Regular readers will have noticed that in recent months, Feministing has brought in a number of new contributors: Ariel, Jos, Lori, Rose and myself. No doubt you're getting to know them by reading their posts and engaging with their ideas in the comments section, but I also suspect that you might want to know a little more about these wonderful women (I know I do!). Over the next few weeks, I'll be interviewing my fellow new contributors so that you and I can get to know them a little better. This week I interviewed Jos Truitt.
Jos joined Feministing as a contributor this July, and in the past few months has been blogging up a storm (those of you who love Mad Men Mondays, you can thank Jos for that!). Jos grew up in Boston and graduated from Hampshire College, where she studied philosophy of race, feminist organizing and sequential art, which, she informed me, is the academic term for comics.
Jos now lives in DC, where she is pursuing her passion for reproductive justice. She recently started working part-time at the National Abortion Federation hotline and she serves as a clinic escort with the Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force. She has also worked and blogged for Choice USA. In her spare time, she likes to bake and spend time in the printmaking studio, and when I asked her which feminist she'd take with her to a desert island, she gave by far the sweetest answer I've heard yet.
And now, without further ado, The Feministing Five, with Jos Truitt.
Chloe Angyal: How did you become involved with feminist activism and writing, and with Feministing specifically?
Jos Truitt: I really wasn't exposed to feminist thought in any sort of overt way for most of my life, and certainly not through high school. I read one essay by an early twentieth century feminist that was about a page long at the end of senior year of high school. And I don't even remember what essay it was or who it was by. I just remember reading it and thinking that the ideas made sense to me. And it clicked. But I think that because I was raised in a very Christian fundamentalist family and in a Christian fundamentalist community, feminism was just really, really far off my radar. But at the same time, the way I understood the world and the things I cared about would have fit within feminism.
In college I came to feminism through critical race theory, through folks like Kimberle Crenshaw, and I was really intrigued by that kind of intersectionality. I was in this really amazing class on critical race theory with Falguni Sheth and Margaret Cerullo, and Falguni Sheth was going to be teaching a class on feminist legal theory the next semester, and I thought, "Oh sure, I'll check that out." I didn't really identify as a feminist, and I didn't really know that much about it, but the more feminist thought I looked at and the more I hung out with feminist organizers and the people doing this work, the more I realized how much these were the beliefs that were important to me and the issues that were important to me, and how much this was what I wanted to be doing.
As for Feministing, I was connected to Miriam in a few different ways. At Hampshire I worked for the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program, and Miriam was part of the organization's New Leadership Networking Initiative, so I'd seen her speak at a conference and I'd read her work a little bit. And then last November I was an intern at Choice USA and Miriam was working out of their offices while she was working for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. So we met there, and started to get to know each other a little bit, and that's also when I started blogging for Choice USA's blog Choice Words. When I moved back to DC, Miriam had already seen some of my writing and had encouraged me a few times to join the Feministing community. When there was a big explosion of trans issues within the community, I decided to start writing, and I got to know the community a little more. That was about the time the editors were looking to bring in some new writers and they wanted to bring in another voice on gender identity and expression from a trans perspective. So Miriam came to me about joining the blog. It's such an exciting opportunity; I get to keep writing about the issues I care about, and I have the potential to reach a broader audience.
CA: Who is your favorite fictional heroine?
JT: Buffy. I didn't in any overt way have a feminist analysis in high school, but I just have a really nostalgic memory of Buffy because that show helped me survive being a closeted, queer, trans kid in a very Christian household. Because of its representation of difference and exclusion, and of not fitting in and finding strength in that. So even though the show had some problematic elements and definitely failed on race a lot, and lacked a gender analysis outside of the binary, Buffy was the first feminist role model I was exposed to, before even realizing that she was a feminist or that I was a feminist. The fact that she could be femme - which I didn't completely understand I wanted to be but had some relationship to - yet strong, and powerful, and stand up for herself while also being a complicated person with weaknesses and struggle to fit into a world that she didn't really fit into, it spoke to me. And I think it really primed my brain for feminism.
CA: Who are your heroines in real life?
JT: The Black feminist thinkers who brought me to feminism in the first place, like Kim Crenshaw and Angela Davis. Their intersectional analysis is what showed me that feminism could be a politics and a worldview that made sense for me, because something that always stood out for me as I started to engage with issues of oppression and social justice were the intersections and complications of identity. And then Kate Bornstein gave me language and words and ways of expressing feelings and concepts that I had inside of me and never, ever knew how to articulate when it comes to trans identity and gender. So she's been a major influence.
And then, some of the really amazing role models I've had the privilege of working with and learning feminism from. I first read feminist thinkers in classes with Falguni Sheth and Margaret Cerullo, who both have incredible analysis and taught me how to think. And Marlene Fried, who runs the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program and who really gave me the opportunity to learn how to do reproductive justice organizing.
CA: What recent news story made you want to scream?
JT: It's been really hard to watch movement on some of the issues that have been touted as the current queer agenda or current LGBT agenda or current gay agenda, and have people saying they speak for my community when I really disagree with them. For example, hearing a trans organization talk about the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill as a victory, when I see it as a really big step back because of its support of the prison-industrial complex and because of the extra policing it's going to create in our communities. It's always really hard in these moments: it's the first real legal recognition of trans people at the federal level should be a gift, and instead, I see it as supporting these systems that I struggle against. So I wanted to feel really proud, but at the same time, the fact that it happened by increasing policing and sentencing and potentially putting trans folks at greater risk, is a real struggle for me. And I feel similarly about Don't Ask Don't Tell and gay marriage, the other two major pushes. The focus on the military-industrial complex and the focus on marriage, instead of trying to get civil rights and basic human rights for all queer people, is just not an agenda I can support.
CA: What, in your opinion, is the biggest challenge facing feminism today?
JT: I think it's the struggle to incorporate a gender analysis into feminism. I think a lot of feminist work, unfortunately but understandably, starts by accepting the world we live in in terms of gender as just fact, that the world that we live in is divided by gender in a binary way, and that within that reality we have to fight for women's rights, women's equality, women's liberation. I understand the gender binary, or the forcing of all people into boxes of "male" and "female," as a crucial tool of patriarchy. That binary itself is used to oppress everyone who doesn't fit into one box or the other. It's a way to keep the people who fit into the most limited and the most racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, classist and otherwise privileged definition of men in power at the expense of everyone else. And the work is happening, but it needs to be understood as a vital part of feminism that we have to critique and understand and dismantle the compulsion to force everyone into the gender binary. Until we do that, feminism's always going to hit up against that wall and only get so far. And as long as we accept that gender binary, it's going to keep us from reaching liberation because it's just going to hold us back that little bit more.
CA: You're going to a desert island, and you get to take one food, one drink and one feminist. What do you pick?
JT: I have to keep a feminist from the world? I would feel so bad about that! Well, I guess if I had to deprive the world of a feminist, it would probably have to be Kate Bornstein. Her ideas apply to my own personal life experience in such a powerful, intense way. They've just been so meaningful to understanding myself. My drink will be a dirty vodka martini with blue cheese olives, and for food I'm going to have to take pear pie with a gruyère crust.
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Jos, you're one of my favorite contributors here at feministing. I always think your comments on Mad Men are really insightful, and now I learn from your desert island preferences that we could totally have drinks and dessert!
You're also one of my favourite contributors here! You are very smart, and very insightful.
This is tangential, but I have to say it can be a pretty classist thing to say that people who are in favor of a greater police presence are part of some kind of complex. I have no choice but to live in a high-crime, inner-city neighborhood where criminals greatly outnumber cops, and would LOVE more police patrolling my area. I often feel unsafe walking down the street during the day, and never leave or come back to my house at night unless I spring for cab fare I can ill afford.
I know Jos, as a transperson, has likely felt this same fear many times. But MOST people who are 'soft on crime' (I hate that term, but I typed a long post using better language, and this site swallowed it after telling me I wasn't signed in before posting, so I'll use the shorthand for the time being) seem to come from very privileged backgrounds. It's easy to argue for lighter sentencing if you have, or have had, the choice to move to a safe place to live.
*All* the small businesses on my street and neighboring streets have been held up at gunpoint more than once. Most of the shops here are shuttered because the owners were scared and shut down their stores. It is a ROUTINE event where I live. There was a murder down the street a few weeks ago - the victim was a law-abiding college student, the killers were drug dealers (cue the comments about due process - both the killers had rap sheets prior to this, so sue me).
Now, prison reform I can behind...but wanting the police to go away? HELL no.
Thank-you. I agree with this.
As a disabled, queer woman who can only afford to live in a dangerous neighborhood, and as someone who has already survived several incidents of sexual harassment, I feel extremely vulnerable and unsafe every single day. I'm not sure if a greater police presence would help, but keeping violent criminals in prison (or in rehabilitation/mental health institutions that keep them off the streets) sure would. I can't get behind abolishing these systems. Reform, fine. But there have been too many sex offenders who were released from jail early and monitored insufficiently, on the backs of a mounting number of female victims.
ps - Jos, the pear pie sounds DELICIOUS.
It can also be a very privileged thing to believe that a greater police presence makes you safer--it's easy to advocate for more police in your area if you're confident they won't arrest YOU instead of your attacker if you're being assaulted.
You are correct. Point granted.
But is the solution not to have cops around at all? Or have them around so infrequently or reluctantly that victims feel they have no recourse? Not to prosecute hate crimes or sexual offenses or murders as if they are anything less than especially heinous? To let thugs rule the streets, which is the current state of affairs where I live?
Within a 10-block radius (most were within a 5-block radius) of my house, in the past 5 months:
1) a deli owner and his daughter were stabbed and robbed
2) an immigrant from Mali was shot in the chest and killed because he didn't speak English and didn't immediately understand that the gunman was asking for his wallet. If I recall correctly, the gunman didn’t even bother taking the wallet after his victim died.
3) a teenager was shot five times in broad daylight by a gunman who rode up on a bicycle and then rode away
4) two men had an argument, one went into his house, got a gun, asked the other to walk in an alley, then shot him multiple times
5) a guy riding a bike was surrounded and beaten by a group of men, who stole his bike
6) a group of women jumped out of a car and beat and mugged another woman
7) a man was shot 6 times in the face and died
8) a guy holding a grenade stole a UPS package from someone's house. This was the only one intercepted by a police officer as it was happening.
9) a murder-suicide by a drug dealer
10) a drug raid in which all five suspects were present in the house from which they sold drugs, surrounded by $35,000 worth of narcotics and nearly $4,000 in cash.
11) three armed men carjacked the driver of a truck carrying prescription medications to a pharmacy
That's not even counting the bank holdups or sexual assaults.
I don't think my fears are invalid, or that I'm some kind of princess for wanting to see more cops patrolling my neighborhood.
Wow. Thank you so much for that Jos. I ESPECIALLY loved your ideas on what problems face feminism. I truly agree with you on that. Feminism does seem to begin with an acceptance of the binary (although I have read great works dismantling that binary) and until we face that issue... its always going to be man vs. woman with everyone else in between falling through the cracks.
Wow. Thank you so much for that Jos. I ESPECIALLY loved your ideas on what problems face feminism. I truly agree with you on that. Feminism does seem to begin with an acceptance of the binary (although I have read great works dismantling that binary) and until we face that issue... its always going to be man vs. woman with everyone else in between falling through the cracks.
That's the second time today I've seen Kate Bornstein mentioned on this blog, and it makes me wicked happy.
Regarding the gender binary, we do unfortunately have to start within the established parameters, no matter how oppressive they are if we want to make systemic change. Otherwise we may create a new paradigm, but if we're the only people who realize it, then we're not really influences the average person.
I'm often at odds with how I see my role as an activist and how we as feminist envision our own role. Do we put more emphasis on developing the best, most complete course of action within ourselves, or do we take a completely different tact and aim instead to address those who are not feminist and are not as highly educated as we are? The two may not necessarily be mutually exclusive, but they unintentionally end up as such.
We all want to see proof of our labors and in a matter as complex as gender, I'm beginning to believe that the results we seek may not arrive for years or maybe not until the end of our lives, but that perhaps if we leave a well-cleared, well-maintained path behind us, then we have not failed. If those who follows us into the fourth-wave, or whatever it shall be called can pull from our example and stand on our metaphorical shoulders, then we have not failed.
I've been an avid reader of feministing since 2007, and it is quite exciting to see a fellow Hampshire graduate featured here now. Congrats Jos! I can't wait to read more of your commentary on intersectionality of gender and race and trans issues.
So happy to read your posts on feministing, Jos! They are always wicked insightful and thoughtful. I recently graduated from Hampshire, and it's awesome to read your work here! Looking forward to future posts =)
Is that pie savoury or sweet? I don't understand.
It's sweet. When making pâte brisée (traditional pie crust) you want to keep the fat and flour separate. When it cooks and the fat melts air pockets are created, which is how you get flakey crust. Grating cheese into pie crust creates incredible flakes and a rich, complex crust. And gruyere and pears marry perfectly.
It's sweet. When making pâte brisée (traditional pie crust) you want to keep the fat and flour separate. When it cooks and the fat melts air pockets are created, which is how you get flakey crust. Grating cheese into pie crust creates incredible flakes and a rich, complex crust. And gruyere and pears marry perfectly.
I just wanted to make a suggestion. Since I don't read the postings on the actual site, but rather through an RSS feed, would it be possible to get each contributors name at the top or even the bottom of the post? That would be really great and would help in telling apart who wrote what.