things that you hear

[pauraque_bk]

So I decided to watch Adam Savage's TED talk about prop making. But I didn't get very far into it before my attention was derailed.

There is a point where he is showing a photo of a person holding a dodo skull in their hand. The person's fingernails are painted red.

Adam: "I found this lovely piece of reference, this is someone selling this on eBay. It was a woman's -- clearly a woman's hand -- hopefully a woman's hand --" [laughter from the audience]

And he goes on to talk about how the size reference of a hand helped him sculpt an accurate dodo skull.

Do you see it? He hopes it's a woman's hand. He hopes it's not a man's hand. He hopes we're not unknowingly looking at a photo of a male wearing nail polish. If we were, it would be alarming and laughable.

This is a transphobic joke. You could argue that he probably wasn't thinking about trans people and was just... just... what? Why is violating gender expectations funny? Why did the audience laugh? Whose identity are they laughing at?

It just makes me sad, because he probably doesn't have any particular conscious hatred of trans people. He's just regurgitating the assumptions that are pervasive around him. You'd think such a smart guy could do better than that. But a lot of the time the reality (and it's a reality I hear around me every day) is that usually people who could, don't.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

And you know, if you asked him he probably totally wouldn't even see what was so funny. It's basically: why is it hopefully a woman's hand? Because it's wearing nail polish. And would you really be freaked out by a man wearing man polish. Probably not.

Those kinds of jokes used to be really common, I think, as just homophobic, though the implication was the same. If you're a man and doing something traditionally feminine there's something wrong with you.

[pauraque]

Those kinds of jokes used to be really common, I think, as just homophobic, though the implication was the same. If you're a man and doing something traditionally feminine there's something wrong with you.

Yup, absolutely. Great point.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Dammit.

And he could have sidestepped the whole thing by just saying "someone's hand". The sex was irrelevant.

[pauraque]

Right. It was completely irrelevant, just a throwaway comment that got a cheap laugh.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I was once at a work training event and the trainer said something about us being good little boys and girls (which was vaguely amusing rather than inappropriate in context) and then added: "but I'm not allowed to say that nowadays, am I, because of transsexual rights. So if you're a boy, you can be a good little boy and if you're a girl you can be a good little girl and if you're a trans you can be a ... good little trans."

I glared at him but didn't say anything, because the idea of trying to articulate all the things that are wrong with that in a way he could understand just seemed overwhelming. I wish I'd tried though.

[pauraque]

And that's pretty overt, but if you had said something he could easily have hid behind "but it was just a joke". That's the usual way it gets dismissed.

For that reason, and so many others, it's often difficult to confront someone in the moment. Especially in a case like yours, where it was someone in a position of authority speaking to a group of your peers. These comments and "jokes" go by so fast sometimes, and generally come as a surprise, and often in a context where it's not socially acceptable to stop the person.

Then later we end up kicking ourselves for not speaking up. Which is pretty backwards, since they are the ones who misbehaved, yet we feel bad about how we reacted. It's downright insidious, the effects those comments have on all sorts of levels.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hannelore/]

I started to feel similarly with regards to the Seinfield "man hands" joke.

[pauraque]

Yup, I can see that too. And it's a weird one for me because I first saw it so long ago that it was way before I ever self-identified as trans or noticed how common transphobic assumptions are, so in an odd way I can see it from the outside, or at least remember what it was like to see it from the outside.