Many of the xygirls I know, believe that they haven't benefited from the male privilege, cause obviously they are not males. People will still treat people they see as males better than they would treat someone they see as female. There are several things like

If a male is never promoted, it's not because of his sex. 
If a male does the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think he did a better job.
If a male has children but do not provide primary care for them, his masculinity will not be called into question.
As a child, males can choose from an almost infinite variety of children's media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of their own sex. They never have to look for it; male protagonists were (and are) the default.
Males do not have to worry about the message their wardrobe sends about their sexual availability
Males can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. They can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.

And the list goes on: The male privilege list
Many xywomen dont see this, and they are definitely in for a surprise when they start passing as women.

Quote from: Drik on July 04, 2008, 06:32:22 AM
Many of the xygirls I know, believe that they haven't benefited from the male privilege, cause obviously they are not males. People will still treat people they see as males better than they would treat someone they see as female. There are several things like

If a male is never promoted, it's not because of his sex. 
If a male does the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think he did a better job.
If a male has children but do not provide primary care for them, his masculinity will not be called into question.
As a child, males can choose from an almost infinite variety of children's media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of their own sex. They never have to look for it; male protagonists were (and are) the default.
Males do not have to worry about the message their wardrobe sends about their sexual availability
Males can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. They can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.

And the list goes on: The male privilege list
Many xywomen dont see this, and they are definitely in for a surprise when they start passing as women.

I would tend to agree with you, Drik.  Though my experiences have not been that extreme.  Where I work there are one or two male co-workers who are definitely chauvinistic.  After I went full time, I noticed that my opinions were not as well regarded as before.  Also they deal with me in a very dismissive manner.  At first I thought it might have been homo/trans phobia, but what I found out from other women that "Oh, that's the way *they* are.  They treat all the women like that.  They're just acting like spoiled little boys!"  None of the activity could be documented as being truly discriminatory but their attitudes speak volumes.

What I also found interesting and slightly disturbing is the general acceptance of this attitude from other women.  Even though in many cases the women were at least as good, and sometimes much better, technically, than those men, they accepted their position as second class to the males.

But I have found that there is a female privilege as well.  Yesterday I was at the bookstore looking at books that women don't usually look at, the very technical computer books.  I was surrounded by typical computer geek males who were trying not to notice a woman in their midst.

A man who worked at the store came up to me and asked me if he could help.  Obviously I should have been in the cookbook section.  I told him that I was looking for books on Tcl/Tk (a scripting language I use regularly in my job).

At first he looked a little surprised, but thankfully he did not ask me if it was for my husband or boyfriend.  Anyway he started prattering on about how he would help finding the books and escorted me to the kiosk where the store search engine ran.  He ran a seach for the books on Tcl/Tk, which I had to spell for him, and came up with a with several possibilities.  He then escorted me back to the shelves found the books and pulled them for me for my review.  There was only one that looked like it had what I was looking for, and I selected that one.  He took the rest and put them back on the shelf.

He asked if there was anything else I needed.  I said that I was also looking for tarot cards, and did the store carry any of those.  He said yes and escorted me to another floor where the cards were kept.  We ended up having a wonderful conversation about all sorts of things, including his tattoos (one of which was still fresh from just a couple of days ago), and spirituality.  He was not disturbed at all that I wanted the tarot deck as a present for my partner as she was looking for a new deck.

This kind of thing has happened on a number of occasions.  Men are more helpful to me if I am in a generally masculine environment like a hardware store.  Mostly they are not condescending or think that I don't have a brain (though there are some...).  They smile and joke more and are generally more gracious to me than when I was the other guy.

I have to admit that I enjoy that gentler treatment and sometimes play into it.  The fact that I have surrendered my male privilege does not disturb me at all.  What I have gained in return makes up for it.

-Sandy 

Quote from: SarahFaceDoom on July 04, 2008, 05:40:27 AM

Quote from: Pia on July 03, 2008, 08:05:37 PM
Guess it doesnt apply to me then.  Ive always been the one oppressed by men.

That doesn't mean you didn't receive male privilege.  I would posit that the price difference between the surgeries that a MTF has vs. a FTM is as a result of male privilege in medical advancements which are the direct result of how long the medical field has been a boy's club, that very rarely considered that women might need diffrent types of care for their bodies.

I would say the media coverage that focuses disproportionately upon MTF trans members is as a result of male privilege.  I would say the notion that some MTF who think only about their own side of transition and not about our FTM brothers side of transition, is as a result of male privilige.

I think if at any time in this society you've been male, you've been somewhat conditioned to believe you are special and you will do great things, which is in stark contrast historically to the lives of many of our sisters who have been told from day one implicitly or explicitly that they were garbage and the best they could do is to end up with a man and kick out babies. 

How ludicrous is it that we've been conditioned to think that taking a man's name in marriage and giving up your own is a testament of love.  It's not a testament of love, it's a testament of the conditioning of mental slavery.  I'm not your property, so why should I have your name on me?  But you tell a guy that, and it's radical.  That's male privilige.  The expectation without even thinking about it, of pre-emenence.  And it's everywhere still today.  For the trans community to think it's somehow immune to that is incredibly arrogant.

Most guys it doesn't even really register to them that they make more then women in this country, and that they are routinely given precedence for leadership positions and promotions.  As always compare the secretarial pool vs. the board of directors at any given company.  That tells you all you need to know about how far we still have to go.

Sarah,

I have to say that I simply agree with 99% of what you wrote. I find it accurate.

However, I do disagree with the bolded part. I don't find it to be arrogant at all. Unseen? Not regarded? Regarded and dismissed as being somehow symbolic that someone is not whom they say they are? Perhaps. If so, I find the idea sorta odd. That one was born, raised and transitioned from a male body to a female one, I think that very perception gives MTFs a certain level of male-privilege whether or not we recognize it or wish to.

I think it's also really hard for many of us who have felt disregarded, dismissed and disrepected and certainly "dis-eased" in male-attire, roles, conditions want to disregard the fact that the way people "see" you gives them cues to how they interact with you regardless of one's own sense of "privilege" or the lack thereof.

In point of fact, the extension of "male privilege" to many of us growing up is what may well have caused much of the dissonance we experienced. The expectations that we would live-into our "birthright," most especially for those who rejected their "birthright" may well have caused frequent and even violent reactions to the ways we wanted and felt we should live our lives.

Overall, I have to agree with you though. Things like job-opportunity, the ability to be "heard" and respected in some area of an MTF's life is very often tied into male-privilege. Would I have been accepted to attend the computer-programming degree program or the chemical engineering program or the medical school had I not been perceived as male? Perhaps not, perhaps so. Given the realities of "cross-gender" presentation right down to today, I would imagine that, like the former Army colonel rejected by the Smithsonian after she had "come-out," that actually getting a start in one's job with that presentation, that knowing by one's bosses and HR depts., would have been very hard to realize.

More so had the person, in say 1988, "presented as female" and adhered to the stance that she "is female" in all regards. Instead she was able to fill the "male quota" for particular areas. That she benefitted from that was in no way intentional, but happened nonetheless.

But, I can see the need and the reality that one would believe that she did in no way have a "grant-in-aid" from "male privilege." When you're being made fun of, harrassed and beaten, disrespected and dismissed it's very hard to see beyond all that to "damn! what would it be like if they saw me as the woman I am?"

It would probably be much less beaten about in various ways, but it would also have been with a certain surety of the dismissal that would be simply "taken for granted" and would be "just the way things are." A mental and socially-ingrained beat-down rather than it's more physical aspects that many of us did experience. That we tend, a lot of times, to reject that seems just kinda expectable and pretty humanly natural to me.

Nichole

P.S. And Drik's post I find absolutely illustrates what I am saying. A lot of that is, as you said, Sarah, simply unrecognized by those who experience it.

I don't find the binary proposed in this post as desireable--- at all.  I'm not an out and proud activist, but I was just at SF Pride's TransMarch.  I'm not stealth, but outside of my close circle no one knows I was born female.  There's an inbetween here, just like in every binary, where I feel my personal place lies.  My partner needs to know my business (and does), but the waiter serving me lunch does not. 

Quote from: Mister on July 04, 2008, 04:22:56 PM
There's an inbetween here, just like in every binary, where I feel my personal place lies.  My partner needs to know my business (and does), but the waiter serving me lunch does not. 

*agrees*

I'm a musician. If i want to keep my career, which I do, I cannot erase my past and go stealth. I'm also an activist, not just trans issues, various other causes too. I've done occasional presentations in which I've outed myself as trans to complete strangers. In other instances I've written letters or testified at hearings using my birth name, and expressed my concerns without outing myself. It doesn't need to be either/or, it can be a combination. Like various people have said, one doesn't have to wear a trans sign to lobby for our causes. I want to see change in my lifetime, and the only way to achieve it is to do the work.

Zythyra

There are a lot of thought provoking replies her. I agree with most too. I suppose, it was wishful thinking on my part to think I could really go stealth. The lure of putting it all behind and living some fantasy life where no one ever knows I am trans was too much for me. I still live with a spouse that really dislikes me being out and says she is an outcast in society to be married to me. She was the force behind my desire to go stealth. I wanted to please her but I have my own life to live. I did come out to my customers in my business and she hated that. I did come out to people locally and she hated that. AS a result, she had to tell the HR people at her job and that got out to all the employees. She is treated differently now like she is the "OH poor thing" in the office.  When I had lunch with the gals from Trans-Ponder.com she didn't care for that either. She flat out asked me "Are you going to be an activist?" I feel for her but I can't change and she says she wants to stay with me. So if I to become more and more active as my resources and time allow, she will have to adapt. I have bent over backwards and more to blunt the effects of my transition delaying it for over seven years.
All this has brought out the stress I live in where my actions are greeted with resistance.
Thank you all so much for your wonderful responses. It helps so much to see that I am not alone.

Maggie

Quote from: Maggie Kay on July 05, 2008, 05:32:45 PM
There are a lot of thought provoking replies her. I agree with most too. I suppose, it was wishful thinking on my part to think I could really go stealth. The lure of putting it all behind and living some fantasy life where no one ever knows I am trans was too much for me. I still live with a spouse that really dislikes me being out and says she is an outcast in society to be married to me. She was the force behind my desire to go stealth. I wanted to please her but I have my own life to live. I did come out to my customers in my business and she hated that. I did come out to people locally and she hated that. AS a result, she had to tell the HR people at her job and that got out to all the employees. She is treated differently now like she is the "OH poor thing" in the office.  When I had lunch with the gals from Trans-Ponder.com she didn't care for that either. She flat out asked me "Are you going to be an activist?" I feel for her but I can't change and she says she wants to stay with me. So if I to become more and more active as my resources and time allow, she will have to adapt. I have bent over backwards and more to blunt the effects of my transition delaying it for over seven years.
All this has brought out the stress I live in where my actions are greeted with resistance.
Thank you all so much for your wonderful responses. It helps so much to see that I am not alone.

Maggie

While I certainly hope this is not the case, it seems as if your partner isn't all that comfortable with your being trans.  I don't know anything about your relationship other than the quoted post, so I hope I'm writing this response in error.  It does sound like a familiar pattern from a former partner of mine, though.

Seems logical to me that if you're in a relationship, you accept someone's past, present and future- if she can't handle you going out to lunch with transfolk, it doesn't seem to me that she's comfortable with you not being a natal woman.  The 'poor thing' mentality at the office could be quashed with one bold, flat out statement about her choice to either enter in or remain in a relationship with you. 

Best of luck- I hope it all works out.

Quote from: Mister on July 05, 2008, 05:56:20 PM
The 'poor thing' mentality at the office could be quashed with one bold, flat out statement about her choice to either enter in or remain in a relationship with you. 

Best of luck- I hope it all works out.

That this is true is probably exactly right, but should she have to? I don't know.

I think that a lot of times we as trans-women, particularly, take it for granted that we "should do what's best for me" in regard to transition and uphold that for other trans-women when the reality is, perhaps, just a bit different.

I'm gonna refer back to the "male privilege" that goes unseen and unrealized in this regard. I find that just one more example of the "expectation?" that someone else just needs to accept that I am going to do what I am going to do. It isn't an exclusively "male" thang to do that, women do as well.

But, I think that transwomen tend to be raised to one degree or another, like most if not all men, with expectations like that as we are generally raised with at least being given an understanding of the world that what we "want" is somehow always our right to pursue. Just a thought.

How Maggie and her spouse work-out their own arrangements about who does what with whom and who tells or doesn't tell surely isn't for any of us except Maggie and her spouse to decide. Nor have I ever gotten the impression that Maggie keeps her partner "out of the loop" of her own thinking and actions at all. So, Mags this isn't directed at either you or Mister, but at the notion that sometimes we avoid or don't have an idea about "male privilege."

Most "privilege" comes through as attitude or an unconscious presumption anyhow. One that the "privileged" one doesn't ponder until their sense of "the way things should be" is violated, that is how ingrained and subtle such things are. This seemed a very good illustration of how that might be at work in the ways we think, when we don't even realize we are thinking about it at all.

Nichole
_____________________________________
BTW:

Welcome to Susan's, Mister.

Please take some time to read The Site Rules and on The Main Page you can discover Links, Chat and Wiki for your use as well. You might also want to go to the "Announcements" section and read the two posts "Post Ranks" and "Reputation Rules" to help you with some knowledge about when you can apply your own avatars, PM, and what those lil stars mean beneath all of our names and how to get them for yourself as well!!

It's great to have you here! Enjoy your stay.

Nichole

Quote from: Mister on July 05, 2008, 05:56:20 PM
if she can't handle you going out to lunch with transfolk, it doesn't seem to me that she's comfortable with you not being a natal woman.

She may also just want Maggie to get on with being a woman, and not a "transwoman." My wife has no problem when people "just happen" to find out as needed. Heck, she's told people herself when need be, and in complimentary, proud terms... not apologizing or ashamed.

But like me, she doesn't want it becoming a "lifestyle" of sorts, with me/us living within a "transsexual community" and life seeming to constantly revolve around transsexualism and it's issues. We both just want to leave the "transsexual" part behind and get on with things. It's not shame, it's just not relevant anymore... so it can be frustrating if it keeps popping up.

~Kate~

I'm not saying ANYONE should have to justify or rationalize why they're in a relationship (or not) with whoever.  I'm a strong advocate of having nothing to do with anyone's relationship other than my own and no one else having their nose in mine.  I wish OP all the happiness in the world, but however she navigates that is no one's business but her own, IMHO.  My point was simply that OP's spouse is plenty able to advocate for herself in this situation instead of allowing the 'poor you' mentality to continue.  Lack of opposition is nearly equal with permission in these sorts of situations.

One thing that I think may folks seem to miss- and my apologies for derailing the thread- is that our pre-transition partners are allowed to throw up their hands and walk away.  That's entirely their right, and i've seen far too many partners stick around only to walk out and cite transition as the reason they left months- even years- later.  Personally, I'd have preferred my ex be honest with both herself and me, owned up to needing to be in a relationship with someone female-identified and left.  But instead, things got ugly, feelings were denied and she bawled after seeing my chest post-surgery. 

Quote from: Nichole on July 05, 2008, 06:16:26 PM
I think that a lot of times we as trans-women, particularly, take it for granted that we "should do what's best for me" in regard to transition and uphold that for other trans-women when the reality is, perhaps, just a bit different.

I'm gonna refer back to the "male privilege" that goes unseen and unrealized in this regard. I find that just one more example of the "expectation?" that someone else just needs to accept that I am going to do what I am going to do. It isn't an exclusively "male" thang to do that, women do as well.

But, I think that transwomen tend to be raised to one degree or another, like most if not all men, with expectations like that as we are generally raised with at least being given an understanding of the world that what we "want" is somehow always our right to pursue. Just a thought.

As a feminist, I'm very much aware of this and it troubles me deeply. It's the fly in my feminism ointment:

It would be a bitter irony if my only way to womanhood was by exploiting male privilege.
But I know deep down through and through I'm not male-- I'm a woman who was wrongly situated in life, and correction of this wrong is long overdue. So it would be a powerful act of women's liberation to free the woman who I am.
But nevertheless the status in life I attained before coming out was seen by everyone as male, therefore male privilege applies, like it or not.
But I always hated it and never asked for it, since I always knew it did not fit me.
And around and around this goes in my mind.

The only justification I can find in this is knowing I did my best to live up to my family's expectations of who I was supposed to be for 45 years, by suppressing my own need to be who I am. When I consider the life experiences of women in general, and many women I know in particular, this fact of my life is congruent with women's experiences. Perhaps with my female brain I was actually socialized to not assert my own needs the way some assertive trans kids do. Lately, as I approach the age of 50, I've become fascinated with the Crone archetype and why women become more powerful, independent, assertive beings starting in their 40s, a time when they finally emerge from under their family's needs and begin to live for themselves. This, again, I find congruent with my own experience.

I think it's much more important that people know you as a good person, a valued member of society, somebody who enriches the lives of those around her. Too many cisgendered people have stereotypical views of us, and I think that's as much true of the prostitute/Jerry Springer stereotype as the activist "You WILL accept me" stereotype. We need to humanise ourselves to people, and the way we do that is by living our lives without apology OR by blaring it from the rooftops. I've said to my folks often enough that I don't mind outing myself to individuals, because I have the opportunity to engage them, to chat to them, to humanise myself to them. It's the strangers who just pass me and read my that are dangerous, because I never have that chance to make myself more to them than a "pervert ->-bleeped-<-". Hate is not a natural state for human beings - we have to dehumanise the individuals or groups we hate, make them less human. The key is to counteract that.

~Simone.

Yeah you guys have it  a lot easier at the outset when gendering is based on secondary sexual characteristics. I was rather shocked and elated to discover that my bottom surgery was authentic enough to convince even experienced butch women.

For me,  male privilege doesn't come into my transition. I didn't look at it as a right or that I would do it come hell or high water no matter what the cost. I was so much wrapped up in pleasing my wife in every way possible that when I realized I was possibly trans, I fought it tooth and nail. It was going to be a disaster for her and I knew it. After years of fighting to the point of suicide, I decided that I could damage her more by killing myself so I accepted that I was trans. She however, accepts only to a point. She understands I can't help it and she understands that she never married a man. She now realizes that my being Mr. Mom all those years was the best for me instead of the corporate dog fight. This still doesn't make it much easier because she has lost her social status. She is now looked down on or pitied by her coworkers because she is staying with me.  I have offered to leave many many times and she has always said that she wants to stay together. Not as man and wife or as lesbian partners but as sisters or some semblance of close live-in friends. She is however, still very much involved in my transition and in some ways in control as she controls the money in our household. We only spend on what she agrees to. I am working with my therapist to find a way for me to stand up to her without destroying the fragile peace we have. One thing is true, my little income from my business is essential in our financial survival even if I can't make it on my own. SO we have that as a bond. It makes very hard for me to participate in trans activities as I know she doesn't like them.

Maggie

Quote from: redfish the artiste on July 06, 2008, 11:29:50 AM
I kind of wish that analyses of privilege were more individualized. It often seems like it's painted as, "You were a member of group x, and therefore you have been a receiver of privilege x." I think there's a lot more complexity than that, though - for example, someone perceived as a feminine male is probably going to have different privileges than someone perceived as a masculine male. Additionally, privilege is not the only thing that acts in people's lives - if someone has the mindset that they should do what they want, for example, that could have resulted from many factors in addition to or independent from any contributions made by privilege.

I think privilege lists and acknowledging one's privileges is a great thing, but sometimes it seems like the concept of privileges is applied in ways that are too generalized, other times in ways that do not account for other factors, and I see it often used (at least in terms of trans people) to delegitimize identities.

This is probably another post I'll regret making and I'm not sure if I even conveyed what I mean correctly, but yeah.

Maybe I'm just a terrible feminist 

While I agree with you, I have to stick to my feminist roots and mention that a feminine man is still a recipient of a great deal male privilege, something that even the most masculine woman is not. 

Quote from: redfish the artiste on July 06, 2008, 12:18:16 PM
I kind of wish that analyses of privilege were more individualized. It often seems like it's painted as, "You were a member of group x, and therefore you have been a receiver of privilege x." I think there's a lot more complexity than that, though - for example, someone perceived as a feminine male is probably going to have different privileges than someone perceived as a masculine male. Additionally, privilege is not the only thing that acts in people's lives - if someone has the mindset that they should do what they want, for example, that could have resulted from many factors in addition to or independent from any contributions made by privilege.

Yup, and when one is talking about privileges and feminism, one should also talk about intersectionality

Quote from: Hypatia on July 06, 2008, 12:36:59 AM

Quote from: Nichole on July 05, 2008, 06:16:26 PM
I think that a lot of times we as trans-women, particularly, take it for granted that we "should do what's best for me" in regard to transition and uphold that for other trans-women when the reality is, perhaps, just a bit different.

I'm gonna refer back to the "male privilege" that goes unseen and unrealized in this regard. I find that just one more example of the "expectation?" that someone else just needs to accept that I am going to do what I am going to do. It isn't an exclusively "male" thang to do that, women do as well.

But, I think that transwomen tend to be raised to one degree or another, like most if not all men, with expectations like that as we are generally raised with at least being given an understanding of the world that what we "want" is somehow always our right to pursue. Just a thought.

As a feminist, I'm very much aware of this and it troubles me deeply. It's the fly in my feminism ointment:

It would be a bitter irony if my only way to womanhood was by exploiting male privilege.
But I know deep down through and through I'm not male-- I'm a woman who was wrongly situated in life, and correction of this wrong is long overdue. So it would be a powerful act of women's liberation to free the woman who I am.
But nevertheless the status in life I attained before coming out was seen by everyone as male, therefore male privilege applies, like it or not.
But I always hated it and never asked for it, since I always knew it did not fit me.
And around and around this goes in my mind.

The only justification I can find in this is knowing I did my best to live up to my family's expectations of who I was supposed to be for 45 years, by suppressing my own need to be who I am. When I consider the life experiences of women in general, and many women I know in particular, this fact of my life is congruent with women's experiences. Perhaps with my female brain I was actually socialized to not assert my own needs the way some assertive trans kids do. Lately, as I approach the age of 50, I've become fascinated with the Crone archetype and why women become more powerful, independent, assertive beings starting in their 40s, a time when they finally emerge from under their family's needs and begin to live for themselves. This, again, I find congruent with my own experience.

Hello, sister-philosopher par excellence.  

The analogy was absolutely spot-on ASAIC. Privilege is an inherently conditioned aspect of anyone's life. It can be mitigated, turned over, eradicated, or, as I think you suggest, be worked to fit who and what one is. But, in order to be reworked I think one first has to recognize and embrace the fact that it exists and that we have been granted it.

The grant was not welcomed, perhaps not even used in a conscious way, but the admission that it exists and has been granted to one must be admitted and dealt with before it can be reworked. That's the flaw I find in those who deny that they ever experienced it. If they don't admit its existence, and flee and fight every reference, every aspect, of that "gifting," then how can they possibly rework it?

To deny we ever had it because it was uncomfortable seems to me akin to a black man denying that his blackness has defined his life in our society. He would continuously go along denying and getting upset when others referred to his blackness. He would deny he was black, which, on the face of it would appear an absurdity to those who saw him.

You could fill-in Jewishness or fundamentalist Christian or psychologist or any other conditioned aspect of our lives. The question is not "did I have this," I did. It leaves its traces, perhaps most especially in those who deny they ever experienced it. To admit and find where it commands or influences one life is the only way out of it, I think. To ignore and deny it is to maintain those vestiges, perhaps even to exemplify them in the denial. Or, so it seems to me.

Your way, it also seems to me, is an answer to the criticism of my inherent "male privilege." What a well-wrought and excellent post. Thank you, as always. 

I believe we crones have things from experience we can add, valuably, to this conversation.  




Nichole

And, brother-Drik, you once more add unerringly a huge value to the conversation. Thanks so much.

QuoteIntersectionality is a theory which seeks to examine the ways in which various socially and culturally constructed categories interact on multiple levels to manifest themselves as inequality in society. Intersectionality holds that the classical models of oppression within society, such as those based on race/ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, class, or disability do not act independently of one another; instead, these forms of oppression interrelate creating a system of oppression that reflects the "intersection" of multiple forms of discrimination.

*Edited to correct some punctuation*

Quote from: redfish the artiste on July 06, 2008, 11:29:50 AM
I kind of wish that analyses of privilege were more individualized.

I agree with you.  It's why intersectional analysis appeals to me a lot more than other waves of feminist theory.

Ah, and while I was typing I see Nichole beat me to a much better post on it.

Nichole, I was very glad you discussed the issue of male privilege here, because it's our biggest liability in establishing our womanly credentials. It inevitably needs careful work by us. It isn't easy, especially when added on top of all the other difficulties our tribe has to struggle with. But I think it's imperative for each of us to honestly face up to dealing with it and work toward some resolution of it.