A recent, much-disparaged thread on I Blame The Patriarchy turned into a reprise of feminist arguments over transsexuality. Because the thread is on the long side, it has the benefit of providing several examples of feminist anti-trans arguments, as well as (thankfully) many feminist rebuttals.
I think the anti-trans arguments are wrong in every case. In most cases, I think they’re also bigoted and hateful. Let’s take a tour.
Argument #1: The argument from freeform, irrational hatred of transsexuals.
Luckynkl provided such an exaggerated example of drooling, bile-soaked hate that if I hadn’t known her for years, I would suspect she’s a sock puppet intended to discredit feminism. Here’s a couple of examples, drawn from a dozen or more similar statements:
You want to know how men can hurt women? **chuckle** You’re joking, right? Oh wait. I’m supposed to believe men in drag are women. And if you put on a werewolf mask, will you also expect me to believe you’re a werewolf? […]
This is about what all this nonsense amounts to. In short, trans are nutjobs. The bathroom is about the last place I want to be alone with a male nutjob. These unfortunate, but seriously disturbed individuals belong on the 5th floor in a straight jacket. Not in a women’s bathroom.
In Lucky’s view, all transsexuals are “male nutjobs,” and they belong in an asylum.1
In this case, the important part of Lucky’s argument isn’t the argument itself (which is based on the nonsensical notion that people who are apt to break the law by being violent against women in public bathrooms, will be stopped by the sign on the ladies’ room door). Lucky’s real argument here isn’t what she says. It’s her derisive, sneering tone: the point is to let trans women know that they are “men” (in Lucky’s view, men are evil) and that they are semi-human objects of contempt.
The most reasonable reply to Lucky’s argument is (to quote Brownfemipower): Fuck you. Lucky’s a bigot and an asshole; the difference between Lucky and a Klanswoman is only in which oppressed minority her hate is focused on. (I should note that although Lucky was the most extreme, several feminists joined her in her hate-fest.)
In an excellent post at Desperate Kingdoms, Winter writes:
I did not come to feminism for hatred; I did not come to feminism in order to use my power and privilege as a white, middle-class, cisgendered2 woman to oppress a group of people more oppressed than myself; I did not come to feminism in order to set up new hierarchies or take up the role of oppressor. I came to feminism because I believed, and continue to believe, that as part of anti-oppression activism, feminist theories and philosophies can offer ways of being, thinking and relating which could make life better for all of us, whether we identify as men, women, or something else altogether.
Argument #2: The argument from essentialism.
SaltyC: “Knowing that someone is a woman does not tell me anything about her fate, but it does tell me she knows what I know about what it’s like to bleed.”
Luckynkl: “Sex is static. It cannot be changed. Men cannot be frogs, they cannot be giraffes, they cannot be trees, they cannot be rocks, and they cannot be women. Get over it.”
Maribelle: “Case in point: my friend’s two year old daughter was so cute the other day my ovaries started to throb…. Face it—women are inexplicable. We are born, not made. We are created. We cannot be made by human hands, sculpted from the rib of Adam. We are something else again.”
All of these arguments are based on the idea that there is an essential, universal “womanhood” which “women born women” have access to, but trans women do not.
This argument assumes that our essence is determined by what’s between our legs at birth. In this view, our abilities and potential is determined not by our individual talents, desires and actions, but by which box the doctor checked off on the form a few minutes after we came screaming into the world (“we are born, not made”). Women are the class that feels longing when faced with a cute two-year-old; men are the class that, I dunno, feels a longing for power tools or something.
Haven’t we heard this before? This is the conservative, anti-feminist vision of gender that feminism has been fighting against for centuries. Feminism was born to fight against this vision; to fight against the harm done to women and men who are shoehorned into these obsolete, confining gender roles; and to fight against the warped culture created when people are taught that gender roles must be respected.
That some feminists are willing to throw core elements of feminism overboard in order to exclude transsexuals speaks volumes.
Note that essentialism isn’t limited to just biological essentialism. There is also “experience essentialism”; in this case, certain experiences are said to define womanhood, always in a post hoc manner designed to exclude some unwanted class of women.
As Brownfemipower points out, making “womanhood” an exclusive space in order to keep out unwanted, marginalized groups is not something new, or something that has been done exclusively to transsexuals. Throughout history, the experiences of relatively empowered women has been positioned as the norm; the experiences of other women is then positioned as non-representative of “womanhood.” This has happened (and is still happening) to women of color, to lesbians3, to Jewish women, and it is currently happening to trans women.
To my eyes, a lot of the “womanhood is our exclusive domain” arguments strongly resemble anti-same-sex-marriage arguments. “Womanhood,” like “marriage,” is described as if its implications and social meaning has never changed in thousands of years; this false description of unchanging history is then used to argue that all change must therefore be not only bad, but a threat to those who are currently married and/or women. Consider this quote from Magickitty, arguing against accepting trans women as women:
Why should a newcomer to my knitting group insist that I re-define the meaning of my group? This person has never been to my knitting group before, which I’ve had for thousands of years. This person shares no history with the other members of my group, and yet demands full status in the circle. I am sympathetic; this person had always wanted to knit (since birth, even) but only recently learned, this person is oppressed within their own world because they are a knitter, and this person strongly identifies with my group. But why would this newcomer want to claim equal status when they’ve only been knitting for a short time, and why would they want to insist that knitting includes crochet, when in all the thousands of years of the circle, we’ve only ever knitted?
And to be really crude… the newcomer knits English. My group knits Continental. The finished product may look exactly identical, but… well, you know.
The above quote could be used, without any alteration, to argue against same-sex marriage. It’s the same argument.
Argument #3: The argument that the word “transphobia” is a form of censorship.
Sly Civilian quotes this comment, left by Heart at BFP’s place:
Here, my experience, again, is, if someone offers a differing view of transgender issues than the one you hold, bfp, then that person gets immediately labeled “transphobic.” At that point, the discussion really ends. There’s nothing more to be said.
(By the way, Heart’s description of how BFP acts is unfair; there are myriad examples of BFP disagreeing with people about transgender issues without immediately labeling them transphobic.)
Conservatives frequently use this exact argument to try and put discussions of racism, sexism and homophobia out of bounds.4 The idea is that because these concepts make (some) people in the majority culture so uncomfortable that they hesitate to speak, these concepts should therefore not be included in our discussions.
The emptiness of Heart’s argument is, I think, obvious. Transphobia does not become an illegitimate concept to discuss merely because discussing transphobia makes some cisgendered5 people uncomfortable.6
It’s true, of course, that someone could be accused of being transphobic when they’re not. This is obviously hurtful when it happens, but not nearly as hurtful — or harmful — as refusing to talk about transphobia at all! The need for transsexual and transgendered people to be able to talk about how bigotry harms them outweighs whatever “need” cisgendered people have to not be pushed outside their comfort zone.
Argument #4: Transsexuals are dupes of the medical establishment.
Over at Little Light’s blog, in comments, Ravenmn writes:
One of the more sensible arguments that some radfems make against transgenders is the idea that you are choosing to mutilate and drug your body, therefore are some kind of dupe of the medical establishment.
(Ravenmn wasn’t endorsing that argument, only referencing it.) Nanette responded:
I, of course, am not attempting to answer for anyone who is transgender and has had surgery or anything, but I am not sure I would consider that a sensible argument, unless they are just anti medical or surgical intervention for anything, as a general practice. If not, (or even if so) then someone’s personal medical decisions are none of their business, any more than it’s anyone else’s business if you get your tonsils out, have an abortion (that’s also one of the arguments anti abortion people use), have moles cut off, have cochlear implants (some in the non hearing community oppose that, as well), and so on.
The only way they can make that argument, in my view, is if they feel the same sense of ownership over the bodies of transfolk as the right wingers and others feel they have over women. Funny how sometimes the language, actions and tools of oppression or marginalization take such familiar and similar forms, across beliefs, political views and boundaries.
I agree with Nanette, but I’d add that it’s true, historically, that the medical establishment has used access to medical treatments (like prescription hormones and surgery) as a means of forcing transsexuals to endorse and live by traditional gender roles. As far as I can tell, this has become less true in recent years, to a great extent because many transsexuals have actively resisted the conservative status quo of the old medical establishment.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the “dupes of the medical establishment” analysis ignores the fact that not all transsexuals and transgendered people seek medical help to transition. There are a wide variety of trans narratives: One persistent flaw of the anti-trans critiques is that they frequently are framed as if male-to-female surgical transsexuals who describe themselves as “women trapped in male bodies” are the be-all and end-all of transsexual and transgendered experience.
Which brings us to the next anti-trans argument….
Argument #5: Transsexuality implicitly endorses essentialism and traditional gender roles.
In the I Blame The Patriarchy thread, Edith (of the blog Because Sometimes Feminists Aren’t Nice) wrote:
Radical feminists are also against oppression and against gender roles, but they simply do not see being transgender as a good way to fight gender roles — rather, they see transgender as a way of ENFORCING gender roles. […]
If gender is inborn, something neurologically wired, then being “born” in the wrong body makes sense. But actually, radfems tend to believe that gender is socialized and therefore, no one is “born” in the wrong body. […] In this way, I personally think that the more modern, “biological” view of transgender is the more essentialist.
I agree with Edith that the “female brain trapped in a male body” — or the “male brain trapped in a female body” — view of transsexuality is essentialist. But it’s hardly as if “X brain trapped in Y body” narratives are a fair way to describe all of transsexual and transgendered thought! There’s no doubt that some individual transsexuals — like some individual cisgenders — have essentialist views. But to take disagreements with how some transsexuals view gender as a criticism of the entire idea of transsexuality is unwarranted.
In a sense, those transsexuals who move from one sex to the other “entrench the system” of gender as a binary, because they are willing to dress and be identified in society as one gender and not the other. But all of us go along with the gender-binary system in some ways, whether its women who shave their legs or faces, men who avoid wearing dresses and gowns, or any of a thousand ways people adapt to the gendered society we live in.
It’s simply unfair to single out transsexuals for criticism on this score. (I discuss this in more detail in this post). To (once again) quote from Winter’s excellent post:
Moreover, why are transgendered and transsexual women scapegoated and made responsible for upholding gender roles and the patriarchy when every single one of us upholds gender roles every day of our lives? I uphold gender roles every time I call myself a “woman,” every time I answer to my gendered first name, or use my patronymic surname, every time I buy an item of clothing classed as female in a shop for women, every time I use the toilet with that symbol on the door which is supposed to denote womanhood. We are all of us thoroughly gendered under the current conditions. If gender eventually disappears, it will go in its own time; we cannot just get rid of it and we certainly can’t get rid of it by denying other people their rights to their own gendered embodiments.
Further Reading
There have been a lot of excellent responses to the thread at Twisty’s; some are direct rebuttals, others are just thoughts brought to the fore by the current mess. Some of the posts I especially enjoyed: Little Light, the entire discussion at Women of Color Blog, The Silver Oak Leaf, Angry Brown Butch, and Tiny Cat Pants.
- Spotted Elephant has a good post decrying anti-disabled rhetoric used by some folks on both sides of this debate. [↩]
- Cisgendered is a term meaning, roughly, “not transsgendered or transsexual.” [↩]
- Remember when Betty Friedan argued against “The Lavender Menace”? [↩]
- One prominent anti-gay-marriage blog, Family Scholars Blog, in effect banned all discussion of homophobia from its comments. Later on they banned comments altogether, which was probably a mercy for all concerned. [↩]
- Cisgendered is a term meaning, roughly, “not transsgendered or transsexual.” [↩]
- I think a lot of what I wrote about how white people react when criticized for racism also applies to many cisgendered feminists criticized for transphobia. [↩]
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Thanks for writing this, Amp. While I was taking part in the discussion over at Feministe, I was hoping you were going to address this, and I was a little dissappointed when you didn’t.
I should have kept faith. The post was worth the wait.
sweet amp. thanks for this.
This is about what all this nonsense amounts to. In short, trans are nutjobs. The bathroom is about the last place I want to be alone with a male nutjob. These unfortunate, but seriously disturbed individuals belong on the 5th floor in a straight jacket. Not in a women’s bathroom.
I wholely agree with Amp that this quote is hateful and bigotted against the transgendered. I think it should also be pointed out that it is also hateful and bigotted against people with mental illnesses.
I would expand further on this thought, but to face someone in the 21st century who thinks that all “nutjobs” should be straightjacketed and confined away from everyone else is so wrong on so many levels I do not know where to begin.
So now it’s cisgendered and transgendered rather than male and female?
Still firmly entrenched in gender no matter how you cut it.
Bodily experiences are of course “essentialistic”. A transman is not going to have the experience of being a newly pubertal boy and having an embarrassing raising of the tent pole in public. A transwoman is not going to have the experience of laboring and birthing. So? I, ciswoman, also will not have the experience of laboring and birthing, being practically on my last oocyte.
I have the feeling that the anti-trans folk haven’t met and talked with transfolk without bringing an agenda to the discussion.
Please, pray elucidate, Q Grrl.
(Thanks for the nod, Amp. I was wondering when you’d weigh in on this.)
Ditto with the thanks for posting. This was a helpful, thoughtful analysis.
I especially appreciate the pointing out that it’s useless to batter transpeople for “upholding gender roles” when cisgendered people do it all the time, too.
The transsexual person I know most closely does subscribe to the idea of a “female brain” in a “male body.” While the idea does bother me because of the ramifications for essentialism, I am also loathe to dismiss it — I don’t have evidence that it’s wrong, and it seems to describe the experience of my friend, at least.
I feel like the malebody/femalebrain (or femalebody/malebrain) idea can still be reconciled with the idea of socially constructed gender. I feel there are probably some connecting points missing in our understanding of bodies and genders. I know someone, for instance, who has no gender identity, just doesn’t internally identify as male or female and never really has, though sie understands hirself to be female-bodied. That’s outside most theories of gender I’ve seen, or at least my understanding of them.
I once had a class assignment to write on the question “What is a man? What is a woman?” My answer was, quite seriously, “That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”
QGrrl, yes! “Still firmly entrenched in gender no matter how you cut it.” I don’t want to be labeled or known by a “gender” category (whether you have a binary or make up 231 categories). I tell people that I don’t like identifying as a woman because, for the life of me, I cannot figure out what it means to “be a woman.” The closest I can figure out and comfortably use is that it means a person who was labeled so by society in order to be kept subordinate in a patriarchal system that holds (often binary) gender categories to be the primary determinant of one’s lifecourse. With that as my only definition, I really don’t like to identify with a gender apart from when doing so allows me to organize and fight back with others who have received that label and the associated oppression. If “cisgendered” means not “transgendered or transsexual” then what do those words mean? Just what am I not? (I have a hard time with being labeled by what I am NOT instead of what I am.) I’m certainly not comfortable with my gender assignment. I certainly don’t feel I AM a woman at a soul-level. But I’m not comfortable with any gendered system of organizing the world and in my utopia the idea would be laughable.
Amp, you make a great point in saying “It’s simply unfair to single out transsexuals for criticism on this score.” It is something I’ve said several times. We all live in this messed up gendered world and get by as best we can. What too many trans-friendly people seem to assume, however, is that my belief that transsexuality wouldn’t exist in my utopian world where gender didn’t exist is, at its core, transphobic. Funny, because they don’t seem to have nearly as much trouble with me saying that lesbianism and heterosexuality and whatnot wouldn’t exist in that utopia either. (I have just as much hesitation with identifying as lesbian as I do identifying as woman or cisgendered.) I completely agree that, quoting your quoting, “If gender eventually disappears, it will go in its own time; we cannot just get rid of it and we certainly can’t get rid of it by denying other people their rights to their own gendered embodiments.” I also believe, however, that I sometimes need to surround myself with people who have experienced this gender thing in the way I have, as a problematic construct and something to, whenever possible, avoid in our personal lives except for when organizing with others who have also been given an essentialized label of “women” and treated (often oppressed) as such. My thoughts on these matters are always evolving, so I look forward to reading more people’s comments, and I reserve all rights to change some of my thoughts as I do so. :)
Little light: I was a little hurried. I should have written that cisgendered and transgendered are the 21st century equivalent of man and woman. Neither is relevant until politicized or crunched out into some form of social significance and meaning. Furthermore, “cisgendered”, as used in most discourse regarding transgendered politics, obfuscates the social narrative of gender that is imposed from outside the individual. This use erroneously posits “cisgendered” as a dichotomous pair to transgendered, which assumes transgendered to be, in and of itself, a fully formed identity relevant primarily from the personal outward to the political. As such, the argument of transgendered identity is, and probably always will be, in sharp contrast to radical feminist critiques of gender.
Cisgendered and transgendered, as terms used by a decided politic, are merely the new wine skins of a patriarchal gender hierarchy. Not as identities per se, but as terms of engagement.
Q Grrl –
I have read over comment #9 several times and I have no idea what you are saying. My attempts to understand it remind me of my attempts to read Spanish. I recognise most of the words, and I think I understand many of the phrases, but I do even trust my understanding. It sounds like you are speaking postmodernism. Is it posible to translate your point into social psychology “schemas” or maybe memetics so that those of us who speak analytics can understand it better?
This is not meant sarcastically. You obviously have a well thought out point to make, but I obviously do not have the necessary background to understand it. If translation is not possible and it would take to long to educate me, just let me know and I will leave it alone.
eh, I knew someone would say that. le sigh
Right now it’s the only way I know how to say it. What I’m getting at is a criticism of pairing types of gender against each other, which is traditionally done with man and women as gender identities and which is slowly encroaching into the *dialogue* of feminism and transgenderism/transsexuality with the *use* of “cisgendered” as a meaninful term. I find it hard to rebut Amp’s criticism because I find the use of “cisgendered” to be highly problematic, but, a) I’m not sure Amp needs criticsm and b) I don’t know if I have the time and vocab necessary to dispute the use of “cisgendered” in this particular narrative.
Basically, it goes something like this: If “cisgendered” does in fact mean *anything*, and more importantly if it’s meaning is derived from it’s non-entity, it’s nothingness if you will, in relation to transgendered, then this points directly to the issues that this, meaning me, radical feminist has with transgendered politics. If all you do is change the names but leave the framework of a dichotomous hierarchy in place, then you are still accepting the *concept* of gender on patriarchal terms.
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I think I am starting to understand, but I am not quite there. To the extent that you are saying that transgender politics reinforces traditional gender roles, it sounds like you are making the point that Amp addressed as argument #5 without addressing the rebutal that it is unfair to single out trans folk for this criticism. You are adding a further criticism of the use of the term “cisgendered” that I kinda grasp. To say that I am “cisgendered” says nothing about my thinking and behavior in the same way that saying that bacteria reproduce “asexually” says nothing about how they do reproduce.
However, I can also see that you are making a further conection between these two points that I am still missing.
Basically, it goes something like this: If “cisgendered” does in fact mean *anything*, and more importantly if it’s meaning is derived from it’s non-entity, it’s nothingness if you will, in relation to transgendered, then this points directly to the issues that this, meaning me, radical feminist has with transgendered politics. If all you do is change the names but leave the framework of a dichotomous hierarchy in place, then you are still accepting the *concept* of gender on patriarchal terms.
How is it different from describing people as “non-transgendered,” or “not transgendered,” in that case? Do you have a problem with the idea of “transgendered” as a discreet category?
I don’t know if this is what Qgrrl is meaning, but at least for me, creating the boxes of transgendered and cisgendered and saying those who are not transgendered are cisgendered is problematic because neither of those boxes work for me. I do not accept the gender I was assigned at birth. I do not accept some different gender either. I don’t accept the gender construct at all. And the boxes of transgendered and cisgendered simply reinforce the gender construct, something I won’t do with my own identity though I respect the decision of others to do so.
I do not accept the gender I was assigned at birth. I do not accept some different gender either. I don’t accept the gender construct at all.
But there are people within transgendered who reject both categories as you’ve described them as well as gender altogether; this isn’t exactly how they’re set up.
And how are these two categories different from transgendered as opposed to definitely not transgendered? Cisgendered is only an attempt to keep the rest of the world from describing gender in terms of “trans” and “normal people;” that’s not only a dichotomy but a marked and unmarked category.
Exactly! I just read Sandy Stone’s “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-transexual Manifesto” which addresses the issue of “being in the wrong body.” She also goes on to ask other transpeople to be more open and out there about their history–that is, to stop passing and to take up the possibilities of literally being *across* the gender spectrum. I agreed with pretty much everything she had to say, but as I read I couldn’t help but think that transpeople were being held to a much higher standard than non-trans feminists. It seemed that the idea was that the usual discourse surrounding trans people (i.e. the wrong body talk) reinforces anti-feminist essentialist views, and hence there is a political imperative for trans people to complicate this discourse by exposing themselves.
In class I looked around the room at 18 women (all non-trans as far as I know) in this graduate level women’s studies course and saw an amazing amount of conformity to traditional gender appearance–long hair, pony tails, long painted nails, skirts, shaved legs, shaved arm pits, lace, v-neck shirts, light makeup, hair clips, etc. I couldn’t help but think, every single one of us is contributing to anti-feminist views about gender essentialism everyday when we come to class with a stereotypically female appearance. And yet, where is the suggestion that non-trans feminists who conform to gender appearance norms should have to justify the choices they make about their appearance?
Decnavda: I’m not saying that transgenderism reinforces traditional gender roles, I’m saying the use of the binary between transgenderism and cisgenderism reinforces our traditional concepts of gender as a binary per se. At least this appears to me be be so in the discursive sense.
All of us pretty much reinforce patriarchal gender roles. Those of us who don’t, regardless of identities and orientations, are quickly criminalized or ostracized if we don’t.
Piny: I don’t think you can really say that someone is “non trans-“. Conceptually that is a pretty empty phrase. In order for it to have meaning, you would have to negate the transivity of trans-. Which brings up my problems with transgenderism and it’s situatedness within the current gender binary. In and of itself, I would have to say that transgenderism relies predominantly on the fact that there is a gender binary that theoretically will remain intact infinetly.
I’m not sure how to answer your question about “transgendered” as a discreet category. I think there is a huge difference between the lived experiences of transgendered individuals and the discursive use of “transgendered” when addressing the differences between radical feminism and trans politics.
What I do have a problems with is if “transgendered” is posited as a discreet category within a framework that also posits “cisgendered” as a discreet, and real, category. If cis- is in relation to trans-, then what of the original paradigm of gendered hierarchy, the very real life-changing and life-challenging implications of being born male, female, or intersex is a patriarchal gendered hierarchy? “Cisgendered”, especially as defined by Amp above, is meaningless outside the discourse of “transgendered”. I have to wonder at its efficacy to describe any real political/social entity.
I, too, weighed in on this early in the discussion very briefly. I kept popping over here to see when you would share your thoughts on the matter. Glad to see you finally have. An excellent post indeed.
Piny: I don’t think you can really say that someone is “non trans-”. Conceptually that is a pretty empty phrase. In order for it to have meaning, you would have to negate the transivity of trans-. Which brings up my problems with transgenderism and it’s situatedness within the current gender binary. In and of itself, I would have to say that transgenderism relies predominantly on the fact that there is a gender binary that theoretically will remain intact infinetly.
I need to know what you mean by “transgenderism.”
I’m not sure how to answer your question about “transgendered” as a discreet category. I think there is a huge difference between the lived experiences of transgendered individuals and the discursive use of “transgendered” when addressing the differences between radical feminism and trans politics.
What is that difference? And if there is a collection of transgendered individuals, then why is there not a category?
piny-
Although I am firmly on the pro-trans side here, I do see the problem with “transgendered” as a discrete category, at least in theory. “Trans” as a category assumes the existence of other discrete categoies to move from and to. Thus, “transgendered” as a discrete categoy accepts the existence of male and female genders as discrete categories. In a nongendered society, there could be no transgendered people.
Where I disagree with the feminist critics of transgendered politics is in two places. First, even if a transgendered woman is reinforcing the construct (or schema, or meme) of womanhood by claiming to be one, I do not see how it deconstructs womanhood to respond by saying, “No, you are not.”
Second, I think that if society accepts “transgendered” as a discrete category, it will help to breakdown the discreteness of male and female, so that the acceptance of transgendered people puts us on the road toward a nongendered society.
Actually, Activistgradgal, I see a lot of suggestion that feminists who do not identify as trans who conform to gender appearance norms should have to justify the choices they make about their appearance. And I don’t think it is a bad thing. To trouble a decision to shave one’s legs, pierce one’s ears, wear makeup, wear one’s hair long, etc and force those to be intentionally thought-through decisions is important. But we also have to recognize that being a “nonconformist” in appearance is also often viewed through gendered eyes. I hear my dyke friends say things like “Well, I don’t wear my hair long because I’m not into all that girly stuff” or “I’m too butch to wear a dress.” As best I can tell, regardless of what I do, it will be gendered by those who view me. If I shave my legs, the behavior will be gendered as female/feminine. If I don’t, it will be gendered as male/masculine. I simply cannot shop for clothes without “doing gender.” Therefore, I don’t believe physical appearance is the best place to be troubling the gender construct at this point. It may serve to break associations between one’s biological state at birth and one’s appearance, but it doesn’t radically change people’s thoughts about gender categorization on the whole. In terms of appearance, I think we have to do what makes us comfortable, humbly recognizing that it is influenced by our personal aesthetics, our body types, and social norms. In the end, I agree with you… the “stop passing” imperative is problematic. But gendered appearance norms should be open to discussion and critique for all people.
I think that’s an idea worth some thought, Virginia, and discrete labels do tend to destroy shades of meaning in some non-useful ways . . . but it ends up feeling to me a bit like responding to racial discrimination with “race is an illusion, so what are you complaining about?”
I mean, there are different levels of fighting the system, and they’re all useful . . . challenging the current concrete manifestations of prejudice and challenging the overarching systems that lie behind the prejudice both have their place, but if you’re using the “challenging the overarching systems” part to fight the “challenging the current concrete manifestations of prejudice” part, I’ve got a problem with that.
Piny,
A couple things. First, could you clarify “this isn’t exactly how they’re set up.” I’m not sure what you mean. Second, I understand and agree on the “normal and not” reason for having the word “cisgendered.” I’m all up on the history of labeling “otherness.” :) I just don’t accept that label for myself, and I’m not sure that the whole system of labels – transgendered, cisgendered – does much good for my ultimate dream of ridding the world of gender.
But transgendered isn’t “normal”. Why else the use of trans-?
I would certainly hope that we can move beyond the need to be seen as “normal” within the patriarchy. But I do see how this argument (between radical feminism and trans politics) often gets bogged down in some folks not wanting to be seen as freaks, as abnormal, deficient, etc. etc. Which is a most worthy thing to work for politically and socially.
My standpoint is that there are a vast quantity of people who* are* “normal” and who invest gobs of energy, thought, politics, and religion into upholding that normalicy (think SSM for starters – either side of the coin). I don’t, however, think that my feminist politics are part and parcel of that framework.
So, I guess my problems is with the development of somewhat meaningless terms cropping up because of a larger misreading/misunderstanding between radical feminists and proponents of trans politics. I do think of transgendersim as abnormal. Thank god. Normal gender practices tend to fuck me over on a very personal level. I don’t support Luckynkls descent into hatefullness; but I also don’t support the use or propping up of terms that seem to only address that type of bigotry and not a larger framework of envisioning gender.
Shit, I’m not even sure that makes sense.
Decnavda: I’m not saying that transgenderism reinforces traditional gender roles, I’m saying the use of the binary between transgenderism and cisgenderism reinforces our traditional concepts of gender as a binary per se. At least this appears to me be be so in the discursive sense.
I do not see how. “Transgendered” implies (at least) two other genders to move from and to. To accept trans and cis, you imply male and female, so now instead of binary genders, we now have four. This is an example of why I think trans acceptance moves us down the road to a nongendered society. The more there are, the closer they get to just being the individual, and the meaning of gender then disappears.
Myca,
Completely with you. :) I’m speaking of the former and not the latter. As for the latter, I’m active in fighting discrimination on all fronts, including that faced by those who identify as transgendered. I do my best to operate on the two levels of “how the world is/what we have to work with” and “how the world should be/what we should have to work with” simultaneously. I find it difficult, sometimes, to reconcile activism on the two levels, and I suspect I’m not alone there. For instance, I want to see less discrimination against lesbians, but then I’d also like to see the entire construct of sexual orientation destroyed. So do I make a speech on the importance of non-discrimination laws that will protect people of different sexual orientations? After all, that codifies a view of sexuality and gender that I don’t ultimately support! :) And as you point out, recognizing that race is an illusion doesn’t cancel out its very real effects on the world and the need for work to end racism. Can we work to end racism without essentializing race? I don’t know. I fully expect to learn more about the possibilities as I grow.
Roughly: those individuals who are uncomfortable with the socially imposed gender they were assigned who believe that they have the personal, social, and political ability to represent an alternative gender identity.
I would say that a collection of transgendered individuals would be a discreet social entity. No problems with that. It’s the *discursive* use of “transgenderd”, as seen in these types of threads that I have a problem with. Especially if “transgendered” is paired with “cisgendered”. For the reasons I tried to outline above.
A couple things. First, could you clarify “this isn’t exactly how they’re set up.” I’m not sure what you mean.
It’s just that “I don’t identify with my assigned gender” and “I don’t identify with some other gender, either” and “I don’t accept the gender construct” are all statements that can coexist with “I am transgender.” I’m not saying you are; I’m just saying that the two options you’ve rejected don’t match the categories you’re rejecting.
But transgendered isn’t “normal”. Why else the use of trans-?
It’s not not-normal, either.
I would certainly hope that we can move beyond the need to be seen as “normal” within the patriarchy. But I do see how this argument (between radical feminism and trans politics) often gets bogged down in some folks not wanting to be seen as freaks, as abnormal, deficient, etc. etc. Which is a most worthy thing to work for politically and socially.
This is not what I’m saying. It’s not about being freakish as in different or uncommon, but about being freakish as in the site of society’s anxiety about something. Normal people and the trans implicitly makes gender our problem, not theirs. The same thing you’re complaining about, but from a different angle. It’s like having “inverts” vs. “healthy sexual people.” This is an attempt to keep anyone from claiming themselves as normal and treating other people as abnormal: a refusal to accept the idea as legitimate, not an insistence that we’re normal, too.
Decnavda,
“The more there are, the closer they get to just being the individual, and the meaning of gender then disappears.” Thanks for this view. I’m not entirely sure I agree (I’ve long said I don’t want more genders, I want no gender classification at all), but it’s nice to see how it could work spelled out. Until now, people have always just said “no, this isn’t about a binary, it’s about a continuum” or “I agree we need more than 2 genders,” and neither of those responses have made any sense to me at all, as they ultimately did not challenge gender itself. It is refreshing to see somebody thinking about how increasing the categories might do away with them eventually. Can you think of other places that this has happened?
Roughly: those individuals who are uncomfortable with the socially imposed gender they were assigned who believe that they have the personal, social, and political ability to represent an alternative gender identity.
I don’t know if I can accept that definition; why would they need to have those resources at their disposal to be trans? And yet there are no people who are definitively not trans?
It’s the *discursive* use of “transgenderd”, as seen in these types of threads that I have a problem with. Especially if “transgendered” is paired with “cisgendered”. For the reasons I tried to outline above.
I’m not sure I see the discursive shortfall.
I know. I think it’s how I’m trying to describe it that is failing. Although I also think you might not agree with me. Although, again, I see it as a problem on both sides of the issue.
FTR, I don’t really understand your first paragraph in post #32.
And I have to run. My bus to weekend reprieve is coming soon.
Decnavda & Myca (and anyone else, I guess),
Another question for you. How does all this play out alongside a need to recognize that, for the vast majority of female-bodies persons, a female gender has been forced upon them and used to oppress them?
[Comment deleted by Amp.]
So do I make a speech on the importance of non-discrimination laws that will protect people of different sexual orientations? After all, that codifies a view of sexuality and gender that I don’t ultimately support!
While such a speech and other politicalrhetoric around anti-discrimination laws (by both sides) may reinforce the categories being protected, the laws themselves do not. If you are fired because the boss thinks you are black, or gay, or schizophrenic, that is illegal whether or not you actually are black or gay or schizophrenic. Far from enshrining the existence of such classes in code, these laws prevent the use of the social constructs in certain defined situations.
Piny,
Ahh, now I see what you are saying. The reason my statements (or what I intended to say) can’t coexist with “I am transgender” is the word “am.” I don’t want any part of my essential identity, at what I would call a soul-level, associated with gender. I’m still working out how to live that. Sometimes I make it a point to say “I identify as ____” instead of “I am ____.” But really, I just don’t know what to do with it. I have no problem saying “I am a student,” but I think that is because my listener is unlikely to essentialize “student” like we do gender. For me, to say “I am transgender” is about as problematic as saying “I am a woman” because both of those are (potentially essentialist) categories that society has created for me, not categories I believe I would have created for myself in some utopian world where free will actually existed. I should really probably study some more philosophy when thinking about these things. My background in social psychology and women’s studies has not prepared me with the vocabulary needed to make this clear, but I hope you have some sense of what I’m getting at.
And I have to run. My bus to weekend reprieve is coming soon.
Heh. Have fun. I’ll try to clarify a bit, too. And as always, I appreciate this discussion.
Ampersand,
My quote was only about bleeding and feeling kinship with others who have bled, and anyway I have abandoned trying to define women outside of truly and sincerely believing you’re a woman.
But I was swayed by arguments by sincere activists such as brownfemipower and Y carrington as well as NexyJo and Little Light.
I would NEVER have been swayed by your liberal quoting out of context, lumping radicals with people who are out to kill them, and your history of attempts to drive a wedge between feminists and your attacks on the credibility and relevance of Andrea Dworkin.
I don’t believe your motives are clean, and your methods certainly are not.
I have changed my mind, I now accept transwomen as women, but I still despise you and your style.
I especially despise your charactarization of my former stance, which was never this:
“This argument assumes that our essence is determined by what’s between our legs at birth. In this view, our abilities and potential is determined not by our individual talents, desires and actions, but by which box the doctor checked off on the form a few minutes after we came screaming into the world (”we are born, not made”). Women are the class that feels longing when faced with a cute two-year-old; men are the class that, I dunno, feels a longing for power tools or something.”
Bullshit, I never ever believed that.
I said I would never post here and I never will again.
How about “I have a vagina. If that’s important to you to know, do with the information what you will.”
Decnavda,
Agreed on the law issue itself. That is why I continue to fight for legal changes. But the law does not sit pretty and do nothing to our understanding of reality. If I (or, heaven forbid, a news program) teach a child about an anti-discrimination law and what it says, the child is likely to pick up on some understanding of the importance and general acceptance of the categories being used in it. Ultimately, yes, the laws are a plus, and they protect based on perception, not an “real” (whatever that means) membership in a group. But as a side effect they can also serve to highlight what group memberships we consider important and even essentialize.
This is a very interesting conversation that’s sprung out of a very good post by Amp. I especially enjoyed parts #4 and #5 and how many more people are getting the “why is it fair to single trans people out for criticism on these grounds when we don’t even think about everyone else doing the same things.” It might also be good to ask why this does happen; maybe the answer is because trans people’s existence brings the subject up when otherwise it would remain relatively invisible. If that is not an important step in challenging gendered expectations, I would be surprised. All the more shame that trans people get punished for causing the problem with gendered behavior to be noticed in the first place, whether or not they are committed to playing a gendered role — which of course not all trans people are. Now we have to take the next step and not just question trans people’s choices about gender expression, but everyone’s, and also recognize how much each of us has to do, all the time, often without really thinking about it, to keep from being brutalized by gender-enforcing systems of oppression.
I totally agree that “cisgendered” is a backwards-formulation. Kind of like heterosexuality, right? Which did not exist before homosexuality became a concrete idea. (Insert Foucault reference here.) I don’t see how that makes it entirely empty of meaning. Most people understand what heterosexual means. A lot of people have at least a crude understanding that it’s possible to be “between” these two boxes, even though they are quite artificial boxes. People who have thought about it even more might realize that “betweenness” doesn’t just involve a third box or necessarily even a “spectrum between poles.” But the reality is that the social world we have to move through (to say nothing about tendencies of human psychology) is a categorical one and we all negotiate tons of categories.
Of course the conceptual existence of “transgenderism” relies, in the very etymology, on the existence of a gender binary. If there were no binary or no gender, then there would be no concept such as transgender. I don’t get either what the problem is with accepting this OR what it means to point this out. “Transgender” is not something that has been “designed” as a solution to gender, and at least originally not something that is designed at all: it’s something that happens to people who are in a binary gender system. I understand my being trans as a reaction to binary gender, how I was forcibly placed in it, and as a method of survival and negotiation with gender so that I would not get crushed by gender. This position doesn’t exactly endear me to gender as a system. And there’s a reason you hardly see any trans people encouraging others to be trans too — it’s not a “positive strategy for revolution.” It’s something that happens both to and by you, I think. But yeah, I don’t think it’s uncommon for trans people to be pissed off by gender binaries — all the claims back and forth about how trans people are supporting the binary or are the best hope for destroying the binary usually come from outside, objectifying viewpoints. For a lot of trans people, “transgender” is about surviving the goddamn binary. Which is something a whole lot of gender-disenfranchised people (including all women) have to strategize and work and position themselves and run and hide and rebuild and remake themselves in order to do.
I do agree that now, after the fact of trans people’s lives, “transgender” is being turned into an academic concept that may be totally different than trans people’s lives. But I would be hard pressed to say how, because the “trans politics” and “trans ideology” that has been targeted by a lot of self-identified radical feminist opponents of something vaguely “trans” is highly abstract. Is it particular works we’re talking about? Particular authors? Particular trends? Heck, there are a lot of authors, works, and trends around “trans” that many trans people would be the FIRST in line to condemn, because messed-up stuff about “transgender” affects us quite immediately, don’t you think? But there have been very little specifics in a lot of the blog arguments lately. Instead “trans politics” seems to be standing in for all trans people and ideas related to “transgender” — and so trans people’s lives are getting mischaracterized, misunderstood, and slammed hard.
I am a trans woman and I also say things very much like what Virginia said:
And I’m far from the only one — ask nexy jo, she was probably the first trans woman I ever saw write something like this, and it set off a chord in me. If that confuses the bejeezus out of you, then there is something insufficient in your theory of trans — whether or not you’re a trans person yourself. At this point some readers are probably saying “if you don’t identify as a woman then what makes you a trans woman?” My experiences, for one thing, which is why when I have the luxury I “identify” as someone of trans experience, and the ways my experience have influenced my perspective of the world.
And that makes a whole lot of sense to me too. To paraphrase Riki Wilchins, “I don’t know why they say I transgress gender when from my point of view, it’s gender that’s transgressing all over me.”
The reason my statements (or what I intended to say) can’t coexist with “I am transgender” is the word “am.” I don’t want any part of my essential identity, at what I would call a soul-level, associated with gender. I’m still working out how to live that. Sometimes I make it a point to say “I identify as ____” instead of “I am ____.” But really, I just don’t know what to do with it. I have no problem saying “I am a student,” but I think that is because my listener is unlikely to essentialize “student” like we do gender.
I see the distinction; again, I didn’t mean to imply that, duh, obviously trans. So I dunno. I’ve seen trans used as anti-essentializing language, as a category that transgresses categories, but I’ve also encountered people who reject those categories as essentializing either in practice or theory. I’m not really sure how to resolve the tendency towards essentializing–which, you’re absolutely right, exists with gender as it doesn’t with so many other things–with language in general.
Oops, back at #37, I meant to say “I am identified as/considered ____” not “I identify as.”
Oops, back at #37, I meant to say “I am identified as/considered ____” not “I identify as.”
Oh. I assumed that you were talking about affinity that likely had something to do with reception anyway, so.
Works the same either way. Fairly new in my thinking on all this, so word choices are still shifting every day.
Re: people who have unusual approaches to gender identity. Is it hugely unusual to feel one has a non-gendered soul/ essence? I feel that way, but I am in a female body, and the world sees me as female, so I identify in part as “socially female, just not the usual variety”, and see it as expedient to expand the traditional definition of “woman” to include non-traditional women of all sorts, including the ones who have or have had penises.
I don’t think it’s hugely unusual, but I don’t know if anyone’s ever done a survey. For what it’s worth, I’ve always felt that my “self” isn’t especially male or female. And “socially male, just not the usual variety” seems (to me) like an accurate description; and I agree with you about expanding the definition of “women” and also the definition of “men.”
It is refreshing to see somebody thinking about how increasing the categories might do away with them eventually. Can you think of other places that this has happened?
I cannot think of perfect examples, but I can think of some that are close.
One is class. While there were many levels of nobility in the past, there was a pretty strong distiction between nobles and peasants. After the industrial revolution, the “middle-class” became a fairly distinct entity for a while, but it had to break up into factory-owners vs. managers vs. professionals, etc. Nowdays, there is strong ecconomic oppression of the poor, and social mobility is not as great as some beleive, but we do live in an essentially classless society. what matters is the exact amount of money you personally have, and while it is likely to be a realtively similar amount to what your great grandfather had, whether it is or not does not actually matter all that much.
Another is ethnicity, particularly among white people. At some points in Ameican history, there were far fewer white ethnicities, and some groups such as the Irish or the Italians were discriminated against in manners similar to blacks and Latinos today. The more different white ethnicities moved here, the more ethnicity became something of a quirk among “white” people.
I can see it also in religion in America. We broke away from a country with a specific sect as a state religion, but there were so many Protestant sect in the U.S. that we agreed to be just a Prostestant nation. Eventually enough Catholics showed up that we became a Christian nation. As Jews gained prominance, we became a “Judeo-Christian” nation. Now, most of our leaders say that we are a nation of people of faith. So I personally am still an Other, but at least the acceptance of all faiths is strong enough that the conservatives who criticised Representative Ellison for swearing on the Koran were shouted down by other conservatives.
And I HOPE the same is happening with race in America. The white/black binary has made eliminating the concept of race extremely difficult. Even when it is legal for blacks to marry white, socially it is still considered a “mixed marriage”. The recent explosion of the Latino population might make it easier. Now instead of two races, we have three, and here in California, four. And for some reason, Latinos can marry anyone without it being treated as a “mixed marriage”. So I now have Asian and black relatives without any of treated like we are in a mixed marriage. The moer races there are, the less it seems to matter. (Please note that this use of race to support my point is the weakest of my examples, as at this point it is still just a hope.)
“Normal”. I find it a vague term, most often unhelpful. I define “normal” as compatible with adequate function. Of course, you then have to define the function, and what “adequate” means. Under this definition, rare variants can be normal as long as they are functional.
Others take the statistical approach and define “normal” as what 95% of the functional population looks like. By this definition, exclusive homosexuality and early assumption of transgendered identity are both “not normal”, if the population sampled is “all humans”. I can’t be all that concerned about mere rarity, however. Redheads over 6’8″ are also rare, but noone is calling them abnormal (unless they are victims of overactive pituitary glands, in which case they have some associated health issues like diabetes).
I dunno…I still don’t want a male, transgendered or not, who still has his/her male genitalia intact in the ladies’ room with me. Not as long as there are only flimsy partitions with broken locks and openings separating me from the rest of the room.
I could live with it if the stalls have floor to ceiling doors with good locks, but that isn’t so in most buildings.
When I was in high school bullies used to kick down the stall doors in the girls’ room, and I still have nightmares about boys in the restrooms.
SaltyC: I’m very glad you’ve changed your mind. That’s wonderful. And it’s a tribute to both your own open-mindedness, and to the great writing of the folks who convinced you to change your view.
I do agree that the bit you quoted didn’t apply to your “bleed” comment. This quote from the same section of my post was intended by me to be more responsive to your argument: “Note that essentialism isn’t limited to just biological essentialism. There is also ‘experience essentialism’; in this case, certain experiences are said to define womanhood, always in a post hoc manner designed to exclude some unwanted class of women.”
Whether or not you believed that, I think it was a fair interpretation of the arguments you put forward at that time.
I didn’t talk at all about “radicals” in my post; although obviously many of the folks I criticize self-identify as radfems, I don’t know if all of them do or not. I lumped them all together as feminists because I believe they all self-identify as feminists. I’m not aware of anyone I quoted who is literally out to kill radical feminists, but if that’s true, it would certainly make everything that person says non-credible.
I don’t try to drive wedges between feminists. Frankly, I think I usually bend over backward to avoid conflict, and to avoid criticizing other feminists; this post is a major exception to my general practice.
Finally, “Alas” readers can read this post, which is the most sustained post I’ve ever written about Dworkin (that I recall), and judge for themselves if I’ve attempted to undermine her credibility or relevance. (It’s certainly true that I don’t agree with much of what Dworkin wrote.)
If you don’t want a male in your restroom, I guarantee you that the men don’t want women walking in their restroom. (squk)(sound of male urinary sphincters slamming shut at the speed of light). And I bet a transwoman wouldn’t be too keen on having you do an “equipment inspection”.
Me – I don’t much care. People are either scary or not, and frankly I’d be more worried about a girl gangsta than the average transwoman orthe cisguy that strolled into the women’s bath room by accident.
(I lurk and lurk and lurk and never post…but I sometimes post over at BFP’s)
It’s so interesting to me the way “transgender” turns into a debate about language and its purposes. I wish I could say something really clever and theory-ish about that, but I can’t think of anything right now.
Q Grrl: I feel like the language we use for politics is always inadequate, and there’s always a tension between political/”mobilizing” language and introspective/theoretical language. To me, that’s productive. When people use language toward a political end, it gets ossified and usually problematic–but it can also gain rhetorical force because it’s ossified/reified. That used to scare me a lot, because I felt like it was impossible to make a st atement about any kind of political action that didn’t rely on bad categories, and yet I also felt that political action needed to be taken. (As you can tell, this is a version of “reform versus revolution” anxiety) But I feel like the [dialectical?] tension between mobilization and introspection can kind of take care of this problem, as long as we let it. That is, it’s important not to be too attached to any one term or way of describing a problem….the part of the left I’m in (and me too, as a person) gets sidetracked a lot by looking for permanent solutions: the permanently correct analysis of capitalism, language to use about race, position on food production, theory of gender, as if we could get all our thinking done in one feel swoop and then never have to think again.
(Of course, this rests on the idea that we do have some permanent values, so that’s a bit inconsistent right there…)
So what I’m saying is this: I think that “cisgender” is a mobilizing term. It’s intended to shock people-who-think-of-their-gender-as-natural by naming what they have, what has hitherto gone nameless. In this sense, yes, it’s supposed to be paired with “trans”–it’s paired with trans for the same kind of political purpose as pairing “white”, another bad, amorphous term, with “person of color”. (Which is not to say that trans issues are somehow identical with racial issues).
Gender categories, as people here have pointed out, come apart when you press them. They’re like fog or a handful of mud–you try to grapple with them, but there’s nothing there. At the same time (to continue the metaphor) it’s not enough to say “well, fog really doesn’t exist”…in a way that’s hard to define neatly, fog exists. It’s not (as far as I can tell) an effective political strategy merely to tell people-who-don’t-think-of-themselves-as-transgendered that there really is no such thing as gender. I feel like that’s where the more introspective parts of the left (especially those of us, like me, who have various types of race and class priviledge) tend to hit the wall–I can think myself to a point where I don’t believe in gender and I don’t believe in race, but then I feel that my responses to the situations I see around me every day are woefully inadequate because I don’t allow myself to use the linguistic register that these things occur in.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are different political registers, and I’m not worried when they provide correctives for each other. It would worry me if someone said “cisgender is a perfect term for reasons x, y and z and when you say it is problematic you threaten the revolution” but it doesn’t worry me when people use the term “cisgender” in specific political contexts.
As far as all this nonsense about “Oooh, the MTFs are coming! Lock up your bathrooms!” goes, well, I have never yet encountered someone who could say “I had this specific bad experience with a transgendered person and that’s why I am afraid of them.” I’ve never even encountered anyone who can say, “I was in this discussion group and this transgendered person behaved in this specific manner which was disruptive.” It’s all theoretical, like “Well, I think they’re men, and I think men would do X if they were in our group.” Of course, isolated bad behavior wouldn’t justify blanket condemnation anyway, but I’d take the argument a little more seriously if there were actual examples given. (I’ve no doubt that, the world being wide, there are a couple of examples floating around out there–people behave badly from time to time anywhere you go–but I sure do find it interesting that this whole argument is never based in examples but only abstractions.)
This is only tangentially related to the discussion, so I apologize in advance, feel free to ignore this more concrete question.
Why is it so important to have segregated bathrooms? I went to France recently and all the bathrooms at the rest stop highways were unisex. In the Netherlands a lot of public restrooms were unisex as well. At first it really disturbed me to walk past a row of urinating men to get the stalls. Then I realized the men were being very polite and hunching over a bit so the women didn’t have to see it. As long as the bathrooms are well-trafficked I don’t see any danger. Now I have hope for a future where everyone will pee together and no one will care.
Frowner said:
I agree completely, and I think that that’s the hidden agenda once you get behind most of the ‘women born women’ rhetoric: a blatantly transphobic, “well, they may say they’re women, but you know that really . . .”
while i understand why people say this, and especially in the context of a binary gendered system it makes perfect sense, i can’t buy into it. and i believe i don’t buy into it in part because of the way we use the two terms “sex” and “gender”. even if we achieve our goal and eliminate gender, i believe there would still be people who would want to change their bodies from stereotypical “male” configurations to stereotypical “female” configurations, and visa versa. and because transsexuals are part of the umbrella concept of transgender, transgender as a concept would still be around.
i might be convinced that there would be fewer people who would want to change sex (or trans sex, as the case may be), if an end to gender was achieved, but i don’t believe *no one* would want to “change sex”.
we humans have always seemed to prefer dividing our world into two categories. perhaps we do that because it’s easier to navagate through our mental constructs of the world in which we live, or because of the language we’ve developed, or some reason i haven’t thought of. but there’s no doubt we humans like binary categories, and we like those categories to be opposite one another. in a world such as ours that is all gray, we still insist on forcing its elements into black or white. but to me, there’s also no doubt that a few of us like to rebel against binaries and opposites.
i believe that as long as there is more than one sex, there will be transsexuals. and as long as there is more than one gender, even if we have 100, there will be transgender people. and frankly, i also believe that as long as there is more than one sex, gender will exist. though i can hope that we can minimize the effect that gender imposes on us.
as holly points out, i don’t “identify” as a woman or a man, at least as gendered beings, because i don’t know what those terms really mean. i claim no “gender identity” because i never “felt” like either gender. certainly, part of the motivation for my transition was a response to our society, and the gendered role i was expected to follow. on the other hand, changing my body, specifically bottom surgery, was motivated, in large part, by the way i prefer my intimate encounters to be. i’ll admit though, that my preferences may very well be constructed by the binary gendered society in which we live. i suppose i’ll never know for sure – no one can know for sure unless and until gender is eliminated.
still, i’m not so comfortable with the female gender role i’m supposed to follow now either. originally, i just wanted to transition from a man to, well, nothing. but you know, we need a letter to put on our legal documents. and “f” works better than “m” for me.
we humans have always seemed to prefer dividing our world into two categories. perhaps we do that because it’s easier to navagate through our mental constructs of the world in which we live, or because of the language we’ve developed, or some reason i haven’t thought of.
Well, we have two brains, kind of. And each half does think about things differently. Maybe splitting things in two to think about them worked well for our ancestors and so we got really good at it.
Oh I see now,
porn is to fashion magazines
as
violence against women is to violence against men
as
trans people conforming to gender is to anyone else conforming to gender
Is it just that trans people are much worse and more harmful than everyone else? Or that trans people are the real problem that needs to be discussed, and bringing up the latter subjects is a distraction?
For the record, I’ve never heard nor read a trans person claim that all trans people inherently upend gender more than non-trans people. That kind of claim, when it does show up, usually comes from someone else, and often in response to some sort of stereotype about all trans people being conformists who support gender roles and structures.
But hey, maybe we’re all close to agreeing that trans people are just as liable to conform to gender as everyone else. Which is to say, most people do and some people don’t and some people actively resist. Then we could stop talking about trans people as somehow notably different or remarkable in this regard, right? We could just talk about gender conformity and reinforcement of gendered structures in general, and go back to arguing over how much wearing lipstick discredits you as a feminist.
Holly wrote:
Holly, you’re assuming that porn/violence against women are “worse and more harmful” than women’s mags/violence against men. I don’t think they are worse and more harmful, and it’s not clear that Bean intended her comparison that way.
You know, the longer I live, the more I embrace the notion that generalizations deeply limit people’s lives. The binary system of gender that feminism seeks to unravel encapsulates immense generalizations regarding human behavior. The notions of male and female certainly do a rotten job of describing human beings.
Ironically, even feminist theory or queer theory or gender theory—in spite of their usefulness—are all generalizations and rough approximations. No theoretical model truly describes the real-life system it is based upon. The point at which we move beyond seeing these concepts as a set of useful tools and cease to distinguish them from the real systems (and actual human beings) that they approximate is the moment in which dogma is born. It is also the moment in which theory moves away from a tool of understanding toward a basis for prejudice.
As nexyjo implies, we human beings have difficulty processing information without breaking data into convenient, distinguishable chunks. This tendency shares some of the responsibility for the tenacity of gender stereotypes, racial stereotypes and many other detrimental systems of perception in the world. A desire to maintain privilege and control over others also shares responsibility. This tendency also lies at the heart of creating various theories to help us understand and possibly manipulate the world that we live in. None of us has the ability to perceive and understand societies or physical systems in their entirety. In place of omniscience, we have theoretical models.
So, we use theoretical models to understand and change systems of oppression that force people into generalized categories (social castes) as a means of control. That is, we are using generalizations to understand and control a form of social organization that controls people via generalizations. The tools that we use to challenge the system share many flaws in common with the system we are challenging.
I’m not sure what alternatives we have to this whole process. Nevertheless, if we aren’t careful, we could easily replace one horrid social system with another.
The snake swallows its tail…
Bean wrote:
Point well taken, regarding feminist criticism of women wearing lipstick, skirts, boob jobs, etc.. – I can think of lots of examples of this (and even some flamewars over this). (Contrary to your assertion here, I can’t recall even one case of feminists criticizing men for not wearing skirts or makeup. Maybe you’ve seen it, but I haven’t, and ime it’s not commonplace.)
But I’m not sure the parallel can be taken very far (which is a bit cheesy of me to say, since I’m the one who brought the parallel up in the first place). Criticizing someone for wearing makeup is one thing; criticizing someone for being trans seems like a more crucial attack on their core identity. It’s the equivalent of criticizing a woman for maintaining the gender binary because she’s heterosexual (which I realize some feminists have done, but it’s rarer, and imo unreasonable), or because she identifies as female rather than refusing to accept any gender identity.
In instances in which the “being trans supports the gender binary system” argument is brought up as a rebuttal to the claim that trans inherently upends conventional gender, I’d agree that the argument is less problematic. (I still think it’s wrong, but it’s less problematic.)
However, I disagree with you that such a context is where the argument is “usually brought up.” A significant amount of the time I’ve seen the argument brought up — including the specific instance I quoted and responded to in my post — it’s brought up by feminists who are implying that the trans identity itself is inherently supportive of patriarchy.
I just wanted to quote this to acknowledge that we have areas of agreement. :-)
No one has argued or suggested that you (or anyone else) has to believe that transsexuality (which is what was being discussed in the Twisty thread, not “their methods”) are helpful in ending patriarchy and gender roles, so I think that argument is a bit of a strawtransactivist.
And of course you (and anyone else) are free to state your opinions. However, I (and anyone else) are free in turn to question whether stating opinions and arguments about how you think peoples core identities and survival tactics are helpful to patriarchy is appropriate and helpful.
I think it’s pretty dubious to question something like that — just as it would be to say “I don’t think it’s helpful that you’re Jewish” or “I think it’s hurting the cause that you’re heterosexual.” Yes, there are obvious instances in which being heterosexual does implicitly go along with a negative status quo — but that doesn’t make it a useful criticism, especially when we see the criticism brought up again, and again, and again.
And it’s a particularly dubious thing to do when the identity being questioned this way (again and again and again) is not a dominant identity like “heterosexual,” but instead that of a marginalized and discriminated against minority.
3) This argument is also usually brought up in a context in which trans people (or pro-trans people) are making the argument that trans people are upending gender. To say that those who are arguing against an argument put forward by [pro-]transpeople is discriminatory towards transpeople is unfair (at best).
Actually, that argument is frequently a defense against the idea that transpeople are delusional patriarchal trend victims. So it’s unfair (at best) to look at it as a spontaneous claim to transgression.
Wow, Amp. Once again, you put into words what I’m thinking.
Right on. I think part of what I was thinking in #24 but didn’t articulate was that the whole ‘controvery’ reminds me of a group of mostly white activists sitting around explaining to to a black person that their identification as ‘black’ is counter-revolutionary, because after all, “race is an illusion,” and, “I’m 1/8th Cherokee myself ,” and, “aren’t we all working to end race?”
Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s some hubris at work there. Listen to trans folk without telling them how they’re ‘supposed’ to work.
i’m a little confused here, so perhaps someone could explain what the argument regarding trans people supporting gender roles is really about. so when a man puts on a dress and makeup, and shaves his legs, he’s supporting male gender roles?
now before you answer, consider this: many of the people i know on-line and many of the people i know irl who don’t know i’m trans proport that they know a trans person when they see them. they argue that their “gaydar” (or “transgar” as the case may be) is 20/20. so i’m framing my above question in that context.
so if someone can clock a trans person as trans, then in fact, they are recognizing a man who presents himself in a role that is directly opposite his prescribed gender role. so how is that supportive of patriarchy and traditional gender roles?
see, either trans people as a group are supportive of patriarchy and the average trans person passes as a member of their target gender, or trans people are unending gender because they are recognizable as members of their birth sex. you can’t have it both ways, i.e. trans people are visably gender variant and they support the gender binary. it just doesn’t follow.
i’ve spent a lot of time with a large number of trans people. many of us do not pass completely as members of our target gender, especially m2f’s. we talk quite a bit about “passing” in our support groups, because it’s a big issue. because other people see us as upending gender, and that somehow disturbs them and we bear the brunt of their enforcement of gender roles.
many of the trans women who do pass as their target gender do not engage in traditional gendered behavior in many areas. most of the women i know at work think of me as some sort of radical feminist, because i never wear makeup, i haven’t shaved my legs in months, i talk about all the power tools i use, and so on. many of the trans women i know who do pass as their target gender are like me. we don’t wear dresses, we work on our cars, and we’re seen as rather masculine women. and half of us date only women.
perhaps the problem is that i’m not understanding what people mean when they say that trans people support gender roles. or, that people who make those arguments are getting their information about trans people from t.v., from shows like jerry springer. because if i got my information from t.v., and didn’t know any lesbians irl, i’d argue that lesbians support gender roles too – just look at most of the women on the “l” word.
opps, sorry about the botched bold html formatting. i guess i thought i was on ezboards or something.
[Fixed! –Amp]
Thanks for this, Amp.
nexyjo : I think Bean is pointing out that many trans women dress overly femme, and many trans men overdo the traditional masculine roles.
Bean, I want to point out a couple of things about the trans community:
– It does not exist as a monolithic entity. Criticizing all transgendered people on the fact that, yes, a sizable number of trans people do embrace traditional gender roles, is the error of letting any subsection of a minority speak for everyone in the minority.
– For a couple of generations, transgendered people were required by the medical establishment to undertake extremely traditional gender roles if they wanted to be allowed access to procedures and treatments that would allow them to become more comfortable with their bodies.
– The argument that transgendered people defy gender is recent, and comes out of Kate Bornstein’s work (Gender Outlaw) and that of xir contemporaries. That work — which came into the open VERY recently — is what is changing, actively, right now, the dynamic in the trans communities.
The older sector, those who have been convinced by doctors that they must “pass” for “normal” OR ELSE — well, many will be slow to change (and many are probably quite comfortable with their gender presentation as it is) — but really, if you look at a room full of transgendered people and a room full of average Americans, I don’t think the ratio of those who practice traditional gender roles is higher in the trans community — and as more people are growing up with the newer versions of the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care, and the less shockingly normative requirements for what a transgendered person “has” to be, I would say that among young trans people, at least, the ratio of people who practice traditional gender roles is quite low.
My friends include more femme trans men and butch trans women than the other way around, and looking around Portland and the internet, I see that my friends are part of a growing movement and culture practicing gender variance openly.
I am dealing with my own gender process on a basis of wanting to be able to take on as many different convergences of roles as possible.
Not saying Bean’s doing this, but some might take her arguments this way, so I want to preemptively defend against that: I do not think it holds water to be “anti” a specific group of human beings on the basis of the normative behaviors of a large number of their members. A lot of queer people are normative. A lot of POC are normative. A lot of women are normative.
A while back, someone made a post about makeup and beauty treatments being a different part of life and life experience for women growing up in different socioeconomic and racial categories — it was linked from here but I don’t remember where it was. It’s a good antidote to the ugly discourse that sometimes comes out of oversimplifying a minority like that.
Coming in late as always… Amp, I agree with every point made in your original post. But, since you have been the subject of a pile-on yourself, I wish the post had included a sentence or two making clear that Twisty herself was not the source of the anti-trans hate. People who don’t read I Blame The Patriarchy might easily read it that way. For those who haven’t been involved in the stoush, the comments appeared in a comments thread – a very long comments thread – on a topic that was completely unrelated to transexualism and was quite a few topics back in the blog.
Because Twisty, who has a full life including serious illness, did not notice the hateful comments until the controversy had blown up, she was held responsible for the opinions of the commenters on her blog.
Pretty unfair in my opinion, and I think a lot of ‘twisty hates transexuals!’ remarks were made in bad faith by people whose motives were less than honest.
IMO.
I think I see both sides of the is it twisty’s fault debate. On one hand, you can’t just have hateful toolbags spouting horrid things all the time. Otherwise good discussion would be run off the site. On the other, it was the holidays and lucky did get banned I believe.
I’m planning to do a brief post about that tomorrow; I decided to do two separate posts, because I think they’re really two separate issues. But yeah, you’re right, I should have made it explicit that Twisty wasn’t the source of the anti-trans hate.
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Because Twisty, who has a full life including serious illness, did not notice the hateful comments until the controversy had blown up, she was held responsible for the opinions of the commenters on her blog.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Twisty was also getting flak because her response to people complaining about the lack of moderation was, essentially, big whoop, I was busy, what’s your issue and it’s not a big deal anyway. Which I personally believe has more to do with Twisty’s not liking to admit she’s ever wrong than with transhatred.
The comments themselves are head-scratching. What ever happened to “One is not born a woman; one becomes one”?
Here’s my beef, in a nutshell —
Transsexuals are accused of heinous crimes.
Transsexuals debunk said accusations.
More accusations of heinous crimes are levelled because transsexuals dared to respond.
I suppose it’s a pretty good gig if one can get it. Beats working for a living …
Myhago,
Twisty did not go “big whoop”. She writes bliquely, yes, but substitute “going away, not enough keyboard time, and undergoing chemotherapy” for “not sufficiently constituted”…Here is what she wrote on 29 December (I for one didn’t have time to touch my blog in that time, and some commenters could have wreaked seven kinds of havoc, had they wished):
And in case some non-Twisty readers were drawn into the thread and are under the impression she’s some kind of Cotillion type who would never understand a transgender person, on 30 December she wrote:
In addition, once the pile on started, people started criticising irrelevant things like the ‘public cans of Austin’ series. Like, what’s with that, ewwww. Now I’m aware of the puritan heritage in the US which makes us a bit different from us ex-convicts and ratbags, but feminists and feminism are often attacked for ‘puritanism’ and it makes me cringe that some people would play into that puritan-humourless-and-earnest stereotype. And the same people are criticising Twisty for not being a good feminist. Gah.
Seems I’ve invented a new word – ‘bliquely’
Should be ‘Obliquely’
(Sigh) another typo. ‘Makes Americans a bit different from us ex-convicts”…
I’ll go back to bed.
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Twisty did not go “big whoop”. She writes bliquely, yes, but substitute “going away, not enough keyboard time, and undergoing chemotherapy” for “not sufficiently constituted”…Here is what she wrote on 29 December (I for one didn’t have time to touch my blog in that time, and some commenters could have wreaked seven kinds of havoc, had they wished):
Yes, but that was her third response to the thread. Prior to that, she commented twice in the thread. The first time, she said this:
I stopped reading this thread when it turned, for no apparent reason, into a referendum on Sheila Jeffreys’ views on transgenderism, which do not interest me. Since then, it has been suggested that my failure to have commented on this “trannies: good or bad?” issue implies my tacit agreement with one faction over another.
Incorrect. It merely implies my lack of interest in a clump of commenters telling each other to fuck off. Not that you should stop or anything. But I personally gotta be in the mood.
My views on gender, inclusive of the trans-, cis-, or whathaveyou- varieties, are as follows.
Gender will not survive the destruction of patriarchy.
OK, carry on.
She initially equated “transsexuals are like serial flayers of women” with “well, that’s really offensive,” as though both kinds of assertions are no more complex than “Fuck off.” That’s not appropriate, and it definitely isn’t a condemnation of transphobic hate speech.
The second time, she finally, finally, told people to knock it off. And she still didn’t say that she’d noticed any hate speech herself, even though it would have taken about thirty seconds to find one of the buffalo bill comments.
The post you’re quoting from is a subsequent correction of those responses. She handled it badly, and that’s why people are offended.
Yea, this is why I’m glad I don’t run a big blog. I can just see me saying the wrong thing and it being just awful.
I think part of the miscommunication here is that there are a number of trans people in these conversations who, over and over, find ourselves jumping up and down and saying I don’t think that’s what makes a woman, either. Over and over, we’re told that this is clearly what we think, if we consider ourselves transgendered. Some of us do go along with that nonsense. A lot of us–including, I would imagine, the overwhelming majority of us represented in online feminist discussion groups–strongly disagree with those notions, too. And we get tired of being told what our positions are in debates without being asked, ourselves. You think your position is weird? Try holding a similar position and being trans.
This is a fairly coherent position, though I have my disagreements with it. I’m opposed to the idea that SRS is necessary to define someone’s social gender. 100%. It is not and should not be the be-all and end-all of what a transition is. For a lot of us, it’s an afterthought, or entirely optional–or we would like it to be. For a lot of us for financial reasons or political reasons it’s not even on the radar. I’m opposed to the obligatory nature of, or the automatic assumptions regarding, SRS, sure.
I am not, however, “opposed to SRS.” Not even just on a look-people-have-to-do-what-they-have-to-to-survive level, either, though that informs things. It’s a body-mod procedure, plain and simple, though it’s then heavily complicated by all of our society’s obsession with genitalia. Some people are happier with it. Some people don’t want it. Some of us are convinced it’s necessary to be something or other, and some of us aren’t. That’s none of my business or, I think, of anyone else’s. A person has the right to modify their body how they want to and interpret its meaning, period. If someone has the resources and the desire and is informed about the consequences, they ought to be allowed to freaking go to regarding how they would like to be comfortable in their skins.
I agree with you that it should be divorced from most of its baggage and that the surrounding politics need interrogation, Bean, but I cannot be “opposed to” an entire procedure that a lot of people find extremely helpful. I don’t have the right in the first place.
I usually sit these posts out and read only, since my experience is so limited and I learn more than I could possibly contribute. But I have to believe that if you identify yourself (or think you do) as being more comfortable in the other gender than the one you were born into (how can you ever know for sure), it makes a great deal of sense to me that you would “be more Catholic than the Pope” on issues perceived as highly relevant to gender, and in doing so you might make native inhabitants of the territory less than comfortable. I don’t think it’s an attack on men who are transgendered to state that they don’t really understand how limiting for women female stereotypes are because they have never been applied to them personally: No one assumes you are incompetent to do math and science, care mostly about appearance and marrying the right man, are more likely to be verbal and caring and all the rest of it. Feminists reject the stereotypical trappings of traditional femaleness as being the sine qua non of being female for good reasons, not because they don’t like women, or even women who won’t reject the trappings but because they have been turned around and used as a means of imposing significant limits on female autonomy and achievement. I am never in favor of hate speech, but certainly, it does seem to me that someone who was born in a man’s body should realize that, to the extent femaleness is a social construct, even if it’s not totally so, he doesn’t really understand female consciousness and the effort it takes to be seen as a person by those who reject the stereotypical conditioning. For a socially conditioned, biologically born male to ask to be seen as female — that’s always going to be a loaded issue for feminists.
Thanks for this, Amp.
(I’m not going to read the comments because I have a feeling there would be some ignorance expressed there that would ruin my Monday morning.)
Bean, I think we can see eye-to-eye on this, anyhow. I find your position reasonable, myself, though I have some disagreements with details of it, as of your clarification.
I’m not opposed to doing the kind of criticism you’re doing, certainly.
Barbara, however, has proved my point above with breathtaking clarity.
Barbara, your speculations in your comment as to what must go on in a trans person’s mind, conditioning, decisions, or politics are based, by your own admission, in speculative extrapolations of your assumptions about what our lives must look like–and many of them are dismissive and disrespectful, despite their civil wording. Why don’t you discuss with one of us what our opinions are of, say, stereotypical femininity? Social constructs? I think you might be surprised at what you find.
Also, for the record? I wasn’t born in a man’s body. My body doesn’t belong to any man. It’s mine. And if I’m a woman, it’s a woman’s body.
…for that matter, I wasn’t born into a boy’s body, either. I was born into an infant’s body, and as far as your concerns toward social conditioning go, you have no idea what mine looked like. I don’t mean this to be hostile; but it’s for the record.
But little light, what’s good for the goose . . . I posit that all of us speculate to one degree or another about what goes on in another person’s mind, even another person who is “just like us”. But really, I am not speculating at all on what is going on in your or anyone else’s mind. I am stating what I believe to be an uncontroversial proposition: If you are born as a male you are not subjected to the usual female conditioning or stereotyping. I think this goes a long ways towards trying to understand why feminists react in ways that are unfriendly to transgendered women, and in many ways perplexing, given their supposed commitment to equlity. I recall reading about a man (a professor) who eventually underwent gender reassignment and upon being interviewed, said that the one thing that really struck him was the degree to which men talked right past or over him because he was now a she. Same guy, same brain, but way different perception: It’s not all about what’s going on in your head. The “born female” experience is different. I don’t think it’s a crime to point that out.
I think that’s fair to say, Bean. (Also, I ought to apologize for my horrific sentence construction last comment. I’m tired, what can I say?) I just think that the way you’re approaching the question is a lot fairer than other formulations I’ve seen of similar claims. There are a lot of assumptions about what my socialization (or piny’s or Holly’s or nexy’s for that matter) looked like, and what my socialization looks like now. (Ten or twenty years being socialized one way, and the rest another, is very different in its way from fifty or sixty years socialized one way, and the rest another, I think you have to concede.) You’re acknowledging that there’s some variance in that experience, and not explicitly denying that what socialization that comes during and after a transition matters, too, o I can see where you’re coming from. Barbara doesn’t seem to be hitting the same nuance you are, perhaps out of her admitted lack of experience.
little light, there is a lot of variance in socialization, and I am assuming there is a vast variation in how transgendered people experience gender. But the crucial socialization period for girls is between the ages of 10 and 16 — during puberty. This is when girls frequently reject the possibility of “male” accomplishment for themselves, and begin developing ingrained patterns of socializing with men. I am not trying to express your experience, I couldn’t possibly do that, but you can’t mine or any other born female’s either. We can only be open to the possibility of dialogue.
Barbara:
That, I will happily concede. I would ask that you reread your first comment, though, and see if it makes sense where I’m coming from here.
I am not claiming my experience and yours have been the same. I don’t know any trans people, actually–though I’m sure they exist–who claim that their experiences are identical to those of cisgendered people of any stripe. (I do, however, find that every time this argument comes up I’m told that I must be claiming that my experiences are the same as that of a cisgendered woman. That’s interesting.) What I’m trying to open up is on the level of questions. There’s huge variance in socialization–why is yours more foreign to me, or mine to you, than that of any other woman of a vastly different demographic, for instance? Is the experience of a cisgendered woman of my ethnic, religious, class, and social background more intelligible to you–of different demographics, but still a cisgendered woman–or to me, and based on what criteria?
My socialization has been, doubtless, different from yours. But in your initial comment, you refused to honor the identities of trans people really at all, based on the grounds of these differences. I just want to point out a few things–for instance, the catch-22 in this conversation. If I speak up and stand up for my viewpoint here, I’m displaying male privilege and aggression, it might be claimed. If I don’t, then other people’s assumptions get to speak for me and once again my life and experiences go denied. Similarly, with the example of some of the stereotypes Bean brought up earlier: were I to display a stereotypically masculine behavior, it would be taken as evidence that I’m really socialized as a male, but were I to display a stereotypically feminine behavior, it would be taken as evidence that I’m buying into patriarchal notions of womanhood and basing my identity claims in that. If I say I think the stereotypes of “masculine” and “feminine” activities or qualities are nonsensical, then I’m ignoring the systems that make me irrevocably different from a cisgendered woman. If I try to talk about them, it ‘s proof I’m invested in the structures of gender.
Thoughtful trans people have these conversations over and over. I myself get oversensitive to them, sometimes. They’re full of traps and pitfalls. When you start by talking about MtFs as “transgendered men,” as earlier, and make speculations as to what trans lives look like that directly contradict the statements of the numerous trans folk in this comment thread, it predisposes me to expect that you aren’t inclined to listen.
I’m glad that dialogue is happening, instead.
I sort of have to go to work, but I will just say that there is a tremendous amount of variety as to how women in different cultures and social backgrounds are socialized and acculturated, however, in almost all cases, the “female” is never the whole, human, trait that is the culture’s ideal, and women are acculturated to defer to the male, to a lesser or greater degree. And men learn this too. That’s why they have such a hard time listening to women. And if I keep harping on this, it’s because I face this daily. If I speak up I am rude. Women, at some very subliminal level, are like children and are not supposed to assume control, and not being heard is the first step towards that end. Nothing can be called universal, and experience in some cultures shows the potential for change. I can see your dilemma as well — and all I can say is that, this confusion over how to be taken seriously as a woman is one that women live with daily, and really, many women as well do not take other women seriously in professions, so it’s always a double fisted fight. If that’s what you are experiencing, you should color it as probably not all that dissimilar from a normal female existence, though I can see how in the particulars it’s probably a bit different from “the norm”. And it’s disappointing that feminists can’t step outside their own world to see where you are coming from.
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