Several readers (and a couple of bloggers) have raised objections to an article we published in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Briarpatch, Mandy Van Deven’s “From invisibility to stability: Trans organizing for the masses.”
Briarpatch actively encourages debate, discussion and healthy disagreement — indeed, it sometimes feels like we actively seek out controversy — so on the one hand, we very much welcome the volume of response this article has generated.
On the other hand, we also work very hard to foster a climate of solidarity, mutual aid, understanding and respect across a range of communities and issues. We therefore take any suggestion that something we have published has failed to contribute to such an environment very seriously.
While I don’t agree with all of the objections that have been raised about this article and while I believe strongly that one need not necessarily be a member of an oppressed group to write insightfully about the issues that group faces, I do agree that the prescriptive, rather than descriptive, approach of the article and its focus on the gaps in transgender organizing, rather than on the models and success stories (perhaps in the context of a broader lack of attention), could legitimately offend and needlessly antagonize frontline activists and allies in the trans community.
Indeed, any prescriptive critique of an oppressed group’s tactics by someone who is not a member of that group — especially when writing for a broader audience that may not be directly involved in that movement — must be approached respectfully and with great sensitivity, if it’s to be of any use at all. The fact that due care and attention was not given to these vitally important issues is an editorial oversight for which I accept full responsibility.
I should add that this is by no means the first article we’ve published that seeks to address the oppression of transgendered people, and I would ask that our record as an anti-oppression publication not be judged solely on this one situation.
Yours in the struggle,
Dave Oswald Mitchell
For further reading, please see:
Calvin Neufeld, “A Pound of Flesh: The cost of transsexual health care in Canada,” March/April 2009
Jesse Invik, Suzanne Mills & Tyler McCreary, “The Third Sex: Supporting the struggles of transgendered people,” November 2005.
Our 2009 gender issue: Adultery, sex work and other affairs of state.
Our 2008 gender issue: Life beyond the sexual binary.
Our 2007 gender issue: Feminism 3.1.
Our 2006 gender issue: Gender mending.
