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. [↩]
I’d like to apologize for being overly huffy and defensive in my last post. I know you didn’t mean “fashion magazines are not as bad as porn” or anything like that, bean, and I ought not to have been setting up spurious straw dogs to be mad about. I had to excuse myself from this thread for a while due to taking things a little personally and feeling attacked (unnecessarily, I think). I hope it’s at least remotely understandable why these kinds of dissections of trans people’s experiences and attitudes about gender might make some trans people (like me) touchy and raw, especially when it feels like the same exact misconstrual of a marginalized experience, over and over.
I think little light (as usual) is doing what I feel like is a very good job of representing trans experience in this thread. I just wanted to add one small thing, which is that I agree that transgendered women, with very few exceptions, generally don’t have the same socialization and childhood experiences as cisgendered women. I have seen some trans-positive advocates come awfully close to claiming that, usually as part of trying to say that the diversity of all women’s experiences should be included under the banner of “woman,” including trans women… but I don’t agree. In fact that would erase some of the diversity that we ought to be trying to recognize.
However I am also pretty sure that a lot of transgendered women have very different socialization and childhood experiences than cisgendered men have, and along gender lines. I really don’t know how hard this is to imagine from outside, but picture a child who is told that they’re one gender, but they fail to believe it, to some degree or completely. Like all children, trans children are subjected to gender socialization, exposed to messages that are intended for the gender they’re supposed to be as well as to messages that are meant for the “other” gender — in social situations as well as in mass media.
A lot of this stuff is unconscious or semi-conscious. A lot of it is hard to “figure out” exactly how you were influenced. But some of it you’re more aware of, even as a child. But I can tell you that I definitely wasn’t affected by “male” or “female” gender-socialization messages in the same way that I would have been if I had been a child that accepted my male assignment, or had been female and accepted that assignment.
I don’t think it’s necessary to equate transgendered experiences with cisgendered experiences. But I would like it if we could recognize that although society insists that there are only two boxes, and attempts to socialize us one way or another, there are a lot of us who are “factory rejects” and did not get “the right kind of programming,” even though I think there’s a lot of other invisible privilege that is unavoidable, which benefits you no matter how you think, if you’re classified as a privileged person (i.e. male). I know there are a lot of reasons to be suspicious of just taking this kind of statement at face value, but I also think it’s possible to look at the experiences of trans people and watch them speak for themselves.
what if he doesn’t identify as a man or a woman? would he be a trans person then, and would he be supporting male gender roles? what about crossdressers? most crossdressers i know do identify as men, do wear dresses and makeup and shave their legs. and by definition, crossdressers are a group defined as falling under the transgender umbrella.
further, what if a man transitions, but doesn’t put on a dress and makeup, and doesn’t shave her legs, and moves through the world being seen as a woman who doesn’t follow female gender roles? is she supporting gender roles?
you know, i’ve spent a lot of time asking myself this same question. and after years of thinking about it, i still don’t know. i don’t know what it means to be a man either. so considering that, am i a trans person? i was labeled “male” when i was born, and now i’m labeled “female”, but to me, these are just labels. my identity hasn’t changed, only how people see me. i suppose we should be asking then, what does it mean to be trans. and does being trans, in and of itself, support gender roles. and how many behaviors of gender roles does one have to follow or reject, in order to be not following them? further, what about behaviors of which any manifestation is gendered? am i then not allowed to exhibit those types of behaviors?
i don’t mean to be not-picking, but this rabbit hole goes pretty deep.
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Holly, I think that your analysis is spot on. I was trying to think of an analogy and the closest I could come is to think of a white person who lives among blacks, and identifies more with African American culture, music, etc., and decides that they really want to be black, and somehow manages to have that done medically. How would we view their claim to actually being black? It’s an imperfect analogy, I’m not at all saying it’s the same, but I think you can see how such a person would not have internalized messages of discrimination in quite the same way as someone who was born into the culture. I have to believe that transgendered women, as well as gay men, receive messages about what it means to be a boy or a man quite differently than other men — just as, for instance, a boy of slight build receives that message differently than one who is a brawny athlete. I think the personal should usually transcend the general, but the general does influence us and it’s unrealistic to pretend that it doesn’t. But that’s true on both sides of this equation, so it is unfair of feminists whose fight is at least partly for women to be seen and treated as people to deny the “personhood”, that is, the particularity of the experience, of others, whether men or transgendered women.
That analogy annoys me, but I can’t articulate why.
Maybe because race is even more of a social construct than gender?
The “race analogy” is another well-worn chestnut in these kinds of discussions. Usually it comes up as a way of discrediting trans people’s gender (i.e. “we don’t believe someone can change races, and we wouldn’t believe a white person who became black, so why should we accept gender changing either?”) That wasn’t how you phrased it, and thank you. However, the race analogy was also discussed a whole lot Feministe recently… specifically comparing trans people to “blackface.” So it might be better to just point at that discussion, specifically my post:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/12/28/okay/#comment-80170
In that post I talk about how if an analogy between gender and race is really necessary, then perhaps the most apt comparison would be to look at how identity and socialization works for multiracial people… especially those who might be perceived and treated one way while growing up/in their family, but might come to identify with a different racial identity as adults. This is far from a perfect analogy either, but I think it does point out how we construct race and gender with very different “rules” which are all artificial at some level. I’m both multiracial and trans, and I see a lot of parallels in experience, negotiating fixed “identity categories,” finding a place to exist intelligibly, etc.
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… [emphasis mine]
Barbara, as a transsexual who knows many transsexuals, I can respectfully say that some are and some aren’t. The only way to know for sure how we feel about traditional gender roles, as with anyone, is to interact with us. And take care to not be blinded by preconceived notions.
As for the “how can you know for sure,” question, did you have to ask yourself when you woke up this morning whether you were a man, a woman, or something else? I’m guessing not, but that you knew the answer in your heart.
Transsexuals know, too. Our questions revolve around what we are going to do about it. Ignore the feelings of dysphoria, discomfort, and unhappiness and conform to the identity society has assigned? Or defy society, risk losing everyone and everything, and take action to live our lives in ways that ease the conflict.
Just dropped in from Shake’s Sis and wanted to thank you for your rebuttals.
i’m not going to try to read the comments right now (my head is still spinning from trying to push through the 300+ comments over at bfp’s post), but i just wanted to say thanks, amp.
What a strange argument. In practice, the patriarchy manifestly views transsexual rights as a threat. And that seems accurate to me. Maybe on some other planet or in some other time you could recognize transsexuals without weakening patriarchal thinking, but I don’t see it happening in America today. Pushing for a world where people can have SRS openly without threat of violence would clearly help change anti-feminist reactions, would attack people’s devotion to fixed gender roles in practice.
If you think that in a perfect world nobody would have SRS, I’m sorry, but I don’t care. Tell it to the New Capitalist Man.
Forgot to add: bigots also think, correctly, that allowing transsexuals to live without discrimination when we recognize them would lead inevitably to changes in these social norms.
“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.”
hmm, I think that labels are good at times to relate to one another a common experience, but at times they don’t really fit. I mean, we use labels to describe our experience all the time…. as far as a gender binary, it’s fiction. Kinda like heterosexuality/lesbian/gay.
“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.”
Oh, goodie… I have to risk being raped or murdered because of your nightmares. I had to make a choice just this last Friday on which bathroom to use. Typically i hold it, because I don’t want to pee in a public restroom (both are freakin nasty disease ridden pits) at all, but I was about to explode.
” 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.”
As I read this two words kept on echoing in my head…
FUCK YES!
Thank you StacyM, that is one of truest statements on a blog I’ve ever connected with. I almost got up started cheering… seriously!
:)
“Transsexuals know, too. Our questions revolve around what we are going to do about it. Ignore the feelings of dysphoria, discomfort, and unhappiness and conform to the identity society has assigned? Or defy society, risk losing everyone and everything, and take action to live our lives in ways that ease the conflict.”
Amp, sorry for so many responses at once…I spent all weekend writing one post for transadvocate.com…. but there’s so much to respond to here… :)
Brynn, you’re right on about risking everything and everyone. Part of the reason I get so mad at some of these discussions about theory is that I have real life experiences of abuse and ridicule because I’ve lived openly. Much of this isn’t theory for me… it’s part of my reality.
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I don’t need a surgically designed penis to ‘prove it to anyone, even myself.’
For me, surgery isn’t about *Proving* anything. It’s about making my body comfortable for *Me.* Not so I can prove to you I’m “really” one thing or another. You(in general) don’t even enter into the equation, because some people would approve, and many, many more would not. Can’t please all of the people all of the time. Hell, can’t even please some of the people all the time. So ya gotta please yourself.
You, along with the rest of humanity, are not and never will be my reason for srs, wether through your behavior, beliefs or actions. Again, I’m not doing this for you (in general) I’m doing this for me. Seems to me some people (Not you in particular) are stuck on the idea that all other people live to appeal to others, to garner affection from the ‘proper’ group they want to be in.
Also…I’m not sure the perfect world model of no gender category is realistic in the slightest. Besides that people are big fans of the idea of direct opposites, for someone not to care what another’s sexual configuration is, everyone would have to be “pansexual?” (I think that’s the right word, but I’m not sure.) Not everyone will be. The world will still have varying degrees of attraction based on genital configuration, wether they’re labeled ‘man,’ ‘woman,’ somthing totally different, or not labelled at all. Unless, of course, you think sexual attraction for All of the population is malleable. Labels or lack thereof doesn’t get rid of a tactile reality, wether sexual in nature or not. And humans especially want words to describe their reality so that others may understand them. I know different cultures find different things attractive because that’s what they’re taught is pretty, but mostly it relies on things that are optional to a human being, like long hair, lip disks and other various modifications, not on something you’re born with, but something that people can aquire, wether that aquiration is healthy or not. Although symmetry does seem to be a big plus.
i agree with the first part of your assertion, before the second comma. but your “therefore” isn’t supported by any facts. while it may very well be true that people wouldn’t undergo surgery to fit into some patriarchal sex/gender schema, it is also true that people might undergo surgery to alter their bodies for other personal reasons.
we currently live in a very gendered world, so i can’t know how deeply my personal motivations for surgery were entrenched in my socialization. but i can say that i am quite happy with the way my body is now, compared with the way it was. these are real feelings for me, based on my personal experience.
theory is all well and good, but i think it’s important to understand that the theory that suggests that srs wouldn’t exist in a genderless society is just that – an untested theory; one that will remain untested unless and until we have a genderless society. and frankly, until that happens, i’m sticking with my truth, based on my personal experience.
bean, read what I what said, what you quoted. You said exactly what I assumed you wanted to say — that in a perfect future as you envision it, nobody would have the surgery. You say this because you ignore the words of (some) actual transsexuals in favor of what you know they must really want, because you know the truth of history and human nature. I don’t care what you think you know. Tell it to the New Capitalist Man.
I’d love to know where this Utopian place is. Till you find it, we live in a real world. One where transwomen that don’t have SRS are more likely to be murdered, discriminated against, and exploited. Sorry, I’m not going to be the Christ for your Utopian dream.
hello all,
Very interesting discussion here – I truly appreciate that writers seem focused on actual dialogue, learning, growing, etc. Also, I like the cool little drawings between posts.
This thread reminds me of my experiences 10 years ago as a Lesbian Avenger (a radical political group fighting for lesbian rights and having a good time doing it) when a trans woman asked us if she would be welcome to join our chapter.
There were probably 10 core members in our chapter, all self-identifying feminists and lesbians/queer women, and of many genders (femme lesbians, butch dykes, androgynous, etc).
Some of us were reluctant to invite her into the group, though we wondered why we would question membership for any self-identifying woman. We realized that most of us felt threatened, fearing that since she had been socialized as male she would take up a lot of space, talk over us, or dominate the group. Few of us had any experience doing activism with transpeople.
When we explored the question further, we realized that not all of us were perfect, and some of us talked more than others, or were more involved in decision-making, or sometimes interrupted other women, or said things that hurt each others’ feelings or were oppressive. In the end we decided to welcome her into the group. We didn’t want a double standard, or to be gatekeepers – if there were problems, we would solve them as a group, reacting the same way we would to any other member’s less-than-delightful behavior.
One of the things we talked about was whether all women’s experiences were similar. What does make someone a woman or a girl? Now when I think about it, since I see the differences in women’s, girls’ and females’ life experiences as pretty broad(imagining experiences of class, geography, ability, skin color, historical setting, ethnic heritage, sexuality, language, age, etc.), I wonder if the differences between trans- and non-trans-women’s experiences are greater than between any other “type” of woman or girl? And how would we know?
I get a sense that a lot of the reluctance to embrace transwomen as “real” women is based on fear, a fear of losing something (I know that was true for us back in my Avenger chapter). It makes me wonder though, what are people afraid of? Can anyone articulate what would be lost if woman-identified transfolks were welcomed into feminist or women’s space?
While we’re forming impressions, bean, I want to make it clear that while you and I differ on some points of doctrine, as it were, I think there’s a lot of common ground here.
I understood you to be saying that while your ideal world would render procedures like SRS obsolete or eliminate them, you recognize that this is not yet that world, and allow that such procedures do some good for the people who get them, even if only on a level of expedience and survival–and that, as such, you don’t advocate banning them until such time as the world gets safer for people to express gender variance. (Correct me if I’m off on my interpretation, please.)
My ideal looks different. I would love to see procedures like HRT and SRS decoupled from their current gatekeeper/obligation status, and I want to see a culture that lets a person live in whatever gender they find truth in, whatever their anatomy, as I think you do; I don’t, however, find SRS itself inherently anti-feminist. Its current baggage is extremely problematic, but putting such huge significance on it is part of the same problem that makes us culturally obsess over genitals in the first place. While I concede that not every choice is a feminist choice, I also wholeheartedly believe in a person’s right to determine the shape and meaning of their own body apart from harm done to others, as part-and-parcel of my own feminism. I don’t think that eliminates the possibility of trans women with penises or trans men with vulva; I think, in the World to Come, as it were, it opens up the options for ciswomen who want phalluses and cismen who want vulva, and so on. I don’t think the genitals make the gender, either, nor should they be the line drawn for gender transition; but if we’re making them only as significant as hair color or shoulder width or any other random physical trait, I don’t see why those who come after us oughtn’t live in a society where those features can be changed just as readily as the others, without a blink. If we eliminate gender hierarchy and women’s oppression, SRS may become obsolete; but it may also become a nonissue through its casual, commonplace unimportance.
As far as I’m concerned, that said, we can shake hands for now. My ideal future looks different than yours in some of its details, but we can certainly agree that in the world as it stands now, however we think an ideal world will change treatment of transgender issues, people at a disadvantage need to be taken care of.
Marti, I think this is a point that needs stressing–while I think in a lot of details, my ideals may share more content with yours than with bean’s, bean isn’t advocating against trans people, or their immediate needs, here.
When your neighbor’s house is burning down, to fiddle a bit with a good analogy I heard the other day, the first order of business isn’t to debate the nature of combustion–nor is it to have a panel discussion of the future’s firefighting techniques. The first thing ought to be to get lives out of danger and put out the fire, and then work out how to make house fires more preventable with what resources are available right now, and then, when there’s a moment for breath and nobody is at the moment on fire and the ambulances are en route to the ER, to have our arguments about how to rebuild the house.
Our opponents are the people who say “Let them burn,” not the people who can agree with us on putting fires out but have a different architectural ideal for what to build on their ashes. If someone’s willing to go back-to-back with me, as far as I’m concerned, they’ve earned a measured and civil discussion when it gets down to the nuts and bolts. Someone can be in solidarity without being in complete accord.
That’s not my assumption, no.
My assumption was that people want words to describe themselves, and that people often like the idea of polar opposites exclusively with very little wiggle room. Ergo, I don’t think getting rid of gendered words would work, no matter what someone’s body configuration is.
Also that since there’s two ‘main’ body configurations biologically, there will always be two visual body sexes (Or however many may be created), and that people will try and shoehorn others into them.
If, through some miracle of vision, the sex categories *Are* abolished in your perfect utopia, what will the people who are primarily/only attracted to people with certain types of genital configurations call themselves?
Because unless everyone is attracted to everyone else, which I also don’t think is likely, they’re going to want words to describe themselves, whether based on genitals or mannerisms or whatnot.
Because they will want words, it’s humanity’s nature to categorize things. Those descriptive words could or would easily take the place of gender descriptors like male and female. Failing that humanity refuses to describe itself at all in regards to other human beings, the possibility of which is virtually nonexistent, I don’t see how your utopia is possible.
And I do not mean that sexual identity (trans issues) is the equivalent of sexual orientation. There is indeed a difference between what one resembles and what one likes.
I wasn’t talking about trans issues there; I was talking about humanity in general, because everyone has genitals.
I do hope that’s clearer.
Is there an edit button? I messed up horribly on the blockquotes.
[There’s no edit button — at least, not one that non-admin types can access :-) — but I fixed the blockquote formatting. –Amp]
Bean writes:
Here’s the deal — I don’t think it’s your place to decide that. It’s not your place any more than it’s my place to tell feminists of color what their issues or life experience are all about. They — feminists of color — are the experts on their own issues. They are the authority, not me.
Feminism isn’t supposed to be about one group telling another group what they are, or how that group experiences being whatever it is they experience. If you think “trans” is patriarchal, fine, you lay out your reasoning and that’s that. When someone rebuts your repeated assertions that trans people are stereotypical pawns of patriarchy by pointing out that their lives substantially differ from your repeatedly expressed stereotypes, you’re not supposed to tell them that they are wrong, or making it up, or just plain ignore them and repeat the stereotypes again in 3 or 6 months the next time some board errupts into The Great Trans Controversey. That’s just flat out NOT feminist behavior. It’s what is so maddening about the never ending cycle of The Great Trans Controversy.
(And to clarify — my use of “you” in the second paragraph of 125 is the generic plural “you”, not a specfic individual “you”.)
“Feminism isn’t supposed to be about one group telling another group what they are, or how that group experiences being whatever it is they experience.”
But feminism IS about the non-subordination of women that subordination has included being defined by others and not ourselves. As part of the feminist project, women get to decide who we are, not men, not people who have said they are men.
I believe FurryCatHerder was responding to Bean’s post using it as an example of when telling someone what their own beliefs are is an unfeminist act, especially when the assumptions about the beliefs in question are totally off.
I don’t believe anyone here disagrees with your statement Minerva, so I’d be curious to know why that particular response is warranted to FurryCatHerder’s comment. How do women defining themselves and having others define themselves as the group they identify with clash? Further, I don’t believe I’ve said wether I considered myself a man, women or something else entirely in either of my responses to Bean on this thread or anywhere else. I did say I wasn’t constructing a penis due to societal restraints on gender roles or other’s expectations of myself, but nowhere did I say I considered myself a man, or that I was even planning a phalloplasty in my particular choices of surgery. *** And for all intents and purposes since I’m not defining myself as a woman, you don’t need to know what I identify with as it’s none of your business.
***Incidentally, I’m unsure why the word phalloplasty is bandied about as the transman’s ultimate goal in other posts around the blogsphere I see when people question the trans community. It makes me wonder wether people are paying attention to the simple fact that’s it’s not usually employed. The cost, health risks and the high rate of complication make it an option I shy away from, though for others it’s perfectly reasonable. Never mind, of course, that without said techniques the difference is easily spottable from the waste down. It probably makes it easier for people to negate their own privlege by assuming everyone else has the oppertunity or the want to look like the majority of who they identify with.
“How do women defining themselves and having others define themselves as the group they identify with clash? Further, I don’t believe I’ve said wether I considered myself a man”
Arrogant worm,
In no way was I referencing you or your experience nor did I notice that a response was made to bean. If I may, I’d like to address your questions as I address defects in trans ideology. Trans ideology would have it that women are natural objects as does patriarchal thinking. In trans-think a woman is something that someone having lived as can just be. In short, trans ideology would have it that someone having lived as a man can simply become an object because that’s the way men see women as objects, or they may latch onto various categorizations of gendered behavior, see that they are “feminine” and decide that they have the object properties of woman objects.
Feminists KNOW that women are not objects that women are socially constructed out of life experiences which men do not and cannot have. Therefore there is no social construction as a woman and therefore men may become simulacra of what they see as objects and objectify. Claiming an identity of “woman” as an object is something that any man can do and herein lies the conflict. Women have identities which are also socially constructed and that construction has come from our life histories. For someone have lived as a man to claim the label of woman is both an objectification, co-optation and annexations of our experiences. If women get to say who we are, it would follow that we have the power to specify that which has constituted us through our own feminist scholarship. We also have the ability to specify what does not constitute which pretty specifically is life as a man.
Feminists see through gender. We see that the basis for transgender ideology is hollow and is a set of understandings emerging from the perspectives of men and how they see the world. We also see that the raison etre of the trans movement lies is centrally rooted in the very thinking that justifies the oppression of women. The central ideology of the tran movement at it’s core is oppressive to women. The idea the gender is real is an assertion there are natural differences in women and men and in patriarchy those constructed difference are the very core of patriarchy itself.
When women define ourselves and men define themselves as women with the weight of patriarchal rationales, then again, women are disempowered. We are not able to establish needed and healing boundaries and again are disempowered in the face of what is, at core, a male movement to even say who we are.
I am continually amazed that so many trans people can have written about how they don’t necessarily think “gender is real,” how social construction is so central to gender, and how there are problems with assuming that “identity = gender” is the whole of any story… and yet “trans ideology” is still something else entirely, that is being attributed to trans people.
Where does this “trans ideology” come from, anyway? Is it originally from, by, and about trans people? Or is it simply about trans people, but written by someone else entirely — say, doctors in the medical establishment, theorists using trans people as objects to prove some kind of point about gender, novelists and songwriters looking for strange outsider characters?
Those “trans ideologies” are certainly the first that have appeared in contemporary culture and are still defining narratives and myths in many ways… for many trans people, too. I hope more trans people can continue to think outside of these stories and tell their own stories — and I hope feminists will listen.
“and yet “trans ideology” is still something else entirely, that is being attributed to trans people.”
It has named itself the “trangender movement” has it not? And how many references in this thread have been made to transgendered people? They do ot refer to themselves as neocins for eaxample, many, many many refer to themselves as transgendered which is very often becomes the basis of their self understanding.
It has named itself the “trangender movement” has it not? And how many references in this thread have been made to transgendered people? They do ot refer to themselves as neocins for eaxample, many, many many refer to themselves as transgendered which is very often becomes the basis of their self understanding.
Not all transgendered people are part of a movement, not even half, I don’t think. No more than in any other movement, certainly.
When one is creating language for a concept that is in most circumstances squashed like a bug by the general public, I ask you to give others a bit of time to work through language meanings as they see them, and not credit the word ‘transgendered’ with one definition, as it means many things to many, many different people, and means absolutely nothing to others who don’t wish to ascribe it to themselves or have others ascribe it to them.
Also, I’m not sure about this, but by self-understanding you mean a personal identity, right? Do you consider identifying as transgender as bad, and if so, why? The word in and of itself harms no one; it describes people who flout the current gendered social or physical ‘norms.’ And if you do consider it bad, for whatever reason, what about other people who identify with a minority community that has specific oppressions due to their status? Oppressions are tangled with each other, some people identify more with one cause then another, or with more than one but find themselves having to ‘choose sides’ and, as such, choose an identity.
I’m working through your concepts in post 129, and writing my reply, but I’m afraid it’s going to take a bit of time, won’t be up for another hour, at least.
While I concede that not every choice is a feminist choice, I also wholeheartedly believe in a person’s right to determine the shape and meaning of their own body apart from harm done to others, as part-and-parcel of my own feminism. I don’t think that eliminates the possibility of trans women with penises or trans men with vulva; I think, in the World to Come, as it were, it opens up the options for ciswomen who want phalluses and cismen who want vulva, and so on. I don’t think the genitals make the gender, either, nor should they be the line drawn for gender transition; but if we’re making them only as significant as hair color or shoulder width or any other random physical trait, I don’t see why those who come after us oughtn’t live in a society where those features can be changed just as readily as the others, without a blink.
Thanks. As someone who relates to gender IDENTITY as a giant can of worms and relates to any and all physical adaptations as voluntary body mods that may or may not have anything to do with gender identity, I just want to say “me too” a lot.
“Not all transgendered people are part of a movement, not even half, I don’t think. No more than in any other movement, certainly.”
There you go…. You just referred to them as “transgendered” That rather makes gender real. What they call themselves, is certainly trans ideology. I believe you just made my case for me.
“When one is creating language for a concept that is in most circumstances squashed like a bug by the general public, I ask you to give others a bit of time to work through language meanings as they see them, and not credit the word ‘transgendered’ with one definition, as it means many things to many, many different people, and means absolutely nothing to others who don’t wish to ascribe it to themselves or have others ascribe it to them. “
This is another feminist concern. “Gender” has never really been defined but in common parlance, is understood to be the delineating set of natural difference between natural male objects and natural female objects having pre-social gendered characteristics and trans ideology promulgates these very concepts.
“Also, I’m not sure about this, but by self-understanding you mean a personal identity, right?
That may be one dimension. If we understand identity to be a reflexive self-interpretation, that’s what I am referring to part in parcel.
“Do you consider identifying as transgender as bad, and if so, why?”
If gender really doesn’t exist and is a social construct which I believe to be the case, why adopt a construct as a ontological condition? What one considers oneself may not be bas however the trans movement is famous for an empirialistic quality which is to “educate”. The trouble what ios propagated is a set of distortions just as I am pretty sure the language you refer to, is such a set of distortions. Yes, I can support that “transgender” as an identity reifies gender and in turn, hurts women.
“The word in and of itself harms no one; it describes people who flout the current gendered social or physical ‘norms.”
Gender harms women – do not kid yourself. Eighty seven percent of congress is men. Women make thirty cents to the dollar less than men and one woman is raped every four minutes. That’s gender. That’s totally gender. I would submit from what you have said here, that your understanding of gender is very much at odds from the feminist understanding of gender.
“ And if you do consider it bad, for whatever reason, what about other people who identify with a minority community that has specific oppressions due to their status?”
I don’t think the community is at all a legitimate community, especially in the way that it understands itself.
“Oppressions are tangled with each other, some people identify more with one cause then another, or with more than one but find themselves having to ‘choose sides’ and, as such, choose an identity.”
I don’t worry about identity politics. I worry about the oppression of women. Typical of identity politics, you grant primacy to trans mythologies. My concerns are women.
“I don’t think the genitals make the gender, either, nor should they be the line drawn for gender transition; but if we’re making them only as significant as hair color or shoulder width or any other random physical trait,”
This statement is exactly what I am talking about. “Gender” is conceptualized as something that is real and true. It’s this very anchoring to naturalism which provides the central justification for the oppresion of women.
Given that this understanding of gender is wholly spurious it’s simply a queer/trans echo of patriarchy itself. Thus the trans movement is in bed with patriarchy and can in no way be considered revolutionary or radical.
“Feminists KNOW that women are not objects that women are socially constructed out of life experiences which men do not and cannot have. ”
What life experiences are those?
The consistent experience of being “less than” and a second class citizens, experiencing a world whose god is the “other” and not me. Having the default sex be the “other”. Livinf in a so-called democracy where, is am so transparent that no one asks what’s wrong with, “all men are created equal.” Having to live within the confines of an implicit male standard. Having my sexuality defined by men. Having my body pornogriphied. Being dissected by the male gaze. On the average women make 238 small almost unconscious decisions a day to avoid rape and a million other day to day differences that men are not subjected to.
So let me see if I understand this right, a “woman” is a true social construct, but gender is a false one?
I suggest you read closer. A woman is socially constructed. It’s a queer/pomo position to say the women are social constructs. Those are two very different concepts.
I’m not concerned with “transwomen”. I am concerned with women.
It’s very “thirdwave” to have diluted feminism into concerns about all oppressions. Feminsim addresses the oppression of women. With such a diluted approach, feminism is diverted into issues that removes women from the centrality we created the movement for. Once again, women find ourselves in the backseat with everyone else in the front seat. This is where third wave adoption of multiple oppressions theory has really hurt the feminist movement horizontally.
Golly then, it sounds like you should transition after all. It’s bad for your health.
Oh, please. You want to talk second class citizen? a tranwoman is more likely to be objectified, sexualized, and demoralized than a natal female. As far as being raped, you don’t think that happens to transwomen? The difference is that typically we aren’t just raped, we’re murdered as well. If you don’t believe me, see http://www.gender.org/remember/#. If it’s oppression you’re talking about, we get it in boatloads. We’re more likely to be murdered and more likely to be sex workers because that’s the only work that is available after we transition.
[Note: Link updated in 2014 by Amp.]
The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition definition of ideology.
i·de·ol·o·gy Pronunciation
n. pl. i·de·ol·o·gies
1. The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of
an individual, group, class, or culture.
2. A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political,
economic, or other system.
Trans ideology the term as you use it can not be considered an
ideology because, to my understanding, not all people
that could be considered transgender identify as transgender,
and some that do identify as transgender aren’t in such a
movement, nor do all people that could conceivably be
classified as transgender have the same political, economic,
social, or moral beliefs regarding gendered opinions or ideas.
This is a statement that proclaims, in no uncertain terms, what
a mythical ideology believes of the social/gender of what
a large portion of society considers female, without asking
said group their views on ‘cross gendered’ behaviors.
(Granted, there’s no such group, as stated above because
the people who could be conceptualized as transgender don’t
display the requirements for the definition of an ideology, or even
a concentrated group of opinions set to represent transgenders
as a whole.)
In short, trans ideology
would have it that someone having lived as a man can simply
become an object because that’s the way men see women as
objects,
Such a sweeping statement that all men view women as objects
does not ring true in my experience, nor, I doubt, in others’.
Assigning foul motives for half the human race is…rude.
Also, I’m curious as to what you believe the other half of the
transgendered population’s motives which convieniently get left
at the wayside. If male-to- self described identity co-opt the label
woman because they feel it is an object to be aquired, what do
female- to- self described identity people do?
Many self-identified and self-described transgendered people refute
this opinion. Many mtf’s/mt- describe themselves as not particularly
feminine, and not aiming to be, now that they have that option in some
places. For years it was required by the medical establishment to be
considered for the transition process at the time, and if they weren’t
considered feminine enough, by whatever measure, be it socially or
physically, they were rejected.
In the third blockquote above you typed that “In trans-think a woman
is something that someone having lived as can just be” which you
disagreed with. This clashes with the quote above as such that
‘…women are socially constructed out of life experiences which men
do and cannot have.” If one is living life as being viewed as a woman
in society, not a man, they are indeed living life as a woman and as such
are woman by your own definition as stated above. There’s also people
with androgen insensitivity, and for intents and purposes they’re gendered
in society as female yet have a y chromosome. Do they not exist, wether
they identify as female or not?
If they are living their lives in society as women, by your own definition
they are women by lived life experiences. Perhapes you meant there’s a time limit to living as
a gender that negates anything after it? To me, that reasoning is shoddy,
as it assumes that all women have a minimum of one thing in common
and are thus snagged in the gender they were declared at birth, as
are men by your reasoning. I can not think of one thing that every single
woman would have in common with every single other woman, and the
same goes for men. Not even growing up in society gendered as female
do all biological women have in common as there’s personal and
autobiographical information that proves otherwise. Nor can patriarchal
oppression define womanhood as such oppression differs throughout the
world, and all people suffer in varying degrees from it.
If women have identities which are also socially constructed, well…
where does the word “also” come in? I saw nothing you typed
mentioning another way for a woman to be made/created/born
besides lived experiences. To co-opt is to take away from a rightful
owner. I don’t believe one can have sole ownership of an entire gender,
just that they may identify and claim their own experiences and use that
gendered label for themself. For one to stake claim to an idea or an
experience that one percieves themself to be experiencing
does not annex, negate or erase another person’s experience.
It does, however, add another way of being within the group that they
identify with.
You have the power to specify yourself in a group. One does not, nor
should, have the power to claim what an entire group of people is.
Identifying with an idea/concept/experience is and should be left for
individuals, not up for public debate as if it were a club.
I’ve no doubt some feminists see through gender constructs.
Some self-identified feminists, however, applaude gender constructs.
Self-identified feminists as a group have the differing opinions, just as
any other group.
Of course transgender ideology is hollow; such a thing as of yet doesn’t
exist in a concrete form. Nor will it, I don’t think. The ‘transgender
movement’ such as it’s called for lack of a better term, as I understand it,
is people trying to acheive the right to live as they please with laws in place
that protect such decisions.
I’m sure some of the ‘transgender movement’ would be pleased to see that
you also identify them as men, as that is how they self identify themselves.
However, you continue to cut out female-to-self identity in the perspectives
of what consitute the ‘transgender movement.’ One can not pretend
that roughly half the transgender population doesn’t exist when formulating
“Transgender Ideology” as you did with your statement above.
The ‘transgender movement’ again, as I know it and am living it,
is not to my knowlege oppresive to women. Having lived as a woman
for 23 years, you’d think I would have spotted myself screwing the
woman society believes me to be, over. That hasn’t yet occured.
I believe gender as a construct is false, and that your opinion of what
natural differences between the two sexes that you claim all of the
‘transgender movement’ ascribe to by default is also false as well
because my beliefs are not what you claim, and I am part of the
‘transgender movement.’
Again, you have every right say who you yourself are. You have no right to speak
for any woman but yourself, no right to decide who gets to be part of a
group. It’s not a club; There should be no heirarchies.
Women may have many intersecting issues, as I’m sure you’re aware.
A woman may be poor as an example. She is still a woman dealing with
those problems that her social gender contributed to, like the wage gap.
I believe the ‘hurt’ you ascribe that third wave feminism is responsible for
is actually others recognizing and attempting to take care of the intersecting
problems that matter to them and the people they care about instead of
focusing on rich/middle class white women.
Concluding, I must respectfully disagree with your opinions.
I haven’t had a chance to read every thing yet BUT
“2. A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political,
economic, or other system.”
This is exactly the framing that I am using the word ideology and it’s quite correct, thank you. This will negate part of your thesis but I’ll look it over anyway. :)
What, you want me to type out all the myriad ways in which transgender people are considered to tresspass on social/physical/ideological gendered norms as it relates to each individual? No thank you, I’ll shorten in to ‘transgendered.’
The key word is system. You can not have a system made of one part. Each individual is one human being.
My thesis’s are much, much longer. That was a post.
It’s typical of transphobes to ignore ftm transfolk, but the fact that it’s common doesn’t make it any less irksome.
You’ve constructed elaborate arguments/rants/theories about how transgendered issues work, seemingly without reference to what transgendered folk themselves believe, and have conveiniently addressed only a portion of the trans community while doing it.
According to your theories, ‘trans ideology’ would also have it that men are ‘natural objects,’ but in your rush to paint all trans thought as part of a patriarchial conspiracy (To do what . . . help people feel more comfortable in their skin? Those Bastards!) You’ve ignored that.
Reject your sexist blinders, and realize that there are a panopoly of genders out there. Not all transfolk are mtf. Not all transfolk are ftm.
Not all transfolk are either ftm or mtf.
There are other options.
“ This is a statement that proclaims, in no uncertain terms, what a mythical ideology believes of the social/gender of what a large portion of society considers female, without asking said group their views on ‘cross gendered’ behaviors.
(Granted, there’s no such group, as stated above because the people who could be conceptualized as transgender don’t display the requirements for the definition of an ideology, or evena concentrated group of opinions set to represent transgenders as a whole.)”
Excuse me but you seem to be begging your own nullified question as I demonstrated. “Transgender” is a myth born on the back of women because gender is a only a social reality in patriarchy. You speak of gender as if is an object reality which it isn’t. Remember I said pretty clearly the “transgender” is a house of constructs having the same properties as a house of cards.
““Trans ideology would have it that women are natural objects as does patriarchal thinking.”
This statement still stands.
“Such a sweeping statement that all men view women as objects does not ring true in my experience, nor, I doubt, in others’. Assigning foul motives for half the human race is…rude.”
I’m a radical feminist, not the fun kind. ;)
“Also, I’m curious as to what you believe the other half of the transgendered population’s motives which convieniently get left at the wayside. If male-to- self described identity co-opt the label woman because they feel it is an object to be aquired, what do female- to- self described identity people do?”
I don’t really care. My concern is women.
“or they may latch onto various categorizations of gendered behavior, see that they are “feminine” and decide that they have the object properties of woman objects.”
“Many self-identified and self-described transgendered people refute this opinion. Many mtf’s/mt- describe themselves as not particularly feminine, and not aiming to be, now that they have that option in some places.”
I did say “OR” didn’t I? I didn’t name at least two conditions. So your many doesn’t negate anything I said.
“ For years it was required by the medical establishment to be considered for the transition process at the time, and if they weren’t considered feminine enough, by whatever measure, be it socially or physically, they were rejected.”
Bravo. I wonder if there isn’t something we need to discuss? I don’t accept trans testimony as evidence of much. You argue as if they are a central force, to me they are a poltical diversion for feminism away from women’s issues.
“In the third blockquote above you typed that “In trans-think a woman is something that someone having lived as can just be” which you disagreed with.
This clashes with the quote above as such that
‘…women are socially constructed out of life experiences which men do and cannot have.” If one is living life as being viewed as a woman in society, not a man, they are indeed living life as a woman and as such are woman by your own definition as stated above.”
There are several problems here. The primary issue is that they have not been socially constituted as women – meaning no social construction, therefore they are simply simulacra. The other issue is that Marti observed the likelihood of killing, rape and prostitution at an enormous rate. So the don’t have the experiences of the majority of women. Secondly, you seem oblivious to issues such as gendered sandpoint, but then again you’d have to be since such obliviousness are hallmarks of the tran movement.
“There’s also people with androgen insensitivity, and for intents and purposes they’re gendered in society as female yet have a y chromosome. Do they not exist, wether they identify as female or not?”
GREAT ARGUMENT FOR SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION! THANK YOU. I’ve said nothing about biology at all.
If they are living their lives in society as women, by your own definition they are women by lived life experiences. Perhapes you meant there’s a time limit to living as a gender that negates anything after it? To me, that reasoning is shoddy, as it assumes that all women have a minimum of one thing in common and are thus snagged in the gender they were declared at birth, as are men by your reasoning.”
May we consider something. Marti was arguing for “transwomen” not women. So Marti isn’t woman centered or woman identified, marti is trans-identified based on Marti’s politics. Apparently Marti’s alliances and identity is not that of a woman but trans. That’s not a woman’s experience. There is not such things as a “a gender”. Gender is a verb and not a noun. It’s something that is done to people, not something that people have.
“Not even growing up in society gendered as female do all biological women have in common as there’s personal and autobiographical information that proves otherwise. Nor can patriarchal oppression define womanhood as such oppression differs throughout the world, and all people suffer in varying degrees from it.”
There is something that women do not have in common. They don’t live as adult men. Would you not agree?
“Nor can patriarchal oppression define womanhood as such oppression differs throughout the world, and all people suffer in varying degrees from it.”
Universally, no matter what the culture (except perhaps one) women are the underclass of men. That is a universal.
“I don’t believe one can have sole ownership of an entire gender, just that they may identify and claim their own experiences and use that gendered label for themself.”
There’s no such thing as “a gender”. You keep using it as a noun. It’s a verb.
“For one to stake claim to an idea or an experience that one percieves themself to be experiencing does not annex, negate or erase another person’s experience.”
You mean like having what appears to be a socially normal male existence and suddenly “figuring out” you’re a woman? That “experience”? But the claim the experience of women after having been adult men. They obviously have been neither socially constituted by the experiences that women have, so yes they are annexing the experiences of women.
“You have the power to specify yourself in a group. One does not, nor should, have the power to claim what an entire group of people is.”
For thousands of years, men have been defining what women are. It’s our turn.
“Some self-identified feminists, however, applaude gender constructs.”
I don’t pay any attention to how someone “identifies”. Christina-Hoff summers identifies as a feminist but that doesn’t make her one. She’s the greatest male apologist there is.
“Of course transgender ideology is hollow; such a thing as of yet doesn’t exist in a concrete form. Nor will it, I don’t think. The ‘transgender movement’ such as it’s called for lack of a better term, as I understand it, is people trying to acheive the right to live as they please with laws in place that protect such decisions. “
You mean these poor people confuse their very Being with a striving?
“However, you continue to cut out female-to-self identity in the perspectives of what consitute the ‘transgender movement.’ One can not pretend that roughly half the transgender population doesn’t exist when formulating”
Well let’s not accuse the transgender movement of formulating. There’s obviously nothing to suggest that. I really don’t care about excursions in manhood.
“The ‘transgender movement’ again, as I know it and am living it, is not to my knowlege oppresive to women.”
Your knowledge base is the reference here? My Goodness! I’ve outlines very clear how the dynamics work. Humbly, I’d suggest that the re-read what I said.
“I believe gender as a construct is false”
But it doesn’t make any difference what you believe. This isn’t a church.
Feminism is a political movement.
Now then. Let’s carefully examine what you say:
“your opinion of what natural differences between the two sexes that you claim all of the
‘transgender movement’ ascribe to by default is also false”
Here is my observation:
The idea the gender is real is an assertion there are natural differences in women and men and in patriarchy those constructed difference are the very core of patriarchy itself.
Here is where you exhibited exactly what I said:
“I believe gender as a construct is false”
If gender isn’t constructed and isn’t a construct than it must be object reality,
which is antifeminist. Indeed where you said, ““I believe gender as a construct is false”, this is the exact object reality I was referring to and it’s as patriarchal as they come.
“Again, you have every right say who you yourself are. You have no right to speak for any woman but yourself, no right to decide who gets to be part of a group. It’s not a club; There should be no heirarchies.”
Of course not. Queer theorists ALWAYS over look the oppression of women. That’s the group. It’s a history of oppression plus other gendered constituents. Men don’t have that history.
“Concluding, I must respectfully disagree with your opinions.”
You’d like for them to be opinions wouldn’t you? However, you and Marti have validated and substantiated everything my analysis has observed.
“Reject your sexist blinders, and realize that there are a panopoly of genders out there. Not all transfolk are mtf. Not all transfolk are ftm. ”
There are two gendered classes. “woman” and “man”. There are ZERO genders out there.
from my experience as a trans person who has conversed to some degree with a number of radical feminists, trans ideology is what some radical feminists determine it to be in an effort to discriminate against and condemn trans people.
no one asks what ideology trans people hold true for themselves, and if they do, their answered are ignored in favor of the radical feminist view of what they believe “trans ideology” is.
“trans ideology” is a weapon used against trans people. used to erase our experiences. used to erase our individuality. used to erase our diversity. used to erase us all together. it would seem that some radical feminists have learned the tools of their oppressors quite well. construction of an object, in this case “trans ideology”, and the use of that object to objectify, demonize, and discriminate against those they fear, hate, and misunderstand.
Your experience is livng the very great majority of your life as a man?
Your concern is also with the ‘transgendered ideology’
appropriating women’s concerns.
As half of that ideology, female-to-self described people
don’t count, but male-to-self described people do?
Odd, that.
Yes, you did type ‘or.’ You’re ‘or’ statement seems to rest
totally on all men viewing women as objects, which I’ve
already typed is not my experience.
So being percieved as a woman by society isn’t being socially
constructed as a woman by society? Silly me.
Funny you should mention this. No, I don’t agree. You’re again
missing roughly half of the ‘transgendered’ population. Including
myself. I was born an infant, raised as female, and am currently
in a sort of limbo heading toward what people percieve as male.
Quit erasing me.
If there is an exception, it is not universal.
No. That’s not what I mean. However it’s about four in the bloody
morning so I’m saving this one for tomorrow because at the moment
it’s too complicated to explain.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
Tsk. You cut off my statement. Not nice, not fair, and certainly
detrimental to any serious discussion that I thought for a smidge
of a moment you might actually have wanted to have. Silly me,
thinking someone was honest. Here’s the rest of it;
I’m sure some of the ‘transgender movement’ would be pleased to see that
you also identify them as men, as that is how they self identify themselves.
However, you continue to cut out female-to-self identity in the perspectives
of what consitute the ‘transgender movement.’ One can not pretend
that roughly half the transgender population doesn’t exist when formulating
“Transgender Ideology” as you did with your statement above.
I’m afraid I exibited exactly what you said because it is now four
in the morning, and I’ve been over-tired for the past week. I
call it a ‘mistake.’ It’s what happens when I post when I’m constantly
tired. It should have read;
“I believe gender as a construct is true.”
No, they just don’t shove everyone else overboard off the tiny little
raft and into the sea. I rather like not being shoved into the sea, myself.
For me to have substantiated your analysis, I’d have to be included
in it in the first place. I’m not, as you so roundly declared that you’re
uninterested in ‘male’ issues.
Minerva writes:
Of course you don’t accept the testimony of “trans”. Men who wish to oppress women don’t accept the testimony of women, whites who wish to oppress people of color don’t accept the testimony of people of color, and hets who wish to oppress queers don’t accept the testimony of queers.
It’s the quintessential first step in “othering” people — deny them a voice and substitute your own voice for theirs. There aren’t a lot of tools in patriarchy’s little toolbox and you seemed to have picked the most commonly used to weild for yourself.
Explain me this — if women are socially constructed, what is the basis of their being socially constructed? Is it not that they are seen as “women” or “female”? Correct? Yes? Baby is born, doctor checks out the crotch, declares “It’s a girl!”, girl is taken home and raised on a steady diet of Barbie and “Math is Hard!”. Woman walks into a job on the first day, boss and co-workers perceives the person to be a “woman” or a “female” and runs the How Women Are Treated In The Workplace Script. Yes? That’s the process, is it not?
What, then, is the magical difference between the social construction of a “simulacra” of a woman and a “Minerva Approved” woman? Does their social construction as members of a gendered class at any instant — trans woman walks into a job on the first day … — depend on their perceived sex or gendered class, or what was marked on their birth certificate? Is Patriarchy all-knowing that it knows “This person is a mere simulacra of a woman, therefore we will treat her as a man, this other person is a Minerva Approved woman, therefore we will treat her as a woman.”
What your doing isn’t Radical Feminism. It kinda smells like Radical Feminism, but it’s not. It’s foregoneconclusionism. It’s “Trans People Suck”-ism.
What about my veiws are essentialist? I’ve said I believe gender is a social construct, so unless you’re attributing words that I did not, in fact, type, I’d like to know what, exactly, you’re seeing in my writing. But then you go on to say you won’t engage my post. That’s sort of like going “Neener neener neener,”
isn’t it.
….Yea, ya lost me, Bean. Of thousands of years of history, apparently noticing that all humans aren’t attracted to all other humans is essentialist. I suppose noticing that people have different genitals is essentialist, too? And let’s not even get on language construction! Hell, all those languagestructures that are based on supposed opposites? Naw, they don’t exist. Spanish, Italian, French, no such thing…
Social construction begins in infancy.
My position is not that transpeople suck. My position is that your ideology and account of yourselves is defective. You are defining yourselves through something that doesn’t exist in nature but is a creation of patriarchy. That’s your point of self definition. It’s defintion. It’s a mythology and nothing more. You can’t Trans gender or be trangendered if there is no such thing as gender.
Trans ideology, EXPLODES the mythology of gender as a noun. It doesn’t exist anywhere except in our heads like Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy. What I’m saying is that this entire idea of gender is ludicrous which is why there is no such being as a transperson. It’s a faulty, falacious account, and understanding and explanation of one’s condition.
Nexy commented on asking about experiences. This is a poltical discussion and not an experiential one. Feminism is interested in the experiences of women not trans. It seems like a major reversal that nexy may think feminists should be interested in nexy’s experience given that the trans ideological account of extistence as annunciated here by trans advocates, is a reinforcement of the power structures oppressing women. That the account oppresses women, is something that must be must be denied and made inadmissable by trans ideology and there is an attempt here to look at each other and deny there is one while at the same time, that very idealogy is permeating this very discussion.
What I was trying to say is that people are attracted to opposites. Structure. Barriers. We have them for everything, not just gender. Wishing humanity would ignore what they identify with is a vain hope. People as a general rule will not give up the language that they consider defines them. And if they are forced to give it up, people will just create other barriers/structures/opposites. It’s really not that hard a concept to grasp.
Suppose a woman just doesn’t like penises? Just doesn’t want to have anyting to do with them?
“According to you, a woman who falls in love with another woman, but finds out that that woman is actually a non-op trans (read: with a penis), she will no longer be attracted to that person.”
Surely no one really considers such an individual a woman as they have access to male power in this society and besides that aren’t woman in the eyes of our legal system. Somewhere in this trans-think, must be that women are simply people who wears skirts which is dismissive of women’s experiences and ability to self-define.
Minerva, I’m trying to find a way to reply civilly to this,
but it’s extremely difficult.
Leaving out the expletives, there’s no “surely” about it. Some of us don’t base who we consider woman and men around the legal system’s standards. Many of us don’t base our attractions, or our considerations of other people’s genders, around their crotches.
My partner considers me a woman, and my legal status doesn’t seem to be her concern.
To use the legal system as a basis for thruth, justice and equality, is proof of the verbal war.
Minerva, if you look at my drivers license you’ll see an F. I’m not sure how a person that society assumes is female and has a non functioning penis has access to male power.
Oh and I guess I’m a bad tranny, I haven’t worn a skirt in at least a year.
Ya know, I think this thread is coming to an end. I know it is for me. I’ve spent the last three days trying to understand, trying to comprehend, and trying to relate to folks that feel as Minerva does. I’ve come to the conclusion that that this isn’t a debate or discussion. This is tantamount each side digging in and regurgitating rhetoric back and forth in preperation for battle.
The truth is that this is a war over words and theories. Meanwhile Grafton Lee Person was beat on the head with a hammer, choked, and placed then had a plastic bag over her head. I need to focus on seeing that put to an end. I’ve got a lot of work to do as a new board member orf the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition.
I think a big problem is that if you represent gender as something easily changed – or something that doesn’t really exist – then you have to throw out a good chunk of feminist theory (or the victimhood stance). That’s what worries a lot of feminists, deep down.
If a man (oppressor) goes in and gets a sex change to become a woman, he’s all of a sudden been oppressed for thousands of years.
Chop, snip, injection of a few hormones, and he can get into an engineering college with a lower grade point average (affirmative action).
It’s almost kind of funny – this being so rooted to your gender and almost being on a sports team (go our team – the girls – against the bad team – the boys – whooooo whooo). Changing teams is then a kind of heresy. You’re a traitor to your team.
Minerva writes:
Uh, surely a lot of such people are considered to be women. They are treated by everyone they meet, just like other women. They are subject to all the joys and indignations of other women.
Without saying “well, obviously I do and everyone knows it”, how does anyone you meet that you don’t undress in front of know that you’re actually someone who was born with a vagina that you still have? Do they know that about you, or just assume it?
The reason these discussions seem to go around and around in circles is because “team thinking” is part of the problem — along with reification (thanks, Plato!) and dualism (thanks, Aristotle!) and a whole bunch of other baggage left behind by centuries of Dead White Males constructing the “way the world is.” I mean, you can’t even talk about “women” as the subject of feminism without buying into the idea that there is such a thing as women, and therefore gender.
Oh, except that we can bring some new ideas to the table — such as the idea that women have a shared set of experiences being oppressed under a patriarchy. Strangely, even with this set of feminist operating assumptions, it seems to be difficult for some to see how they could apply to other people.
Regardless of what kind of essentialist baggage people are carrying around, and I agree with bean that a lot of people are carrying this stuff around, it’s not easy to get rid of no matter who you are, what your gender is… trans people, despite also being an incredibly diverse group, also can be seen as people with certain kinds of experiences being oppressed under a patriarchy. I really wish we could have a conversation (it has been especially nice to read the exchange between bean and little light, thanks you two) about the common ground this creates, rather than trying to stake out definitions and ideologies that erase people’s experiences. Trans people are not simply the result of a sudden political choice, nor do trans people “necessarily” believe certain things or identify certain ways.
of course you are not interested in the experiences of trans people. if you were, you would learn the truth about trans people, and you’d have no argument.
Oh come now. I never called you a transphobe. I called Minerva a transphobe, and she is.
If someone came in here saying the kind of things she’s said about transfolk about women, that person would be a misogynist, about feminists, an anti-feminist, about black people, a racist, and so on.
The whole oh, I’m being so oppressed when people refuse to accept the vile shit I’m saying about them bit isn’t something you would accept in other situations, so why accept it here?
Arrogant Worm: I think the problem Bean and other feminists might have, or do have, with your argument is that you are conflating three distinct categories or aspects of being human. You’re mixing up biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender as if all three are interchangeable and equally meaningful. It’s really rather sloppy intellecutal argumentation.
Biologically speaking, and quite out of the control of humans (despite our opposable thumbs), nature is probably always going to break down the majority of humans into, not polar opposites, but compatible pairs that divvy up the, oh I’m sure you remember this, the chromosomes! Pretty nifty biological adaptation that probably isn’t going anywhere.
Now humans, because we have opposable thumbs and these nifty, large brains, have developed civilizations with all their glorious attendant social norms, myths, and social survival strategies. One of which is gender. But because it is a derivation of the human mind and the human tendancy towards civilization, it has no essential root. Gender is a tool, a social tool. Not much unlike race, but that’s a horse too tired to even beat at the moment. Gender, as we understand it right now, in 2007, is a hierarchy of power, of a moral dichotomy between right and wrong. This isn’t new, in fact it’s been entrenched in 2000+ years of religion, myth, literature, and pseudo-science (thanks Freud!).
And none of the above even touches on human sexuality – something I’d rather leave alone academically and just enjoy for all it’s tawdry, every-day physicality.
So, from my perspective, the perspective of a radical feminist who views the primary subjection of women in the patriarchal paradigm as stemming from the misplaced notion that women’s biology fixes her socially as weak, sinful, evil, stupid, etc., etc., transgenderism is, well, nothing. It can’t be anything. Not when you have a rootless, essentially meaningless, paradigm of gender that is imposed from the outside onto the individual based upon birth genitalia. What is that then? How do you transgress a dichotomy if what you’re doing is switch hitting? That doesn’t change the larger game – it just gives a temporary advantage to the home team, the individual. The individual has transgressed gender only in their own mind. Gender itself, that meaningless, rootless social paradigm, keeps on keeping on.
Now then, the common mistake that people are going to make about my words is that I am anti-transsexual or anti-transgenderism, neither of which is true. What I am anti about is, now get this, and probably you might have to read it slowly and twice, even: THE SOCIAL MEANING OF TRANSSEXUALITY AND TRANSGENDERISM. I wholeheartedly believe that it is anything but transgressive.
And because I’m a radical feminist in a stupid, lethargic, spoiled and swelling patriarchy, I am all about transgression. And if I don’t personally believe that your politics are marching next to mine, I have a right to say so without you, general you there, getting all worked up and making it all about your hurt fee fees. Because, you know, if transsexuality and transgendersim were about transgressing our fucked up gender norms, you’d be pissed at teh mens, not the feminists. And, because I’ve looked, and looked, and looked, these past 4-5 years, I don’t see this happening. The trans community, almost to a T, spends it’s energy dissing feminists, crapping on female biology, and trying to out vamp categories of oppression. So, if you want feminists, this feminist, to embrace you, all of you, your choices, your non-chocies, your politics, then wake up to how, so far, you are more like men in a patriarchy, who blame women for all their own weaknesses and failed socializing, then you are like women living under the gender hierarchy of patriarchy.
If you really think the “trans community” in general is spending most of its political energy fighting with feminists, then you are probably only seeing a tiny section of the trans community that has the time and privilege to hang around online arguing about this sort of thing. There are historical reasons for this pointless and divisive argument that probably need to be examined, but the ultimate point for me is that the effect is that of division. The lives of cisgnedered women and the lives of transgendered people could all be looked at as experiences of people being oppressed by patriarchy, but this isn’t happening because of these border disputes which frankly, are about pretty trivial stuff on either side. But yeah, if you’ve looked and looked on the internet, I’m not surprised at all.
Didn’t say anything about the internet Holly.
if “switch hitting” is considered to be against the rules, how does that conform to the dichotomy? if gender is considered immutable, and trans people “switch hit”, wouldn’t that strike a blow at the very heart of the gender bible?
interestingly enough, in my own mind, i see myself as the same person i’ve always been, abeit with a slightly modified body. it is in the minds of everyone else that i’ve transgressed gender. everyone else seems to believe that i’m a woman now, where before everyone believed me to be a man. my own belief of who i am hasn’t changed at all.
i would disagree that “the trans community spends it’s energy dissing feminists, crapping on female biology, and trying to out vamp categories of oppression.” i agree that a small number of outspoken trans people might be doing this, but they are no part of any community that i belong to. i don’t believe that engaging in the “more oppressed than thou” discussions serve any purpose, and i work hard to align with feminists toward our common goals – the elimination of gender, as one example.
i object to the propensity of people to define me in the context of one choice i made 10 years ago. my transition is in the past. and whether or not my transition supports or transgresses gender isn’t something i can do much about at this point. i’d argue that all feminists, radical or otherwise, have made just as many choices in their lives that have supported the gender dichotomy as i have. yet they are not defined and compartmentalized as buying into the perpetuation of the gender binary. why are the previous choices of feminists forgiven when mine are not?
A large portion of the population DO define themself by genitals.
What I disagree with is you saying I’m an essentialist for pointing that out,
or pointing out that genitalia is a way for a person to define themself, just as it is with any other part and parcel of what they have, what they feel and what they experience. I’m trying to say that the majority of people aren’t going to get rid of something that they think sticks them in a specific social category. You know, kind of kind of like being in a profession. Stonemasons, librarians, mechanics. For some people, those are identities too, not just jobs. It’s that way with a lot of things. People aren’t going to get rid of a verbal definition for a concept/idea/belief just because you want them too. After thousands of years, if they were going to do that, they would’ve done it by now. But yet…they haven’t. Occasionally new categories are introduced, but they’ve yet to drop a system.
And out of curiosity, since my posts got butchered anyway, why the fuck would someone who points out what’s actually going on in the world right now be considered an essentialist when they don’t agree with those views themselves, hmmm? Is it because it’s a nifty way ‘Not to engage in my posts’ or to discredit me by saying “Look! Worm thinks the majority of the population will be hard-pressed to give up gender as a category! Worm must agree not giving it up!”
Incidentally, I don’t agree with giving it up. Sure, it would be nice; I’d like to go to the bathroom in peace, I’d like to go out in public without people asking “What the fuck is it” behind my back in supposedly hushed tones that I can hear, or hey, there’s always the people who’re deliberately loud while doing it.
I’d like to change the descriptions of those categories to include freedom from gendered roles, and the ability to be considered one or the other, or again, something else entirely without having to jump through every personal fucking hoop that an individual considers as mandatory to allow me to identify as they do.
But it would also rip away parts of people’s identities, and in the end, they’d just replace them with something else to make a good/bad dichotomy. So no, just because I don’t consider it a feasable plan doesn’t make me an essentialist. You have to actually believe the drivel that’s spewed by society in order to do that, and I don’t.
Of course not. The heart of the gender bible says that gender is real. Switching categories withing the paradigm still leaves the paradigm intact.
I don’t know what feminism your reading or what version of feminist history you’re paying attention to, but a great bulk of feminist theory and action is predicated in pointing out how women themselves do perpetuate the gender dichotomy, etc. Hell, if you read the bulk of Twisty Faster, you’d see that. And that is exactly why feminists aren’t afraid to criticize transsexuality and transgenderism – b/c it’s the same lens that we use on ourselves and our sisters.
Didn’t say anything about the internet Holly.
Either way, it’s bullshit. What do you think the Transgender Law Center, or the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, or the Transgender Resources and Neighborhood Space, or Dimensions, or the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, or FTM International do all day? Do you really think they spend the bulk of their time on michfest? Or talking to radical feminists? Our community’s activism is largely focused on keeping us alive. That involves taking on opponents like public-health services, insurance carriers, governmental bureaucracies, employers, and legislatures. Prison activism. Housing. Anti-discrimination. In a patriarchal world, most of those battles involve attacking sexism as personified by powerful and misogynistic men.
You feel this way because most of your interactions with transpeople have been in a very narrow category, not because it’s true.
Really piny? Because the way I look at it, all those services are working to make sure that transsexuals and transgendered folks are safe and comfortable in the patriarchy, with all the rights associated with the patriarchy. Which they have a right to. Undoubtably. I’m not arguing against *that*. I’m just saying it’s not the same a changing what gender means within the patriarchy.
And I stand by my comment about the routine dissing of biological females that occurs in the transgendered community. I’ve seen it too many times, without debate, without the self censureship of the trans community, to think it isn’t a going trend.
Really piny? Because the way I look at it, all those services are working to make sure that transsexuals and transgendered folks are safe and comfortable in the patriarchy, with all the rights associated with the patriarchy. Which they have a right to. Undoubtably. I’m not arguing against *that*. I’m just saying it’s not the same a changing what gender means within the patriarchy.
Oh, that’s ludicrous. By that same calculus, Planned Parenthood is not feminist. Neither are organizations that help assist women who have suffered rape and sexual assault. The right not to be murdered is not a patriarchal right, and it is not demanded on the basis that transpeople are sufficiently or correctly gendered, but that we are human beings and that, contrary to what the patriarchy believes, our gender identity/history/position does not make us human trash.
And I stand by my comment about the routine dissing of biological females that occurs in the transgendered community. I’ve seen it too many times, without debate, without the self censureship of the trans community, to think it isn’t a going trend.
I’ve had a different experience.
Bear with me, I’m going to switch the two groups in your statement, and I’d like your opinion of why it isn’t offensive when it’s directed at me, and it is when it’s directed at you.
Now, I’m pretty sure you’d find that offensive. I don’t want you to ‘Embrace Me.’ and I don’t blame women for ‘all their own weaknesses and failed socializing.’ I don’t think being socialized as a woman means someone is a failure or lacking in any way, shape or form.
Also, very important;
I don’t EVER need to ‘prove’ myself to you, or agree with your views. I don’t believe in what you say I do, or act like, or live. In fact, that sentiment needs to be typed again!
I don’t EVER need to ‘prove’ myself to you. EVER.
that assumes that trans people have a choice in what gender they switch to or away from. the gender bible does in fact say that gender is real, but it also says that those people born with a penis are men. i rejected that assertion. i’d argue that “switching” categories is not any worse than accepting the category one was assigned.
i’d argue that any disturbance to any facet of the tenets of the paradigm upsets that paradigm. rome wasn’t built in a day. and during construction, i still need a place to pee.
i welcome examination and criticism. but i have to wonder why, when trans people engage in the same, we are often accused of “[spending] it’s energy dissing feminists”. it seems to me at the same time feminists examine and criticize, trans people are “dissing”, while we are both doing the same thing.
At this late stage I mean yelling in the wind…
However,
And what I am about to say has been adequately covered by BfP, so I will reiterate:
Trans is not ever about gender, solely. Except when white feminist talk about it and forget that we/they are white.
Trans is about race, size, ability, language, etc. It is largely one of white feminists, yelling, chatting, screaming, about one part that makes us human.
Given that we are all raced, why can’t trans be about race, too?
What happens to this discussion if we discuss trans solely about race?
For me, when I do that, I see that as a man my ascension up the food chain is about my race. FtMs of color do not experience the same ascension as I do, since we are living in a white supremacist society. MtFs of color have a shifting locus where their identities as women remain contested by white people because they are women of color.
In the end we cannot separate gender from race. I just wish more white feminists would start paying as much attention to the color of their skin as they do to my genitals.
I just want to pop in and say:
Hear, hear.
I think this is a big part of what Amp was getting at in Argument #5.
Is it transphobic to call out trans prison activism as a counterproductive tool of the patriarchy?
Not at all! Just as long as you’re also calling out women’s shelters as a counterproductive tool of the patriarchy.
It’s when transfolk, and transfolk ALONE, attempting to secure basic human rights are judged as counter-revolutionary that we run into a problem.
—Myca
So, in a genderless society as you see it people would ***be attracted to any form of genitalia as long as they’re attracted to the personality.*** Again, that hasn’t been my experience, I haven’t observed that particular belief in the people I’ve dated. So I disagree. Some people don’t like certain attributes/objects. Like greenbeans. My brother hates greenbeans. The color, the taste; all of it. Avoids them like the plague. Why is entertaining the concept that someone might just not be attracted to a certain configuration, No Matter What That Configuration May Be, hard to understand? For some people, it is indeed a defining factor, just like other reasons people give for not being attracted to someone. Ie; hair, state of dress, body shape. All can be changed, to adegree, but that doesn’t mean the people who would’ve found them attractive before would find them attractive after the change.
Right, ArrogantWorm . . . I’d also like to add that by this standard, being lesbian for non-political reasons is counterrevolutionary. But, of course, you never hear that criticism.
I was thinking that as I hit the submit comment button. According to the belief expressed for the ‘Perfect Utopia,’ Lesbians wouldn’t exist, either, as genitals wouldn’t define attraction, and since there’d be no gender categories.
Your argument falls short, AW, because you’re assuming there’s such a thing as a preference or a like/dislike that isn’t socially constructed. All of these things are socially constructed at some level even if they also have a deeper level that’s related to human biology. You can’t escape social construction, and if you say “my brother just simply hates green beans” you’re still being essentialist. There is no such thing as “just hates green beans.” Admittedly it’s not particularly important that you’re being essentialist about green bean preference, but you still are.
Let’s say there’s some biological factor in your brother’s dislike of green beans, like there is genetically for some foods (like cilantro). Some chemical your brother produces or doesn’t produce makes green beans taste really bad on his tongue. Even if this is true (and it might not be) the only thing that’s happened at the biological level is a chemical reaction. It has to be interpreted at a psycho-social level for there to be such a thing as “dislike of green beans.” And at that point, feelings about green beans end up interacting with all sorts of other stuff: social ideas about vegetables and health, what kinds of food are good for you, how your family presented these ideas to your brother, other associations he might have with green beans.
In a far-off future where power inequities have been dissolved, ideas about green beans would probably be rather different. Again, green beans are kind of a weird example, but even ideas about green beans would be different because of all the stuff I mention above: families, ideas about vegetables and health, etc. You can say, well in theory, your brother might still not like green beans in that world, just out of sheer preference. He likes something else better, just as an aesthetic choice of sensory experience, and because there are no power dynamics or oppressive social structures at this point, nothing is influencing him. But that’s pure speculation: your brother exists in this world, and a lot of his feelings about green beans may even be unconscious — so it’s hard to make a comparison between your brother and some far-off inhabitant of a utopia, and how they both feel about green beans. Even if both dislike them, it’s for different reasons, and can’t be compared.
Same thing is true of gender. You can’t say “some people just like penises and that’s the way it is” without being essentialist, because you’re ignoring all the social construction that goes on. You can speculate “well, in a genderless world, some people would still like penises” but there’s absolutely no comparison because the way those people would have arrived at “hmm, I kind of like this kind of configuration that shows up between some people’s legs better” in an environment totally devoid of gendered structures and inequities would be so radically different that we can barely imagine it. Especially for something so laden with meaning and obsessive cultural freaking-out as a penis.
So what you’re saying, Holly, is that since everything is socially constructed, by making different social choices, we can completely alter the way people react with the world. We can make choices that lead us to a world where everyone is perfectly polysexual, or we can make one where everyone is gay, or where everyone is straight.
Personally, I think that’s profoundly silly. Of course there are social constructions, but those constructions rest on biological foundations.
but those constructions rest on biological foundations.
Care to elaborate on those precise biological foundations?
I said everything was socially constructed. I didn’t say that there was no biological substrate. A lot of stuff — for instance the cilantro example I pointed out — have both a biological aspect and a social construction. So yeah, I agree. Of course there are social constructions (of pretty much any kind of human behavior, conception, feeling) but those constructions rest on biological foundations, eventually. Human bodies are about as biological as it gets, at least to start off. But none of us, living in this society, can conceive of anything having to do with a human body without the social constructions of that body immediately coming into play and changing everything.
A lot of human existence does have to do with tensions between various kinds of instincts and cultural ideas or mores. Not necessarily always one side vs. the other. But human beings have totally altered the world by saying things like “we might have intense feelings of jealousy when someone else mates with another human that we consider to be our mate, but you ought to control your behavior and not hit either of them, or you’ll be in trouble.” If humans hadn’t started making choices about how to interpret and change that stuff, we would be living in a very different world. And what has driven a lot of those changes and made this world? Power structures, inequities, and culturally sanctioned forms of violence, right from the start. So yeah, we ought to be making conscious choices about whether we want to move towards dismantling those and having other values instead.
Yea, ideas around greenbeans probably would be very different. But his sense of taste would be the same, unless someone found some method of altering his biology so he doesn’t sneak the greenbeans in the trash because he doesn’t like the taste and doesn’t want to eat them. His sense of taste *would be the same* in such a society and he would base eating said beans on that.
“I’d say she has a right to her feelings. But, I’d also say that it wasn’t a hard-wired feeling, but rather came from living in and being socialized in a patriarchal society and connecting “penis” with “male privilege.”
I’d agree that it’s not hard-wired, however I would think it quite reasonable for any woman to take the position, “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen” (meaning ALL penises.) Her reason need not be stated, she just thinks penises are ugly.
Furthermore she is wholly within her rights to reject any anatomical male as defined by the presense of a penis who tags along behind one. She is under no oblgation to gender such an individual as woman – at all.
I’m not ignoring the social constructs that society forces people into. I’m trying to say that the social constructs in such a utopia wouldn’t exist as the people who believe in the idea imagine them. You typed that there’s no comparision because the way those people would have arrived at that conclusion of what they like would be radically different than how people arrive at those same conclusions today. But the conclusions themselves don’t change, which is what I’ve been trying to say since last night.
AW, if your brother does indeed have a chemical problem with green beans, even that sense of taste is not independent of his acquired ideas and subconscious culturally-instilled attitudes about green beans. It’s all part of the same bundle, and to talk about them separately is to play a sort of pretend game, as if “something can exist independently, by itself, and have its own existence.” In fact, this is the very core of what’s called essentialism. Hypothetically you can talk about some future version of your brother who doesn’t have those ideas and attitudes because society is different — but then the “dislike for green beans” is also so different, not having passed through the filter of social construction, that it shouldn’t even be called the same thing. Same with attitudes about genitals. A “penis” is not just a biological thing, it’s also an idea that is coupled inevitably to whatever diverse biological reality there is.
Even if we can sort-of imperfectly imagine a world without gender, the fact that genitals would no longer have the same meaning, and would in theory just be their biological component, means you shouldn’t even call those genitals “a penis” because through the eradication of meaning, they would have become something totally different that wouldn’t matter any more like it does now. Ignoring the fact that at least half, probably most of the “reality” of something like a penis is ideological, and claiming that the biology left behind is “the real thing” — that’s also a very strong form of biological essentialism.
I’d also say it’s not exactly the same conclusion if the process of arriving at it is different, especially because the conclusion is “feelings about things.” I don’t think it’s that hard to understand how the process might be just as important as the destination, especially when it comes to feelings. To simply focus on the conclusions and effects is ignoring a whole lot of what’s important.
That’s kind of like saying, well one person doesn’t like green beans because they taste bad, someone else doesn’t like green beans because he thinks green beans are part of a conspiracy of women to kill him with vegetables. Is the conclusion really the same? No, and neither is your brother’s dislike of green beans and some utopian future dweller’s dislike. Neither is any member of present society’s feelings about penises, and some theoretical future utopian feelings. They can’t really be compared in a way that you can say “well I’d feel the same way even if I hadn’t been socialized!”
Well, Jay. You can bash white feminists if you wish, but I think talking about gender, as gender, and the transgression of gender, as a transgression of gender, is a valid political topic.
All you lilly white transsexuals were quite complacent in your lack of discourse about race until it became vogue to blame all the ills of feminism on the whiteness of some women’s skin. It’s not a monopoly, it’s a political movement, and if you don’t like the results, change your tactics. I do what I know, I say what I feel – if you like what I say cool, if you don’t, just dismiss it. But don’t be so freakin’ lazy as to blame my opinions, my thought out, followed through opinions, on your perception of my skin color.
I tried talking about them together; I got a reply about how I was ‘conflating issues’ and a series of definitions on the difference between human biology, gender role, gender identity, et cetera, which I’m very much aware of as I’m living it. Pick one or the other, for the love of god, because I can’t conflate an argument by mixing definitions and seperate them from each other at the same time.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but food issues pass through social construction every day. There’s several excellent posts floating around the blogsphere on just that topic. What to eat, what not to eat, what’s bad/good for you, what’s sanctioned by a religion as proper edibles, what’s considered ‘unclean’ by various cultures that may or may not have anything to do with religion.
It’s not just a biological thing, no. But it *is* biological. As such, it will be compared to other biological realities, wether one gets rid of social constructs of gender or not. And people name those ‘biological realities.’ Which is why I don’t believe getting rid of the social institution of gender is feasable, just changing what those views are and including as much as possible.
Well, no you don’t… up until that point at which you project yourself outward as a political entity and try to socially critique feminism and feminist thought. At which point you do, indeed, need to prove what you are promoting.
What the fuck is this? Politics lite ™?
I’m sitting here will to lay my entire reputation on the line; willing to walk the bigot gambit; willing to say the uncomfortable things; the ugly things; the things that make me look most, most unpopular – not because I want people to like me, to understand me, to see me as an individual. Fuck that noise. That’s what high school and bars are for.
I bring my opinion to the table because I think it matters – I think it matters enough for people to hate me. To call me a hater, or merely ignorant.
Do I think I’m right? Hell, I don’t know. But I do know that when say, Piny and I go at it, I learn something. And even if I’m wrong, it’s worth it. It’s worth it to challenge any paradigm, to challenge anything that masks itself as politics but is really a stand-in for sophmoric, moralistic right vs. wrong, good vs. evil.
And so AW, what exactly is it that you bring to the table when you say you have nothing to prove? Wouldn’t it be easier for you to simply not bother?
I think Holly’s claiming something more nuanced, Robert–that what preferences we have are partially based in biology (say, chemical reaction to the taste of greenbeans) and partially in social construction around that biology (learning to like greenbeans because they’re healthful.) Similarly, I’d argue, and I think from that last so would she, that in our Theoretical Utopia–or any very different world–there would be people attracted to “men” and to “women” and to “people with penises” and to “people with vulva” and so on, but they would experience those attractions differently, and for different reasons.
There are plenty of people for whom my history or anatomy is simply a turn-off; and that’s their deal, and I respect that, because attraction is attraction. And some of those people have basic, ingrained preferential reasons for it, and would probably keep those in a world with different cultural constructs around gender. Some of them have past experiences that make it so; God only knows how that would change. Some people have a culturally-indoctrinated revulsion regarding trans bodies; I’d like to think that would go away.
If someone says to me, well, I don’t find your particular anatomy desirable, I don’t waste time arguing, anyway. If someone says, ‘Well, you’re not a woman, and surely nobody considers you to be one,’ well, that’s simply counterfactual. Some people have a preference, strictly, for some genital constructions, and in most cases, that’s not going to change, but I would hazard that many more people have preferences for specific gender constructions, and those will shift significantly, culture-to-culture and over time.
The process is indeed important to the destination. Very much so, as it helps bring about the conclusion. But I’m not going to ignore the conclusion that some people will inevitably have when they decide not to eat the beans or associate with a penis.
But the effects of those conclusions are the same. Either way, he won’t be eating greenbeans, and people will choose wether or not they find penises sexually acceptable to them.
Q Grrl,
All you lilly white transsexuals were quite complacent in your lack of discourse about race until it became vogue to blame all the ills of feminism on the whiteness of some women’s skin. It’s not a monopoly, it’s a political movement, and if you don’t like the results, change your tactics. I do what I know, I say what I feel – if you like what I say cool, if you don’t, just dismiss it. But don’t be so freakin’ lazy as to blame my opinions, my thought out, followed through opinions, on your perception of my skin color.
Appreciate the thoughtful, considered response.
Since you know nothing of my life you cannot comment on my commitment to anti-racism. Try as you might, you will only fail.
We will not agree. You wish to see only gender. You wish only to talk about gender as gender.
I said gender can, only partially, be discussed without referencing other things like race, or ability. I don’t think, nor did I say, that I blame all the ills of feminism on the whiteness of some woman’s skin. You did.
Unitary responses to complicated, messy human beings don’t work for me. Continuing to discuss trans solely in terms of gender will fail both socially and politically, I think, because the discussion lacks so much nuance.
But you may very well be right. Opinions are some of our most dearly held beloved prejudices. The opposite of one sacred cow is often another one.