Trans(re)lating

00:00 Opening
01:05 Introduction
05:04 Conversation with Nobilis (second half)
- Nobilis: I think change happens best in quiet, personal conversations, not in vast impersonal media.
- DDog: I tend to agree, but I don’t think that is the only tool available. Big media can act as a starting point for the smaller conversations as well.
- Nobilis: If you’re saying the proper reaction to these problematic works is to have conversations with friends about the issues, then I’m all for it.
- DDog: Some people do best with emotional angles, some do best with logical angles, some people like to be the reasonable person at the table, and some do their best work shouting in the streets.
- Nobilis: Shouting just entrenches people in the ideas they already had. Subtlety is much more effective. Martin Luther King succeeded where Malcolm X didn’t because he never used the language of conflict.
- DDog: Do you think you would pay as much attention to the people who are speaking quietly if there weren’t someone across the street shouting at you? King’s message may not have been as well-received if it did not stand in contrast to the Black Panthers’ and others’ messages of conflict and separation.
- Nobilis: You have the people on the outside pushing, and the people on the inside taking off the brakes?
- DDog: Playing the extremes agains the middle works well from many angles.
- Nobilis: Do movements actually plan that out?
- DDog: Genderbitch breaks activist strategies down into Nukers, Appeasers, Logic Bombers, and Emoters. Many people have a preferred style, which can make them distrust the others. I see each of these styles as important and effective in different ways.
- Nobilis: I appreciate the understanding on your part to meet me where I was on these questions. I learned a lot, especially about shouting.
31:04 Promo for Scouts in print
31:53 Contact information and closing
33:36

Links mentioned:
Balticon
Scouts, by Nobilis Reed (free sample!)
Nobilis Erotica and @Nobilis on Twitter
The Casting Game
Activist Modus Operandi: Methods of Communication by Recursive Paradox at Genderbitch: Musings of a Trans Chick

Email: feedback@transrelating.com
Twitter: twitter.com/DDog
Podcast blog: http://transrelating.com

Trans(re)lating 007: A Response to Trans Film with Nobilis Reed, Part 2

00:00 Opening
01:05 Introduction
02:25 Conversation with Nobilis (first half)
- Nobilis: Actors change themselves all the time for roles. Why is gender identity different than things like hair color?
- DDog: Hair color isn’t the right analogy. Some totally inadequate comparisons are blackface and characters with disabilities being played by actors without those disabilities. Some people have power and privilege over others, and there is something wrong when the people without the power are overwhelmingly portrayed by the people with it.
- Nobilis: But blackface just looks wrong; you know the person isn’t really black. You don’t know if someone isn’t really trans unless you’re reading their mind, because trans-ness is not something that is intrinsically visible, unlike sex, race, etc.
- DDog: That construction implies that being trans is like a hat that someone can put on and take off at will, which in general it is not. Even for the people for whom that is the case, being trans has a social meaning and effect that hair color doesn’t.
- Nobilis: What effect does that actually have on the real world? Does the media change and popular perceptions follow, or vice versa?
- DDog: I think it can go back and forth. You see it on TV and it becomes less of a big deal to see them in your own life; and you see it in real life so it’s less of a shock to see it on TV. Some creators may try to push the envelope with varying degrees of success; most media portrayals are initially negative but evolve into something more representative with time.
- Nobilis: I see mass media as being far behind social reality. Eventually there is enough social inertia that media simply resists less and then you see better representations.
22:49 Promo for The Good Parts
24:30 Closing and contact information
25:50

Links mentioned:
Trans(re)lating 005, “Trans Film”
Nobilis Erotica and @Nobilis on Twitter
The Good Parts, a podcast about the process of writing erotica with Nobilis Reed, Ann Regantin and Helen E. H. Madden

Recommended reading on “crip drag”:
Where Are All the People With Disabilities? by s.e. smith at this ain’t livin’
And if this keeps up, there won’t be any by Anna at FWD/Forward
Glee: “That’s why we call it dismissing legitimate concerns instead of acting” by Anna at FWD/Forward

Trans(re)lating 006: A Response to Trans Film with Nobilis Reed, Part 1