what the Trans Woman Manifesto could do for Allegheny College

 Lately I've been thinking about how the various ways in which language is frustratingly limited. To say it simply, words are really, really difficult. That being said, words are our most effective form of communication and so we've got to make the most of what we've got. By this, I mean to say that we need to be constantly aware of language and its fluidity and even more aware of the ways in which language can be expanded to achieve a greater level of inclusivity. 

With that in mind, I think the Trans Woman Manifesto could do Allegheny a lot of good, assuming we're talking about the ideal Allegheny College where the Statement of Community actually makes a difference in the way students are treated on campus. 

First and foremost - while speaking idealistically, of course - the Trans Woman Manifesto would open the eyes of students to a variety of new isms. Currently in the Statement of Community, we claim that as Allegheny students we are going to actively confront and challenge sexism, racism, heterosexism, religious bigotry, and other forms of harassment and discrimination. While I can appreciate the idea that we included heterosexism in this statement, heterosexism is defined as the "discrimination against homosexuals on the assumption that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation" which really dismisses the possibility for trans* students - or any student, for that matter - who identifies their sexuality as something other than homosexual or heterosexual. Within just the first few pages of Julia Serano's writing, we are exposed to the idea of Transphobia (the intense dislike of or prejudice against transsexual or transgender people), cissexism (the belief that trans*'s identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cisgendered individuals),  and a wider definition of sexism including Traditional Sexism (the belief that men and masculinity is superior to women and femininity) and Oppositional Sexism (the belief that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive categories, each possessing a unique and non-overlapping set of attributes, aptitudes, abilities, and desires).  And yet, the majority of students on this campus would not know the meaning behind these terminologies because the majority of students on this campus are unaffected by the oppression these isms create. This is then to say that the isms that Allegheny Students say they are willing to confront and challenge - those being sexism, racism, heterosexism, and religious bigotry - are isms that oppress a more privileged group of oppressed individuals.  

Before going further into this, I think it's important to discuss intersectionality on a deeper level since that's not necessarily we've spent much time defining in the course. In Patricia Hill Collins' Intersecting Oppressions, Collins defines intersectionality as a "way of understanding social location in terms of crisscross systems of oppression"; in other words, intersectionality is analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and age form mutually constructing features of social organization". Thus, when these systems form together, oppression can exist on a variety of levels for a variety of different ways. Collins explains this idea through the exploration of the black feminist woman identity - not only does a woman face oppression from being a woman, but she faces oppression from being black as well. Thus, it can then be said that, when compared to a white woman of equal economical/financial/class/etc. background, the white woman would have more privilege based on the fact that she is white and the black woman would be oppressed based on the fact that she is black; thus, even though both women face the oppression from their existence as a woman, the black woman experiences oppression on multiple levels - both sex and race - and therefore receives more oppression. 

     

Bringing this back to the Statement of Community at Allegheny, I previously stated that our current statement benefits the most privileged of the oppressed. Despite the fact that there are other isms discussed in Serano's piece - such as transphobia, cissexism, traditional sexism, and oppositional sexism, the only isms we mention in our statement community are the isms that we, as a society, accept as "worth fighting against". That is to say that we see discrimination based on the binary-definition of biological sex (man vs. woman), race, and the binary-definition of sexuality (heterosexual vs. homosexual), and religion with more severity than discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression (or lack thereof), etc. We have a way here at Allegheny - and in most places, really - to only recognize and fight against the systems of oppression that oppress the privileged group of oppressed, the group of people that we wouldn't mind to be equals to because, for the most part, their self-presentation remains normative. 

With this in mind, we can once more go back to Serano's Trans Woman Manifesto. I feel as if Serano's manifesto is incredibly useful in understanding the fact that oppression is a complex system that results from a variety of privileges - many of which go unnoticed because they're so frequently taken for granted, i.e. ablism, eurocentrism, pro-natalism, etc. 

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While Serano's text doesn't cover all of these things, I don't think it needs to nor do I think it should. It would be exhausting to write a text that addresses all of the systems of oppression we choose to ignore. Instead, I feel as if Serano's method is successful in addressing the systems of oppression we ignore that pertain to trans* issues and I'd hope that other activists feel empowered to indivudally address other ignored systems of oppression until we know enough about them to include them in our "everyday mindset of oppressive systems". 

Basically, as much as it sucks, the process to successfully attaining an intersectional perspective that is all effective, universal, and aware is an incredibly slow and exhausting one. However, I think efforts such as Serano's are very much needed and hopefully, with more efforts such as this, a Statement of Community such as Allegheny's could be continuously revised to further include all types of oppression. While the list will be exhausting, I believe it better to have an all-inclusive list than a list naming just a few. With the way the statement is currently phrased, it only perpetuates the idea that the systems of oppression that benefit the least-marginalized groups are the only systems of oppression that are worth fighting against, or perhaps even the only systems of oppression that exist.