Category: Keepers

Maybe it’s the sea air up here on the Cape but I spent last night again watching Fox News. It was like slipping into an alternative universe. Sure. I expected criticism of the president and a few outrageous zingers – but not the picture of reality that seemed to undergird the entire enterprise. But here’s the gist: the president is a lawless dictator, abetting America’s Islamist foes around the world, releasing Taliban prisoners to aid in his own jihad on America, fomenting a new caliphate in Iraq, and encouraging children to rush the Mexican border to up his vote-count, while effectively leaving those borders open to achieve his “fundamental transformation of America.”

I watched Megyn Kelly, who is regarded as more centrist than Sean Hannity. You could have fooled me. The guests were Brent Bozell, far right veteran, and Andy McCarthy, pro-torture activist touting his book calling for Obama’s impeachment. The only pushback Kelly provided to a relentless stream of hysteria was to ask whether the president sincerely wanted another terror attack on America – since it would hurt his approval ratings. And that provided the only qualification to the picture of a Jihadist in the White House determined to destroy the America he loathes. The “chaos” at the border and the emerging caliphate in Iraq may have been merely the unintended consequences of fecklessness rather than a deliberate attempt to destroy everything valuable in the United States.

At no point was any context provided to make sense of any of this. So, for example, it is axiomatic for Fox viewers that Obama has presided over a massive wave of illegals flooding the country. The truth is quite different:

If you compare [Bush’s and Obama’s] monthly averages [for deportations], it works out to 32,886 for Obama and 20,964 for Bush, putting Obama clearly in the lead. Bill Clinton is far behind with 869,676 total and 9,059 per month. All previous occupants of the White House going back to 1892 fell well short of the level of the three most recent presidents.

We wondered whether there might have been a surge of undocumented immigrants that explained the increase, but there wasn’t. During the first two years of Obama’s tenure, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated the illegal immigrant population nationwide at 11.2 million, compared to an average during Bush’s eight-year tenure of 10.6 million. And illegal immigration actually peaked late in Bush’s second term, at which point the recession hit and the numbers declined under Obama. Such patterns do not explain the 57 percent bump in monthly deportations that we found under Obama.

That data simply refutes the notion that we are somehow living in an era of lawlessness and massive illegal immigration. If a Republican president had done as much, he’d be a hero on Fox.

Look: I know I may be a total sucker for even hoping to see some semblance of fairness and balance on Fox. But it’s still shocking to see programming designed not to uncover reality, but to create a reality in which no counter-arguments are ever considered, and in which hysteria is the constant norm. MSNBC is almost as bad, of course, but with CNN as the new Discovery Channel, the entire possibility of a balanced newscast has disappeared from cable – and from the lives of most Americans. Again, this is not new. But as it continues, it intensifies. And as it intensifies, the possibility of governing all of the country recedes into the distance.

This is a civil war without violence. And we are two countries now.

A reader follows up:

In your response to my letter, you dismissed my argument, claiming that it’s important that all trans advocates be willing to discuss their genitals because “reassignment surgery is often intrinsic to a full trans identity.” I am going to ignore the issue of whether surgery is intrinsic and what the words “full trans identity” mean and instead deal with the bigger issues: who has the right to know about our genitals, and why this is considered a personal subject.

The only people who have the right to know about our genitals are our intimate partners, and potentially anyone who needs to provide medical care directly related to our genitals. Beyond that, it is personal, and I will attempt here to give a non-exhaustive list of reasons why it is personal.

Part of the reason our genitals are a sensitive subject is that even people who want surgery may be denied it due to gatekeeping, lack of funds, or other medical reasons. The Medicare ban on GCS [gender confirmation surgery] was only lifted two Fridays ago. This is important not just for those on Medicare, but more broadly for trans people in the US, as many insurance companies base their coverage on Medicare policies. Without the possibility of insurance coverage, GCS is out of reach for many, including many middle-class trans people.

Additionally, there are many trans people who do not feel the need to have GCS or opt not to have surgery for other reasons. We are not any less trans and our gender is not any less real simply because our genitals do not align with the picture someone might have in their head. In fact, nobody beyond our partners and physicians would not even know what our genitals are if people weren’t so insistent on asking (and sexually assaulting us in public, often under the guise of curiosity).

In addition to being a personal issue, the question of genitals is also a distraction from other, more important issues. When every interview with a trans person, even those on completely unrelated subjects, turns into questions about their genitals, it is derailing the conversation and distracting from other issues. It is not possible to have the conversations we need to have when all the interviewer seems to care about is genitals.

These are exactly the points that Laverne Cox explained in her interview, and this is why questions about genitals are an invasive distraction. And at a personal level, people’s desire to satisfy their curiosity does not supersede my right to keep information about my genitals private.

Another agrees:

I underwent sex reassignment surgery in my early 20s. For the subsequent 15 years, I have had to field questions about the most intricate details of my sex life and the function and appearance of my new plumbing. Complete strangers have offered me money to see or touch my vagina. Other men propose sex “so I can see what it’s like”. This is the harsh reality of being a MTF trannie – we get to experience all the lecherous advances that regular women do, plus the even more brazen and thoughtless objectification from those who see us as little more than fetish toys. I can completely understand high-profile trannies not wanting to go there.

The truth is, although getting surgery seems like the most important thing in the world during transition, after it’s over it becomes such an insignificant part of who we are. We are not defined by our junk. Post-transition we are just normal people with normal lives and everyday problems. I don’t want to talk to strangers about my genitalia any more than any other woman – or man – would. I’m no prude, but honestly, there are way more interesting things going on in my life.

As a general rule, I agree with you that the trans-whatever community has become overly neurotic and that it spends way too much energy policing language and trying to distance itself from “gay culture”, but wanting to take the public focus away from surgery is not a part of that. Sure, gay guys fuck other men, but they aren’t asked in high-brow interviews what it’s like to take it up the ass. Why should transsexual women be asked what it’s like to have a vagina? Leave that for the tabloids and the medical journals.

I’m really grateful for my readers explaining this in more detail and I better see now why a trans identity is what matters, not how radically that identity has been implemented physically. And of course I can see how those questions can seem invasive and violating. I get it better now. Which is why a provocative but sincere debate as we’ve been having here can lead to greater understanding.

“I think that we have found something horrible. At least one of the detainees was alive hours later than reported. He was left to die. First in the detainee clinic, where he lay unattended on a gurney with ropes tied around his neck. He was later found in an ambulance with faint vital signs because the ropes were still around his neck. When they cut the ropes off, his vital signs improved. But when he arrived at the hospital, he lay there while Camp Delta kept calling, asking if he were dead yet. And finally he died. This is more horrible than I could possibly have imagined,” – a student at Seton Hall University, on a FOIAed document from an internal military review of the conduct of guards one night in Gitmo, where three prisoners are said to have committed suicide simultaneously on June 9, 2006.

Dish readers may recall Scott Horton’s dissection of the military’s and DOJ’s assurances that somehow, three prisoners managed to elude guards and cameras and hang themselves in tandem in their cells on that night. (The story won the National Magazine Award for reporting in 2009.) The Alpha Block where their bodies were allegedly discovered was closely monitored, with guard checks of every cell required every 10 minutes. There were five guards for 28 prisoners. And yet the NCIS report found that the bodies were not discovered for two hours. How one of those prisoners was still alive thereafter – as shown in the new document in an eye-witness account from one of the medics – is yet another head-scratcher. So too is the absence of any disciplining of the negligent guards.

The story is not uncontroversial. Many investigative reporters looked into the story and didn’t find anything to contradict the Pentagon’s story and the conclusion of subsequent investigations. For skeptical takes, see Shafer and Koppelman. For a back-and-forth on the issue, see here.

But that an internal military investigation found testimony that clearly contradicts that version of events – a prisoner still breathing two hours after hanging himself and with the rope around his neck not fully cut – is clearly something worth examining. That this document was also filled out of order, and not included in the formal NCIS report is also suspect.

For me, the thing I cannot quite get my head around is why the prisoners were all found with a rag stuffed in their throats. The official line is that this was contrived by the prisoners who wrapped cloth around their faces to muffle any involuntary cries in the hanging. Somehow, they sucked those rags into their mouths during their deaths, further asphyxiating them. Seems more than a little strange to me. What else could explain it? Some have posited an experimental torture technique known as “dry-boarding”, in which rags are stuffed down throats until near-asphyxiation and then removed. If that torture technique went wrong, you can see how a hastily contrived “suicide” cover-story would have been an option. I really don’t know.

This is a complicated story – but when a key piece of evidence contradicting the Pentagon line gets mis-filed, and is discovered only in a mass review of FOIAed documents, I’m not inclined to take the Pentagon’s word for it. And on Gitmo and torture in general, I’ve come to see that the Pentagon just isn’t to be trusted. And neither, alas, is the Obama administration.

It’s a very dangerous endeavor, as my old friend Dan Savage just found out. In talking about the evolution of his sex advice column in an off-the-record seminar at the University of Chicago, Dan referred to many terms he has used in the past, including the word “tranny” which he stopped using in 2011:

I talked about why the word was problematic, why some object to its use, where I see double standards, and the LGBT community’s long history of reclaiming hate words.

This was a hate crime, apparently:

During this part of the talk a student interrupted and asked me to stop using “the t-slur.” (I guess it’s not the t-word anymore. I missed the memo.) My use of it—even while talking about why I don’t use the word anymore, even while speaking of the queer community’s history of reclaiming hate words, even as I used other hate words—was potentially traumatizing.

I stated that I didn’t see a difference between saying “tranny” in this context and saying “t-slur.” Were I to say “t-slur” instead of “tranny,” everyone in the room would auto-translate “t-slur” to “tranny” in their own heads. Was there really much difference between me saying it and me forcing everyone in the room to say it quietly to themselves?  … I asked the student who objected if it was okay for me to use the words “dyke” and “sissy.” After a moment’s thought the student said I could use those words—permission granted—and that struck me a funny because I am not a lesbian nor am I particularly effeminate.

This student became so incensed by our refusal to say “How high?” when this student said “Jump!” that this student stormed out of the seminar. In tears. As one does when one doesn’t get one’s way. In college.

Yes, this occurred at the University of Chicago! Now, I’m not interested in defending Dan, because he can defend himself. And John Aravosis is right that there’s a potent and destructive strain in the LGBT world that aims more hate at someone like Dan Savage than at Rick Santorum (tell me about it). What I am interested in is condemning this pathetic excuse for a student. This plea in a university to be free of hearing things that might hurt, offend, traumatize or upset you is an attack on the very idea of education itself. And don’t get me started about “trigger warnings.” So many things worth thinking about, grappling with, and chewing over can be offensive at first or second blush. That’s what a real education is about: offending your pre-existing feelings and prejudices with reason and argument and sometimes provocation. Education is not and never should be about making you more comfortable and more safe within your current worldview. It should not be about accusing someone with whom you might disagree of a hate crime.

And the idea that trans people or gay people are those signing up for this mindless crap is particularly distressing.

Policing language is something no gay person should ever countenance – if only because our language and our speech, as tiny minorities, could be the first to be policed in that brave new world. And what does it say about someone’s self-esteem that they run crying out of a seminar because they cannot handle a simple fricking word (and that they do that, while preferring to be referred to as “it”!). I know life as a member of a sexual minority is not exactly an easy one. But what happened to self-empowerment? Whatever happened to the proud, fearless trans people fighting back against the cops at Stonewall? Whatever happened to the great tradition of flouting all sorts of public norms and parading down main street in full Pride regalia? Or the tradition of bawdy outrage perfected by generations of drag queens, gay satirists, cultural provocateurs, and performance artists whose goals often include the salutary impact of – precisely – offense?

All of this is to be buried in a ghastly, quivering, defensive crouch of affirming claptrap, with trans people whining to teacher that someone said a naughty word, and incapable of taking in even a completely benign discussion without collapsing into trauma and tears. There is only one word for this and it is pathetic. I’m all in favor of avoiding words that some people find distressing if at all possible. It can get in the way of an argument, or simple manners. But I am more in favor of free, bold and fearless speech and argument, in which every t and l and g and b can give as good as they get, and in which this sad and pathetic recourse to fathomless victimology is called out for the disgrace it is. It is entirely self-defeating. No one else can give you the self-respect you may want. No one else’s words have any more power over you than you decide to give to them.

When you think of the courage so many trans people have demonstrated over the decades and centuries, when you think of all the brilliant, funny and sharp ways in which trans people have described their world and ours over the years, this craven emotional blackmail and language monitoring is particularly tough to take. It is not some kind of high-point for gay maturity and tolerance. It’s a sad and tawdry failure to live up to the heroes and heroines – and standards – of the past.