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. [↩]
Fair enough Jay.
But this:
is most precisely right. At least for this argument. And I fail to see any problem with that.
Especially when one political group wants to make up nebulously meaningful terms like “cisgendered” and shove those down the throats of all the eager folk that don’t want to be seen as un-PC or as bigoted.
When a political group makes up a term which renders discussion of the position of women, as women, a position rendered only possible through the use of gender, null and void, then hell fuckin’ yeah – I’m gonna talk about gender.
Holly writes:
Were that the reasons were that simple.
My experience is that neither side wishes to concede anything to the other that it perceives will weaken its stance.
If a man can do “something” and forever after be classed amongst “Women, as a class”, it means that not only is gender a social construct (something that Radical Feminists pegged decades ago), but that it is not something that is UNIQUELY attached to any part of female anything (something else that Radical Feminists pegged decades ago). And that, I think, is absolutely frightening to the little-r radical feminists who pretend to be Radical Feminists on the Internet.
Radical Feminism does not, for example, claim that the most privileged, least oppressed woman on the planet is more oppressed and less privileged than the least privileged, most oppressed man on the planet. That’s not a claim of Radical Feminism, which is a good thing because it’s an absurd statement. Rather, Radical Feminism is aware that there are multiple forms of oppression and that “gender” is the universal form of oppression — that because all societies have both “men” and “women”, all societies have sex-based classing — “Gender” — as part of their makeup, and that in all of those societies “Woman, as a class” is the socially constructed inferior to “Man, as a class”.
Yet we wind up with the faux radical feminists treating, in this instance, “trans people” as a monolithic entity having the same socially constructed characteristics as the females and males from which the female-born “trans MEN” and male-born “trans WOMEN” originate. One would have to explain what role social perception of sex has to do with gendered classes to deny “trans men” are classed with other men and “trans women” are classed with other women. If it isn’t socially perceived sex, what is the mechanism by which someone knows that Robert or Amp are members of “Men, as a class” and Nexy and Minerva are members of “Women, as a class”.
What’s the mechanism by which Radical Feminism claims that people are classed? Are rapists asking to see birth certificates before choosing their victims? Do bosses examine chromosomes when handing out raises? Or is gendering based on socially perceived sex? That would be a question I’d like to see answered by the current radical feminist contingent.
I don’t have to prove to her that my choices, my non-choices, and my politics harm her or hers by having her agree with me. I don’t have to approve of someone to ’embrace’ them as human beings and worthy of the same rights all people are entitled too.
Case in point.
When a political group makes up a term which renders discussion of the position of women, as women, a position rendered only possible through the use of gender, null and void, then hell fuckin’ yeah – I’m gonna talk about gender.
I was not involved in this discussion in any way.
Sorry Jay, I had assumed you read the thread.
So, you want the position on women, as women, a position rendered only possible through gender to *Stay*? I’m trying to be clear.
No, arrogantW. Shit, I was assuming you read the thread too.
I did read the thread. I’m betting I mistook your meaning, then. Which is a wonderful thing in this case, as I don’t understand how one would want another to be subordinate in any way, shape or form.
So the political group your talking about subscribes to the “Transgender Ideology” concept that was so popular upthread? Not all ‘transgendered’
people have the same politics, beliefs and/or ideologies. Not even most of the people who could be considered or considers themself transgendered are in a ‘political’ movement. Ascribing a whole set of beliefs to a group that is inadequately represented, as few people go into politics, at best, is holding one person up as a definitive example of a whole segment of the ‘transgendered’ population.
“All you lily-white transsexuals,” huh, Q Grrl?
I’m not white.
Holly’s not white, either.
And giving a damn about race issues and intersectionality isn’t just some sinister scheme to score points against your politics–it’s my goddamn life. So, while I’m happy to politely discuss the rest of what you’ve brought up, on that point? Back. The hell. Off.
ok, now i’m really confused. do you mean this thread? or was there some thread in which trans people, who as a political group, made up the term “cisgender”? because if the latter is true, i wasn’t involved in that discussion either, and i assert that the trans people who made up the term do not represent me, or any trans people i know. and further, i’d argue that they are trans rebels, who act on their own accord, and should be seen as such.
Assuming, of course, that the person being held up as the example has views that fit the ‘Transgender Ideology.’ in any way, shape or form. There’s probably a few, as I think there’s probably at least one example of anything possible no matter what the situation.
I think the discussion on this thread was really excellent for a while, but that it’s moved downhill more recently. Would anyone find it a horrible thing if I closed the thread to further comments?
I think the discussion on this thread was really excellent for a while, but that it’s moved downhill more recently. Would anyone find it a horrible thing if I closed the thread to further comments?
Yes. But it’s your blog.
Little light, I was only referencing those transsexuals et al who are truly lilly white.
And yes, discussion or race are always good, except when their absence is used to bash a poster or her comments.
I think that there are some worthwhile threads of discussion in here, but it’s all hopelessly snarled. I wish some of it could be continued elsewhere, but I don’t have a blog.
Thanks for saying that. :-) But one of the things I can do, since it’s my blog, is take your opinion into account. So I’ll leave the thread open to new comments for now. :-)
If it’s the cisgendered label, then I’d like to weigh in that if there was a conference, they sure as hell didn’t invite me. Although as a label, I don’t see any complications as it describes the experience of being ‘normally gendered’ in a socially constructed gender category. Although the categories suck.
I see it as a word describing how people who are routinely interacted as socially gendered ‘normal.’ by not ‘displaying’ ‘cross-gendered’ characteristics may not have identical experiences with those of ‘transgender’ by society.
Unless there’s another definition of ‘cisgender’ that I’m not aware of. Is there?
Amp,
You’re free to close this thread because, as Piny put it, it’s your blog.
What would be nice is a thread in which the derailing comments that are so common to these trainwrecks were forbidden, much as you ban MRAs and antifeminists from threads where their presence is going to generate more heat than light.
As I wrote much earlier, the pattern of these threads is fairly simple —
Someone who dislikes transsexuals, transgenders, trans people, trans whatever makes an assertion about such people and uses it to attack them.
People who might be the target of that attack then rebut the assertions or stereotypes using examples from their own lives.
The person who dislikes or whatever trans whatevers then makes more outrageous assertions, none of which are supported.
Yes, there are people who are clueless on the trans side as well. One fairly well known poster once asserted that her “womanhood” was somehow related to her love of satin blankets, her participation in beauty paegents, and her dislike of full-contact sports. I think that a meaningful discussion about “trans” and it’s impacts on women, feminism, feminist politics, etc. is only possible if both of the two extremes are forbidden from participating. Neither of those two extremes — the “you were raised a man, so I know exactly what your life was like and I’m here to tell you all about it” and “I identify as a girlie for all these girlie reasons and that makes me as much a girlie as you” sides — will ever contribute to a meaningful feminist dialog on the subject.
Considering that people’s interpretations of my views are most likely a part of why it ‘went downhill’ I can just watch if you like? I don’t mind.
One fairly well known poster once asserted that her “womanhood” was somehow related to her love of satin blankets, her participation in beauty paegents, and her dislike of full-contact sports.
Has she been here? I’m sorry I missed it.
And who doesn’t love satin blankets?
You know, I’m not honestly sure that I’ve ever tried a satin blanket.
I’d be worried about doing this myself; my intuition is that the result arguments about which bans are legitimate and which bans are not would be epic. So the result of trying to generate more light and less heat might be more heat than ever.
As for this thread, right now I have a nasty flu; I’m spending 12 hours a day in bed and the rest of the time barely able to think coherently. So I can’t really consider being a very engaged moderator of this thread, right now. (Not that there was any way for you to know that!) :-)
Why do we call it “derailing”? In RPGs, being “on rails” is a bad thing. (“Piss off, Casey Jones”, as the magnificent DMOTR series puts it.)
Is a conversation supposed to be a fixed trip along inflexible route?
I wonder if this is the best metaphor to be using for talking among people.
Yeah, I don’t think these discussions are past the “preschool” level of establishing dialogue and figuring out where the boundaries are yet. I really wish it was possible for them to graduate so that there could be some near-consensus on “that is a total troll argument” and “oh no not that red herring again” and that sort of thing. But sometimes it seems years away, and meanwhile the same exact stuff gets dragged up and very few new ideas get considered.
Maybe part of the solution is more blogs by trans people who are also feminists (yay, little light!) as these threads always seem to grow enormous, and it somehow doesn’t seem fair to bloggers who are covering all sorts of other important topics. Discussions about the legitimacy of “transgender” or whatever you want to call it, end up being poor guests.
Bean: “LOL! See, I get it from both sides. I’m both a transphobe and entrenched in “trans think”
Well you are entrenched with trans think :) , but let’s talk a moment about “transphobia”. The trans movement has a two new tactics, I see.
In the past , in view that there is no substance to trans ideology, trans activists have only had two tactics. The first is the characterization of “bigot” and the second is the pseudo-bludgeon of “transphobia”. It is against transpolitical correctness (the trans ideology they claim does not exist) to have feelings that are labeled as “transphobic feelings”. What men as a class have done is to illegitimatize women’s feelings as a class as they grant primacy to the authority granted to “objectivity”. The transmovement has fine tuned this with their appropriation of homophobia into “transphobia”.
I say the feelings negated in the label of transphobia are quite valid feelings and no one has any obligation to accommodate trans ideology, the very ideology they defend by denying that it exists. One cannot examine something that does not exist, so all they have to is to deny that it exists.
It is undeniable that the ideology does exist. The blog is permeated with the cognitive distortions of the trans movement.
Bean, if anyone calls you transphobic, here is how I would process it. Their ideologies are susbtanceless and they have few alternatives but to call you transphobic. Which is a move to deny your very valid feelings. If someone calls me transphobic I don’t worry about it a bit. All that means is that they cannot defend their position and I have valid feelings. Somehow, I knew that already. :)
Okay, Minerva. I’m enough of a masochist to bite. What’s your position? What is it in relation to Amp’s original post and its claims? What do you think my position is, as a trans person audacious enough to call herself a feminist? What parts would you like me to clarify? What parts do you think are indefensible, and would you be willing to read a defense of them?
You’ve spent this entire conversation telling me how I think. How do I think, Minerva? Are you having a conversation, here, or just monologuing?
I await your reply with bated breath.
Amp,
I don’t know if a thread can generate more heat than most trans threads on feminist boards. I’ve seen pro-pr0n threads that weren’t as nasty as trans threads.
Holly,
“Open” discussion board conversations about “trans” eventually turn into slug-fests between “Trans people suck!” on one side and “I’m a girly because I bought a vagina!” on the other. There will never be a consensus on the subject of “trolling” because the language is completely disconnected. There isn’t even an agreement on the meaning of the word “Gender” and “Gender” is central to the entire conversation.
Another problem, and I have to say this so I can give equal time to my attacks (heh), is that there is no such thing as a “Certified Feminist”. There are people who say “Oh, I’m a feminist”, but their feminism is either it’sallaboutme-ism or foregoneconclusion-ism. I love “feminist” discussions which include Side #1 telling Side #2 what Side #2 experienced. I’d like to have a giant gong I could hit and say “Sorry, that’s not feminism! Thanks for playing! Don’t come back next week!”
One thing that might help is for people to lay out their definitions and maybe number them all. So if I say “Gender” and I mean “socially perceive ones self as a member of a specific group” I can write “Gender #3”, and someone else says “Gender” and they mean “A class system based on sex in which males dominate females”, they can write “Gender #2” and a third person says “Gender” and they mean “the social customs and behaviors associated with a person based on sexual stereotypes” they can write “Gender #1”. Those are all ways in which “Gender” is used in these discussions. And for different writers, those are the really-real definitions of “Gender” and that’s what they assert as “Gender” —
“I am a woman because I like satin blankies, think math isn’t for women and hate contact sports.”
“I am a woman because society told me math and football weren’t for women, and I experienced loss of self-esteem in school as a result of being told I suck at math and now I’m overweight with diabetes because I was told not to exercise. Gender sucks. Go to hell.”
“I am a woman because I stand in solidarity with other women and find I have more in common with them than with men.”
Having a meaningful and productive discussion on the subject of “gender” and “transgender” requires that Gender #1, Gender #2, Gender #3 can all be discussed without saying “You’re not allowed to use Gender #1 in a discussion!”. Gender #1 can be examined within a feminist framework. “You suck because you use Gender #1 in discussions!” cannot.
Sadly, what we get is “You such because you use Gender #1/2/3 in discussions!”.
What the fuck is this? Politics lite ™?
No Qgrrl, it’s politics trite and the poltics of green beans. Pay attention, this board of green bean centered.
bean are you green?
Yeah, I respond the same way when someone calles me a misogynist, racist, or homophobe, Minerva.
There’s no such thing as bigotry or prejudice, because all of our feelings are valid.
Every last one.
Urph. S/B —
Sadly, what we get is “You SUCK because you use Gender #1/2/3 in discussions!”.
Must. Type. Slower.
No Qgrrl, it’s politics trite and the poltics of green beans. Pay attention, this board of green bean centered.
bean are you green?
Hmm.
“Okay, Minerva. I’m enough of a masochist to bite. What’s your position? What is it in relation to Amp’s original post and its claims?”
1.) There are many people who call themselves radical feminists who do not understand what radical feminism is. They are actually cultural feminists and are essentialists. As such they are not feminists at all, something which does not seem to phase them at all.
2.) Actual radical feminism is indifferent to transexuality perse as long as someone has been reared consistently with their class and does not add to the oppression of women. Andrea Dworkin has spoken in support of transsexuality and so has Kate Millet. Catharine MacKinnon is indifferent and leaves room early transitioners. In short the sin is not reassignment, poltical heaven or hell is predicated on your poltical alignments.
An observation, Qgrrl is a good example of a radical feminist (most of the time.)
That’s the good news.
Here’s the bad news. I agree with what Qgrrl has said. It is clear to me that transgender philosophy is garbage, indefensable, vacuaous and is pernicious and damaging to women for reasons that I have discussed. Kids who manifest a cross classed identity early as children are valid and legitimate. Grown men going through sex reassignment are grown men and always will be. Transgender ideology is the most naïve, unexamined ideology I have ever and it is tragic that it has propagated the way it has.
“What do you think my position is, as a trans person audacious enough to call herself a feminist? “
I believe any person who calls themself a transperson is seriously impaired and I’m serious about that. To do so means that they haven’t examined very much and really should not be heeded until they learn better. In other words, I’ve already spoken about the identity itself. The identity and assocated beliefs are the toxins, NOT the person. They may sound inncocent enough because of the naivette of indivualism but it is also pervasivve and damamaging to women.
Anyone who is transcentric is not a feminist and is not a woman and should be thrown out of women’s circles. People who have lived the majority of their lives as women and are woman-centered are women. I know this sounds radical/heretical but I think I can support it.
“What parts do you think are indefensible, and would you be willing to read a defense of them?”
I would defend kids, not adult transistioners. I think almost ALL of trans ideology because it is not feminist informed but is queer/pomo influenced comes from a male standpoint, is not woman-centric and in a feminist, and any hard philosophical examination is unexamined (meaning it is garbage – meaning their understanding of themselves is garbage.)
Actually I think there is a RADICAL paradigm which is quite acceptable and would universally attack the roots of patriarchy that would support the legitimate people that this politic has annexed. You see, patriarchy is not the least bit hampered by identity politics. It’s hard to see and QGrrl has touched upon it but patriarchy is held together by an essential identity politic and this is the mechanism where women work against ourselves. Cultural feminists propagate identity politics and are in alignment with patriarchy in exactly the same way that trans is. Twisty’s board is FULL of many patriarchists and antifeminists who call themselves radical feminists they aren’t.
With this in mind, I am willing to throw a radical manifesta together. It won’t be airtight because it will be thrown together but I promise you this. It will challenge patriarchy at its roots and NO ONE will have an inherent claim to an identity.
Interested?
Okay:
1) Attempted jokes which are actually word salad.
2) Defense of transkids coupled with venom directed at “adult men.”
2a) Special pleading.
3) Increasingly long posts.
4) “Minerva”
So, to begin with, your position is that any position I take, as a person claiming trans identity, is automatically not worth listening to or engaging with, Minerva? And then that you know this because whatever claims you assume I make will be indefensible and that I won’t be able to back them up–automatically, because I am impaired and automatically have an invalid perspective? I just want to get this clear, if this is your grand response to “Please let me know what you think my beliefs are, so I can discuss them with you.”
Deal with the substance of the argument piny. I do not think you can.
Deal with the substance of the argument piny. I do not think you can.
I’m not introducing an ad hominem; I don’t pretend to engage with your arguments, such as they are. More stamina to little light for doing so.
“So, to begin with, your position is that any position I take, as a person claiming trans identity, is automatically not worth listening to or engaging with, Minerva? And then that you know this because whatever claims you assume I make will be indefensible and that I won’t be able to back them up–automatically, because I am impaired and automatically have an invalid perspective? I just want to get this clear, if this is your grand response to “Please let me know what you think my beliefs are, so I can discuss them with you.”
This is an accurate recapitulation of my position. You beliefs are impaired because you define yourself by believeing that gender is real and that it is something to be trans’ed. As long as you are a person who holds those beliefs you are unexamined meaning you have internalized a set of patriarchal cognitive distortions manufactured by the trans movement. As such, we don’t have anything to talk about.
Oh, and (5), “The fact that you are a transsexual makes you incapable by definition of making an argument of any kind.”
You do not think he can, Minerva, because your argument is that any argument that comes from me or piny is automatically wrong. Your argument is that anything I say is automatically vacuous, naive, and antifeminist. If I say I don’t buy into the stuff you say transsexuals believe–which you still haven’t detailed in any way, just lumped under a vague “transgender ideology”–I’m being dishonest. If I argue for any of it, I’m by default wrong because those are your terms of discussion. If I ever did back you into a rhetorical corner, you already believe I should be “thrown out” of the discussion. Your argument is LA LA LA I’M NOT LISTENING.
Do I misunderstand? Q Grrl, since you think she’s worth listening to, is at least making assertions. Would you consider rising to her level?
“Actual radical feminism is indifferent to transexuality perse as long as someone has been reared consistently with their class and does not add to the oppression of women. ”
The toxin is in the identity and the ideology- not the act, piny. Don’t try to distort what I am daying.
“You do not think he can, Minerva, because your argument is that any argument that comes from me or piny is automatically wrong. Your argument is that anything I say is automatically vacuous, naive, and antifeminist. If I say I don’t buy into the stuff you say transsexuals believe–which you still haven’t detailed in any way, just lumped under a vague “transgender ideology”–I’m being dishonest.”
No. Everyone who goes through reassignment does not automatically believe this garbage. It’s this belief system and set of justifications which radical feminists oppose.
I am opposing this ideology and the non-sensicalness of this identity which IS political. I’ve already said WHY it’s non-sensical and no one has responded to that why tells me that they cannot.
Immediately this is shoved into and argument based on defense of identity and that’s about it. I’m not trying to “win” here. I am defintiely confronting a set of cognitive beliefs which you have internalized.
“In short the sin is not reassignment, poltical heaven or hell is predicated on your poltical alignments.”
Minerva, I’ve decided that you’re adding more heat than light to this discussion. So, with my apologies, I’m
not going to let your posts through for the next few days at leastnot going to be letting any of your posts through.(Once I’m done being sick, I might reconsider my decision at that point.)
[Edited to add: Cross-posted with Maia, but I fully approve of what she posted. –Amp]
I gave a reason when I attempted to deconstruct that long post when I first entered the discussion on why the word ‘ideology’ can not be used for ‘Transgender Ideology’ as a political term. You never responded when I pointed out that a system is made up of more than one person, which you specifically said was the definition you were using. How can one argue an ideology if the concept that is espoused doesn’t fit the definition of ideology?
…Question withdrawn, I s’pose. Sorry.
Wait a minute — I recognize the use of “kids are okay, late transitioners (‘husbands and fathers’) are not”, the growing post lengths, increasing occurance of misspelt words, dismissing feminists who aren’t radical feminists and mentioning MacKinnon.
Anyone else pick up on that?
I recognize the strategies, yeah. It sounds very much like a few posters who are regulars on other boards, but I don’t recognize her screen name. The benefit of the doubt and all that, she’ll be ‘Minerva’ unless she states otherwise. But it’s hard to discuss things when people don’t respond to posts but start on a new tangant. Like, did anyone besides Minerva mention transkids, MacKinnon, husbands and fathers, ect cetera and so forth, because I don’t remember anyone else bringing those particulars up. I’m ignoring the misspelt words because I’m assuming if she’s passionate about a subject she’ll type fast, and her vision might not be the best. I have trouble with the vision thing myself.
AW,
It’s all a pattern.
If it’s who I think it is, this entire thread has been a giant dominance game by her in which she attempts to prove that not only is she the most “Radical Feminist(TM)” of all radical feminists, but also the least transsexual of all transsexuals.
The only other “Radical Feminists(TM)” who play that same “I can’t HEAR Yooouuuuuu!” game are a few genuinely transphobic radical feminist wannabees who’s sole purpose in these threads is to attack trans people. What they do is neither feminist nor feminism.
I don’t understand how transkids can be okay when older trans people aren’t. Surely some older transitioners felt trans as children, but reacted to socialization in such a way that they didn’t transition. So, then, what? There’s like an expiration date on when you can act on desire? After that, you’re seriously impaired?
Feh.
everyone is talking about philosophy, but i want to talk about the science for a second. some very well-reasoned arguments are being based off of premises that aren’t supported by modern science (ie, “gender is a social construct”), and i think that starting from the same point is important when talking about gender and transexuality.
first, we have complete control of gender in a lab (yes, gender, not sex or sexuality) — we can create a male sex with a female gender and a female sex into a male gender, or we can make something in between. of course, we haven’t done this with human beings, but we have with other animals (sorry animal rights!). there’s a short “critical period” in the development of a fetus that determines its gender for its entire life. for humans, this happens during pregnancy shortly after the gonadal tissue (ovary or testes tissue) develops. for other mammals, like rats, it happens shortly after birth as a neonate, since rats are born less developed than humans. if everything goes according to plan, if it’s a XY male, little testes will produce androgen (testosterone, etc) that cause a chain reaction in the body.
there’s a somewhat common saying that nature tries to make all babies into women, and it’s only testosterone that creates men. that’s mostly true. every baby would be born with a vagina and uterus without androgens affecting the developmental process. every baby would also be born with a female gender. if we take an XX (female) baby rat and inject it with testosterone equivalent to what an XY (male) baby rat would have under normal conditions, we create a female-to-male transexual for life, even though the rat still has ovaries, a vagina, and a normal female amount of estrogen and testosterone flowing through its body. the rat has all of the behavioral characteristics of a male rat, and will even “mount” and try to “thrust” female rats, even though it doesn’t have a penis. the male behaviors are so strong that female rats will present for the transexual rat thinking that it is a “normal” male rat. the opposite is true for XY male rats that are not allowed to develop testes tissue. they become female rats with penises and testes.
since nobody would want to do these lab experiments on human fetuses, it hasn’t been well studied why specific humans become transexuals, for many reasons: the difficulty finding humans to test, the problem of funding transexual research, and because there are so many possible theories to test. are there environmental factors, such as hormones in cow’s milk or other foods that pregnant women ingest? do some fetuses not completely develop their gonads until the “critical” period has passed and gender is already set? is there some kind of specific biological condition that hinders “normal” gender development, similar to known conditions that alter physical sex development, such as androgen insensitivity, which causes XY males to not react to androgen and develop completely into women? (you might be a genetic male and not even know it.) maybe a combination of all of these?
every one of these theories would follow the facts. there are many more MtF transexuals than FtM transexuals, probably because it’s easier to biologically make a MtF transexual. you just need to not have the required androgen affect the fetus during a short fetal period (probably around two days long). to create a FtM transexual, you need to introduce something “foreign” — androgen — into the fetal bloodstream. it might not necessarily be completely foreign, and might come from the pregnant mother’s body.
there is also a wide “range” of gender. some transexuals can’t tolerate being stuck in the wrong sex so that they do everything they can to have surgery and/or live as the other sex as soon as they can in their teen years or even earlier. these transexuals are almost always heterosexual, in that they like men if they are MtF. other transexuals live as feminine or masculine versions their birth sex later in life until it becomes unbearable, and the vast majority probably die without “switching.” the later a transexual transitions the more likely they will be homosexual. the biological gender development is probably not “complete” in many (because there are opposing forces in the fetus) and they have conflicting female and male gender identity. there are also probably different but related forcing causing sexual identity and sexual orientation. no matter what, transexuals always show “abnormal” gender-atypical behavior as small children, whether it be a boy playing dress up in his mother’s clothes (which would not be strange for a little girl to do) or a girl to play cowboys with fake guns (which would not be strange for a little boy to do). little transexual children almost always play with the opposite sex mostly at least until later in grade school, when it becomes socially unacceptable.
if you look at “normal” infants who are forced to be raised as the opposite gender, it never turns out well. there are famous cases of americans who have genital accidents and they cannot live as the sex they were raised. for example, the book “as nature made him” is about a boy whose penis is destroyed during a botched circumcision and he is raised as a girl with hormones and female gender roles, but he becomes a FtM transexual even before he knows he was born as a boy. this is not at all unique — whenever this happens, the result is almost always the same. there are cases of isolated communities where a genetic condition causes some XX girls to have a “penis” at birth and are raised as boys until puberty, when female sexual characteristics start to form. this is easy to “correct” so that they can remain as boys, but they always choose to become girls (i think there was only one exception to this ever recorded). this happens in cultures where females have no power or status in society, which makes it more compelling.
most people don’t think that something so intangible as gender could be biological, but it is so. even infants can tell the difference between men and women’s faces (there have been clever experiments measuring eye gaze length and such). gender is the one personality trait that helps us pass our genes along, so i don’t think it’s that surprising that it is hard-wired into our brains.
there is the socially constructed form of gender, too, but that is in gender roles, not gender itself. every culture on earth has specific different gender roles for women and men. girls in dresses and boys with guns aren’t inborn in our brain, but the gender that we tend to emulate is. i see gender as a drive, just like how hungry you are, who you want to have sex with, or how much power you crave. if someone has a feminine drive, they will have an urge to follow female gender roles, an urge to take female role models, and an urge for sex-specific behaviors, for example squatting to pee or taking “female” sex positions. just like if someone is hungry, they will have an urge to eat unless food is unavailable or there are huge social pressures, like the ones lots of teenage girls face. it’s only because of similar enormous social pressures and taboo that cause most transexuals to “stay in the closet” and surpress these drives for most of their lives. just look at the reactions of most americans (male and female) if a man orders a salad at a steakhouse, or a woman belches in public.
sorry if i seem a little condescending, but i really think it’s important to share why i am certain gender is not a social construct, gender identity is inborn, and transexuals have no more say in their gender identity than the color of their skin. even if everyone understood this, there would still be issues — many transexuals have difficulty completely passing, for example. transexuals may not share certain childhood experiences, but their gender identity is as real as any born-female woman’s.
Mandolin,
The belief that transkids are “okay” and non-transkid-trans-people are “not okay” comes from, in large part, The Person Suspected of Being Minerva. It was further fueled by a paper written by one Dr. Anne Lawrence and a book by Dr. J. Michael Bailey.
The theory is that “real” transsexual women (and one intersex and transkid activist said that there are no real transsexual men, only women infected with the “trans virus” …) are always hyperfeminine children who transition prior to puberty. Furthermore, everyone else is suffering from a sex-fueled mental illness called “autogynephilia”. The theory goes on to claim that these young hyperfeminine boys have no future socially as adult men because they will be unable to get a boyfriend (most of these boys are androphilic — sexually attracted to men) on account of gay men don’t place high value on hyperfeminine partners.
Many other things come along for the ride with the “transkid” theory, including the assertion that all transsexual women who aren’t transkids intentionally lie about their life experiences because they are ashamed to admit that they suffer from this sex-fueled mental illness.
You can read more about Transkids at the transkids’ official website. You can read more about the controversy surrounding Drs. Lawrence, Blanchard and Bailey at this website which acts as a clearinghouse for arguments against the theory.
My personal opinion is that the transkid theory is a case of special pleadings as well as proof by repeated assertion. At the most basic level is the unsupported assertion that changing sex after puberty is never socially advantageous, which is the main supporting claim for the validity of transkids. Other flaws include the unsupported assertion that non-transkid-trans-people are pathological liars who are too ashamed to admit to their sexual perversion and cover their lies with fabricated histories of childhood femininity, desire to change sex, or any number of other parts of what they derisively call “The Standard Transsexual Narrative”.
Fun.
I did know the term “autogynophile.” (I believe the main character in Samuel Delany’s _Trouble on Triton_ is supposed to be an autogynophile.) I didn’t know it was supposedly correlated to time of transition.
Thank you very much for the links and the explanation.
Hi Jamier,
I’m not categorically opposed to the idea that gender identity may be inborn. A couple quibbles, though:
” transexuals always show “abnormal” gender-atypical behavior as small children”
All transsexuals? I feel like I’ve read stuff by people who claim not to have.
Or at least not to have any more than children who eventually identify with birth gender. I would assume every child has exhibited behavior not identified with their assumed gender.
I also don’t think you’re correct that “most people don’t think that something so intangible as gender could be biological, but it is so.” There are many books dedicated to this theory. I think it is most people’s default assumption.
Before this discussion, my sense was that the construction of gender as biological when associated with transgenderism — effectively the argument you’ve presented here — is the basic theoretical divide between one school of feminism and what is commonly (if mistakenly) considered to be “trans ideology” or whatever someone upthread said.
I apologize if I am misreading you. However, to me, the logical consequences of the argument that people “innately” identify with one gender and “innately,” therefore, want to emulate the sex roles of the people who also identify at one pole in the binary, goes something like this:
1) You are innately born with a gender identity that is male or female.
2) You want to emulate the people who show those traits.
3) Transpeople want to emulate the people whose physical sex is different theirs, because of point 1.
4) Anyone who doesn’t hit point 2 has just become unnatural.
I’m not comfortable with point 4.
I do not, however, wish to use my feeling about point 4 to invalidate anyone else’s experience of their own gender or anyone else’s choice about their own gender or their own bodies.
I apologize for the quote marks around innately. I didn’t wish to be dismissive of your feelings or your argument.
Wait a minute — I recognize the use of “kids are okay, late transitioners (’husbands and fathers’) are not”, the growing post lengths, increasing occurance of misspelt words, dismissing feminists who aren’t radical feminists and mentioning MacKinnon.
Anyone else pick up on that?
I knew it.
Bean writes:
So … all the people who’ve been screwed around and had their opinions about transsexuals severely distorted, what? “Too bad, so sad”?
That’s one of the reasons I don’t trust you, Q Grrl or anyone else from Ms., The Margins, MWMF, or any number of other boards where Renee (let’s just quit calling her Lynne, okay?) did her schtick and y’all just sat back and watched.
You quoted part of a post by Q Grrl saying how evil the Tranz are for whatever, but I don’t recall you standing up to The Person Suspected of Being Minerva and her whacky faux radical feminism. Only one person in this thread has said that what Minerva writes isn’t Radical Feminism. Do you agree or disagree with that? Do you think that what Minerva writes is both an accurate reflection of Radical Feminist theory and an accurate reflection of “transsexuality as it really exists”?
That’s a rather extreme statement.
Being social creatures, there is very little human behavior whose expression is not shaped in some way by social forces. Even if there is some biological basis for gender identity, the ways in which that identity is expressed (or even IF that identity is expressed) is guided by customs, mores, and other social forces. Transfolk have existed throughout time, but the position and form of expression allotted to them varies between cultures. Often times, we were not even seen as men or women, but as a members of some third category which was been imbued with spiritual significance. Contrast that with today’s treatment of transfolk as misguided deviants and social pariahs. Regardless of biology, those assigned roles guide how transpeople think of themselves, relate to themselves and relate to others.
I’m a transwoman and I’ve lived on both sides of society’s gender divide. I can assure you that I am treated very differently now that people see me as a woman. That difference has reshaped my behavior in more ways than I can count. I might also add that in spite of any natural inclination that I might have had toward identifying as female, I was initially socialized as a boy. I accepted myself as a boy and behaved similarly to other boys until I was 17 years old. So, biology or no, my childhood socialization had a very real impact on me. Even today, I’m much more androgynous than other women are. I chalk that up to the experiences of my first 17 years of life… and the ideas of feminism, which lead me to reject a lot of traditionally feminine behavior.
I don’t much like what some (and I emphasize “some”) feminists have to say about transpeople, but I have to say that your words worry me even more. Please do not defend me and those like me by reducing our identities to the pure fiat of biology. Those same kinds of arguments have been used to justify all kinds of sexist behaviors and are still used to dismiss the subjugation of women and the possibility of ending this subjugation. I might also add that biological reductionism has been used to justify racism, classism, and numerous other forms of elitism and prejudice. (Does anyone remember a book called “The Bell Curve?”) I assume that is not your intent, but nevertheless, please stop. Those societies which see sex and gender as immutable categories also tend to be societies in which both women and queer people are treated like garbage.
The feminists who say derogatory things about transpeople are a minority among feminists. Being a feminist, I’m thankful for that. However, there are far greater numbers of people like you, Jamier—people who believe that much of gender behavior is innate. By sheer numbers, those who embrace biological determinism can do far more damage to transfolk and women than a few prejudiced feminists can ever hope to achieve.
Thanks for your support, but I’d rather go it alone.
PS: I transitioned early (25 years old) for the time (1994). I’m now a lesbian. I also hung out with mostly boys until my late teens. So your ideas about late transitioners vs. early transitioners certainly doesn’t hold for me. I might also add that if you are living in a conservative culture and have limited access to financial support, you are going to be less likely to transition than someone living in a progressive culture with solid access to financial support. Transition is also governed by social forces.
Actually, that should have read:
“By sheer numbers, those who embrace biological determinism can do far more damage to transfolk and women than a few prejudiced feminists can ever inflict upon transfolk alone.”
I don’t actually believe that feminists who deride transpeople are actually trying to hurt women. I apologize for the misstatement.
Bean writes:
You overly-self-important-twit, I came here because my SON found another feminist blog I’d posted to, we had an actual feminist discussion about actual feminist topics, and I came BACK (as in, returned, as in, you can find some fairly old posts of mine still here) to this incipit discussion with The Person Suspected of Being Minerva holding court.
And calling me a “sick twisted piece of shit” hardly passes for feminist discourse either. Nice to see you break from the “Why can’t we all hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ act you play when when the Tranz Versus Feminist Smackdown gets a’ rollin’.
Your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired – perhaps you’re too busy stirring shit to notice. Aren’t you the one that brought Renee into this argument initially? And then you say you don’t trust us. Hah.
Anyway, and more importantly, I don’t have issues with transsexuals and have in the past and currently do support those who wish to transition, either physically or otherwise.
What I argue against is the efficacy of transgenderism as a political and social movement vis-a-vis patriarchal gender paradigms. And because that gender paradigm tends to produce a great deal of suffering for many women, I’m looking for ways to subvert it. My arguments in this thread have tried to stay true to arguing that transgenderism is transgressive in name only (hence my arguments about the use of cisgender) and that what works for an individual is just that: an identity. As such, I see transgenderism as, alternatively, a shallow politics and a nascent politics.
I made some rather heavy accusations above about how I see a great many transgendered folk acting in ways that patriarchal males do. I do not think that the entirity of trans politics is comprised of these individuals, but their influence and abundance cannot be dismissed — especially, as I’ve seen, when that particular subset of the transgendered community starts maligning lesbians and lesbian feminists. The last thing I like to experience in my queer community is other queers expecting me to conform to external notions of gender just because it’s du jour, hip, trendy, or cutting edge. Now maybe that’s just age speaking, but I rather think it’s because I feel like all the feminist progress of the past 40 years is regressed to accomodate for individuals who mask personal issues as political issues.
StacyM writes:
(And I’ve read your subsequent ellaboration)
Much of what is “gendered behavior” properly falls outside the scope of “What is feminism about anyway?”, except when it comes to “what does gendered behavior mean?” Feminism, in a nutshell, is about “What does sex mean and why?”
This is where the majority of public proponents of “the transgender ideology” go awry — gendered behavior is taken as proof of something somehow related to “sex”, and that’s where I read posters such as Jamier heading. People who sit to pee are more likely to lack the handy appendage which makes standing to pee feasible, are at least significantly less messy. People who choose to sit to pee, and who have that handy appendage, aren’t somehow supposed to not have that handy appendage EXCEPT that sitting to pee has this meaning ascribed to it — women sit, men stand. That’s where the entire issue of “You’ve never lived in a genderless society” comes in.
Mandolin writes:
The “gender” that’s used in trans discoursive contexts and the “gender” that’s used in feminist discoursive contexts is not the same “gender”.
Trans discourse holds that gendered actions are proof of this thing known as “gender identity”, and if those gendered actions are missing, it’s still proof of “gender identity” because the person in question was suppressing their gender identity in order to survive within the existing system. Summed up, “my thoughts / feelings / behaviors are more common amongst X sex, therefore I should be X sex.”
Feminist discourse holds that gendered behaviors are either biological (in which case “So what”) or are socially imposed. That men and women behave in certain ways because Patriarchy has constructed a set of standards against which men and women are held, and devised an (in-) appropriate set of punishments against those people who do not conform.
Nothing in feminism is concerned with sitting to pee being related to being a woman or a man or a failed man or a transkid. About the best a feminist analysis of “standing or sitting to pee” could say is “Men have a handy appendage which makes it easier for men to stand to pee than for women to do likewise”. Where feminism goes from there has nothing to do with men who choose to sit, or women who buy devices which make it easier for them to stand to pee. And it certainly says nothing which might indicate that men who sit to pee are really women.
It’s this point —
that is the most maddening to me because it then follows that people act in concert with their “true” sex — that this “true” sex is what controls behavior, not personal desire, personal habits, political objectives, or anything else that might influence someones decision to act in some manner. Masculine women aren’t women who like doing stuff society says is more appropriate for men, masculine women are acting out their “true” sex by immitating men. It doesn’t confront that it’s society which made this decision in the first place, it just accepts it. Men like full-contact sports, women like cooking snacks for the men watching full-contact sports on the TeeVee.
(Argh — I clicked something I shouldn’t have clicked …)
Q Grrl,
Touche’ — I’d not noticed that The Person Suspect of Being Renee hadn’t posted until I made my post at 125.
And no, I don’t see myself as stirring up shit. I agree with probably 90% of what you write, especially in this paragraph —
Trans and feminism intersect so violently, I think, because people-who-used-to-be-men all too often discover (!) that life as women ain’t some bed of roses, then suddenly “discover” feminism at age 40- or 50-something and start intermingling “I always sit to pee” and their justifications for being women with what they think passes for feminist conversations.
“I know what it means to be a woman because I sat to pee as a man!!!”
Hah!
Alright.
Miraim-Webster Dictionary
es·sen·tial·ism
Pronunciation: -“li-z&m
Function: noun
1 : an educational theory that ideas and skills basic to a culture should be taught to all alike by time-tested methods — compare PROGRESSIVISM
2 : a philosophical theory ascribing ultimate reality to essence embodied in a thing perceptible to the senses — compare NOMINALISM
3 : the practice of regarding something (as a presumed human trait) as having innate existence or universal validity rather than as being a social, ideological, or intellectual construct
I do not think that the cultured ideas of the social roles of gender should stand, but I don’t believe it’s feasable for them to be toppled, as so far, for the past few thousand years, it hasn’t happened. There’s been some added categories in different cultures, but none has ‘toppled’ the system. I think if it was going to happen, it would have been done somewhere by now, and I haven’t found any histories that even suggests the possibility of that had occured at a point in time. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any, of course, but until/unless I find some, my opinion remains the same.
Second definition. In a gendered role-free society, what you would be judging things on is the senses, because the cultural norms wouldn’t exist as one thing/object/idea being better than another. All you would have left is the senses. Isn’t that what you wanted?
Third definition. I don’t regard human traits as having innate existence or universal validity. What I believe is that people will see what they look like physically, and want a word to describe that. Your body is only innate in the sense that you’re born with it and that it’s a lense that which others veiw you; it can be changed to a degree. Much like the benign hemangiomas I was born with, then had removed. It is innate only in the sense that it’s already there. What one chooses to do with their body, well, ain’t any of my business, it’s theirs.
Please forgive me if I sound a bit rude, but I wasn’t aware you deal with the some of the possible issues faced by ‘transgendered’ people, and have had people stop dating you because of your plans that concern ‘crossing’ over into the ‘other’ gendered category, or had them tell you you’re a sick individual because they do not want any contact whatsoever with people in your situation/body. I believe that even in a society where there is no social gender, people will still ‘transition’ to be physically comfortable with themselves, and that other people might, indeed, not want to date them for whatever reasons that they may have, up to and including what one may happen to have in one’s pants.
Etymology: Utopia, imaginary and ideal country in Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More, from Greek ou not, no + topos place
1 : an imaginary and indefinitely remote place
2 often capitalized : a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions
3 : an impractical scheme for social improvement
Your definition of Utopia does indeed fit your desired goal. I encourage you to reconsider your plans for your utopia, as I dislike seeing people fail.
Humans are not perfect, nor will we ever be. Such a place can not possibly exist except in the mind, though it’s a very noble goal to work toward.
I left the sentence off at an incorrect spot, and looking back, it’s badly worded and will probably not convey my meaning as it stands.
Your body is only innate in the sense that you’re born with it and that it’s a lense that which others veiw you; it can be changed to a degree.
I’d like to replace it with;
Your body is only innate in the sense that you’re born with it, and not as a metaphysical ball of energy. It is a physical thing which others see and take note of. Granted, the ideas surrounding the ‘rightness’ of social genders are cracked and smeared and horribly superglued together, but it’s only a lense none the less, not something innate as you seem to think my beliefs about the socially gendered body constructs are.
Trans discourse holds that gendered actions are proof of this thing known as “gender identity”, and if those gendered actions are missing, it’s still proof of “gender identity” because the person in question was suppressing their gender identity in order to survive within the existing system. Summed up, “my thoughts / feelings / behaviors are more common amongst X sex, therefore I should be X sex.”
Wait, what? I don’t think this is accurate at all.
I’m sorry for the multiple posts, but the third definition of essentalism has struck an question.
3 : the practice of regarding something (as a presumed human trait) as having innate existence or universal validity rather than as being a social, ideological, or intellectual construct.
Do you consider that these presumed human traits include biological sex? Because that’s what I’m saying will not disappear. Or does it not include biological sex, which is what I’m arguing, because biological sex isn’t a ‘presumed trait’ as I took their meaning to be, like long hair for a girl in this culture, or thinking that all men should be and act aggresive. Biological sex is a physical reality, as the human species doesn’t divide to reproduce like single celled organisms.
This discussion is becoming absurd because of the amount of argument over “what trans people think,” what ideologies trans people must necessarily subscribe to, etc. There’s no such thing as “what trans people think” any more than there is “what women must necessarily think because they’re women” or “what black people think about race.” Trans people, in any sense that’s worthwhile discussing, are a class defined primarily by a set of experiences — not primarily by slapping a label on your forehead. Besides that one set of experiences which they might to some degree have in common with other trans people, they all have a whole bunch of other experiences too, which inform their opinions differently.
Try those last couple sentences out with “women” or any other group too, it starts to make more sense. Yes, there are some points of view and ways of seeing things that you might find more often in common amongst trans people because of certain shared experiences. But you’re not going to find trans people agreeing on any number of political / ideological positions about gender, or whether “trans” means “transgressive” or any of that, any more than you can describe what ideology all women subscribe to or all feminists subscribe to. (Not to mention the fact that there are trans people who are women and feminists too.) And yet, there’s a whole lot of “well if you’re trans, you must believe this, you must be taking actions that have this effect, you must be supporting this ideology.” It’s a little bit absurd. I mean, not all trans people even “transition” to “the opposite gender,” there are genderqueer trans people too who reject gender at a personal level and quite often politically as well.
Holly, to cut to the quick of it, it’s that “quite often politically as well” part that I’m addressing. I don’t think there’s a trans hivemind, although I am entranced with hiveminds and their attendant implications.
Thank you Holly, you’ve typed that much better than I could.
It’s more than a little bit absurd, it’s what I usually see these discussions amount to.
I think I was a little vague in saying “quite often politically as well,” but to explore that part in more detail… yeah, I absolutely agree with a lot of the assertions in this thread that somehow “moving” from one gender to another does not necessarily mean you politically or ideologically reject gender. Neither does “moving” from one gender to a space in which you reject gender for you personally — that’s an individual choice, an identity (or refusal of identity) although it may have political ramifications for you. Thus the “quite often.” But I don’t think either of these “movements” (whatever we’re going to describe that way) necessarily mean you DON’T politically or ideologically reject gender. Just because you reposition yourself in a gendered system — to a different gender, or to some space “outside of gender” — doesn’t mean you oppose gender, but it doesn’t mean you’re in love with gender either. Nobody in this thread has said anything that challenges the two ideas in sentence, as far as I’ve seen.
I will make one minimal assertion though, which is that the act of repositioning yourself, no matter where you end up, makes it slightly more likely for some people to gain different kinds of awareness of gendered systems; and because gender is oppressive, for many people who have progressive values, this awareness can lead to resistance. I think it’s rare, just as people who question ideological authorities in general are rare, but even for that reason, I think “repositioning” can be worthwhile. And that’s to say nothing of more important reasons such as survival within an oppressive system that’s try to quash you as a reject.
Piny writes, starting with a quote from me:
I’m sorry if I assumed something about you that I shouldn’t. I’m usually fairly good about noticing who supprts “I’m Tranz because I’m more like that group than the group I was born into.” However, the number of Tranz I’ve met over the years who don’t support a variation of “I’m Tranz because I’m more like that group than the group I was born into” can be counted on the fingers of both hands, with fingers left over.
So … why are you Tranz? How do you explain it to others? And for bonus points, how do you justify that within a feminist context?
Feel free to pass on this request if it’s personal or something you’re not interested in sharing. This isn’t a setup or anything, I’m just curious about non-standard trans discourses is all.
So … why are you Tranz? How do you explain it to others? And for bonus points, how do you justify that within a feminist context?
I think I will pass, if that’s okay. I think that justifying it is rather a fool’s exercise, and don’t want to turn into Lynne. I interrogate my behavior on either side of the divide, but that’s different.
Most of the people I’ve encountered do not say either, “I did these things and therefore I was a boy [or girl] inside,” or, “I wanted to do these things even if I didn’t and therefore I was a boy [or girl] inside.” Sometimes, they point to these desires as an indication of what they were interested in, the same way a dyke might look back on being crushed out on other kindergarten girls, but most of the time it’s no big deal either way. If it indicates an affinity, it’s only in the context of a child’s understanding of what men and women are supposeda do. There are infinite reasons someone might be more or less “like” other people assigned the same gender; none of them are either incompatible with or indicative of transness. Plus, how could you use this theory to explain someone whose conformity post-transition is not particularly strong? Are they latent non-transsexuals?
Piny writes:
“Trans discourse holds that gendered actions are proof of this thing known as “gender identity”, and if those gendered actions are missing, it’s still proof of “gender identity” because the person in question was suppressing their gender identity in order to survive within the existing system. Summed up, “my thoughts / feelings / behaviors are more common amongst X sex, therefore I should be X sex.”
Wait, what? I don’t think this is accurate at all. ”
This is somewhere around the point where I get confused.
Okay. I don’t know if I’m using feminist definitions of gender or anthropological definitions of gender. I suspect the latter.
To me, sex is the physical state of genetalia, usually described in the somewhat inaccurate binary of male/female. Gender is the social construction of meaning that surrounds sex. It includes certain behaviors and attitudes which are labeled sex roles.
In our society (and I believe in many others), masculine and feminine are viewed as a binary dichotomy, much like Americans view black and white.
However, in practice, masculinity and femininity include a lot of overlapping sex roles, though these are often described in different ways. For instance, Americans associate competition with being a masculine trait, cooperation with being a feminine trait. Except not really, because we see women as catty and competitive over appearance and boys, and we see men as being cooperative within team structures, or as being the only sex capable of true friendship, etc. etc.
So what we have is a constellation of behaviors and the ways in which these behaviors are expressed which are generally labeled masculine or feminine.
And this is where the individual comes in, I guess, and makes things confusing.
Obviously, my preference for shiny shiny clothing, skirts, and pink, are not innate. Is my tendency to emulate my mother in those aspects of her behavior that seem determined by sex innate? I don’t know. Maybe.
But I would err on the side of “probably not” just because so much social training goes in to making sure that I identify with my mother and women when it comes to sex roles.
I, as a female-identified individual, act out certain sex roles that are identified with males. My trans friends act out certain sex roles that are identified with the opposite sex. People are way complicated.
Transsexuality can’t be just about sex roles, because masculine women exist without transitioning, feminine men exist without transitioning. Although our construct of masculinity and femininity is binary, the practice of masculinity and femininity is not binary. So why do some people react so strongly to their identification on one side of the binary that they need to switch?
I have heard claims of innateness, and I don’t want to dismiss them. I guess I just don’t understand. As a female-identified, cisgendered person, the times I think most about gender is when I’m looking at their social construction or when they chafe. It’s hard for me to think about gender without looking at sex roles — so it’s hard for me to think about transpeople thinking about gender without looking at sex roles.
The claim of an underlying gender identity separate from sex roles is interesting, but I’m not sure that I understand it completely as a construct.
So, um, in sum — Piny, when you say that identifying with one set of sex roles over another set of sex roles is not part of the impetus for transgender, are you referring to the gender identity concept which looks at gender apart from sex roles? Or is there something else I’m missing?
I apologize if this takes things into too abstract a realm or if it sounds like I’m trying to lump all trans people together into one set of thoughts or beliefs about transgenderism. I’m trying not to do that, though I’m sure I err. It’s just that it seemed to me that this thread is at least partially about the intersection of feminism and transtheory (to whatever extent transtheory exists, yet) and since my feminism rests on a largely theoretical framework, I am still trying to make that framework function.
” So why do some people react so strongly to their identification on one side of the binary that they need to switch?”
Switch was a sucky word choice here. It was not my intention to imply that transmen who have not transitioned aren’t still men, though obviously I did. I apologize.
Holly writes:
I’m going to go with the writers who’ve said that transgender, in just about all of its incarnations, is more about shuffling gender around and less about “opposing” it.
But I also wanted to say that one can think they are “personally opposing gender”, but the feminist meaning of “gender” isn’t something, I think, that one can “personally oppose” through their personal choice of clothing or behavior.
Gender is a system of oppression, not a collection of articles of clothing, ways of moving, or personal pronouns. For Tranz to “personally oppose ‘the system of oppression'” would, to me, mean acting in ways which actually dismantle that system. For example, a person who learned a skill as a man doing that skill as a woman is not dismantling that system, it’s acting on their male privilege for their own benefit. Leveraging that skill so that women who were denied the opportunity to obtain the skill obtained it and were able to benefit from it — that would be, IMHO, “personally opposing gender”.
Mandolin writes:
In what feminist sense is a “person perceived as female” the same as a “person perceived as male.” Because that’s how patriarchy functions — look at a person, determine their “sex”, react and respond to them as if all the patriarchal rules about “sex” and “gender” applied to them.
In that sense — in the feminist sense of “gender” — a trans man who has not transitioned is NOT a man. Nor is a person who will transition to become a woman in 10 or 20 years a “woman”.
I don’t know if this would help you or not, but I’m not ‘switching’ because of preconceived ideas about masculinity and femininity and feeling comfortable emulating one and not the other based on how other people perceive my sex. I could express ‘masculine’ characteristics and ‘feminine’ characteristics in a body with no surgical or hormonal modification just as well as afterwards, and both choices would be equally as valid. It’s my body itself that bothers me. And I don’t know how to explain that to someone who hasn’t experienced it themselves.
And this is why I *heart* piny:
It’s my body itself that bothers me. And I don’t know how to explain that to someone who hasn’t experienced it themselves.
Do you think that the theory described by Jamier about hormonal gender misidentification is on target?
(I am simply curious; I have no dog in this fight, and my only strong feeling is one of sympathy for anyone who is unhappy with their biological sex, because that would suck.)
ArrogantWorm writes:
Right, but where did that feeling about your body bothering you come from?
When I was 12 and puberty was starting to move into full swing, my mother looked at me, declared that I was getting “fat” (hah!), and for the next 14 years of my life I basically starved myself because being “fat” was a bad thing. I’d grab the smallest fold of skin and reason that because it wasn’t paper-thin that I was definitely “fat”.
I certainly wasn’t born with some “I must have paper thin skin or else I’m fat” gene telling me I was too fat, and I clearly remember (okay, not so much, but I’ve told this story countless times, so I know it’s still true ;) ) her telling me “You’re getting fat!”
Without a critical analysis of “why would someone be bothered by their body?”, I’m not willing to accept “my body bothers me” as anything other than “I was told my body meant something other than what I wanted it to mean.” To a person — men and women alike — the people I know who’ve done the heavy lifting of critically examining their own body “discomfort” have all concluded it came from social messages. And not being disrespectful, but in that indirect sort of way, I think “I dislike my body” is a symptom of “my behavior is inappropriate for my body, so I have to change my body to make my behavior match what people see (or want to see).”
Robert writes, starting with a quote from ArrogantWorm:
I suspect that, to the extent it may occur, “hormonal gender misidentification” is a secondary cause. If a boy or man is slight, doesn’t masculinize well, is perceived to have a feminine body as well as feminine mannerisms, that they might experience more intense social ridicule, and that would be internalized as “my body is wrong” or “my body bothers me”.
But having never met a non-trans-person who hears the “I’m really a girl / boy” secret voice that tells a person to transition, I’m inclined to believe that Patriachy is the cause of transsexuality, not the fact that this boy isn’t Joe Jock.
No. Attributing everything to biology is lax, it doesn’t leave room for personal choice of any stripe. It …makes it sound like the choice is wrong, that someone would choose not to transition but could they please be excepted because it’s *Just not their fault.* It reminds me of the transkids argument, actually. I don’t see anything wrong with ‘transgender’ behavior or decisions regarding such, which might be a reason as to why I’m not particularly fond of the theory. Either way, the science behind it isn’t foolproof; nothing is. Someone may well get a hormonal wash as a fetus and it didn’t do a damn thing; it’s happened before.
There’s several problems with the hormonal mix hypothesis being the sole and only cause, if you’d like I’ve got links to several medical papers dealing with the subject and others like it?
As an aside, I would like to know what I’d have been like without the hormonal wash. I was born a good 2 1/2 months early, and was on anabolic steroid treatments for several years. Wether that played a part, I’m not sure yet. Although the treatments might explain my why reproductive system doesn’t work properly.
Sure, that’d be great.
Isn’t this a bit of an oxymoron, though? If a non-trans-person hears the “I’m really a girl/boy” secret voice telling them to transition, then they’d be considered by others to be along the ‘transgedered’ spectrum. Thus, not a non-trans person. Also, it’s not exactly a topic you’ll get many people to admit too, especially in ‘real life.’ It’s something people often get hurt and killed over, they’re not just going to go about proclaiming it to all and sundry when they don’t expect others to have similar experiences.
ArrogantWorm writes:
Right, but they also don’t hear the “I’m a boy, I’m a boy!” or “I’m a girl, I’m a girl!” and they have the body that matches.
And while asking complete and total strangers, especially the mean looking ones who might pound you into the ground, can be a dangerous thing, within the context of feminist conversations, asking the question “Do you have an internal voice which tells you that you’re a woman / man / something-else first thing in the morning?” is possible.
Anyone here non-trans-anything have a voice in their head telling them they are man / woman / whatever? By show of hands?
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/85/5/2034
Mtf brain dissection
http://endo.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/146/4/1973
Organizational Role for Testosterone and Estrogen on Adult Rats
Apparently the other papers I’d read they now want money for.
I can give you the links for buying the paper, but it’s probably easier for you to go to a medical school’s library. There might be one next to your local hospital, that’s where our medical school’s program for the hospital is. It should be located inside the school. I’m not sure if they’d have a problem with you using it, but I’ve yet to be reprimanded. The cheapest paper so far is thirty two bucks!
Two Monozygotic Twin Pairs Discordant for Female-to-Male Transsexualism
Journal Archives of Sexual Behavior
Publisher Springer Netherlands
ISSN 0004-0002
Subject Behavioral Science
Issue Volume 35, Number 3 / June, 2006
Actually, I’m not sure what the library, if you have one, would have. Best just use the search engine for their card catalog in their computer. You could always request the appropriate journals at your local library too, I s’pose, if they have a lending program.
Sorry again.
They may not hear it, if it exists, because they get constant reaffirmation in our society that that is what they are. Or by an easier phrase,
“You don’t miss it till it’s gone.” Or if you’ve never had it. Yearning, after all, is still the want of a thing.
Perhaps asking people if they’d ‘change’ their primary and secondary sexual characteristics to the ‘opposite’ sex if they’re content with the body they have now, and if they wouldn’t, why not, would be more adequate.
Especially since ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are such…loaded words.
But my behavior would be inappropriate for my body wether I ‘switched’ or not, what with my having both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ behavior. Nor am I going to censure my behavior to make others comfortable, as that would make me quite miserable.
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ArrogantWorm, in two parts —
I’ve done this dozens of times, all over boards where trans people and feminists intersect and “gender identity” as this little voice is introduced. Of all those times, over more than 10 years now doing this, no one who isn’t “trans” has said they’ve got the “voice”.
What I see in response is internal voices of shame, inadequacy, guilt, embarassment — all sorts of negative emotions about how they don’t measure up. This is why I think that the “voice of gender identity” isn’t about gender IDENTITY, but about gender RIGIDITY. I also think that gender rigidity is why so many trans people fixate on gendered behavior. FWIW, I see the same thing in other communities — talk with women who are “fat” and they have this voice telling them that they are fat, even if they are quite thin.
It would be an interesting conversation, but I suspect there wouldn’t be a lot of responses due to the entire bother of the process. Who knows. Maybe someone here will respond ;)
I do hope people will respond, we’ve been dominating the discussion. ; /
You won’t be getting shame, inadequacy, guilt or embarassment from me.
I don’t have a little voice, that I’m aware of. Sometimes (including this morning) I wake up thinking I’m female and it takes me a few moments to figure out that I’m male.
Exactly! If I could flip a switch and change my sex, I’d do it, but the transitioning process available in the real world sounds like too much effort for me.
FCH, with all due respect, this sounds like you’ll shoehorn anything anyone else says into your own pre-decided paradigm, regardless of what they say. There’s no reason “I dislike my body” must be a symptom of “my behavior is inappropriate for my body,” and I’ve known transfolks who don’t believe that there is such a thing as behavior that’s inappropriate for a body’s sex.
I think if there was a switch to flip, it would be much more popular. People would be switching all the time, provided they also had the opportunity to switch back if they wished, of course. Curiosity alone would snag quite a few people. Robert Heinlein’s books have that same theme, which is why I think his books are so popular. Plus, he’s an awesome writer.
FurryCatHerder says:
So here we are talking about why transpeople feel such a deep desire to change their identities and bodies. Here we are talking about the qualities of this desire and its flawed social underpinnings.
Oh, man. Can opener? Check. Can full of night crawlers? Check.
Am I a woman because of shame, inadequacy, guilt and embarrassment? No. Absolutely not.
I feel a profound sense of connection with women. I feel a profound sense of love and admiration for women. This sense of connection/love/admiration runs so deep that I can not imagine spending my life as a man. Maleness feels like a wasteland of numbness, of emptiness, of… wrongness.
Have you ever stood in a forest, or sat on a beach, or walked through a valley and felt such a deep sense of connection with nature that it seemed as though you could loose all sense of self and melt into your surroundings? Have you ever felt so connected with nature that you could imagine becoming a part of that forest, ocean or valley? Do you find that long periods of time lived too far from nature fills you with a painful sense of emptiness? If you feel a connection with nature, you might have a sense of what I speak of.
The connection that I feel toward women feels very, very similar to the connection I feel toward nature. I see both experiences as being spiritual in nature. Why does either set of feelings exist? Beyond vague speculation, I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. Neither biology nor social forces offer satisfactory explanations for me. I simply accept these feelings for what they are and embrace the beauty that I find in them.
Do other transpeople experience their sense of self in the same manor? Some might. Others might see my words as airy-fairy nonsense. I do not claim to represent anyone except for myself. Transpeople are not a monolith. Folks have been saying that throughout this thread.
No doubt, those of you who were expecting an explanation based in logic and rational thought are thinking, “Wow, what a bunch of mystical bullshit.” Sorry. These are my feelings and this is the best description I can offer.
Nooooo, feelings are a perfectly fine answering of the question. And thanks for answering.
Thanks for the links, AW. I will read them with interest. I find this entire topic fascinating – how diverse a species we are. (Not to put you under a microscope or anything; we’re all just so darn interesting.)
Amp:
Yeah, I’d be one of those.
Really, FCH, your theories are very pretty, but they don’t have much to do with my reality. I’m a frigging feminist. Much as I’ve had to explain it to a stack of therapists, I don’t think there are “gender-appropriate” behaviors. I don’t buy into this notion of “masculine” and “feminine” qualities. My mother has asked repeatedly if I identify as a woman because I’m sensitive, or nurturing, or artistic, or whatever, and that’s a load of bullshit, honestly. Liking fighting and toolbelts didn’t make me not trans, did it? Where do you put someone like me, who believes very firmly that those qualities aren’t gendered? Who was raised by a tough feminist woman who dug her own holes, fought her own fights, and stood up for her own opinions–and wasn’t particularly nurturing? I don’t associate personality traits as “men’s” and “women’s.” So where does that leave your theory, that I “wanted” the gender that carried the traits and behaviors I was supposedly exhibiting? Or that other theory running around, that I would adopt “feminine” traits and behaviors upon embracing an attempt at a feminine gender role?
I spent a lot of time trying to explore all the venues, including being a “feminine” man, something that very surely exists and works for a lot of people. I could have saved myself a shitton of trouble by just being a gay man (except I love women, and, to confound that “homosexual/age-of-transition” correlation running around in this thread, I’m a young transitioner) or a crossdresser (except it wasn’t about the clothes or the makeup or whatever else I’m supposed to be liking as one of those trans women fetishizing womanhood) or a man with stereotypically “feminine” traits who buys into the notion that that means anything. That would have been jim-dandy. It would have saved me a lot of time and hurt and money and trouble for my loved ones. I would have been happy to be a man with, otherwise, the very same personality I have now, if I were one.
I was not a failed man. I am not a woman because I couldn’t hack it as a man in this world. If being a man had worked for me, I could have done very well at it, thank you.
Being a woman isn’t some consolation prize for fucking up at what I’m “supposed” to be. It isn’t because I think women are a particular way and I’m that way, so I must be one; for God’s sake, I have the sense the good Lord gave a duck. It isn’t because I do things that are supposedly woman things to do, or can’t do or be things men are supposed to. Could you please have the grace to consider what we’re saying about our own lives, in your theories?
I thought about being transsexual for a while in college (many years ago), mostly out of a hatred of being male and masculine, but I decided that I’d hate being female just as much (and I don’t really think that being female would make me much less masculine, although I think it would have some effect, as I am very susceptible to social influence and expectation).
I certainly have a voice that tells me I’m male (actually, it tells me that I am a man), but I’m not sure it is any more innate than the one that tells me to that I am masculine (and I don’t believe that either one is innate).
I hate both of those voices.
I also have an awareness that I am male. Mostly this seems connected to a body awareness of having a male body and I therefore have no way of knowing if there is an additional component that would remain if I were to have a female body. If there is a voice that tells you which sex you are, separate from the physical awareness of your body, for me it is congruent with, and therefore masked by, the body awareness.
If changing bodies were trivial, I would certainly try out having a female body, and I don’t believe I’d be uncomfortable with my new body at a body awareness level, but it is really hard to guess.
If I were transsexual, it would be out of a belief that having the body and the social expectations of the sex I was not indoctrinated to be from birth would mean that I would have a greater ease at freeing myself from my indoctrinated gender constraints. I don’t know if anyone who is actually transsexual or transgendered, (or more specifically, who presents as the gender they were not raised as) is so for that reason.
I wonder if people who lose their physical sex characteristics (or their body awareness thereof) continue to be aware of themselves as being a particular sex? If so, what is that awareness like?
If there are people who have a physical sense of properly having a body of the other sex, how much body modification is required to make that sense feel congruent with their new body?