I can't remember how I found it, but I stumbled across this memorial in SL recently, for those transgendered people who've been victims of hate crimes or have committed suicide as the result of the conflict between what they are inside and what society says they should want to be.
For those of you who don't have SL, I took a screenshot to show you what it's like. I think this memorial was a pretty fitting place for my Mir avatar to be; I think this declaration, displayed on the wall and reprinted here for those who can't read it, is something she could easily have spoken:
- A Monument -
To the Inhumanity of Humankind
This is what Mir is about. This is what I'm about. And yes, I cross it over with my fandoms. It'd be a poor thing if I abandoned my awareness of what I think is right and good for the sake of participating in a fandom, after all.
8 comments:
The Transgender Day of Remembrance... I've heard of this before, from the webcomic side of things. Misfile has done comics for it in 2004, 2006, and 2008. (You can see them and others here if you're interested.)
There are times I'm very glad my particular brand of gender confusion is a desire to have both options rather than just the other one...
Thanks for the link! I saw some of the 2008 images from that site on the walls of the SL memorial building, actually.
I was also heartened to see that, despite the prevalence of crude sexual content in SL-- seriously, it's impossible to search for just about anything without being inundated with sexual content, from apartments to animations-- most results for "transgender" on their search came up with safe spaces, not fetish stuff.
And I think gender is generally an idea that constrains people far more than it needs to; is used too often as a weapon for getting people to stay in what society considers their place, when it should be a celebration, a thing for the self to revel in. Gender's a personal thing, IMO; nobody has any business telling anyone else what theirs is, or should be.
Hmmm. I think I'd be more likely to be looking for fetish stuff myself. `.` (Although I prefer subtle sexual content. *innocent innocent*)
For that matter, like my Reyvablog persona, I'm not entirely clear on the "safe space" thing. `.`
when it should be a celebration, a thing for the self to revel in.
That makes me think of something I've said a few times. "I don't suffer from gender dysphoria - I enjoy every minute of it."
I think there's a lot of issues that would stop being problems if people would just focus on living their own lives instead of poking into other people's personal lives.
Aww. That is sweet.
From what I've seen in Second Life, liberal politics are very much the norm there, and alternate lifestyles/orientations/religions/genders abound. ("This area is a hangout for zombies, spiders, and dirty hobos. No Republicans allowed.") So I think that anything that is controversial is probably very much viewed as okay in SL.
And I agree with the idea that gender should not be as big of a deal as people make it out to be. There's no reason for someone's reproductive plumbing to totally define who they are, as it is just one small aspect of a person, after all.
A physical structure, a literal safe space to commemorate the fallen, not because they did something amazing, but because they did nothing to deserve being at the receiving end of that hatred... If only there were memorials that were always present in the physical world, to remind people that this isn't something that's only important on specific days of the year.
Deciding how someone else should live based on their reproductive plumbing, as it were, is ridiculous. Such a small detail, hardly relevant at all to the myriad thoughts, sentiments, ideas, projects, and decisions going through their minds right now... It's absurd. Letting one small, irrelevant detail define the perspective from which everything else should be evaluated.
It ought to be common sense that a person knows more about themselves than what any random stranger claims to know about them based solely on surface characteristics.
If only there were memorials that were always present in the physical world, to remind people that this isn't something that's only important on specific days of the year.
Sadly, it doesn't look like there is one in the physical world, no... that's kind of sad, and a little surprising. I guess I sort of expected a permanent, physical presence for this sort of thing to exist. Instead, it's just transient events-- which, potent as they are, are forgotten about easily by the majority, yes.
Letting one small, irrelevant detail define the perspective from which everything else should be evaluated.
*nods.* No matter what that detail is, a person is more than the sum of their parts. A person is not one experience, one facet, one mistake, one past action. They are a continuum, a living thing. Unless they choose to be understood from that perspective-- as you say, people know themselves best, and have probably chosen that trait or experience for a good reason if so-- they shouldn't be seen as a single, defining thing around which everything else aggregates, whether that thing is "male identity", "male body", "gay", "gamer", "truck driver", "bad at social interaction", or anything else.
Okay, so a person has a certain chromosomal setup, appearance, whatever-- yes, they possess it, but why should it shape who they are any more than a random mole or a cancer or a limp? A limp shouldn't define my identity, unless I want to. I'm not "a limper". I'm just a person with a body that doesn't always cooperate with me. Many of them don't. But I don't define a person by whether their body matches who they are. I define them by, you know, who they are.
Don't a lot of memorials get most of their attention when there's a specific event or day though?
I think there's a particular value to having special days like that, just because it gets a lot of people focused on one thing at the same time. Makes it stand out more from the background.
(Of course, there's also some effect from these things after the day has passed too. I know I didn't start reading Misfile until the last year or so, and when I was reading the archives I was expecting the 2004 comic about as much as a punch in the face...)
Oh, true, I'd never argue that those days should not exist, or anything. It'd just be nice to have a physical, permanent reminder too, rather than simply a transient day. Both are valuable in their own ways.
Post a Comment