted to use those words on transgender email lists–without suffering the very exclusion that lead them to the list in the first place; without the stigma of being called the reason for the failure of the equality movement, on email lists–and elsewhere.

It is easy to get away with the oppression of transsexual people after they have been defined out of existence in the last 20-30 years.

It is far harder to oppress two spirit and intersex people, in the interests of their equality, of course, because there are other parts of their lives, as well as the very characteristics of their lives which some take as the path to oppress them, which immunize them from the “equality” oppression, unlike transsexual people.

There are organizations that advocate for intersex people, run by intersex people–such as the Organization Intersexual International–and those that advocate for two spirit people, the latter based in the more traditional ways out of which the modern notion of two spirit grew.

The melancholy for transsexual people is that there are only organizations that advocate for transgender, or, less likely, organizations that advocate for LGBT people, which often means just gay and lesbian people.

Who will advocate for transsexual people?

An Observation: People tend to judge, based upon the Outward Appearance.

On the contrary, people judge on the basis of acceptance, or rejection, of  the transgender loyalty oath.

In all the very respectful debate–most of the time–and more than any such in the past as I have observed it on this list, one thing stands out in the most graphic of ways, and with particular clarity in this post.

All those, such as myself, who call for the recognition of transsexual and transgender people, who call for an historical understanding of our oppression, who call, explicitly and REPEATEDLY, for equal treatment of ALL transsexual and transgender people–are accused of demeaning and diminishing transgender people.

The only people I see who refuse to simply declare a commitment to equality for all, are those who give fealty to the transgender ideology–as if that enforced identity is all that is needed to ensure equality for all.

This notion of policed identity is the model of the gay rights movement that has not/is not proving very helpful for transsexual and transgender people in the United States; for all the noise that the, so-called, repeal of DADT is what transsexual and transgender people need, very arguable, it is not arguable that it has filled the quota of LGBT legislation before the mid-terms. When the Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress disappear after the mid-terms there is little likelihood anything trans inclusive will be passed.

In Canada, gay and lesbian people have long achieved their formal agenda and are less than enthusiastic to come back for transgender and transsexual people.

I argue there is a lesson here for “all who care to note.”

I’m not sure how an enforced identity is working out in Arizona; I have just read that the “papers, please” law is supported across the United States–I hope I read wrong; though given American history, this certainly seems likely.

Nor am I sure about how the notion of “melting pot” worked out for what we in Canada call First Nations/Aboriginal People, also.

Do you really believe basing a struggle for equality, even equity, on a lie is a productive way to proceed?

“But I really don’t fancy the notion of some elitist gatekeepers pompously blasting out a piece of the legislative or social Bridge to Equality that I need to get to where I aim to go in Life.”

Just who are the “elitist gatekeepers pompously blasting out” around here?

Just who are those laying out accusations about “not “worthy” of equal treatment”?

In my legislative work I accept the expediency of gender identity and gender expression; in practical fact this has already been well-established in Canadian human rights practice at the federal, provincial and territorial level.

We work now to raise the awareness of transsexual and transgender people, their different lives and needs–particularly health needs–by passing legislation.

The pathologization of transsexual men in Canada, at least for hysterectomy surgery has never been; ‘top’ surgery, depending on the doctor, can be similarly finessed.

I had to obtain a diagnosis for GID and follow the Standards of Care. I would argue there is a fundamental sexism involved here–one I have never heard discussed.

Julia Serano has argued the entire sexist reaction of society to transsexual men–less–and transsexual women–more–is not because of the women and men we were, respectively; it is because of the men and women we are now, respectively.

As I read one of the depathologization manifestos there was a call for surgery to be covered by national health insurance plans. Without some medical diagnosis, coverage, such as the San Francisco municipal plan would lose its medical base and would probably not cover any more.

I recognize the extreme libertarian culture in America is often profoundly against single-payer, such as we have in Canada, that provides coverage for SRS, without which many, many transsexual women–the men in many cases already covered under OTHER categories–will, as they are now, be excluded.

There must be a way to square this circle–depathologize but retain medical coverage to the extent that it will be paid for. Unless libertarian ideology replaces transgender ideology governing the lives of transsexual women without regard to their lives and needs–what’s new!

I appreciate the de-psychopathologize intermediate position, of requiring national insurance coverage, but, as I’ve pointed out in Canada, we are just talking about transsexual women, transsexual men have long escaped the psychopathologization the women have always been subject to.

And in libertarian countries, such as the United States the entire idea of single-payer, or ANY health care system run by the government, smacks of “repellent socialism.”

I also appreciate this is a very class-structured thing, which is precisely why I advocate for single-payer.

For the reason of sexism/gender the men simply go through the system without any stigma; the women must.

Until the Depathologization Movement actually, formally, explicitly recognizes this sexism at the heart of the treatment of transsexuality–including its–it will be little more than an interesting side issue.

The entire foundation of her work is the dismissal of transsexual people and our claims of being mis-SEXed at birth illuminated by her incomprehension at the rage that drove David Reimer to take his own life rather than continue, even when he tried, tried so hard, to struggle with the gender that was forced upon him in support of another’s gender ideology.

How incomprehensible gender ideology is to those who espouse it!

I am left with the sense of a world turned upside down. Where those who must recognize themselves, not able to accept their birth-assigned status, are treated unequally: Gay, lesbian, and less, bisexual people are recognized and possibly transgender people; certainly transsexual people are less so. With the expectation we must all accept the melting pot, yet those who cannot are accused of identity politics; we are accused of standing in the way of equality by those who commit the greatest identity political coup of all time:

the melting pot is in their image

Why isn’t the dominant identity, instead of sexual orientation, transgender/gender variance?

Why, since same-sex sex is gender transgressive after all, are not all gay men and lesbians proud trangenders?

I always think the celebration of someone who has no conception of the lived experience of those who must change sex, who becomes the arbiter of the lives of those who must, oppressive.

And declares the core of our lives, the urge to change sex, is nothing, and that it is really the discomfort with gender–and so recruits us for her gender ideology–oppressive.

But then, this is the common goal of those who demand common identity.

THEIRS

It is neither identity nor identity politics that is the focus of my critique of Butler.

It is her total incomprehension at the rage of David Reimer, the rage not only at what was done to him, but the rage that lead him to take his own life–and that of his brother to take his own life.

How can a cissexual person make a principled attempt to speak to the lived experience of transsexual people? Without acknowledging the foundational question of our lives? Without impressing us into her ideology?

The elision of the lived experience of those who must change sex with those who explore gender–something Butler knows well–is no less than violence; it is no more than oppression.

This becomes a basis of the discourse that declares our experience is non-existence, that what we are really experiencing is gender dysphoria.

This is why I challenge the theory, abstract and ungrounded, of Butler and all the oppression that issues from it.

While most of the speakers, who had been in Toronto on the weekend, spoke of the immediate violence they had endured, one courageous young man spoke of the larger issues involved, including the austerity that has now been “sanctioned” by the “leaders” of the G20–a policy that, among others, was championed by my Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.

The issues of power and oppression have been raised; for myself, I am less and less able to see what power is.

Oh I know the incidents described, and all the others that were endured, and many witnessed, both by those on the ground and those watching through media. represent raw power, but, being a student of these things for so many years, I need something more I can engage/understand.

What the leaders did in comfortable secrecy, immune from what they have described as necessary austerity–that will impoverish retirees, women, GLBT/T people, students, workers, in fact everyone who has a stake in the modern, once upon a time welfare state, at least it was in Canada–is not something new, just a new, and even more skeletal mask.

As a concept, oppression is difficult to understand, because it manifests in so many guises, and is not limited to those we might like to hate–myself included–such as the police, especially those in their Blade Runner, cyperpunk futuristic armour, and the politicians.

The overt violence we saw over the weekend–which appalled and shamed me–is a rather rare, though dramatic episode in oppression.

It mostly happens in the ways all of us who are reading this comment are very familiar with: Mullaly refers to them as the aversions that make up our bureaucratic society, both the personal aversions, and the more anonymous ones that are the essence of our society: refusal to hire, refusal to train, refusal to promote, refusal to serve, the many bureaucratic barriers to equal access and treatment, the regulations, the attitudes that don’t end with a fire extinguisher on our head, but may well have the same result, if not quite as dramatically or as quickly.

Violence doesn’t stop, of course.

And few of us are the sources of violence–though when I read of American trans-prefixed persons revelling in their guns, in their fighting–and implicitly killing–techniques, I shudder.

How to continue this thread of logic?

Along with our many overlapped demographic characteristics, trans-prefixed AND female, of colour, working class, Jewish, Muslim, the list is neverending, there is our participation in the oppressive structures, though many of us challenge it in whatever ways are open.

There is no escaping our participation in the oppressive structures; reading–and writing–this comment is participation.

Is it the same as the leaders of the G20, of course not.

Is it the same as the police, of course not.

I do not go out and beat the crap out of someone because I am, well, programed to oppress; my programming is far more subtle than that.

Sometimes, I do avert people; I cannot always engage constructively with others; I certainly do say things that I, on the other end, might well believe to be oppressive.

What I do claim for myself, is that I reflect upon what I say and do–sometimes to the point of inaction.

This is not the best post I have ever made, and I think most will see through my obfuscations.

The point I’m trying to make is that it is less the violence and the personalities we should be pointing at, as easy and as fun as that is.

The oppression at the centre of our lives is not as obvious nor as easy to focus on as what we saw over the weekend, but it is pervasive in our lives–and it is seductive and almost irresistible.

We must see it for what it is–and our complicity in it.

Free the Toronto 900!

Fight back against the police state! We are putting you under surveillance!

Build the resistance against the G20! Build the resistance against austerity!

Build the general strike!