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Tag Archives: being the change

(there should not be) silence in the library: why I support #teamharpy

27 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life

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being the change

Two women in the library science world, nina de jesus and Lisa Rabey, are being sued for 1.25 million in damages. Why? Because they spoke up regarding the behavior of a fellow professional who appears to be a serial harasser — and refused to back down when he threatened them with a lawsuit.

If you feel safe doing so, please consider cosigning this open letter signing this petition to plaintiff Joe Murphy asking him to withdraw the lawsuit and seek an alternative path toward reconciliation.

If you are willing and able, please consider speaking up as a witness; a key aspect of defending one’s self against charges of defamation.

If you can afford to, please consider donating to nina de jesus’ and Lisa Rabey’s legal defense fund.

I’m not going to write a long blog post on the subject, because I have little to add that hasn’t already been said by individuals more articulate than I (particularly Meredith Farkas, Laura Crossett, Barbara Fister, and the Radical Librarians Collective). But I want to offer two reasons why I support #teamharpy in standing up to Joe Murphy’s aggression.

1) One day, it could be me. I’m a snarky, opinionated woman on the Internet. I have little patience for those who punch down and I have reason to believe I give a good tongue lashing — particularly when I have people to defend, including myself. If women are to be slapped with a 1.25 million dollar lawsuit for naming high-profile men in the context of sexual harassment allegations, a conversation that desperately needs to happen about sexual coercion and sexual entitlement — within the library science profession, apparently, as in the rest of our fucked-up society — will be stifled. And those who do speak will be forever looking over our shoulders waiting for that inevitable moment when we piss off the man who proves desperate, angry, or privileged enough to come after us with every tool at his disposal.

I stand in solidarity with the women who have spoken because there should never be silence in the library (or anywhere else) on this subject.

2) One day, it could be me. While this is a less likely scenario than the one above, I could also someday find myself faced with allegations that I sexually harassed a colleague. While I have every reason to believe I’m good at respecting boundaries, people make mistakes. Actions or words are misconstrued.

Continue reading →

believing the unicorns [#bivisibilityday 2014]

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in life writing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

being the change, gender and sexuality

I was informed by the Internet that today is Bi Invisibility Day 2014.

So here I am. Being bi. And visible.

Like I am most days. Showering in a bisexual manner. Brushing my bisexual teeth. Biking to work bisexually. Bisexually offering reference assistance to researchers. Lunching on bisexually-approved pizza. Picking up my bisexual wife after work so we can indulge in public displays of bisexual affection.

A bisexual as seen in the wild, with fairy wand and rainbow scarf, which I wore to my grandmother's funeral because Grandma always loved a spot of color.

This is what a bisexual looks like.
July 2014

Though of course most people don’t know I’m being bisexually visible. People who see me on the street unaccompanied probably assume I’m straight (unless I’m on a street in JP, in which case they probably assume I’m a dyke). With Hanna, they probably assume I’m a lesbian. Because as a culture we read people according to the gender of their partners, and we humans with our funny little categories have a rough time understanding folks whose desires don’t map neatly onto the binary system of gender we’ve invented for ourselves.

I don’t really care, most days, who people think I fuck.

But here’s the thing: Because of biphobia I spent the first 27 years of my life thinking I wasn’t queer enough. Because I liked dudes as well as dykes, and people of all shapes, sizes, and self-presentations were equally likely to make my squishy bits a bit more squishy. Continue reading →

in which I write letters: open letter to SAA re: #thatdarnlist

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life

≈ 15 Comments

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archivists, being the change, i write letters

Society of American Archivists
Attn: Council members
17 North State Street
Suite 1425
Chicago, IL 60602-4061

10 September 2014

Dear members of the SAA Council,

I am writing to you as a member and critic of the Archives & Archivists listserv. My name is likely familiar to some of you given my role in the recent debates about A&A and its future. I have been part of on-list discussions about the culture of the list, am the author of two lengthy blog posts (“once upon a listserv” and “once again upon a listserv”) critiquing list dynamics — one of which prompted personal attacks on-list by those who disagreed with my views and approach — and I also participate in discussions about #thatdarnlist on Twitter. Those experiences have led me to form the Amiable Archivists Salon, a website and email list focused on issues of professional culture and inclusion in the archival and associated professions.

I am also the founding co-chair of New England Archivists’ LGBTQ Issues Roundtable, and have studied and written on issues related to gender, sexuality, and inequality for over a decade, online and off. My perspective is, of course, specific to my own areas of expertise and experience. Yet my observations regarding A&A are informed by listening to and engaging with many others on questions of community, power, privilege, and belonging.

With all of these contexts in mind, there is much that could be said about the complaints and critiques on and around the Archives & Archivists list that have been raised in past months. I’ve already articulated many of them myself in emails, blog posts, and on Twitter. Today I am writing directly to you for the first time to raise concerns about the recently-revised terms of participation and how they were implemented. I believe the new terms and their roll-out send a clear and troubling message regarding what SAA considers as speakable and unspeakable, appropriately visible and best handled invisibly, within our professional community.

Continue reading →

the marilyn ross memorial book award

08 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in my historian hat

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

being the change, books, family

Marilyn Ross with her daughters Bonnie and Janet

Marilyn Ross (1925-2013) with her daughters Bonnie and Janet
Photograph by Duncan Ross

Today is my maternal grandmother’s birthday. She passed away in June 2013, a year and a month to the day before her husband, Duncan Adam Ross, followed.

Marilyn Coe Ross was born in 1925 to single, working mother Marguerite Scott Coe, and grew up in Detroit, Michigan, with her mother and younger sister Barbara (b. 1927). While she was unable to afford college or extended professional education, she was — among many other things — a lifelong lover of books and libraries. One of my most enduring memories of my grandmother is that a visit from her always meant new books to read. It was she who introduced me to such beloved childhood classics as The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare and The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill. When my grandparents relocated from Michigan to Oregon in the 1980s my grandmother began volunteering at the Bend Public Library, a relationship that lasted decades and endured even after a stroke left her partially paralyzed. Her active enjoyment and eager sharing of books and the act of reading within community remains one of my inspirations for pursuing a life of letters — of reading, writing, and sharing the life of the mind through librarianship.

This past spring, while Hanna and I were participating in our third year of Massachusetts History Day judging, I noticed that the special topical awards given out for student projects — labor history, local history, military history — didn’t include any awards for the history of projects related to women’s or gender history. Each year, many students do excellent work exploring the history of women and girls, gender, sex, and sexuality — and it seemed to me a shame that this work would not be recognized to the same extent that more traditional fields of historical inquiry would be.

So I decided to establish a book award in women’s and gender history — and I decided to name the award in honor of my grandmother. As I explained in the award letter:

Congratulations on winning this year’s Marilyn Ross Memorial Book Award. This prize is awarded annually at the state level to the best Junior or Senior individual project on the subject of women’s and gender history.

As an undergraduate student in history and women’s studies I was the recipient of several book prizes. It was very meaningful to me that faculty paid attention to my research and selected an award that fit my own particular scholarly interests. In establishing this book prize, it is my intention to support the work of the young scholars in my own field as I was once supported by my own mentors. I celebrate your hard work and encourage you in whatever direction your historical curiosity takes you!

…I award this prize in the memory of my maternal grandmother, Marilyn Ross (1925-2013), who was one of my inspirations for pursuing a career in librarianship and writing.

The inaugural award was presented in May 2014 to Gayatri Sundar Rajan for her individual documentary “Smile, Laugh, Charm: Expectations Placed on Women in the Work Force.”  

The idea of the book award is to reward and encourage the honoree in their continued work as a scholar by selecting a book that reflects the topic of their project but branches out in a tangential direction. This year I selected two titles (the second being an apology for an unwarranted delay in selection and presentation of the prize) in labor history:

  • Rocking the Boat:Union Women’s Voices, 1915-1975 by Brigid O’Farrell and Joyce L. Kornbluh. Rutgers University Press, 1996
  • Women Strikers Occupy Chain Stores, Win Big: The 1937 Woolworth’s Sit-Down by Diana Frank. Haymarket Books, 2012.

I look forward to presenting many more books to eager young scholars in the years to come!

once again upon a listserv: some follow-up thoughts about #thatdarnlist

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

archivists, being the change, sociology, technology

Note to non-archivist/librarian readers: this blog post is largely professional insider discussion and, while it may be interesting to some of you it will likely be tl;dr for many others. You have been warned!

a radical feminist cabal (via)

In the three weeks since I published my post about professionalism, privilege, and power, discussing the Archives & Archivists listserv, I’ve had further interesting adventures — both inspiring and dispiriting — around what I wrote, how I wrote it, and the manner in which it was shared. Having (mostly) weathered that storm, I offer a few further thoughts about what went down, and how, and the manner in which I’ve chosen to participate in this conversation moving forward.

My last substantive listserv email on this subject went out to the listserv on June 5th and can be read here. The two listserv threads to which that message refer can be read in their entirety here and here. What I would like to share in this post are two items of gratitude, four items of critical reflection, and finally an invitation.

For those wishing to skip straight to the invitation,
please see my sounding of interest.

Continue reading →

booknotes: ‘bi’ and ‘a woman like that’

20 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in book reviews

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being the change, gender and sexuality, memoir

While we were snowbound in Michigan, I had time to do quite a bit of reading. Two of the titles I read were A Woman Like That: Lesbian and Bisexual Women Tell Their Coming Out Stories edited by Joan Larkin (Avon Books, 1999) and Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution by Shiri Eisner (Seal Press, 2013). Separated by nearly fifteen years, and written for very different purposes, yet grappling with similar subject matter, it was interesting to read them back to back.

A Woman Like That is — at the subtitle implies — an anthology of personal essays by queer women describing their experiences of coming-to-awareness of their sexual selves. “Coming out” is a term we typically use for the process by which we (non-straight) people make public the shape of our sexual desires. While mainstream narratives generally pin-point a singular event (“When did you come out?”) what most of the essays in A Woman Like That make clear — and what most in the queer community already know — is that to come out is a verb, a process, and myriad. Reading these pieces challenged me to consider my own narrative of sexual awakening, and asked me to consider how I would organize it biographically. Does one begin with romantic/passionate friendships in childhood? With the acquired vocabulary that allows you to name yourself, or proscribes that ability (more on this below)? With a sexual debut? The first time you employed the word (bisexual lesbian dyke queer) to describe yourself to a (parent friend lover colleague medical professional) or on (on a form the internet) or in (an academic essay a job interview a survey response)?

The women in A Woman Like That, whose essays are arranged roughly chronologically featuring stories from the 1950s to the 1990s, use a variety of these definitions of “coming out,” often in combination. They describe childhood passions, first crushes, sexual initiations (good, not-so-good, violently non-consensual). They describe always knowing and coming to their realization later in life. They write a lot about the pain of living queer in an anti-gay world: of “reparative” therapies, of drugs, of physical abuse, of children taken away, of ruptured relationships, of fear and self-loathing. One of the things that startled me, in fact, and bogged me down in the reading, is how grim so many of these women’s narratives were. Hanna and I joked, as I kept reading her excerpts, that it should have been titled “The Unhappy Dyke Book.”

Still, as I said, the book made me think about the shape of my own story: the intense romantic friendships (same- and other-sexed); the inability to discern erotic from platonic attractions by gender in adolescence (I was told by multiple people “you’ll know” … what it turned out “I knew” was that gender was not a salient factor for me!); the internalized biphobia that caused me to de-legitimize my same-sex longings as invalid data; the sexual debut(s); the transition into a relationship, the describing of that relationship; the (mostly unruffled) reactions of people who found out I was dating a woman; the experience of getting married in a state where same-sex marriage is legally recognized.

Shiri Eisner, author of Bi would probably frown upon my brand of bisexuality. For one thing, I’m an “assimilationist” bisexual, perpetuating my own erasure by playing nice with the mainstream LGBT (or “GGGG”) movement, by often using language like “lesbian” to describe myself (even though I am, in fact, bi), and by marrying Hanna (“even if one particular marital arrangement doesn’t include any form of direct violence, marriage still constitutes symbolic violence against women in and of itself”). Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution challenges those of us with bisexual desires and identities to push for an end to bisexual invisibility, and to recognize the radical challenge the organization of our sexual desires pose for the sex, gender, and sexual hierarchy of what Eisner refers to as minority-world culture (more commonly known as Western culture).

In eight chapters, Eisner explores what bisexuality is, how monosexism and biphobia work, bisexuality and the concept of “passing” and social privilege, and the intersection of bisexuality and feminism, trans* activism, racialization, and the mainstream gay movement. Overall, despite the fact that I suspect Eisner would take away my bisexuality card if she could, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It’s accessibly written, deeply researched (I’m already mining its bibliography for further reading), and thoughtfully inclusive of many different peoples and communities.

At times I felt like the apparatus of inclusivity was top-heavy and slightly arbitrary. For example, Eisner had a habit of identifying authors’ nationalities which didn’t always seem any more relevant to the meaning of their work than, say, their marital status, or whether they were parents. Still, I think probably over-articulating subjectivity is probably better than assuming objectivity or universal applicability. The other stylistic challenge of the “big tent” work Eisner is attempting to write is the way the text sometimes got bogged down in enumerations of what could not be discussed, whom the next statements would not be relevant for, and whose voices might be in danger of erasure. As with the identity-markers, these provisos sometimes felt like they were undercutting the relevance of the forthcoming passages and/or assuming a readership that would be unable to discern for itself about whom the text was speaking. While I fully appreciate what Eisner was trying to do, I found myself as a reader getting impatient with too much telling and not enough showing (“I know that already! Get to the damn point!”). This is perhaps a personal limitation rather than an authorial flaw.

At the end of the day, I appreciate Bi as a call to stand up for bisexuality as an actual-factual way of being sexual in the world, and one which is not an attempt to cover one’s homosexuality or seek to gain heterosexual privilege. As an adolescent and young twentysomething, I needed someone like Eisner to come along and point out to me that my erotic interest in people with male parts and identities did not trump my erotic interest in people with other parts and identities. For too long, I assumed that as a woman who was capable of sexual attraction to men, my only social recourse was a heterosexual relationship.

(Because statistically speaking, in my hometown, what were the odds of finding a woman interested in me. Because lesbians would all hate and be suspicious of me. Because I was sexually inexperienced and too stupid to tell the difference between platonic and erotic interest; once I had sex with a man I’d suddenly realize what made that different from my same-sex romantic friendships. Because “everyone knows” that bisexuality is just a phase and that bisexual women are flakey, indecisive, and deceptive. Because no one believed me when I said I didn’t know what orientation I was. Because the default sexual orientation is always straight and monosexual.)

While A Woman Like That would likely only be of interest to people who like to think about the structure of coming-out narratives and about how the material experience of coming out has (and hasn’t) changed since the mid-20th century, I’d argue that Bi is absolutely essential reading for anyone who cares about keeping their fingers on the pulse of queer activism. As we look beyond, around, and through the mainstream gay rights issues that have preoccupied the most visible activists and activist organizations in recent years (i.e. as “gay” people become more accepted to the extent that they look and act like hetero, gender-normative folks), we need to remain committed to gender, sex, and sexual diversity beyond the hetero/mono and male/female binaries that obsess Westerners and others across the globe. Bi offers up a robust toolbox of concepts for doing so.

on dying well [a book and a radio show]

10 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in book reviews

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being the change, big ideas, web audio

This past week I received and read an advance review copy of Changing How We Die: Compassionate End of Life Care and the Hospice Movement by Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel (Viva Editions, 2013). The reading involved a lot of spontaneous weeping on public transit, which I tried not to feel ashamed about: Big emotions are pretty appropriate where end-of-life narratives and choices are concerned. I couldn’t even tell you what emotion I was feeling that prompted tears other than BIG — it was joy, grief, surprise, longing, anger, fear, gratitude, all wrapped up in the moment at hand.

My paternal grandfather died at home in hospice care, and the whole family was grateful that they made it possible for him to die well in many respects.

I hadn’t thought about it before reading Changing How We Die, but the modern hospice care  movement– having grown out of the countercultural moment of the 1970s in many ways — shares a lot with the homebirth/midwifery/doula and homeschooling/unschooling movements. No wonder it feels like “of course” to me in many ways: an impulse toward low-intervention, person-centered care; placing the individual (laboring mother, learner, dying person) in the decision-making role; providing mindful, non judgmental support; holistic attention to all aspects of being; a preference for home-based rather than institutional care. I’m curious whether anyone has thought to look at the homebirth/homeschool/hospice movements as a continuum of care across the lifecycle, and what placing these movements side-by-side might teach us about lessons learned and possible future directions.

Food for thought.

Then, the radio came on this morning in time for “On Being” with Krista Tippett and it was an interview with Dr. Ira Byock who works in palliative medicine and hospice care. If you’re interested in the question of how we die — and what it might look like to die well — I highly recommend listening to the podcast or reading the transcript.
Audio here.

Transcript here.

on being out day [a belated post]

13 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in life writing

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being the change, gender and sexuality, hanna

This Friday, October 11th, was International Coming Out Day.

I thought, in passing, about writing something but I was distracted by trying to get things done at work and by the fact my wife was getting a chest x-ray for pneumonia. And then picking up antibiotics (thank goddess for antibiotics) for her. And remembering to feed the cats. And pick up something for dinner.

Hanna in the redwoods (Sept. 2013)

So this is a belated post on the theme of coming/being out. I don’t have anything particularly original to say, except that I am grateful to all of the people throughout history, past and present, who have conspired to make International Coming Out Day an unremarkable occasion in our day lives. Hanna and I live in a time and place where our bisexual inclinations and same-sex relationship are known and largely honored structurally in our workplaces, with our landlord, at our health center, in our city, state (and now, finally, the federal government), by our friends and relations. We hold hands and kiss in public, speak of things sexual while dining out, review queer porn, blog about being dykes.

We don’t fear being evicted, fired, blacklisted, jailed, physically attacked, disowned or disinherited, treated as sick because of our sexual selves, or otherwise grossly discriminated against. And if any of these things were top happen to us, we would have advocacy organizations and a network of supporters to turn to for aid.

In many ways, our security is exceptional: many queer folks still live in the toxic closet, or cover aspects of their identities, for fear of social and material marginalization. The young and the old, the gender non-confirming, trans folks, queer people in nations that still actively persecute sexual minorities.

There is obviously still work to be done.

But this week, I’m grateful in my own small domestic way for the work of activists and the kindness of those people in our lives who together made it possible for my Friday to be, in part, a story about leaving work half an hour early so I could get to the pharmacy and pick up Hanna’s antibiotics. A story about a boss and colleagues who sent well-wishes for Hanna’s quick recovery. A story about a health clinic that knows were a couple and has no problem letting me pick up her medications.

A story about going home to my wife.

the statement on trans-inclusive feminsm and womanism [signed!]

19 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in think pieces

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being the change, bigotry, feminism, gender and sexuality, i write letters

I’ve been seeing this statement coming through on my RSS and Twitter feed for the last few days, and have finally had a moment to sit down and sign it. 

It should be upsetting to us all that the need to specify trans-inclusive feminism and womanism exists, but it does so I want to spell out my support. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the trans people and allies who have pushed me — in person and in print — over the past ten years to learn about trans issues and un-learn toxic myths and stereotypes. You have immeasurably enriched my life and my feminism. I will do my best to live up to the vision all you have challenged us to fulfill.

[text via feministsfightingtransphobia]

We, the undersigned trans* and cis scholars, writers, artists, and educators, want to publicly and openly affirm our commitment to a trans*-inclusive feminism and womanism.

There has been a noticeable increase in transphobic feminist activity this summer: the forthcoming book by Sheila Jeffreys from Routledge; the hostile and threatening anonymous letter sent to Dallas Denny after she and Dr. Jamison Green wrote to Routledge regarding their concerns about that book; and the recent widely circulated statement entitled “Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Critique of ‘Gender,’” signed by a number of prominent, and we regret to say, misguided, feminists have been particularly noticeable.  And all this is taking place in the climate of virulent mainstream transphobia that has emerged following the coverage of Chelsea Manning’s trial and subsequent statement regarding her gender identity, and the recent murders of young trans women of color, including Islan Nettles and Domonique Newburn, the latest targets in a long history of violence against trans women of color.  Given these events, it is important that we speak out in support of feminism and womanism that support trans* people.

We are committed to recognizing and respecting the complex construction of sexual/gender identity; to recognizing trans* women as women and including them in all women’s spaces; to recognizing trans* men as men and rejecting accounts of manhood that exclude them; to recognizing the existence of genderqueer, non-binary identifying people and accepting their humanity; to rigorous, thoughtful, nuanced research and analysis of gender, sex, and sexuality that accept trans* people as authorities on their own experiences and understands that the legitimacy of their lives is not up for debate; and to fighting the twin ideologies of transphobia and patriarchy in all their guises.

Transphobic feminism ignores the identification of many trans* and genderqueer people as feminists or womanists and many cis feminists/womanists with their trans* sisters, brothers, friends, and lovers; it is feminism that has too often rejected them, and not the reverse. It ignores the historical pressures placed by the medical profession on trans* people to conform to rigid gender stereotypes in order to be “gifted” the medical aid to which they as human beings are entitled.  By positing “woman” as a coherent, stable identity whose boundaries they are authorized to police, transphobic feminists reject the insights of intersectional analysis, subordinating all other identities to womanhood and all other oppressions to patriarchy.  They are refusing to acknowledge their own power and privilege.

We recognize that transphobic feminists have used violence and threats of violence against trans* people and their partners and we condemn such behavior.  We recognize that transphobic rhetoric has deeply harmful effects on trans* people’s real lives; witness CeCe MacDonald’s imprisonment in a facility for men.  We further recognize the particular harm transphobia causes to trans* people of color when it combines with racism, and the violence it encourages.

When feminists exclude trans* women from women’s shelters, trans* women are left vulnerable to the worst kinds of violent, abusive misogyny, whether in men’s shelters, on the streets, or in abusive homes.  When feminists demand that trans* women be excluded from women’s bathrooms and that genderqueer people choose a binary-marked bathroom, they make participation in the public sphere near-impossible, collaborate with a rigidity of gender identities that feminism has historically fought against, and erect yet another barrier to employment.  When feminists teach transphobia, they drive trans* students away from education and the opportunities it provides.

We also reject the notion that trans* activists’ critiques of transphobic bigotry “silence” anybody.  Criticism is not the same as silencing. We recognize that the recent emphasis on the so-called violent rhetoric and threats that transphobic feminists claim are coming from trans* women online ignores the 40+ – year history of violent and eliminationist rhetoric directed by prominent feminists against trans* women, trans* men, and genderqueer people.  It ignores the deliberate strategy of certain well-known anti-trans* feminists of engaging in gleeful and persistent harassment, baiting, and provocation of trans* people, particularly trans* women, in the hope of inciting angry responses, which are then utilized to paint a false portrayal of trans* women as oppressors and cis feminist women as victims. It ignores the public outing of trans* women that certain transphobic feminists have engaged in regardless of the damage it does to women’s lives and the danger in which it puts them.  And it relies upon the pernicious rhetoric of collective guilt, using any example of such violent rhetoric, no matter the source — and, just as much, the justified anger of any one trans* woman — to condemn all trans* women, and to justify their continued exclusion and the continued denial of their civil rights.

Whether we are cis, trans*, binary-identified, or genderqueer, we will not let feminist or womanist discourse regress or stagnate; we will push forward in our understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality across disciplines.  While we respect the great achievements and hard battles fought by activists in the 1960s and 1970s, we know that those activists are not infallible and that progress cannot stop with them if we hope to remain intellectually honest, moral, and politically effective.  Most importantly, we recognize that theories are not more important than real people’s real lives; we reject any theory of gender, sex, or sexuality that calls on us to sacrifice the needs of any subjugated or marginalized group.  People are more important than theory.

We are committed to making our classrooms, our writing, and our research inclusive of trans* people’s lives.

Signed,

Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook (librarian, historian, writer)
Allston, Massachusetts
USA

[click through for the full list of signatories]

in which I write letters: NPR, I’m disappointed in you

24 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in think pieces

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being the change, bigotry, feminism, gender and sexuality, npr

To: abross@npr.org
From: feministlibrarian@gmail.com
Re: Chelsea Manning

Dear Ms. Bross,

I am contacting you as a lifetime listener and longtime supporter of National Public Radio. As a teenager I began contributing to Michigan Radio as soon as I began to earn my own paycheck; my wife and I are currently sustaining members of WBUR and WGBH in Boston. I usually look to National Public Radio for thoughtful and respectful in-depth reporting that is conscious of the full humanity and agency of the individuals whom its reporters speak to and about.

Your decision to ignore Chelsea Manning’s explicit request that we honor her gender identity and use her chosen name as well as conventional female pronouns is an unethical one. It is a decision that robs her of what little agency she has left as she enters a military prison — the right to personhood, and the ability to articulate who she is. Surely Pfc. Manning is the one individual in the world who can know more intimately than any of us who she is. For NPR to contradict her own explicit self-definition is a profound act of arrogance and erasure.

I hope the coming days see reversal of your initial decision, and an apology to Manning and all of the trans people out there who have had to live through yet another round of media mis-steps around a high-profile individual who happens to be transgender. I was truly sorry to see NPR complicit in this perpetuation of trans-bigotry and ignorance.

In hopes of a better, more inclusive tomorrow,
Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook
Allston, MA

h/t to @SexOutLoudRadio for the email

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