Bravo for Argentina!

[elettaria]

You may have heard about this rather extraordinary Argentinian bank advert, where an elderly man apologises to a transwoman for treating her badly. I first read about it in compilerbitch's impassioned post, from her perspective as a transwoman. I'm still a bit too stunned to know what to say to her, so I'll get back to that.

Then poisoninjest linked to this discussion of the ad, which is from a place closer to my own, so I think I'll start with that. I'm not a member of blogspot so I can't respond there, and anyway I find that I have quite a lot to say about it by now.

In that post, KaterTot says, "the bank then shamelessly self-promotes for being so progressive". Well, of course it does. It's an ad. My initial response to the ad, apart from the incredulous delight at its very existence that we're all feeling, was, "What a strange ad." But then I don't have a TV and on the rare occasion I do see ads, I usually find them really rather odd, with very peculiar logic. The main oddness about this one was the way they tried to attach it to "So bank with us!" at the end, and that's where ads are most likely to go off the rails anyway. The statuette with the tutu was a smidgen strange as well, and frankly reminds me of that party from my student years where there was only one other woman amongst hordes of gay men, and after a few hours of drinking and laughter the boys started practising ballet holds.

I liked that it showed an attractive middle-aged woman with a lovely voice, someone normal and real-looking, rather than an oversexualised Ladyboys of Bangkok stereotype. (Incidentally, I have rather more mixed feelings about the Ikea ad mentioned in that discussion, where it looks to me like the actress is a born woman, or whatever the appropriate term is, rather than a transwoman: the ID card from when she was a man looks completely like a woman. If they've just picked a pretty non-trans actress to prance around in her underwear, along with the surgery and hospital stereotype that a few trans people were saying in that discussion that they're sick of seeing, then I'm rather less impressed. Also I still can't get past the "redecorate your life" slogan, which personally I find crass when referring to something as major as gender reassignment, though I must point out that some people saw it as refreshingly joyous and celebratory.) Yes, it did other her somewhat, but I'm not sure the ad was entirely from the point of view of the old man either. I'm queer, which puts me on the same side as the transwoman if we're going for the big umbrella group approach, and I'm not a bigoted elderly man, albeit one who's seeing the errors of his ways. I wasn't really identifying with either character much, which again is normal for my response to ads, but I certainly felt more warmly towards the woman, even though her position in the dialogue was a more passive one. (Mind you, she'd been opening a business, he'd just bought a car.)

Another comment which interested me in that post was this one:

I see this clip suggesting that it's totally superextraordinarily decent of the man to decide to stop being an asshole to the woman. I don't feel that it makes a statement condemning casual bigotry against trans people as much as it constructs a towering pedestal upon which to place the remarkable individual that might eventually refrain from the (implicitly natural/socially acceptable) assaults upon the class.

The thing is that casual bigotry against transpeople still is the norm, and apologies of this sort are almost unheard-of. compilerbitch transitioned, I'm not quite sure, I think decades ago, and she's never once received that apology. It doesn't make the man extraordinarily decent. It does make him unusual. There are many times when you don't want to be always harping on about the problems that you face, when you just want to get on with your life and stop being put under the microscope. That doesn't mean you should deny those problems exist and that reparations are due, and thus there are also times when it is crucially important to show what needs to be done. Integration into the mainstream community shouldn't need to be an issue, but it is, and this ad showed that the need was there and that yes, apologies are in order and here's one way of making them. It's difficult to approach this incredibly fraught subject gracefully, but I think they made a decent attempt.

The main difficulty with writing about this, and indeed with making an ad about it, is that old position-of-privilege problem. I'm an ethnically Jewish, disabled, bisexual woman, so I rarely feel the need to tie myself into knots of guilt about being white, middle-class or living in a relatively wealthy country. I appreciate that I am lucky in many ways, but I've had more than enough in the way of obstacles and prejudice. Nevertheless, I'm not trans and I can't pretend I've been there or know more than a little about what it's like, just as I can read as much as I like and talk to friends about their experiences, but I don't know what it's actually like to be on the receiving end of racism. I don't want to end up sounding condescending about something I've never lived through and am aware I don't know enough about.

I'm trying to untangle my responses to compilerbitch's post, which were complex, sudden, and also yesterday. My main reponse to the ad was probably startlement, especially since I found it a little odd, but overall I am utterly thrilled that there is a mainstream, sympathetic ad out there. That was the easy bit. It showed the happy ending to a grim situation, conveniently glossing over what that woman must have gone through before getting that apology, which was doubtless way overdue, and for a TV advert that was fair enough. compilerbitch didn't gloss over that part. She has experienced the most appalling things again and again, and she wrote about them with a courage and honesty I salute her for.

Do you know the odd thing? What really held me back from replying to her post yesterday is that, in a smaller way, I do have some idea of what she goes through. I'm not talking about being queer, Jewish or female, although I've certainly experienced prejudice against all three and historically we can include genocide and witch-burnings (and thus the more-downtrodden-than-thou mindset some people have). I'm talking about my experience of being disabled, today, in Britain. This isn't something most people without disabilities realise, but as a group, we really are hated. What is more, that hatred and disgust is so mainstream that few people realise it's a problem, it's socially acceptable, it's the default position for media coverage (as in "lazy benefits scroungers", or "poor person in a wheelchair whom we're certainly not going to give a voice to"), and there isn't even a word for it. Homophobia is pretty well recognised as an issue by now, the word "transphobia" is settling down into the language, but we haven't even got to the stage of dodgy etymology.

This has drifted slightly off the point, and I'm trying not to make this about me. Because while that post struck a chord with me, there's a difference in scale here. People with disabilities generally have to worry about things like being discriminated against, jeered at, kept in poverty, treated as less than human. People who are transgendered have those or smilar problems too, but they also have to contend with a very real increase in risk of violence. Being in a position where you can't eat for days or wash for weeks is appalling, but it doesn't for a moment compare to someone trying to kill you. And just occasionally, I have received that apology.