(no subject)

[sorcyress]

Fetishizing Groups and Human Attractiveness vs Objectification((Next essay, I decided to split them up.))
-or-
Sor has a bit of an Existential Crisis night part two! ((Being as this was primarily written last night))

There's a group on livejournal called ftmvanity. It's where I met helionaut, and quare, and a handful of other people along the way. It's basically a community where people who are or were once or have/had the genitals of girls can post pictures of themselves dressed as/as boys¹. There's a little bit of passing advice, the occasional discussion of surgeons or T dosage, but really and primarily the purpose of the community is to post pictures of yourself and get comments telling you how incredibly hot you look.

I like the community a lot, but as Erika Moen points out, I worry that I'm fetishizing them --both the members of the community specifically, and transmen in general.

I'm pretty sure I'm not fetishizing transmen in general. I know a surprisingly high number of transmen² in real life, and if I harbor any deep crushes or fantasies about them, they're secret enough that I don't know about them³. I'll flirt with them all, sure, in varying degrees of seriousness, but then again, I flirt with nearly every person I interact with.

As for the community...well...the place is called ftm vanity. It's not just expected that you'll get wolf whistles and *drooling* from the commenters, it's encouraged that the commenters engage in such flirtations. The posters post pictures because they're feeling pretty. The flattering comments serve to show that yes, they are pretty. To me, it's not really any worse than saying rrow at the half naked men over in long_hair_guys. Yes, there's a little bit of objectifying, but it's what the posters want. ^{4, 5}.

And so, honestly, I don't think it's wrong to drool over the boys who post there. They are pretty, they know they're pretty, they're posting the pretty, I admire the pretty. Someone else can write the rant about how they're turning themselves into objects and setting transrights back a hundred bajillion years, I don't care. Those are some good looking guys, and I like having a forum where I can actually tell them that.⁶

~Sor
MOOP!

---

1: Because seriously, if you're a boy, you're a boy. You might have been the result of the gods fucking around, and therefore born with a vajeener, but if you say you're a boy, I'm gonna go ahead and do my best to remember that. That being said, ftm_vanity is home to a fair number of genderqueer folk, and at least a couple people (like me) who are just crossdressers.

2: ie, much higher than the number of transwomen I know. This is largely because I follow ftmvanity and have never bothered to find out if there is such a thing as mtf_vanity, but even without that, on the ftm side of things I have dan4th, Mando, Nathen, Mattie, and Michael, plus little flashes of Ria, Maddie, me, and my sister. On the mtf side, there's Woozle and Stacey. (And that's just the ones I can think of off the top of my head --I could very well be forgetting people.)

3: Well, no, that's not entirely true. I will admit to wanting to know what your average ftm (and mtf) looks like under the hood in the process of transitioning. I'm pretty sure this is merely curiosity, however, and not sexually linked.

4: It's not like I'm, say, going to the much more transition oriented ftm and drooling over the photos --that would be, how do you say, not polite.

5: I...hesitate at this word choice. Following any negative with "but e wanted it" is not a good sentence. It is rapey, which I try to avoid *so* hard. So, "but that's what the community wants" is not exactly what I'm trying to say here, but I'm floundering a little at what the proper word choice should be.

6: This'll be part of the next post, or the one after that. I can feel it.

Comments

[harena.livejournal.com]

*poings over to long_hair_guys*

>.>

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

*giggles!!*

~Sor

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

Your footnote numbers seem to be off in the main body -- they go 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6.

And regarding 5, yeah, the phrase has some unfortunate associations, but it does seem to be accurate in this case. (And it's now got me thinking about its use for people who like to roleplay rape, which is a whole nother kettle of fish.)

Possibly more later.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Oh, carp. Yeah, that's because I went back and added the first number one --I'll go fix.

Yay later!

~Sor

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

So, in general, I think it's ok to fetishize whatever or whoever one wants. Though I use the term "wants" advisedly, since by the technical definition of fetishes they're not controllable: if someone actually had an ftm fetish, they would be unable to be aroused by anyone other than an ftm. But even for the more general definition of fetish, it's okay to be turned on by whatever you want to be. What's important is how you act on or react to being turned on, and that's where objectification comes into play, or doesn't -- it's really a separate issue from fetishization.

To recap that last paragraph, because it wasn't particularly coherent: fetishization is about who or what turns you on; objectification is about how you think about the people who do.

And, going a bit farther, it's generally even ok to act on fetishes (the major exceptions being things involving lack of consent). If someone has an ftm fetish, it's ok for them to go out looking for pretty transmen to date, just as it's ok for anyone to look for people they find attractive to date. And the rules are the same: as long as one respects the people one finds attractive, it doesn't really matter why one finds them attractive.

Hopefully that made some kind of sense; if it didn't, or parts of it didn't, let me know and I'll try to explain better.

"she was askin' for it"

[woozle.livejournal.com]

Following any negative with "but e wanted it" is not a good sentence.

Seems to me there's a big difference between (on the one hand) claiming that someone who was fighting you tooth and nail for any part of the time "wanted it" and (on the other hand) claiming that a group of people who are each posting stuff specifically (and in writing) for the purpose of being admired and/or commented on "wanted it". One is a lie (or at best the product of an overactive imagination); the other one is verifiably true.

I understand the reluctance to use a claim of any particular form once that form has been poisoned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well) by abuse, but it seems to me that avoiding valid uses of that form for this reason -- implying that there are no valid uses of it -- is, shall we say, "letting the rapists win" in at least a small way.

Re: "she was askin' for it"

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

I...huh.

...huh.

You have a really really good point. It's kinda like taking away the hateful language from those who use it to hate, and giving it back to the people who it describes --blacks calling each other nigger, gays teasing one another with fag.

~Sor

Re: "she was askin' for it"

[woozle.livejournal.com]

...yyeahh, kind of... except I don't know that those words have any use other than as pejoratives (repurposed into terms of affectionate solidarity or whatever you wanna callem). Their absence from the vocabulary of the privileged (i.e. those who probably shouldn't use them) doesn't really take anything away from our ability to express ourselves*.

Not being able to say "I thought it was ok to do X to Y because Y invited me to do so" would be, however, a rather different situation. It would mean you can't accurately give the reason why you considered your actions to be acceptable.

Worse than that, if you don't realize that there's (usually) nothing actually wrong with "doing something to someone after they [really actually] say it's okay", this can lead to all kinds of mental distortions as you try to find alternative justifications for your now-inexplicable actions. That way lies... mental unhealth. It can take years of cognitive therapy to remove the encrustations and further tangles caused by something like this, if it is allowed to settle unquestioned into the bedrock of one's psyche.

(*There is, however, spillover from some of these words -- e.g. I often don't know what word or phrase is ok to use for referring to black people anymore, and that does take something away from our collective ability to talk about black people in a reasonable way.)

Re: "she was askin' for it"

[l33tminion]

Agreed.

Also, reminds me of some of the discussion I've heard surrounding this book (with the disclaimer that I haven't read it yet).

[londo.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with the idea that objectification is universally bad.

On a somewhat related note - hey, finally a community I can be a camwhore in!

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Hahah, yay! That comm needs points.

I don't believe it's inherently bad either, so long as the person being objectified consents. ie, it's the difference between wolf-whistling at a pretty girl just minding her own business as she walks down the street and telling her she's hot when she posts her picture to the "lol, I'm hot!" community on livejournal. The first is unacceptable. The second is just fine.

~Sor

[ndkid.livejournal.com]

Let's say you find a fanfic by, um, screenNameBob. And you really like it. So you go find more fanfic by screenNameBob, and you like that, too. You like it so much that you tell your friends what great fanfic screenNameBob has. Heck, maybe you send a fannish email to screenNameBob, telling s/he what great fanfic they have.

To me, that's objectification. You aren't viewing screenNameBob as a whole person; you're looking at one aspect of screenNameBob, and talking about it, judging it, etc.

I see a few possibilities:
1) We disagree on our definitions of "objectifiction" (at which point, we should have a semantic discussion)
2) You consider telling people about screenNameBob's fanfic, or writing screenNameBob about his/her fanfic wrong (which, I'd disagree with, but at least seems internally consistent)
3) You consider putting one's fanfic online implied consent (which I'd say is inconsistent with your rule for determining consent above)
4) You consider this objectification without consent, but do not consider it wrong (at which point, I'd want to discuss why not all objectification is created equal)

[ndkid.livejournal.com]

I don't ask this to try and minimize gender self-identification, but I'm curious whether your position goes beyond gender. If I understand correctly, your position is that the only person really qualified to define Person A's gender is Person A. What about, say, otherkin? What about people who believe they are the Messiah? Is there a point at which you are unwilling to accept someone's self-identification?

[ednoria.livejournal.com]

I was wondering the same thing.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

See below --I need to think a little bit more on the subject, but I *think* my thoughts boil down to "as long as they're not hurting anybody, they can believe whatever of themselves they'd like, and I will do my best to respect that belief."

Otherkin are inherently hilarious, sure. Haha, you think you're a cat, you loser. But at the same time, they're still human, and no matter how badly I want to laugh on the inside, I really *really* should do my best to be civil to them on the outside. If they legit believe they're a faerie-princess, and they're not hurting anyone (including themselves) with this belief...more power to them. I'll do my best to respect that.

Or something. Like I said, I need at least a little more time to think.

~Sor

[ndkid.livejournal.com]

Hm. My gut reaction to your gut reaction is that it implies... that sort of not-being-open-and-honest-in-the-name-of-social-lube that I tend to be uncomfortable with. Which ties in with my notion of identifying-someone-the-way-they-identify-themselves-implies-you-agree-with-that-identification. It's like going to weddings of people you don't think should be getting married... your presence implies your assent, or something.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Honestly, it's not something that I've yet had to deal with. I fear that if I met someone who really truly believed it, I would be willing to accept it in the real world while internally shaking my head with laughter at them.

I think though, that as long as they're not hurting anyone, I'm willing to accept just about anything someone believes about themselves. You're an alien? That's chill, as long as you're not gonna try and probe me. Bad mouthing me and people like myself doesn't prove you're the messiah. It proves you're an asshole.

Soumyeah. Will have to think more and respond properly later.

~Sor

[ndkid.livejournal.com]

Hm... just to press the point... have you ever been exposed to people who throw their belief into things wholeheartedly, and then, in a relatively short period of time, throw their belief into something completely different, but still completely wholeheartedly?

I may have touched on this before, but I've never been comfortable with... self-identity supremacy. If you think I'm a douchebag, you're welcome to say, "hey, douchebag". I may choose not to respond, but I don't think I have the right to say, "look, I don't think I'm a douchebag, so you're not allowed to say I am". By way of analogy, if I think that the definition of Catholicism requires agreeing with all the doctrines of the Catholic Church, then I feel like I'm within my rights to chose whether or not I want to call someone I know who doesn't believe in the Immaculate Conception "Catholic", regardless of how they self-identify. And so on.

More generally, I suppose I question the general truth of whether someone knows themselves better than anyone else can/does know them. Because, while that seems like a generally safe bet, so many people turn out to believe fundamental non-truths about themselves, and that while someone may have more knowledge of themselves, they also likely have more biases fiddling with it.

[swingerzetta.livejournal.com]

One thing that I think of is that gender is inherently personal. There are chromosomes, and genetalia, sure, but I believe that's what's refered to as Sex, in sor-speak, yes? And gender is less straightforward, it is an internal, mental thing.
So, while I can look at a person and tell her "No, you are not a cat", I can't exactly look at someone and tell them that they are more comfortable in a woman's body. Because of this I'll give them the benifit of the doubt. You say you're mentally male, I'll trust you.

Same would go for anything else that's inherently personal, in my mind. Sexual orientation, for example. there aren't many other examples coming to mind. Maybe Emperor Norton.

[ndkid.livejournal.com]

Hm... to badger the metaphor, what if the person said "I feel like a cat trapped in a human body"? On what level is that less... believable?... acceptable?... than "I feel like a woman trapped in a man's body", or the reverse?

[swingerzetta.livejournal.com]

Well, on the surface they are similar complaints... I can certainly imagine someone sympathising with cat behaviors to the point where they feel more cat-like than other people. If someone was Raised by cats, I could understand it further, too.
but even still, genders, unlike species, have genetic programming that does or does not get triggered. Everyone has the genetic code for female and male behavioral development, but not for cat development.

I admit that I'm coming up with these ideas as I go along, this is not something I've bothered to realize before now, but it makes sense to me.

[jestingly-yours.livejournal.com]

See, I don't get the whole "mental gender" thing. Isn't that just playing right into society's definitions of girly and manly? If people really wanted to flout stereotypes or society or whatever it is they're trying to do by going along with this mental gender thing, wouldn't they just call people people instead of boy or girl? If someone says they're mentally male, what the hell does that mean? Does it mean they are aggressive and dominant and athletic? Does it mean they just like the idea of having a penis? Or does it mean something so obscure and personal and abstract that there's really no point in labeling it?

[ndkid.livejournal.com]

Side note: in your editing, I think you lost where footnote 5 was supposed to be referenced.

Slight snark

[springiswrath.livejournal.com]

I swear I'm the only FTM in the world who isn't skinny, a punk and/or have stretched ears! I had to get rid of all my facial piercings, too.

Re: Slight snark

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Haha. And I thought you were definitely and totally male when I met you, beyond any shadow of a doubt, wheras with most of 'em, I recognize their androgyny. So, take it as you will.

But yeah. ftm_vanity does have a lot of that look to it.

~Sor

Re: Slight snark

[springiswrath.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks! :) Will you be at NEFFA this year? I will, and with any luck I can get more rainbow pants first!

Most FTM gatherings do, too. *sigh*. I have a bicycle and an cap with a brim and a leather jacket. I'm getting there :)