The Hind End of Space

gxesio:

PSA: It may seem kinda cool how someone presenting feminine with a full beard just won Eurovision but Conchita Wurst is not positive trans representations. She is a drag queen and also racist. Her name is a dick joke roughly translating to “The Virgin Mary’s Sausage” and she got her name first known by participating on an Austrian reality show called “wild girls” where she with a group of other white Austrians had to “survive with a native tribe in the deserts of Nambia”. Also, she is intended to be Colombian, according to Tom Neuwirth, the white austrian cis gay man who “plays” Conchita Wurst. So he is a white guy from Europe dressing up as Colombian.

Her beard is not a cool violation of the gender binary but rather is intended to be humorous. Tom Neuwirth refers to her as “The Bearded Lady.” Who is an “Art Figure” and “A statement, it’s not appearances that count, but what’s on the inside.” The section of Tom/Conchita’s website titled “Tolerance” only includes links to websites as “The Homosexual Initiative” and websites about HIV awaresness. She makes no efforts to promote tolerance towards trans folk, who face violence for visibly existing outside the gender binary during their daily lives not as a performance but as how they present to make themselves comfortable.

Her presense on Eurovision resulted in several transphobic jokes such as Austria’s correspondant for voting, a cis woman, wearing a “hillarious” fake beard and many other correspondants making beard-comments and beard gestures when announcing their votes for Conchita. She was referred to as “The Queen of Austria” and after she won “The Queen of Europe.” While it’s not a hardset case that she won because people thought the very idea of her was a funny joke, it looks enough like that for it to make me, as a trans feminine genderqueer person, uncomfortable. News media either calls her a “transvestite” or “drag queen.” When it comes to acceptance of her, all of the discourse is about acceptance of gay folk and no mentions are made of trans people. Because the purpose of Conchita Wurst as a “statement” is not to promote tolerance for trans women but to use them as the butt of a joke to unite cis straight people and cis gay people.

When Conchita was first announced as Austria’s representative to Eurovision I was initially excited when I saw how she presented on stage but I have done extensive research and as much as I wished there was some Austrian cultural context that was being lost in translation, Conchita Wurst cannot be interpretted as anything positive for trans people.

sources:

http://conchitawurst.com/

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/belarus-calls-cancel-eurovision-over-inclusion-trans-singer231013

http://eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/austria-bearded-woman-conchita-wurst-bids-for-eurovision/

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/eurovision-2014-twitter-in-praise-of-transvestite-conchita-wursts-performance-for-austria-9350030.html (this article is not a source of accurate information but rather an example of the media not handling this in an informed and helpful way)

PSA for cis people

justaguywitharrows:

Janet Mock killed it on tv tonight but please remember she is speaking to her personal experience. Do not parrot her words as the Trans Narrative ™. Hers is one of many. Not all trans people know at age 6. Not all trans people seek surgery the moment they are legally allowed to. This universalizing narrative hurts many trans people by barring them access because they don’t follow this trajectory.

I see a lot of cis people reblogging her words and I don’t want the takeaway for them to be “this is what I say about and expect from all trans people”.

(Source: missivesfromghosts)

Trans woman exist.

transbian:

Why do people get so into DFAB queers, like on magicqueers, people are always head cannoning trans men and DFAB non-binary people but there are so few trans feminine people.  Sometimes I feel like the queer community has a big thing for vaginas and is in general against penises because they are so “male.”  and honestly, I really hate them, but thats because of dysphoria.  I realize us DMAB trans people are hard to come by, but I even see more attention paid to DMAB men who are femme or wear dresses and traditionally “girly” stuff and have beards.  Its like, cool, they are not pretending.  And yes, that take courage, and is actually probably more dangerous, but I would like to feel like the queer community actually remembers us Trans Femme people are still around… we kinda started the movement…