Revising for Trans Inclusive Language

At some point in the past, in a comment thread where we were discussing what I was then calling “routine infant male circumcision” in the United States, Grace pointed out to me that phrases like “the routine medical circumcision of infant boys” and “routine infant male circumcision” were both not trans inclusive because they contain the assumption that an infant with a penis, who is obviously too young yet to have anything even resembling a gender identity, is by definition already gendered male. One could, I suppose, quibble that “infant male circumcision” is identifying biological sex, not gender, and maybe someone did–I don’t remember and I cannot find the comment to which I am referring. The fact is, though, that even if the word male in the phrase male circumcision can be read to refer to biological sex, the constellation of cultural, social, and even medical assumptions that attach to the procedure frame it as one that turns infants with penises into appropriately-bodied boys. In other words, Grace was right, and so I have since then used phrases like “the routine medical circumcision of infants with penises” or “routine penile circumcision” instead.

This change didn’t cost me anything, except the time it took for my ear to get used to the different rhythms and sounds it wrought on my language–which is not a trivial thing, since the aesthetics of my writing are very important to me. Once I did get used to it, though, it was hard not to notice that the new phrasing had the benefit of being more descriptive, in that it named the body part being discussed, and it also had the felicitous consequence of, implicitly, making clear that penile circumcision precedes the formation of gender identity, leaving open the possibility of arguing that the procedure, where it is practiced, is actually part of the male-gendering process and not simply a medical intervention that either does or does not have ostensibly objective, non-ideological benefits. (I am not talking here about brit milah, Jewish penile circumcision, which is not intended as a medical procedure and is explicitly defined as creating appropriately-bodied boys.)

I have not thought about it deeply, but it seems to me this could have really interesting implications for thinking about the connections between the medical circumcision of infant penises and the kinds of circumcisions done in adolescent male rites of passage elsewhere in the world. But that’s not really what I’m concerned with here.

I’ve used this new phrasing here on Alas, on my own blog, and elsewhere, and no one has stopped to ask me what I mean by it; no one has suggested it is inappropriate because it leaves the infant’s gender unspecified or because it does not address, for example, the fact that the infant’s parents, and probably almost everyone else who comes in contact with it, experience the child as a boy. Indeed, it has seemed as if readers barely even noticed the change. I have my theories about why, and maybe these will come out in the comments, but for my primary purpose in the post, those reasons don’t really matter. What matters is that I changed my language to make it more trans inclusive and it was, or at least it seems to have been, no big deal.

I thought about this a lot as the now-closed discussion that followed Amp’s recent post, Don’t Call Trans Women “men who identify as women,” sadly and unfortunately devolved into a hurtful argument over precisely the question of what it means to use, or willfully not to use, trans inclusive language. (PLEASE NOTE: I do not want to reopen that discussion here, and if anyone does, then I–or any other moderator who sees it (I’m asking you all to keep an eye out for this as well. Thanks.)–will simply delete their comments.) Unlike my discussions of penile circumcision, of course, Amp’s post was about language used to describe trans women, people who already have a gender identity, which makes misgendering them as men not only inaccurate and deeply hurtful. Misgendering trans people is also an act with potential real-life consequences for how they are treated socially, culturally, professionally, and even legally. I am referring to that thread because buried in it, or maybe just implicit in it, is a much more interesting and constructive conversation that we could have had about how to navigate and negotiate the changes in language use that mainstream affirmation of trans identity will inevitably bring with it.

Those changes–or, rather, the need for those changes, the potential within those changes–have been on my mind since I posted a comment to my Reading The Veil and The Male Elite thread about the Jewish laws concerning menstruation. In that comment, I did not use phrases like “people who menstruate” or “people with vaginas” and so, inherent in the comment, is the assumption that women are the only ones who menstruate. I was aware of this as I wrote, and I consciously chose to leave the trans exclusive language the way it was because making the language inclusive would have meant untangling a knot that not only had nothing to do with the point I was trying to make, but that, even as I am writing this, I am not sure I will be able to untangle.

At the center of the knot, for me, was this: Unless something has changed in the past couple of years, Orthodox Judaism–and I was discussing in my comment the menstrual laws of Orthodox Judaism–does not recognize trans as a legitimate gender identity. Trans women, in other words, are legally and “really” men for Orthodox Jewish purposes; and trans men are legally and “really” women. So it seemed to me as I wrote the comment that to write a sentence like, “In the orthodox [Jewish] tradition, people who menstruate are considered ritually impure” would misrepresent that tradition, not because the sentence is false in anyway, but because it elides the strict gender binary that Orthodox Judaism not only insists on, but relies on. It’s not that I think it’s more important to respect Orthodox Jewish tradition than it is to respect trans people, but what I thought at the time, and I still think now, is that accuracy matters. So, for example, while there are probably ways I couldn’t think of at the time to signify the gender binary in Orthodox Judaism while still keeping phrases like people who menstruate, I also got stuck when thinking about the misogyny–though I didn’t use the word misogyny–in Orthodox Judaism. It didn’t make sense to me to use language intended to be inclusive of some percentage of trans men and then talk about how Orthodox Judaism viewed them misogynistically because they menstruate. It felt disrespectful to those men and, again, misrepresentative of Orthodox Judaism.

Now, maybe I am overthinking this. Maybe this is just me working through my own cis-centered assumptions and imagination, and it is not as big a deal or as interesting as I seem to think it is, because there is a simple solution that I just haven’t seen yet. It does seem to me, though, that once we accept the notion that there are men who menstruate, we also raise the question of whether the misogyny that we usually think of as directed at women because they menstruate is less a response to the biology and physiology of menstruation itself than it is a way of culturally shaping appropriately-gendered female bodies. In other words, once we fully accept the notion that gender is a social construct that can be attached to any configuration of human sexual biology, then maybe we also have to accept that the attidudes and assumptions we have tended to experience as responses to gender–or, perhaps more accurately, to the relationship between gender and biology–are actually what drive patriarchy’s strict gender binary, what build traditional male and female gender identities, in the first place. And that, I think, is not such a simple issue to navigate.

Just to be clear, I am not trying to argue for this position in any strong way. Rather, I am trying tentatively to tease out what seem to me some of the implications of revising the way we use language so that it is more trans inclusive. I am eager to learn from what other people think about all this, of course, but I also want to share with you the little exercise I did for myself that gave rise to this post. I decided to forget for the moment that Orthodox Judaism does not recognize trans identity and simply revise the comment that I wrote in the “Reading The Veil and the Male Elite” thread to be more trans inclusive. It was not difficult to do and, with this caveat, I’d also be interested to hear people’s responses to the revision: This is not a piece of writing I intend for formal publication. It’s excerpted from a blog comment, written (as such comments usually are) relatively quickly and in the context of a very different conversation. Similarly, I did not spend a lot of time on the revision; indeed, that was part of the point, to see how relatively quickly and easily it could be done. Therefore, if anyone decides to dig their teeth into the revision, I would ask that they treat it as a draft, an exercise, as language that is no longer attached particularly to me, but rather as an example for us all to play around with.

That said, here is the excerpt from the original comment:

In the orthodox tradition, menstruating women are considered ritually impure, and there are all kinds of restrictions imposed on them, and they need, when they are done with their periods to go to the mikvah, the ritual bath, to purify themselves. (These days, only married women tend to go to the mikvah, but it used to be the case that all women did once they started menstruating.)

As you might imagine, all kinds of rhetoric and cultural baggage has been attached to a woman’s ritual impurity, all of it devolving from a patriarchal mindset that sees women as dirty, disgusting creatures, etc. However, if you examine the actual biblical texts that concern ritual impurity—I think it’s from the biblical and not rabbinical texts that we know this—the ritual impurity of a menstruating woman is, in and of itself, in essence, no different from the ritual impurity of a man who has had a nocturnal emission, is no different from the ritual impurity of someone who has touched a dead body.

Ritual impurity, in other words, attaches to someone who has come in physical contact with let’s call it a life-death nexus, and that person is required to withdraw from certain ritual activities (in the biblical text) until he or she has gone to the ritual bath. The length of time of separation has, if I remember the logic of this reading correctly, to do more with the “depth”—for want of a better word—of the nexus than with anything else. So, a nocturnal emission is not as “serious” as touching a dead body, and I am pretty sure that menstruation is the most “serious.” In the biblical text, except that the words are translated as pure and impure, my understanding is that there is no implicit moral value placed on either of these states.

Now, if an orthodox woman tells me that his reading is meaningful to her—and I’m pretty sure this explanation was published in something written by orthodox women, or at least people who were trained in the orthodox tradition—that she finds in this reading none of the misogyny that informs traditional understanding of nidah, and that practicing the laws of nidah within this reading fulfills her spiritually, I ask again, who am I to tell her that she is wrong, that, in fact, she is merely practicing a kind of, say, internalized self-hatred because she simply cannot see outside the tradition in which she was raised?

It seems to me that her ability to give this kind of reading to the text, her ability to see the reading as valid, meaningful and as one in which she can find herself, demonstrates precisely her ability to step outside the tradition in which she was raised.

And here is the revision:

In the orthodox [Jewish] tradition, people who menstruate are considered ritually impure, and there are all kinds of restrictions imposed on them, and they need, when they are done with their periods to go to the mikvah, the ritual bath, to purify themselves. (These days, only married people who menstruate tend to go to the mikvah, but it used to be the case that anyone who menstruated did, once their menses started.)

As you might imagine, all kinds of rhetoric and cultural baggage have been attached to the ritual impurity of menstruation, all of it devolving from a patriarchal mindset that sees people who menstruate as dirty, disgusting creatures, etc. However, if you examine the actual biblical texts that concern ritual impurity—I think it’s from the biblical and not rabbinical texts that we know this—the ritual impurity associated with menstruation is, in and of itself, in essence, no different from the ritual impurity associated with nocturnal emission, is no different from the ritual impurity associated with touching a dead body.

Ritual impurity, in other words, attaches to someone who has come in physical contact with let’s call it a life-death nexus, and that person is required to withdraw from certain ritual activities until he or she has gone to the ritual bath. The length of time of separation has, if I remember the logic of this reading correctly, to do more with the “depth”—for want of a better word—of the nexus than with anything else. So, a nocturnal emission is not as “serious” as touching a dead body, and I am pretty sure that menstruation is the most “serious” [because it is connected to childbirth and the actual beginning of a new life]. In the biblical text, except that the words are translated as pure and impure, my understanding is that there is no implicit moral value placed on either of these states.

Now, if an orthodox person who menstruates finds this reading meaningful and spiritually fulfilling, with none of the hatred that informs the traditional understanding of nidah [Jewish laws concerning menstruation], then who am I to say this person is wrong and/or is exhibiting a kind of, say, internalized self-hatred instilled by the tradition in which she or he was raised? It seems to me that this person’s ability to give this kind of reading to the text, to see the reading as valid and meaningful, demonstrates precisely the ability to step outside that tradition.

Finally, just a reminder: as a matter of basic courtesy and respect for trans people, the use of trans inclusive language is a condition of participation in any discussion thread that follows from this post. Any comments that willfully cross this line will be deleted.

Cross-posted.

This entry posted in Transsexual and Transgender related issues, Writing. Bookmark the permalink. 

15 Responses to Revising for Trans Inclusive Language

  1. 1
    Eccaba says:

    I actually prefer the first one. I think saying “women who menstruate” actually helps to demonstrate the strict gender binary in Judaism. In the second example, it looks like Judaism might be trans inclusive when it isn’t. Because it’s only the menstruating people who Judaism sees as women who are also married that they have this requirement for. Transmen who menstruate most certainly wouldn’t be allowed to get married as out transmen in traditional orthodox Judaism. So we really aren’t talking about “people who menstruate” and I think that’s important. I think it’s important because we need to shine light on what the nuclear Jewish family is, what women are in Judaism, what expectations there are for people in the family, how Judaism treats marriage, etc.
    Also, you are welcome to correct me if I’m wrong or if there are different right answers, but as someone who used to be an orthodox Jew, the Nida laws really are only related to acceptable menstruating women who are sexually active, and the people they are active with, which is another important departure from “menstruating people”. It’s been my understanding that the Nida rituals exist explicitly for the purposes of purifying oneself for sex, whether as a concubine or wife. Currently unmarried women are discouraged from going because many in the orthodox community are afraid of concubine arrangements even though there are perfectly good reasons to go to Mikvah outside of purity laws.
    Perhaps you could say something like “individuals defined by Judaism as menstruating women” Like maybe it’s worth just finding a way to say what’s going on. IDK. I’m interested to hear what others think.

  2. 2
    Christopher says:

    The changed first paragraph seems fine, to me, a person who doesn’t know jack about othodox Judaism.

    ETA: By fine I mean the first paragraph appears, to me, to have the same meaning in both examples.

    However, I think that in the second paragraph, there’s a kind of implicit through-line which is different depending on which version you go with.

    The first:

    As you might imagine, all kinds of rhetoric and cultural baggage has been attached to a woman’s ritual impurity, all of it devolving from a patriarchal mindset that sees women as dirty, disgusting creatures, etc.

    Implies that there’s a kind of process which works like this: The patriarchal mindset sees women as dirty disgusting creatures, therefore it also sees the processes it associates with women as disgusting, dirty processes.

    The second:

    As you might imagine, all kinds of rhetoric and cultural baggage have been attached to the ritual impurity of menstruation, all of it devolving from a patriarchal mindset that sees people who menstruate as dirty, disgusting creatures, etc.

    Implies a process which works like this: The patriarchal mindset sees certain biological processes as disgusting and dirty, and so, by extension, it also sees the people associated with those processes as disgusting and dirty.

  3. 3
    Grace Annam says:

    Richard,

    First, in case it’s useful to the discussion, here’s the comment you reference in your post.

    This change didn’t cost me anything, except the time it took for my ear to get used to the different rhythms and sounds it wrought on my language

    Thank you for making the effort.

    Considering the rest of your post, I have no Jewish life experience, other than having Jewish family members and Jewish friends, none of whom are Orthodox, so I have no good handle on what’s the best linguistic approach to referring to trans people in an Orthodox Jewish context. I have read some material on Jewish treatment of transsexuality and I think, but I’m not sure, that people have transitioned fully in an Orthodox context. However, according to my vague recollection, the binary was fully in place; people had to have genital surgery and transition “completely”, there being no conceptual framework or place for anyone the least bit genderqueer.

    Only this thought seems worth offering: if Orthodox Judaism ignores trans people, essentially eliding us from existence, it is perhaps (oddly) appropriate that descriptions of Orthodox thinking should likewise elide any implication of our existence.

    Perhaps the best place to treat with trans people, in such a context, is in the introduction, or in a footnote — something to the effect that while the author understands that we exist, Orthodox Judaism doesn’t, and so within that context, the author will make certain assumptions which would be unwarranted and erasing in a broader context.

    Grace

  4. Grace:

    I have read some material on Jewish treatment of transsexuality and I think, but I’m not sure, that people have transitioned fully in an Orthodox context.

    That’s interesting. I will have to see if I can find this out. If it is true, it is a change from what I learned when I read up, albeit briefly, on this subject a couple of years ago for something else I was working on.

  5. 5
    Eccaba says:

    “I have read some material on Jewish treatment of transsexuality and I think, but I’m not sure, that people have transitioned fully in an Orthodox context.”

    If you mean that they’re not totally disowned and still allowed to do things like eat at the Shabbos table and go to shul, than I suppose that’s true. But the short answer is really “no”. Judaism is all about laws, and there is now law or pathway allowing you to do this. You would never get permission to keep the laws of the gender you identify with. Rabbis would most likely say what I’ve heard them say about gay individuals. Judaism tends to accept that being gay is a Real Thing, so they might also believe trans people about their feelings. (Like they might not think it’s an issue of choice that can be reeducated like some fundamental Christianity does.) However, they would say that it is a challenge set by God and you must resist every day and do the right thing (not transition).*

    The thing is that Orthodoxy is going to see being trans as something wrong, but they a sizable number of people might not see it as being as bad as something else like marrying a non-Jew for example. So the people you’re talking about have a low level of acceptance in that they’re not explicitly booted out.

    *However, there is some precedent for cis lesbians getting around this because sex is not technically sex without a penis and so whatever they do technically doesn’t break laws from the Torah (although Rabbis later forbid two women laying together), and since women aren’t required to marry they can sort of make an argument through Orthodoxy for living a life together. That said, it’s certainly disliked and roundly seen as not in the spirit of Judaism by most.

  6. 6
    Grace Annam says:

    Richard,

    I know from news reports and interviews that Jewish people have transitioned in a Reform context (I hope I’m getting this terminology vaguely right); there are even rituals being developed for it, apparently. It’s possible that I misunderstood one of those, but I think I recall one in an Orthodox context; I just can’t remember any details.

    Let’s check Le Google.

    Ah, it looks like Yeshiva University is Orthodox, and of course Joy Ladin transitioned as a professor, there, and still works there (very interesting interview with her over at “On Being”, by the way). Maybe that’s what I was thinking of. But, of course, that may have more to do with academic tenure than Orthodox Jewish thinking (Ladin, not being an idiot, waited until she was awarded tenure before she approached the administration about her pending transition).

    It’s clear in this article over at Huffington Post that many Orthodox Jews do not accept the existence of trans people.

    Also in that article, Ladin herself is quoted making an argument which I find fascinating:

    As Ladin points out, the rabbis have interpreted circumcision as a procedure that “perfects” the penis. God deliberately left a little extra skin so that Jewish men could remove it and thereby perform a ritual in which their genitals become a physical sign of their true identity. “From a trans perspective,” she writes, “this is a radical teaching. If an operation to alter genitalia is necessary to bring the male Jewish body into conformity with the Jewish soul, then God long ago acknowledged that medical intervention may be necessary for human beings to achieve their true identities.”

    Clearly, however, being trans in an Orthodox context is fraught with difficulty. The Dina discussion list public page cautions participants not to use their real names.

    I don’t know if any of that helps at all.

    Grace

  7. 7
    Eccaba says:

    Re Ladin:
    The argument she’s making is still NOT a Halachic argument. The thing that’s important is that Orthodox Judaism is all about laws. There is no Halachic precedence for allowing transition. The interpretation of laws does sometimes change over time and differ in backgrounds, but making it fit for trans people would be tricky. The only application I can see would be the laws for intersex people. Judaism does acknowledge that intersex people exist. There are some differing opinions as to how to deal with it, but in the conversation is very clear that people do not decide on their own. Here is a helpful conversation:
    http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/english/journal/cohen-1.htm
    Also, Ladin was put on permanent leave as soon as she came out.
    I think it’s possible with looking at the argument around intersex folk that maybe it could be expanded to trans people, but that has never happened that I am aware of.

  8. 8
    rimonim says:

    Re: trans people and Judaism. There are halachic arguments being made for transition (don’t have time to google right now but can do so later). Some I’ve seen argue for the permissibility of transition based on the tradition that the law cannot place limits on medicines. There are others too. The Orthodox community is largely, but not entirely, anti-trans. However, there are been loud pro-trans voices in the Conservative and Reform communities for longer than I’ve been alive. With no central authority, this varies from one synagogue to another, but both the Conservative and Reform traditions allow a person to change their gender status and do not prohibit trans people from marrying or becoming rabbis. Wikipedia has some good info.

  9. As Ladin points out, the rabbis have interpreted circumcision as a procedure that “perfects” the penis.

    Interestingly, in a book called God’s Phallus, Howard Eilberg-Schwarz shows how this notion is also connected to a metaphorical feminizing of the Jewish male body, making it more attractive and beautiful to God in the way that brides make themselves more attractive and beautiful to grooms. Ladin’s reading is really interesting.

    And also just a note to say thank you for the links and the commentary. I am filing them away for future reading and use. It sounds either like I didn’t do extensive enough research last time, or the discussion has become louder (among the orthodox), or that it has, at last, started in earnest.

  10. 11
    Grace Annam says:

    Eccaba:

    Also, Ladin was put on permanent leave as soon as she came out.

    Permanence may have been the Yeshiva’s intent, but I’m pretty sure that Ladin returned to teaching at Yeshiva, or at least at Stern, which as I understand it is the women’s college under the aegis of Yeshiva:

    But a letter from Ladin’s lawyers, as well as a show of support from students past and present, eventually changed Stern’s initially intractable position, and Ladin came back to campus in the fall of 2008.

    Grace

  11. 12
    nobody.really says:

    I offer no opinion on the religious or theological implications, only on English usage.

    To my ears, “people who menstruate” refers to anyone who is prone to menstruation, whether or not that person happens to be menstruating at the time. In contrast, “people who are menstruating gives a clearer sense of people who are currently menstruating. If you are one of the people who are menstruating today, hopefully you will not be in this category tomorrow. If you are one of the people who menstruate today, you will still be in this category tomorrow in the absence of some abrupt physiological change (e.g., death, hysterectomy?).

    Thus, to me, the statement “people who menstruate are considered ritually impure” implies that most women are considered ritually impure from the moment of their first menstruation to the moment of their last. In contrast, I sense the text is supposed to suggest that they are considered ritually impure only during the periods of their menstruation.

    I’d guess the simplest translation for “menstruating women” would be “menstruating people.” But perhaps “those who are menstruating” sounds more idiomatic.

  12. 13
    Ruchama says:

    If you are one of the people who are menstruating today, hopefully you will not be in this category tomorrow.

    Huh?

    (e.g., death, hysterectomy?).

    …menopause…

  13. 14
    nobody.really says:

    To my ears, “people who menstruate” refers to anyone who is prone to menstruation, whether or not that person happens to be menstruating at the time. In contrast, “people who are menstruating” gives a clearer sense of people who are currently menstruating. If you are one of the people who are menstruating today, hopefully you will not be in this category tomorrow.

    Huh?

    If you are one of the people who menstruate today, you will still be in this category tomorrow in the absence of some abrupt physiological change (e.g., death, hysterectomy?).

    …menopause…

    To clarify my use of language: To me, the phrase “people who are menstruating” suggests people who could change their status (menstruating) overnight. To me, the phrase “people who menstruate” suggests people who are not likely to change their status (capacity to menstruate) overnight absent some abrupt physiological change.

    I omitted menopause from my list of examples only because I have not generally thought of menopause as abrupt. But I’m no expert.

  14. 15
    Glen Raphael says:

    The revised language seems fine to me.

    Vaguely related question: Does there exist a term like “misgendering” with respect to racial identification? It seems like there should be, yet I don’t know of one.