The Tolerance Project Archive

interpretation:
Namaste’s contention that the metaphorical inflation of the transgender figure works to render transsexuality and transgender lives as literally unthinkable is certainly correct in as much as it describes the institutional and social imaginary as it has been mobilized by bureaucrats, social service workers, the courts and other agents of the state who in some ways work to fix the boundaries of the real with the parameters of the state’s concern and purview. In these domains and others, the erasure of transsexual lives has been routinely effected. The recent (February 1, 2007) decision by the Supreme Court of Canada to refuse to hear the appeal of transsexual Kimberly Nixon, barred from training to be a support councilor at Vancouver Rape Relief, in 199? is certainly legible as one such instance. Nixon’s exclusion from Rape Relief’s program has been justified on many grounds, perhaps none more damaging than that which suggests that though she is now legally a woman, Rape Relief (and by extension, other small organizations) is entitled to judge her as not a woman for their purposes. The implication is that Nixon, transsexuals, belong to a class of person that can be judged, by any normatively embodied subject, insufficiently authentic in her/our being (women) as to justify our exclusion from social life or reality, which stands dangerously close to life, or reality, itself. Rape relief’s criteria for judging Nixon is particularly noxious and ironic – it is on the basis of her having transitioned from male to female in her early thirties, and therefore lacking the experience of woman hood necessary to interact as a woman. That is to say, it is Nixon’s experience of difference within the category of woman, and exclusion, that justifies her exclusion, and negation. The irony is exacerbated when one considers the extent to which the honouring of experience as a ground for conscitization and political knowledge has been foundational to the second wave feminist project encapsulated in the phrase, the personal is political. The Supreme Court’s assessment of damages to VRR and requirement that Nixon pay their costs adds insult to injury and brings home a double movement within the law, wherein the Supreme Court colludes with Rape Relief’s contention that Nixon is a woman in name only, i.e. that actually inscribes her womanhood as a legal fiction, with out real weight in the social.

Stolen:
http://lyra2.concordia.ca/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-47450/US-2009-5-D15.pdf

Misprised, polemical and mistaken:
by trixxx3
May 28 2009
12:31 PM
The idea that Pride Toronto has adopted a policy banning “groups advancing a political agenda” is as ludicrous as it is repulsive. Pride celebrations grew out of political marches and demonstrations— community-based responses to laws criminalizing homosexuality, transvestism, and sex work, as well as police brutality and societal homophobia. And they are certainly still mobilized by mainstream, “a-political” queers in the fight for marriage rights, and other forms of anti-discrimination work—the right for queer youth to bring same sex dates to prom, for instance.So the organizers of Toronto Pride don’t have a problem with politics at Pride, they are merely selective in what they count as “political.” Clearly advertising dollars are at stake, but also a certain amount of privilege, enough that organizers feel comfortable separating gay rights out from the human rights of (lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex, transgender and transsexual) Palestinians living under occupation and Israeli Apartheid.So, I wonder, will Pride also be banning members of Helem, an organization of Lebanese Gays and Lesbians from participation in the Pride Parade? How about Salaam, the queer Muslim organization? Perhaps you should get rid of Blockorama and Funkasia as well, because, after all, Black and South Asian queer cultural celebrations might have something to do with politics as well? And what about that Dyke March? Wasn’t there a critique of commercialism and sexism at the root of the march? Finally, you might want to cancel your readings and youth events, because the people participating in them might have something to say, and that wouldn’t be good…Or maybe queers of conscience should just boycott Toronto Pride this year. Trish Salah

context: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2009/05/27/toronto-pride-organizers-ban-anti-zionist-group.aspx

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