Corimelaena sp. The Twisty Hemiptera Department, May 26, 2007.
I adjourned to the bug paddock to snap this foto after throwing a copy of Newsweek across the room. It’s the May 21 issue, the one with a picture of a baby on the front. The baby is wearing a half pink, half blue wunzy. “The Mystery of GENDER,” it says. “THE NEW VISIBILITY OF TRANSGENDER AMERICA IS SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE ANCIENT RIDDLE OF IDENTITY.”
That’s why I bought the magazine. This ‘ancient riddle of identity’? What the hell is that?
Alas. Like all Newsweek articles, this one sheds no light whatsover on anything, ancient riddles of identity or otherwise. Its several thousand words could have been boiled down to “There are transgender people around.”
Here’s a howler, though: “Actively expressing the feminine in me has helped me grow closer to God,” says some godbag who has been brainwashed by patriarchy to think long hair and bras are an “identity.”
Ay yi yi.
The rest of the piece pretty much deals with how weird it is for the binary-minded when people cross over to the dark side and want to play sports. It turns out that Renee Richards, famed 70’s-era trans pro tennis player, is no exception to the “all old people are bigots” rule. A septuagenarian, Richards opines “God didn’t put us on this earth to have gender diversity.”
Whereupon I threw the magazine.
NOTE: I shouldn’t have to say this, but that’s what I thought the last time, so: I will not admit bigoted anti-trans crap into the comments section.
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Ah, Newsweek, a possibly not at all adulterated piece of crap.
*THIS IS THE VOICE OF PATRIARCHY, TWO IS THE MOST OF ANYTHING THAT THERE CAN POSSIBLY BE. ONE OF THE TWO SHALL BE BEWIENERED THE OTHER OF THE TWO WILL BE DESCRIBED AS THE ABSENCE OF BEWIENERED*
I don’t know what the voice of the patriarchy sounds like, probably like Darth Vader on the inside but some sort of folksy grampa on the outside.
Does this website constitute a piece of bigoted anti-trans crap?
http://www.questioningtransgender.org/
Just wondering.
Everything makes me think of Firestone, these days. I think nuclear families serve up bigotry with a childs first solid food, then they park the little ones in front of the teevee for a second helping.
Oh, Newsweek. Always ready to feed into a fucked up system.
My feelings on the existence of transgender people* is this. The fact that some individuals are transgendered is proof that the patriarchy sucks. Granted, it’s possible this understanding is incorrect, in which case please correct me, but in a post-revolution world everyone will be able to feel comfortable in their body, no matter where they fall on the gender continuum, because dual genders themselves will be a thing of the past.
I guess this is born out of my impression that most transfolk have made the decision to transition because they feel that they do not “fit” as members of their birth gender, or because they feel more at home with the qualities of their non-birth gender. Please, please correct me if this is a wrong assumption. But if we didn’t force people to choose in that way–but choose ONLY WHAT YOU CAME OUT AS, dammit, so not a choice at all–then people wouldn’t feel like they needed to, you know, choose to become a different gender, they could just express themselves as they felt comfortable regardless of genitalia.
So, in sum, IBTP for Newsweek.
* Not that they asked for my opinion. I feel as though I might legitimately be offending and/or stepping on toes with this, so please understand that I have had limited opportunity to learn about this first-hand and am genuinely seeking correction if I’m just being a flat-out dumbass.
If this thread is supposed to be about bigotry, then I wonder why people who question transgender are held up, apropos of nothing, as the primordial bigots.
I think it’s the one the Sphinx told about “I walk on four legs in the morning, two at noon and three at night, what am I?
Louisa, the most recent (I think) post here on trans issues resulted in a rather surprising comment thread. A lot of people thought it was surprising in the not-so-good way. Twisty hadn’t been able to mod for a few days at that point, so I think she’s just making a preemptive strike this time.
wait. holdupasecond.
you mean long hair and bras AREN’T an identity?
crap.
back to the drawing board…
oh, yeah, wait. what about skirts?
lipstick? SURELY lipstick must be the font of all identity. right?
no, wait, i think it’s shoes. definitely. shoes. ok, c’mon, are you SURE it’s not bras?
on a more serious note, wren, totally.
with the caveat that i don’t think there’s really any such thing as “the one you came out as”.
if i dye my brown hair red, does that make me Transfolliculared?
what if i don’t actualy go through with the dye job, but i just “feel” like a redhead trapped in a brunet’s body? how does “dyeing the carpet to match” factor in?
ok, in all seriousness, i’ll stop thread hogging now.
That branch of transgender politics which seeks to reinforce binary sex roles is at odds with that branch of radical feminism which intersects with the Twistolution. It is the position of this blog that femininity and masculinity, as well as “woman” and “man,” for that matter, are synthetic constructs imposed by the dominant culture to bolster a class hierarchy that favors dudes. It is not the position of this blog that transgender people are subhuman. Everyone does what they gotta do to survive. It’s war.
I think Louisa might be familiar with that situation, but if not it was pretty bad. The link, though, that Louisa provides at least has a lot of info about the debate that was going on, and with which I think a number of commenters (myself, maybe others) had no idea had been raging for quite some time. So it was not clear until the very end of a horrible thread exactly where everyone was coming from. I don’t think this is an argument that anyone can win. One side demands inclusion and another demands space with which to be comfortable in light of patriarchy not providing said space. A definition of “no win”-
hm. i just realized that my above joke-ish-ness might be interpreted as being anti-trans. which i’m not, and in fact what i meant to convey was the opposite, that since i don’t see sex/gender as being an innate and rigid binary (or even rigidly connected to each other), and that i most certainly see gender as a completely social construct, i don’t think it should matter overmuch who decides to identify as what, how they do that, and what it should mean to both them and the world around them.
and that goes for myself, too, woman identified person that i usually kinda sorta am. (i mean, what does that even mean?)
I don’t know what the voice of the patriarchy sounds like
I like to imagine it sounds like a Vogon. You know, the kind of voice best suited for bellowing orders and issuing threats and that kind of thing.
Precisely, Pinko. I don’t propose to become embroiled in another fucking referendum on transgender politics. This is not an argument, and it is not about winning. I don’t give a fuck who uses what bathroom. The condition of perpetual conflict among the oppressed is a central feature of patriarchy. My main point is that Newsweek is lame. It’s a whole magazine about nothing.
Also, that thyreocorids are pretty. That bug is only 1/4″ long, but look how fabulous it is. Your garden is full of’em, but who can shed light on the ancient riddle of a burrower bug’s identity?
What? There’s no burrower bug ancient riddle?
“A septuagenarian, Ricahards [sic] opines ‘God didn’t put us on this earth to have gender diversity.’”
I don’t know whether all godbaggery will be tossed to the heap from the get-go, but I’m going to go ahead and fight God with Rabbis.
There is one Jewish mystical interpretation of Genesis that claims that the first earthling was in fact hermaphroditic. Sort of. It was an earthling with a penis and and earthling with a vagina that were attached back-to-back. This didn’t do very much good. While it is often interpreted that God took Adam’s rib and formed Eve, the word translated as “rib” can also mean “side.” In this interpretation, God just split the thing in half so they could face each other.
If you regard all this as a bunch of baloney anyway, then I guess it’s not of much interest.
I wonder if I might prevail upon you, the opoponax, to avail yourself of the shift key? As a favor to me? I don’t ask for much. And besides, all the other kids are doing it.
Twisty, you got it right in one.
A lot of the trans/queer activists I know aren’t interested in usurping women or anything like that, mostly not even interested in being a “woman” or a “man,” only interested in being comfortable in their own skins. Which is I think something we are all interested in.
I can see why feminists might be angry at trans people for “defecting from femaleness” or “attempting to co-opt femaleness” when the focus is on externals and not internals. But it seems like the issue for the site linked above is that trans people can never truly transition, that is, once you have been raised as a man you have privilege and cannot ever understand women (or “be” a woman) and similarly with women — you are just masquerading into a man’s world slavishly, and will never be accepted as male.
I do accept some of this way of thinking. I don’t think that the ultimate answer, the thing that will fix gender problems, is simply to enable trans people to switch genders and eliminate prejudice against them. More important is to eliminate the gender dichotomy all together. Have female sex organs, want to behave any way you please? Great. Just don’t be oppressive. Have a good time! Have male sex organs, want to behave any way you please? Great. Just don’t be oppressive. Have a good time!
I don’t believe, of course, that even if the gender dichotomy were abolished there wouldn’t still be some people who felt they were wrongly sexed. I don’t see what’s wrong with those people attempting to alter their biological organs. It seems to me that at that stage, altering one’s genitalia and taking hormone therapy would be more of a cosmetic change than anything. It would be like choosing to get breast reductions because you are made uncomfortable by your large breasts, or like choosing to get a tattoo (though obviously more extreme than either). At this point the question wouldn’t be about gender identity; it would be about whether you think drastic elective surgery is okay (I think yes; there’s plenty of reasons people think no; it’s off-topic to argue right now).
But ultimately all this boils down to is that trans people today are, as far as I can tell, caught in a difficult bind between male and female, possessing some of the privilege and some of the un-privilege and a whole lotta anger directed at them and a whole lotta anger coming from them. As you say, Twisty — we’re all just trying to get by.
There’s an ancient riddle about how to tell the two sexes, genders, or whatever you call them, apart in the thyreocorids.
Whenever you pick one up to try to inspect it, it leaps out of your hand and runs away.
Wouldn’t you?
Could a bug that has not been visually inspected be considered to have a gender? Is the gender of all thyreocorids then only a will o’ the wisp?
Ahhhhhhhhh … sleeping pill kicking in. G’nite.
no exception to the “all old people are bigots†rule
But old people are an oppressed class! That’s a gross generalisation! No different to hating on blacks or kids or gays!
I kid. The straight white dudes who run this damn world are all fossils. Oppressed? My birkenstock! Not that I think the younger ones would do much better, mind (insert ellipses here)
“God didn’t put us on this earth to have gender diversity.â€
Now make my miserable day and tell me she referred to God as “He.”
But she’s right. Half of us were put on this earth to blow shit up and watch porn. The other half of us were put on this earth to be blow-up porn. What’s gender got to do with it? Oh, Everything.
TF,
I was wondering if at some point you might recommend a bugly tome, perhaps a Field Guide as it were for the identification and perusal of bugly personae/entities.
More on the topic, I think I understand the argument about women’s only spaces in terms of dealing with the existing environement of dudely encroachment on everything. With the patriarchy smashed we might easily imagine unisex restrooms. with the patriarchy in place, we might NOT imagine unisex restrooms as being a viable solution (forgetting for a moment that boiling down this issue to bathrooms is highly reductionist).
Everything after this point are my thoughts trying to understand arguments/issues in this debate. I am not telling anyone how they feel, think or argue.
Actually I can’t make myself clear enough to be understood, so I’ll save it to the clipboard.
And here I was thinking they’d actually done an article that talked about the not insignificant number of people who don’t fall into binary categories either chromosomally or anatomically. Facts that might lead one to think that division into two (or any other number of) gender roles is arbitrary in the first place, regardless of whether we allow people to switch? I suppose I have unreasonably high expectations.
““A septuagenarian, Ricahards [sic] opines’[...] ”
Jesus fuck, I got [sic]ed! And here I was so smug about spelling ’septuagenarian’ right.
As for the ’sort of’ hermaphroditery of the primal human earthling, Shakes, I find it extremely interesting, and in fact, much more compelling than the rib myth. If only God hadn’t clove them! Imagine the agonies we’d have been spared.
On a related note, I heard on the radio today about the first documented case of parthenogenesis in sharks. The dude said that pretty much everybody except mammals has been seen to do this.
But I guess that’s a whole nother post.
The child of one of my cousins is transgendered. It was obvious in photos of family events over the past few years, but the topic had never come up. I simply assumed that everyone was aware.
So, recently, my mom comes to me in a concerned/whiny/tsk-tsk tone and tells me that our dear J was changing genders and everyone was so upset and that her sister, the grandmother, was just so upset and no one knew how handle it, or how to act around J now that J was D.
I resisted the urge to call my mother a concern troll. When the tip of my tongue had stopped bleeding I told her that it wasn’t about her. I told her that since it wasn’t about her that there was nothing to handle and that she should act exactly the same way that she had always acted. Keep sending birthday and holiday cards, only now address them to D instead of J. Keep calling and shooting the family breeze, but now address my cousin as D instead of J.
I don’t understand why this should cause such a ruckus.
Love the bug! More bugs like this, please!
If only people could learn to be more accepting and treat each individual as a person. I really don’t understand why people are so threatened. Just let people be whatever they are.
But, Twisty, m’dear, that would be succumbing to peer pressure, now wouldn’t it?
Though I agree, and in my heart I’m ready to make nice with the world of capitalization and just play it by the book, already (like I already do, by the way, in my professional life, of course). but oooh, it’s just so much faster this way.
Also, I happen to like the way all-small looks in typewriter fonts (a la your ‘Blame the patriarchy here’ box).
But for you, Twisty, I will see what I can do.
(what if I started using the german Method of capitalizing all Nouns, instead?)
Oh, and Shakes:
When the earth was still flat
and the clouds made of fire
and mountains stretched up to the sky,
sometimes higher,
folks roamed the Earth, like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms,
two sets of legs.
They had two faces peering out of one giant head,
so they could watch all around them
as they talked,
while they read.
And they never knew
nothing of love.
It was befo-oh-orrrrr…
Turkeys also engage in parthenogenesis, I believe. How cool is that?
There’s an interesting article in this month’s Scientific American on the genetics behind sex determination and the politics of and prejudices against “intersex diagnoses.” Scientists and medical researchers are working to eliminate the popular misconception that intersex individuals are unusual or bizarre. I think the larger implication of this kind of work is the eventual eradication of prejudices against all “non-traditional” genders.
Screw Newsweek. If you’ve let your subscription to SA lapse, at least pick up this month’s issue.
bugs are pretty.
I remember a conversation I had with a friend when it came out a classmate of ours in high school who was born a woman and had a girlfriend was transgender. My friend asked if the classmate and her girlfriendi were still lesbians, or if this made them heterosexual. I was so frustrated because I didn’t know how to explain to her what the problem with that question was. I still can’t seem to put it into words. The question just doesn’t make sense to me.
girlfriendi = girlfriend
But it won’t let me edit it.
Pinko Punko, if I may: I use Simon & Schuster’s Guide to Insects. It’s an affordable, basic guide with gorgeous photos and lots of information. It’s not particularly useful for species identication, though it ha been a good introduction for a beginner interested in entomology.
Oh, and Pinko Punko, your comments often make me want to do a little jig of delight. So, thanks for that.
wtf has left us a pretty little goodbye note on “The (new) page of consent” thread, with a special message for cathy and LYMC.
It most certainly is. I love bugs, too, and your photos are gorgeous. I know I read as a child that something like 98% of all insects are female, so I’ve always felt sympatico towards them– especially spiders, who are always led gently outside at my house. Mosquitos, however, get squished. Also, the fleas on my cats die horrible deaths. (Probably. I’m not sure how that stuff works.)
Much agreed. Twisty, this blog makes me pine for a macro lens more than anybody’s Flickr photo set ever has.
Tangentially, I have a gorgeous 3-yr old son. He has longish hair and fine features, so he looks really androgynous. I’ve found that people have no problem in asking if he’s a girl or a boy – a societal shift of the past ten years (when I worked as a nanny) from people assuming a child was one or the other, and addressing them accordingly.
(But I always want to ask them, “Why does it matter?”)
I hate that myth about the hermaphroditic people being split apart; it seems to me to promote the idea that women are dying to have any given man shove his dick in them and see if it fits.
Ah, skimmed. We were talking about a different sort-of-hermaphroditic-double-human.
“That myth” also includes a man/man being and a woman/woman being, in the Platonic version, anyway (and in the song). Also, at least in the cartoon sequence from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, they were back to back. It has nothing to do with anyone penis fitting in anyone’s vagina.
It’s a metaphorical “fitting together”, not a physical one.
Though I always sorta had issues with it because it doesn’t really find room for either bisexuality or non-monogamy. I love the idea that there is some other half of me out there, but unfortunatly no matter how lovely an idea, that doesn’t make it true. Also, am I a woman/woman, or a woman/man? How will I know? Or are bisexual people just not sure of which they are until they find who they’re looking for?
I try to console myself with the fact that it’s just a story, for goddess’ sake. And a relatively nice one from a feminist standpoint, when you compare it to all the other creation myths.
I saw the cover of the Newsweek in question, and decided not to open it, because I knew that it would piss me off. Last year, Newsweek sent me 6 months of unsolicited free issues, one of which dealt with how “feminized” education wasn’t responding to boys’ needs to jump up and down every three minutes and “unfairly rewarded” girls for being more studious.
At one point in my life, I did subscribe to Newsweek. Of course, that was the point in my life when I also susbscribed to Cosmo. I’m feeling much better now, honest.
I have a post in moderation which probably will be irrelevant by the time it clears.
Gah. I read the same article this morning, got about a third away through, and gave up in disgust.
It seems so often that the only time we appear in this sort of press is to give some hack the chance to espouse Louann Brizendine-ish garbage about how innate gendering supposedly is. But then again, if they actually gave trans activists a voice, they might just have to confront this nonsense for what it is.
Binary sex assumptions are scientifically incorrect. There are QUITE A FEW people born on this planet whose sexual “identity” has to be “assigned” at birth by, for lack of a better word, authorities.
Silly me (seriously) I had thought that hermaphrodites born nowadays were left that way. Sadly, no: they assign a sex to these children and socialize them as the sex that the doctor or whoever picked. They usually pick whatever sex is easiest for them to surgically fake.
Often, this assignment does not “take”, and the child grows up more or less completely freaked out. (I read of a very sad case where a young boy had his weiner chopped off in a BOTCHED CIRCUMCISION. Figuring that he would be a total loss as a MALE if he didn’t have an enormous cock, they assigned him to the female sex and surgically created girl parts for him. Because he was still genetically male, this did not work out well. THis young man is now an activist trying to get doctors and hospitals to quit assigning sexes to babies, and quit performing surgery on them when they are too young to consent.)
There is nothing at all new about there being individuals who do not fit the binary sex model AT ALL.I don’t mean to imply that any transsexuals are more transsexual than others, or more deserving of sympathy or anything. I only offer this as evidence that gender is NOT a binary and never has been.
Actually, there was a lot more going on behind the scenes in that particular case — the decision to raise him as a girl wasn’t actually made until he was about 2 (an age when most toddlers are already acutely aware of which team they’re supposed to be playing on and what that means), and the doctor in charge of the whole thing was massively insane, and, well, a ton more completely outrageous stuff was also going on. People paint that case as a sort of proof that obviously our minds know our true gender which cannot be altered by surgery and is thus totally innate. in reality the whole thing is much more complex. The only obvious truth is that the surgery should never have been performed.
Also, the man in question died a few years ago, either from psychological trauma related suicide, or from some completely unrelated and very unfortunate other thing (cancer, car accident, I forget).
the opoponax: It was suicide. The man you’re talking about was David Reimer.
“I read of a very sad case where a young boy had his weiner chopped off in a BOTCHED CIRCUMCISION.”
25 years ago some white/right wing neo-nazi group sent me a news-clipping of this or a similar story in an effort to keep me from having my son circumcised. I was so disgusted I almost had him cut.
V- thanks, that is really very sweet. That book sounds like a good start.
I see it listed on this bibliography page from “Field Guide to Field Guides”
I hope that link works, it is from a Google book search. I see that spiders got the shaft from Simon and Schuster. I used to have the Audubon guide to North American Butterflies, which was quite good. I just noticed they have a field guide to weather, which for some reason is cracking me up.
In a world where gender is prescribed according to a whip-strict and arbitrary binary division of humans, and that the practice of “masculinity” or, even more emphatically, “femininity” requires a considerable and sustained performance, all that surprises me is that more people don’t consider themselves transgendered.
All femininity is drag. The cisgendered woman who practices the art of femininity – blonde extensions, boob implants, mascara, lip-plumping injections, whatever else you can think of – is fundamentally not that different to the transgendered woman anyway, as far as I’m concerned. I practice a fair few aspects of femininity myself, and would feel very hypocritical having a go at transfolk for indulging in the same. We’re all on the losing end of the patriarchy stick.
Madeline:
I do. Because there wouldn’t be a “wrong”. There might be people who decided to modify their genitals or other features, but that would have nothing to do with conforming to a “correct” identity as Man or Woman. It is quite different to change your body because a whim to do so strikes you, versus changing your body because society has shamed and intimidated you into doing so. It is for this reason that I am not bothered when my friends get tattoos. I would be bothered if they got plastic tits.
This is exactly the reason why so many women have learnt to parrot the “It’s my choice!” line: because it would be possible, were there no patriarchy, to modify yourself in any way you choose freely and without political implications. At the moment, it is not – and so all of us, trans and cis, are stuck in the same crap boat.
One side demands inclusion and another demands space with which to be comfortable in light of patriarchy not providing said space. A definition of “no winâ€
One of the important things here is to be clear about what is meant by inclusion (or exclusion) and space, and also to recognise that if two people or sets of people have conflicting demands then some precedence must be given to those wanting to be left alone as opposed to those *not* wanting to leave others alone.
The inclusion/exclusion thing is important because there is a big, big difference between
1) I want some occasional escape and chill-out space with other people that share [whatever defined characteristic]*
and
2) Because of your NOT-[whatever defined characteristic] I want to see you discriminated against in wider society in terms of education, healthcare, legal protection, and so on.
People, women, who are saying 1) get accused of saying 2) even though their beliefs are the opposite to 2). And the accusers say that in order to prove that those women are not saying 2) they must not be allowed to create their own space as in 1).
So the discussion becomes impossible, because even though in theory it should not have to be a no-win situation, in practice it turns quite nasty.
* [whatever defined characteristic] can get tricky though, because the question is: defined by who ? If everything we are is only a social construct then why not all muck-in together all the time ?
“25 years ago some white/right wing neo-nazi group sent me a news-clipping of this or a similar story in an effort to keep me from having my son circumcised. I was so disgusted I almost had him cut.”
The kid isn’t to blame for the psychos. I’m strongly anti-circ and strongly anti-nazi. I feel sorry for that kid with the botched circ, it clearly didn’t occur to them that the problems were caused by having your genitals cut up and the attempted gender binary.
“Binary sex assumptions are scientifically incorrect. There are QUITE A FEW people born on this planet whose sexual “identity†has to be “assigned†at birth by, for lack of a better word, authorities.”
It’s a tiny percentage, about 1 in 1500. Binary sex does exist. Every human being on this planet has two biological parents, one female and one male. It’s fundamental to our initial existence as humans.
Intersex doesn’t really have anything to do with the trans debate however and some intersex people are offended by their circumstances being brought into an argument that really has nothing to do them or their experiences.
all this makes me think of a news story i overheard a few days ago about a great new test they’ve concocted where at 6 wks into a pregnancy you can know the sex of the fetus. Human rights folk are worried that this will cause a rise in the aborting of “girl” babies since most want “boys”…
on a lighter note, they joked that this test will allow parents plenty of time to paint the babies room pink or blue.
holy crap…theres so many problems with this my head starts to spin.
but its a sobering example of the very real dangers of this ridiculous gender binary crap as well as the assumption/dictation that our sex organs predetermine our gender expression.
sad sad humans.
delphyn, I agree that intersex and transgender are distinct issues, but I also think that they exist on a continuum related to gender and are considered by many to be “unnatural” (I hate that term by the way), which is why they are, rightly or wrongly, lumped together. I think it shouldn’t be a matter of shame to relate one to the other (or to any discussion of gender)–but that may just be wishful thinking.
(As an aside, the Scientific American article says that 1 in 4500 births are intersex and that 5 sex reassignment surgeries are performed daily in the U.S. (not all on infants I assume).
“God didn’t put us on this earth to have gender diversity.â€
What??
That would seem to imply the invisible sky pilot only intended for there to be 1 gender.
So, ok..fine. I can deal with that. There was only 1 intended gender. We all start out as female….so male would be the fuck up, right?
I disagree Virago. Intersex is a physical experience related to sex, it doesn’t have anything to do with gender (gender meaning the artifical cultural constructs that our society has created around male and female). The intersex people that I have heard objecting to (not being ashamed of) having their experiences co-opted in arguments about transsexualism, are objecting to two quite different experiences being seen as similar or as part of a continuum, as you are doing here.
Once patriarchy is smashed gender will no longer exist. Women, men and intersexed people will however.
I think that, as a physical manifestation of sex, no, intersex doesn’t have anything to do with the social construct of gender. But I have also read accounts of individuals who have undergone an arbitrary assignment of sex as infants who must later deal with the psychological ramifications of that physical manifestation (which we all do really), and that does have to do with gender. When the physical doesn’t “match” the psychological in these individuals, it is related to gender issues.
Yes, it’s true that gender will no longer matter one day, but to get to that day, we must necessarily begin examine how and why we (and others) conflate sex with gender. I believe that it means examining how and where sex and gender interact on all levels.
I hope it’s not a matter of co-opting arguments, but rather relating one to the other. (But again, that might be wishful thinking.)
“When the physical doesn’t “match†the psychological in these individuals, it is related to gender issues.”
The problem with relating that argument to trans is that with intersex people there is a physical manifestation of why the physical may not “match” the psychological. In trans there is no such pathology (if that’s the right word, not sure if it is).
I don’t think it’s possible to extrapolate from the experience of intersex people that sex must at its root be psychological and thus if someone “feels” they are the wrong sex they must be correct and it is their bodies that are mistaken.
I wrote a lot before I realized I was getting off track. All that schtuff will be posted here shortly.
Now for some random replies to this thread:
Shakes:
And I just read girlfriendi as something from Old Norse, and parsed it [masc nom sg]. Ye gads I’m a geek.
AND:
pheeno, I just had a vision of an old, bearded, slightly transparent dude with no teeth in 1920s flying goggles riding astride an antiquated, dilapidated, likewise slightly transparent biplane. He was having a hot old time, I can tell you.
Now for the actual comment.
I let my adventurous nature out for a romp yesterday morning when I told a 16-yr-old male that I was baiting sexists on YouTube. It was a good exercise in Feminism 101, of course. It was an actual conversation, which surprised me to no end, during which the other conversant kept trying to justify things he’d been socialized into believing AND integrate them into the thing that I had said was so contraversial, saying “women are equal to men”. We got into the issue of gender politics, and this little tidbit came up:
And the light bulb that went off, just now, was that gender socialization == brainwashing. We’re being brainwashed now, and have been for centuries. What I was describing was not brainwashing, but allowing people to be who and how they are, with no outside interference from *anyone*.
That, of course, is utopia, no place in the world as it is.
And what I’m actually doing is trying to un-learn the brainwashing I’ve already experienced, the things that I was taught that deluded me about the things I am privileged to, the way I ’should’ be, the ‘fact’ that I ‘am’ a ‘woman’. I am Me. I am Human. But beyond that, I deny anyone else the delusion that they have some sort of say in who or how I am.
For it not being that easy, IBTP.
And I get the prize for Jumping the Gun: Forgot to post the link to the rest of my ruminations. Here it is, in case you’re interested.
Delphyne and Virago -
Just a few thoughts to add:
1.) virtually all intersexed people are raised within a gender binary and probably identify as an “intersexed man” or an “intersexed woman”, rather than an “intersexual”. Some of them don’t find out they are intersexed for years – for example, a woman with androgen insensitivity syndrome may be raised as female and find out when she’s a teenager that she has XY chromosomes and no uterus.
2.) A lot of intersexed disorders are mostly “cosmetic”, like being born with non-patriarchy approved (ambiguous) genitalia, and many intersexed people are able to have children. AFAIK, the odds for some of the chromosomal disorders are not as good (XXY or XO for example), but then again there are non-intersexed people who also can’t have children.
3.) I think it’s actually kind of hard to draw the line when assigning sex, because there’s even a lot of variation of hormone levels, shape/size of genitalia, etc. within the non-intersexed population. I read that baby boys (and I think this was mentioned upthread) will be assigned as girls if their penis is not x length and if that’s the only criteria, why not make it x-1 or x 2 length?
So I avoid derailing the thread, isna.org has a lot of info about intersex issues.
Nightgigjo:
I like “girlfriendi” as a masc. sg. nom., but it’s too bad it’s (grammatically) weak.
I wonder how much of the day-to-day binary-enforcing silliness we could avoid if we spoke a language that didn’t have gendered personal pronouns, like maybe Finnish.
http://www.earthlife.net/insects/classtax.html
This Web site has a lot of great information about insects, including a pretty comprehensive set of links to other sources on the Web. For anyone interested in insect biology–anatomy and physiology–the classic text is “The Insects: Structure and Function”, by R.F. Chapman. The book is beautifully written and illustrated. (I would provide an Amazon link, but I think a second URL will get this post spam-filtered.)
And just to indulge my pedantic compulsions: spiders are not insects. Spiders, like insects, are in the phylum arthropoda, but they are arachnids (as are scorpions, ticks, and mites).
pheeno wrote
>….so male would be the fuck up, right?
Genetically that’s right. As we all know from watching too much CSI females are XX and males are XY. The Y is an X chromosome with 1/4 of it genetic information missing. The male is actually an evolutionary derivative of the female organism. That rib story reversed it because prehistoric males needed some way to justify their arrogance and domination of females.
Not to continue to interject science, but the XX = female and the XY = male is being questioned by researchers even as we speak. Turns out that it may be certain genes–not whole chromosomes–that determine sex. The manipulation of these genes produces XX males and XY females.
There may be more to the function of these genes than just the formation of sex-related organs, as many are expressed in the brain long before gonads begin to form. The implications of this are: Yikes.
Catherine, you said what I meant much better than I did. Thank you for replying – I slipped into terminology that is often used now, but which would not then be appropriate or applicable.
Of course, in birds it’s the females who have heterozygous sex chromosomes and males who have homozygous ones; males are ZZ and females are ZW. It just gets weirder from there. I love science.
I also love that photo: the beetle as cabochon.
I think it’s interesting that we have here a recurrence of the category versus dimension debate that seems to go on in every field of study. Categories are too restrictive and don’t acknoweledge the fuzziness of the boundaries (there is no such thing as an absolute category) while dimensions can account for lots of variation but don’t give us that neat sensation of knowing that a certain group share similar traits and therefore ‘belong’ together. It is a very big debate in mental health at the moment where the categories that exist just don’t match the science. For some reason the instinct to categorize persists though.
Thank you for that website, LouisaMayAlcott. Very interesting stuff. But then, I’m considered a piece of bigoted, anti-trans crap in some circles.
Mar said,
So am I, I suspect. There was some discussion of that old thread at Pandagon recently, and I went back and reread my posts. I still think that knitting and crochet are separate, distinct, equal, and able to live together in peace an harmony. IBTP that we’re fighting.
Hey, Mar
So am I
:-)
I know spiders are distincto from bugaboos, but I can’t as well try to identify a generally creepy crawly without nature’s full palette illustrated, and at my fingertips, and somehow portable. I presume this imaginary field guide will need to be carried in Twisty’s unobtainable or Platonic ideal of a bag, because 100,000 or so crunchy critters are not gonna fit in a slim, revolutionary pamphlet of bug Blame.
Su writes: I think it’s interesting that we have here a recurrence of the category versus dimension debate that seems to go on in every field of study.
I’ve never heard the argument framed this way. Can you elaborate on this idea?
In my experience, the “hard” sciences support both categorizing and dimension modes of thinking. In fact, good science requires both. But “hard” science has little to say about gender, really.
In re: the identification of spiders, insects, bugs, et cetera.
I recently saw a commercial for a cellular phone that one can point in the direction of an unknown piece of music and the phone will identify the song. (I need this feature, why?)
And: We don’t have this kind of technology for insect identification, why? Oh, right, probably because we’re in the midst of a mass extinction event and the technology couldn’t possibly keep up with all the disappearing species.
For useless technological advances and mass extinction, IBTP.
Pinko,
One of the bug vs insect dealios is does it or does it not have a thorax. Most county extension offices have tons of info on your friendly neighborhood crawlies. Sometimes they can refer you to an ent. that gives intro talks for the local gardeners.
I bet they have that technology in STAR TREK WORLD
“…i don’t think it should matter overmuch who decides to identify as what, how they do that, and what it should mean to both them and the world around them.
and that goes for myself, too, woman identified person that i usually kinda sorta am. (i mean, what does that even mean?)” opoponox
I know, I know. You were born with a womb. This does seem to matter overmuch on this planet and you will be treated accordingly whether you chose to use it or not, or even identify with it.
“I know spiders are distincto from bugaboos, but I can’t as well try to identify a generally creepy crawly without nature’s full palette illustrated, and at my fingertips, and somehow portable.”
Arachnids have eight legs, insects six.
–ttcc
A few months old, but still relevant to the issue of transgender issues in the press. From AngryBrownButch:
An important victory was recently won in the struggle for trans rights, specifically around health care [...T]he City of New York is obligated to pay for the sexual reassignment surgery of Mariah Lopez, a young trans woman of color who was denied this important and necessary medical care while in the care of the NYC foster system. The City is constitutionally required to provide adequate medical coverage for all children in its care, and SRS is a medically approved procedure, one that is often necessary for trans people.
The links to the articles are amazing; talk about transphobia in the press.
When I teach biology at the local community college in this conservative town, I particularly enjoy introducing topics like intersex phenotypes and sex chromosome trisomy in my usual low-key monotone. Someone usually pretzelizes their brain trying to fit the biological reality into the grotesque confines of their definition of normal. Fun to watch! And I take it as evidence that I have planted a seed that may help open a mind.
Not long ago, I read an article by a transgendered scientist who gave a talk shortly after his “she-to-he” transition. During the talk, a colleague, unaware of the situation, turned to another colleague in the audience and commented, “He is so much better than his sister.”
IBTP. Long live the twistolution!
Hi virago- I was thinking about certain controversies in evolutionary biology like the Wallacian line/zone where there is a change of fauna types (marsupials below the line/zone). For years there was a to or fro about where the demarcation between the two fauna types was. People really wanted to pin it down to an exact grid reference but the harder they looked at the boundary the fuzzier it became. What happened was a lurching from one perspective to another. Science certainly supports both approaches I was just thinking that it seems very difficult for people to maintain both approaches in one concept simultaneously. This may be woolly thinking on my part but its been on my mind as the DSMV is likely going to undergo a radical shift to more dimensional approaches.
Hmm. I may very well come off as transphobic, though I don’t think I am, but I have a transgendered sister (mtf) and the male privilege she retains drives me absolutely fucking crazy, to the point where most of the time I really, really, want to strangle her. She very much conforms to the sexbot stereotype (tall, very skinny, always in high heels, makeup, frilly sexy clothes) and will criticize me mercilessly because I don’t. She has no clue at all about feminism and probably doesn’t think there is any need for it, and will not listen when I try to explain. An example of her attitude: she thinks catcalls are complementary, and doesn’t get (though I have explained it) that they are actually threatening.
I sometimes think that the Gods have given me the most deliberately annoying sibling to teach me some profound lesson or other, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.
Oh did I mention she works in porn?
No one I talk to gets why she drives me so crazy. They all assume I’m just uncomfortable with her because she’s trans. Which is not it at all. Please, someone out there tell me they understand what I’m talking about!
(Apologies if I’ve “jacked the thread”; I’ve been quietly going crazy here for some time and this was the first relevant thread I’ve seen in a friendly forum, so it just kind of came blurting out.)
i’m guessing that all of the above are not because she is trans, but because she is clueless about feminism.
there are many women in this world, born as women, who are equally clueless.
I should have said that I was thinking about categorisation as a necessary prerequisite for discrimination and that came up because I remembered that homosexuality was only removed from classification as a mental disorder in 1973. Psychiatry has a pretty murky history as a tool of oppression and genocide. Some eugenics laws, inspired by the desire to keep the population free of mental disorder existed right up until the 50’s and later in places like Denmark and Finland. I was wondering in my convoluted way whether the move away from a system of classification (the DSM) that emphasises discrete categories is partly inspired by realisation of how these categories and the process of categorisation in itself have been instrumental in causing great harm. The science itself has actually never given support to many of the categories that currently exist, and yet they have persisted for a century. Don’t want to derail the thread though- going back to lurking and learning.
Of course, I mean, that’s obvious, and yet, A-HA! –It is my assumptions about her that are driving me crazy. The assumption that if one is going to go through all that, and purposefully choose to be a woman, that one would naturally get a clue in the process. Alas, this is not necessarily true. So.
Someone (the address labels are coyly cut out) in the ecologically aware presumably progressive academic office I pass through routinely keeps leaving Newsweek among the reading material in the outer office. I usually bury it under the Indyweeks. After looking at that stupid pink and blue baby “Mystery of Gender” cover for a week, I snapped. I ripped the label off my “Texas Observer” and plunked it down on top of the pile (burying Newsweek as per usual).
This morning the T.O. was gone, but so was that disgusting Newsweek. Hopefully one of those highly qualified academics took the T.O. home to ponder the difference between real journalism and regurgitated prejudice.
(Thalia, intriguing anecdote – don’t mean to hijack your non-hijack!)
http://www.logoonline.com/shows/dyn/gender_rebel/videos.jhtml
Here’s a good documentary about people who don’t fit into the gender boxes.
Most people just don’t “get” the concept of genderqueer. It’s like talking to a brick wall. The binary gender system is so deeply ingrained in them.
“I wonder how much of the day-to-day binary-enforcing silliness we could avoid if we spoke a language that didn’t have gendered personal pronouns, like maybe Finnish.”
I wish. Oral Chinese has one singular human pronoun and no noun or verb genders whatsoever, but is full of spectacularly woman-hating expressions like “buy a chicken that can’t lay eggs” (marry an infertile woman). Gender binaries are just as just-so here in China as they are in the States.
Hi Thalia. My experience is probably not all that like yours but my dad is trans. I found it interesting the way you called your sibling your sister and talked about her using the word she whereas I haven’t been able to abandon the use of he so easily when talking about my dad, and consequently, still think of him as a man. I suppose it’s because you can’t swap the concept of father for mother quite so easily as brother for sister. Anyway, that’s beside the point. I just wanted to say I can relate to your position in certain ways. In my own experience, as a feminist I find my self questioning whether my attitude of indifference/tolerance towards his lack of feminism would be different if he were my mother, and concluding that I’d probably judge him more harshly or get more upset by it even though I know that’s bias against my mother, as a biological female. On the other hand, I question whether I might be biased against my father, as a mtf because there can be a feeling that this is a person who has deliberately opted to adopt the female role as opposed to being forced by society and has summarily begun upholding the very things I feel insult women such as myself. I really don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about this sort of thing as a feminist. It mixes up all my ideas about what it is to be a woman and I can no longer trust my own opinion or experience when it comes to this topic.
When, on the other hand, I have given up on the idea of either parent, but especially my mother, becoming a feminist. She of the “You look like a man when you don’t shave your legs”, as i step into the car in a skirt, tank top, ballet flats, and shoulder length hair.
It’s interesting. I have 3 brothers, none of which are particularly pro-feminist. I wonder how I would feel about this fact if any of them turned out to be trans. One the one hand, intellectually I know that people are who they are, and you can’t change them or expect more from them just because you share some genes. On the other hand, I’ve wanted sisters my whole life, and it would be disappointing if we couldn’t share feminism. At least my stepsisters give lipservice to it, while generally being of the “empowerful” novice blamer type.
Thalia and Layla: fascinating stories, and I know a couple of people in very similar situations who would say very similar things. I also know some who wouldn’t, though. The opoponax hits the nail on the head when she notes that many cisgendered women are equally clueless about feminism. There’s sometimes an added layer of irritation for people in your position, though, because of the sense that surely someone who has thought about gender and identity deeply enough to start transitioning really ought to have encountered some feminist thinking on the subject?
I think that’s true, and I think where a lot of anti-trans feeling among some feminists comes form is the sense that some transwomen can be incredibly conservative about gender issues and expend their political effort in propping up binary gender roles (which, as distinct from binary sex, presumably everyone here could agree don’t exist). Few feminists want the ranks of women swelled by yet more airheaded girly girls, perpetuating silly and outdated stereotypes.
But, if we’re going to be charitable about it – and I think we should be – it’s important to remember that transwomen, like all women, gain acceptance and approval by conforming to socially prescribed femininity. And that, even if they start out accepting diversity, they are stuffed through a medical-industrial complex that sets out to brainwash them out of it. There’s a comparison to be made between the transwoman and the religious convert: those who are required to create and prove their new identity are always more likely to adopt extremist behaviour than those who have lived with it from birth. Transwomen have something to prove: hence, there’s a lot of eyelash-fluttering and rejection of feminism as a hairy-armpitted backslide. Again, transwomen are only a tiny minority of the very large number of women who behave like this anyway.
Moreover, there are plenty of transwomen – just as there are plenty of ciswomen – who are more intellectually sophisticated than that. If you’re interested, have a read of this excerpt from Deirdre McCloskey’s memoir. She’s a transwoman and a distinguished economic historian. The excerpt makes plenty of thought-provoking points, but the section that is particularly relevant here is the bit where she was interviewed by a psychiatrist who was assessing her gender identity. She was pressured to lie so that her experience conformed to DSM guidelines on the definitions of gender identity, including claiming that she had “always felt like a woman in a man’s body” and “hated” her penis, neither of which statements reflected her real feelings. It’s an example of how transwomen are forced into a closely strictured performance of femininity by the medical and psychological system that deals with them. http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/pubs/gender/dee.php
I strongly suspect that what irks Thalia is not only the lack of feminism and the blanket assumption that female=patriarchally feminine, but the unexamined male priviledge involved in trying to enforce ‘femininity’ on others.
It’s understandable, as said before, no ‘winners’ in this. But I also suspect it’s harder to deal with when it’s “family” and therefore inescapably in your face.
Chris Clarke stole my Sphinx joke. People have already picked up on Shakes’ ‘God didn’t put us on this earth to have gender diversity’ reference to the mystical interpretation of Genesis, and how neatly it mirrors Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, which, among other things, describes what I call the happy ball-people (sexually integrated beings who were also, for some reason, round: hooray, opoponax, for the Hedwig verse*).
See what happens when you leave town and computer access? All the good jokes are taken when you get back.
One more tidbit from spirituality and religion, where this ‘riddle’ has long been explored better than Newsweek does it: many indigenous cultures have a completely blasé, or even particularly honoring, reaction to variations on ‘Two Spirit People’ who are neither/both male and female.
Here, Twisty, have a parthenogenic dragon to go with the ants, bees, snakes and frogs, et cetera.
* re: the opoponax’s “it doesn’t really find room for either bisexuality or non-monogamy†– I always thought Aristophanes’ speech including “Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three; and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon…†dealt directly with the children of the sun and earth (pining, reuniting, etc.), leaving the children of the moon without much explanation or direction, and therefore free to make up anything we wish.
Nice bug.
There’s a great big icky ball of stuff here for me re: privilege and existing hierarchies and/or power disparities (the dominant paradigm, etc.)
I have been acquainted with many trans folks who appear to have embraced the idea that the way to reinforce their trans nature is by emulating the very worst parts of the gender binary. Similarly, I’ve had many queer acquaintances who basically have accepted heteronormativity as their personal savior, and put all of their time and attention into reinforcing those roles.
Thankfully, however, I do have trans friends and queer friends who *don’t* do any of that. Those are the folks I choose to spend time with, as life is too short to hang out with people who make me even crazier than usual.
This has been a long road. From ‘you don’t do feminism the way that I do’ or ‘you don’t do queer the way that I do’ and figuring out where I’m at with all that, yeah, it’s a mess, and having to sit down and mull over whether this means that I’m transphobic or homophobic, and what I want to do about that–and in the end, what I’m left with is this: I don’t like it, and I’m never going to like it, when an oppressed class emulates the behavior of a privileged class in order to cope with their oppression. And there’s a whole other ball o’ resentment I’ve got going on here about mainstreaming, but I’m not going to rant that rant today.
Basically, Thalia: I hear you and I feel your pain. I’m glad you love your sister, and I’m sorry she chose to be a femmebot. That sucks big-time.
Layla,
There are lots of reasons why you feel that way, having everything to do with the relative power of male and female voices, and what even females are allowed to perceive as feminism.
Compare the relative powers, for instance, of pro-porn “feminist” vs. anti-porn feminists in public discourse.
You have to be able to think things through for yourself, and realize whose interests are benefitted by the pressures you feel to silence yourself and your instincts.
Much of the work of 1960’s and 1970’s feminism has been undone by males having re-written the definition of feminism to serve (very effectively) their interests. They have done this with pornography and abortion and classism and just possibly (you will have to figure this out for yourself) the issue under constrained discussion here.
Virago:
I know people who love this idea, because they are often driven mad trying to remember the name of a song. I saw a commercial the other day touting how great it is to have access to the internet over your phone, because you can identify man-eating plants before it is too late. I presume the same handy technology could be used to identify insects– although it’s not quite as simple as that music feature.
I haven’t read the Newsweek article, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t mention a sports columnist in the LA Times, Mike Penner, who is very publicly transgendering to Christine Daniels. He introduced the process, here:
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-oldmike26apr26,0,2709943.story?coll=la-home-headlines
And she is maintaining a blog about it, here:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/womaninprogress/
Hmm. There is a growing atmosphere of mutiny on this thread. I wrote a trans-friendly comment, but it’s stuck in moderation.
The idea that there is a clear binary sex division is codswallop; exangelena’s comment above is spot on. I would also dispute the idea that the proportion of intersexed people is one in 1500. The research (eg Anne Fausto-Sterling et al, “How sexually dimorphic are we?” American Journal of Human Biology 12 (2000)) suggests it’s more like 1 in 100, and a friend of mine who is a paediatrician and spends her life delivering babies concurs. If it’s 1 in 1500, we’re talking about 4.4 million people. If it’s 1 in 100, we’re talking about 66 million people. That’s about the same number of people that are redheads, and in their case we have realised that their existence proves that hair colour is not set on a linear scale from platinum to black, and that they are not weird genetic freaks but a perfectly normal variety of human.
If your model of how sex differentiation works excludes millions of people, it’s obviously faulty. The results are not wrong if they don’t fit the model. The model is wrong if it doesn’t fit the results.
And the issues of intersex and transgender are linked, not least because the mutilation so often foisted upon the intersexed in infancy creates traumatic gender identity problems for them later in life. Furthermore, while the existence of intersexuality proves that the binary sex model does not work, it has not yet been shown whether gender dysphoria or transsexualism is another dimension of this, i.e. something “inbuilt” but invisible, or whether it is a response to one’s environment. Until there is more evidence available, it is judgemental to assume that transgender people are merely making some sort of frivolous lifestyle choice rather than embarking on a sincere search for belonging. Some of us may find some transpeople’s conservatism difficult and unpleasant, but then again I find anyone’s conservatism difficult and unpleasant. There are plenty of transpeople who aren’t prescriptive about gender.
Finally, I do not for a minute think that the fact that I have been, by most available definitions, a woman since birth, means that I get to decide who joins the group “woman” and who does not, and who gets to use the pronouns “she” or “her”. If we’re going to start laying down membership rules for the female sex, there are all sorts of people I’d rather not share it with. Funnily enough, though, I don’t get to make the rules, and nor does anyone else.
How come I keep ending up in moderation? Not accepting the transsexual model is a legitimate radical feminist position.
What is the transsexual model? Why are some of you lumping all transwomen into this assumption that they are all either trying to undermine feminism or patriarchs trying to invade woman-only spaces? It is so ironic to hear this kind of blatant stereotyping in a forum like this. I’ve been through the surgery. Since I was able to form my own coherent world view, I have been a feminist, though I may not have known the word at the time. And I haven’t become some girly-girl wearing skirts and heels and tons of makeup trying to seduce men into taking care of me because I’m so feminine and weak that I just need a big strong man to think for me. I have met transwomen like that and it’s annoying as hell. I have no idea what “trans-politics” are, but what I’m reading here sounds alot like the alarmist bullshit republicans love to spout about the gay agenda. Patriarchy exists and it loves nothing more than to instigate in-fighting among people who should be working together. And they do it because it works. I was hesitant to post any reply in this thread, because I’m not usually very outspoken and I don’t like to talk about transsexualism because I don’t want to pretend to speak for anyone else, and I don’t really understand my own feelings about why I am what I am and have little confidence I could express them if I did. But after some of the comments I read, I finally had to. My two cents…
Thanks for your input, Mireille. Well said!
“What is the transsexual model?”
The idea that it is possible to change a man into a woman or vice versa and that sex resides in someone’s thoughts or beliefs about themselves rather than in their bodies.
Mar Iguana;
I dont know who else agrees with me, but it seems that many here share your opinion of “transpolitics,” but none of them sound as bitter and nasty as you. I think your attitude clearly crosses a line into “hate.”
“The idea that it is possible to change a man into a woman or vice versa and that sex resides in someone’s thoughts or beliefs about themselves rather than in their bodies.”
Umm… isn’t that kind of the same as the feminist idea that gender is a societal construct? Wouldn’t those two theories seem to support each other?
And as far as “change” goes… Well, I don’t know how much I’ve changed as much as just become more comfortable in my own skin. Could I have done that without the surgery? Maybe…
But If someone is born with 6 fingers on their hand and get it removed, is that wrong? Should they be proud of their six fingers and keep them all to prove a point even though they’ll have to special order gloves or wear mittens the rest of their lives when their hands get cold? Should they still have to use the 6-fingered person’s restroom? I was born with two heads. The second was extraneous and wrong, so I had it fixed. The surgery isn’t what made me a woman, that was already there, but it makes life a lot easier.
But some people just need something to hate on, so keep on keepin’ on.
I even quit giving money to NPR because every time I sent them a check they sent me a year of Newsweek whether I wanted it or not.
I’m totally blown away by the degree of anti-trans sentiment. Putting to the side the caricatures and hyperbole over the legions of MTFs currently descending upon your beautiful, sacred toilets, doesn’t anyone identify with these poor women and men? What they are doing is extraordinarily transgressive in the eyes of just about everyone they know, are related to, or come across in their day to day lives and because they feel the need to change their gender so deeply, they do it anyway. My uncle, a depressed beer-drinking couch potato for most of his life, came out as TG in his late 50s and went on to have “gender reassignment” surgery. By doing this, she used up all of her pension, lost pretty much any chance she had at a steady job in her field, lost her romantic relationship, nearly lost her relationship with her daughters, has one brother who won’t speak with her and one who will only do so when his wife makes him. Plus, of course, she willingly gave up the male privilege of _being_ a beer-drinking couch potato that nonetheless seemed to make her so miserable.
Yet she is clearly so much happier than she ever was as a man. Although she destroyed of all of these things in life that society tells you to value in order to do something that pretty much no one will support, she’s happy. At an abstract and philosophical level there’s nothing especially positive about what she’s done; she’s unquestionably a victim of patriarchal programming (though probably not solely, I definitely agree with Catherine Martell on that); but does she beat people up? No. Is anyone particularly likely to be oppressed by her? Certainly less so than when she was male. Does interacting with her make people more likely to work their brains a bit more and possibly shift their ingrained thinking about the immutability of gender and sex? Yes. So if she’s not hurting anyone and is made happy by her difficult, anti-socially-determined choice, why pick on her and people like her?
It’s true, I chose to call my sister “she” in this forum, and in reality I usually call her both “she” and “he” depending on the circumstances, but that’s because of the situation in reality, where she’s not out in some crowds and to some friends, and will often come home to do say yard work or work on a car as a male, or visit my dad as male, since he’s in a nursing home and barely remembers our names as it is and she doesn’t want to confuse him any more than he already is. I don’t know that this is a phase, either, since she’s been like this for years. The everyday situation is that I have to keep track of my pronouns depending on who I’m talking to, and if I mess up around the wrong person oh my gawd am I in trouble. I’m sure this is a part of what I find particularly annoying about her, as it feels (rightly or wrongly) that she’s getting the best of both worlds, and gosh, that just doesn’t seem fair. And yeah, I’ll admit to calling her “him” in front of her, but I like to think that I’m just doing that to annoy her, (since she annoys me so damned much), and that as a big sister it’s my right to pick on my little sister; I don’t think it’s prejudice on my part (though who knows, since we’re all conditioned into it under the patriarchy). I know several other transwomen, though they are acquaintances and I don’t know them very well, and I would never in a million years use anything other than their chosen pronoun. It’s just disrespectful. But with my sister? I have such a bad reaction to her most of the time that I’ll take being disrespectful towards her over strangling her. And besides, she’s so disrespectful towards me most of the time it’s hard not to react in a similar way. Should some things be off-limits? I don’t know.
Alas, CannibalFemme, I can’t choose not to be around my sister, since we’re always stuck with family. I’m glad, though, that even through my ranting you did pick up that I love my sister.
And oh, Layla, your last two sentences: I so hear you, sister.
Isn’t the real issue the lumping of people into groups? That you can’t really say anything true of “transgenders” that will be true of all of them, or of “the Chinese” based on that example of language that Ada gave, or of “people with Asperger’s” based on the one you know that picked on your child? There are fucked up people in any group that will do anything for power over others, or who manipulate whatever system they’re in – we know we can’t say “women are whatever” and have it be true for a group that contains Twisty and Ann Coulter.
I think you can think that transgenderism is not a political movement that has the capacity to smash gender, but that doesnt really explain the hatred and bitterness toward transpeople. Even if you dont think trans is resistance, so what–lots of feminists are heterosexual. thats not resistant, and its buying into male power and its not a feminist act, but ive never seen a thread here that was just straight up hate on heterosexuals the way that can happen to trans people in radfem spaces. And yes I read the blowjob blowup.
I hope it’s clear that I am not making any assumptions or lumping all transwomen together based on my sister’s behavior.
I guess my question is this: are we not most of the time making the assumption that in this patriarchy all males have unearned privilege of some sort? Why, then, should we not assume that someone who spent a good part of their life as a male before becoming female would also carry some of that privilege over? (Or rather, the attitude of being privileged; the privilege itself one would assume goes when they transition). Is that not a legitimate question?
I would emphasize that this of course is not saying that transwomen aren’t women; after all, plenty of women have unearned privilege like white, hetero, or class privilege.
Thalia,
What you are saying about privilege carrying over is correct. But to say that on this blog is considered hatespeech.
I don’t think a truthful analysis of this matter is possible on this blog.
Heart has done that brilliant and thorough analysis on her blog.
http://tinyurl.com/3bs2wm
It’s a long thread, but towards the end is her detailed analysis.
Did the spamulator eat my post? If not, I apologize for the double post. If so, here it is again:
Thank you, Catherine Martell, for once again being the voice of reason. I am also trans-friendly.
But when I think about how many people aren’t, I wonder why this is. The only explanation I can come up with is that when faced with something they don’t understand, many people react with fear. If that fear is not alleviated, it often turns to hatred. Those types of people will stop at nothing to destroy what they don’t understand. Hatred is the end of the road for them.
For some, a lack of understanding doesn’t lead to fear and hate, but to a desire for understanding. Understanding is not an end to the road, but a beginning.
Transgender (or any non-binary gender designation) is not an understood phenomenon. It throws a monkey wrench into our ideas about gender and sex and, by extension, our ideas about feminism. (And frankly, I think it is a very weak kind of feminism that can’t accept the (eventual) inclusion of everyone.) Some people try to understand and some people cling to fear.
Mireille, thank you for speaking out here, in what should be a safe place for you to express your opinions (and isn’t always). You are very brave.
Louisa, obviously you can say it. You’ve said it twice and nobody stopped you.
I think you are wrong, even though I am also no adherent to so-called “transgender politics.”
Hee-hee! Good catch, curiousgyrl.
Tha’s some funny scheisse right there.
“It throws a monkey wrench into our ideas about gender and sex and, by extension, our ideas about feminism”
I really disagree with this. First of all why would we need a monkey wrench in our ideas about feminism? Radical feminism seems pretty well thought through to me – it certainly provides an excellent analysis of how men hold power over women and the mechanisms they have used to maintain that power.
I don’t think transsexualism actually says anything useful about gender. It was feminist analysis that uncovered that gender is a social construct rather than an immutable state of affairs, a construct we need to get rid of. I don’t see any transsexual analysis doing that.
As for changing our ideas about sex, all the transsexual model says about sex is that it is a feeling rather than the physical reality of a person’s body. I suppose that’s a different approach to take but I don’t think it’s a correct one.
But then why would a male-led, male-created institution have anything useful to tell women or feminists about sex, gender or feminism?
I bought the Newsweek issue because I feel it behooves me to keep track of what the media is telling my parents to think about me. Its only redeeming value is it didn’t suggest that any of it was their fault, so in my weakened state of resistance I gave it a pass (plus flinging things in airplanes can get you in trouble these days).
Just to toss a spanner in the works concerning the ‘tranny agenda’ and the place actually transgender folks fit into that agenda, here’s a link to an article I read a few days back about an Iranian transgendered. It could be summarized with Twisty’s comment above: You do what you gotta do to survive.
http://www.irqo.net/IRQO/English/pages/064.htm
Thalia, your problem is 1% this:
Why, then, should we not assume that someone who spent a good part of their life as a male before becoming female would also carry some of that privilege over?
and 99% this:
[...W]hat I find particularly annoying about her [is] she’s getting the best of both worlds, and gosh, that just doesn’t seem fair. [...] I’m just doing that to annoy her, (since she annoys me so damned much)[...] I have such a bad reaction to her most of the time that I’ll take being disrespectful towards her over strangling her [...]
and
It is my assumptions about her that are driving me crazy.
and
No one I talk to gets why she drives me so crazy. They all assume I’m just uncomfortable with her because she’s trans. Which is not it at all. Please, someone out there tell me they understand what I’m talking about!
I think you are being purposefully obtuse.
Your problem is with your sister–not with transgendered individuals or with the politics and problems associated with trans-folks–and you are looking for approval of your disrespect for her from a bunch of strangers on an internet board about the subject of transgender issues in Newsweek.
In this case, you might try looking at the personal before you look at the political.
Delphyne, you seem very confident about the “physical reality” of sex. Could you enlighten me as to exactly what your definition of a woman is?
I don’t mean to be facetious; I’m genuinely interested as to whether anyone can do this. Medical science currently can’t. Sex is determined in humans by the balance of between six or eight indicators, none of which is decisive. Even the IOC – one of the few organizations in the world that actually has an interest in ascertaining whether grown adults are male or female according to a binary division – has abandoned gender testing as being pseudoscientific, unverifiable and an affront to human dignity.
curiousgyrl, clearly you need to think further. With that, I’m gonna break out the chocolate chex and watch this latest boyo show.
Over and out of Thyreocorid buggin’.
Oh, yes, I am just swimming in privilege… Let’s see, because of my transition I lost my job, was ostracized by my family, spent my life savings on a surgery that very few people will ever see the results of, am losing my house, have to constantly work harder than the people around me at my current job just to stay where I am. If that’s privilege, then all I can say is… Take my privilege, please. I don’t want it anymore. But even if I had known the eventual outcome, I would still have done everything pretty much the same.
We can all unzip our pants, whip out our oppression and compare sizes, but I really don’t see the point. I’m sorry some people are always going to think that the choices I’ve made for myself are somehow undermining everything they believe in. It would just be nice if they would see how very republican it all is. Absolutely sure that they’re interpretation of my experiences is more valid than my own. George W would probably want to go bowling with you.
delphyn, no one needs a monkey wrench. That’s kind of the idea of a monkey wrench.
If the issues surrounding transsexualism were such a given (along the lines of, say, old white honkeys are at the top of the patriarchy), were so easy to dismiss by feminists, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
I simply can’t dismiss transsexualism as having nothing of importance to offer in our examination of gender. To me, it is worth examining how and why some people don’t feel as though they fit into the traditional binary system of gender. I mean, I don’t feel I fit into that system, but I am still at the mercy of it, just as trans-folks are. Since I think examining my situation in regards to gender is a worthwhile pursuit–a pursuit that will ultimately help to topple the patriarchal hierarchy, gender division–I extend that willingness to engage and examine gender in all its manifestations, transgender/transsexualism included.
Anyway, I think we both agree that gender is going to eventually be a useless designation. Thank the lard.
I feel quite strongly that true equality between the sexes will only occur when societally constructed gender has been obliterated. Therefore, anyone who feels the calling and has the bravery to publicly challenge the gender binary are totally in line with the sort of feminism that I try to practice. As Twisty pointed out early in this thread, transpeople who end up reinforcing the gender binary aren’t completely in line with this idea, but just as I would never begrudge a female-bodied woman using societally approved drag to get by, neither would I begrudge a transperson from doing the same.
Partially because I view the gender binary as a fallacy, I’ve never quite understood how to define a women only space. Sure, I understrand and appreciate the intention. I think that women only spaces are vital. I just don’t see how it’s possible to dictate who exactly falls into the category of “women,” since it’s nothing more than a construction to begin with.
As for the feeling that some transpeople are threatening the feminist movement through trans politics. Well. The only suitable response I can come up with to this idea is that there are loads of assholes in this world, and it would therefore follow that some assholes are women, some assholes are feminists, and some assholes are transpeople, but it’s asinine to point fingers at groups, rather than individuals. One you start doing that, it’s bigotry.
well, I read the heart thread and the “questioning transgender” site, and didnt find much convincing therein. The positions on FTM vs MFT are contradictory, and the psychoanalysis essay was bizarre. Heart’s post would have been improved with specific history and examples–wihout them, there is no way to assess the point.
Even if I allow that transwomen retain some privledges of their upbringing, I have to see the massive increase in violence and discrimination that they recieve as a result of violating gender norms as oppression under the patriarchy.
I understand more clearly why radfem and political lesbianas would object to FTM transition as opposed to butch or androgynous identity, but I hope that there be political objection to this as a political strategy without hating people for doing what they feel they need to do to get by in a nasty and impossible world. I would also point out that not all or even most trans folks view thier transition as part of some strategy of “transgender politics” (the reality of is, byt the way, pretty grossly mischaracterized on Louisa’s reccommended link). And, in my experience, its wrong to think that all FTM’s would have been lesbians if FTM was never invented.
Trans folks are not the enemy and if anything they show that gender is socially and biosocially constructed, but you cant individually choose your way out of oppression under the gender regime.
Transfolks need the long history of feminism and feminist analysis, but unfortunately ill-concieved assessments, and worse, nastiness seem like they could keep a lot of people away.
“Delphyne, you seem very confident about the “physical reality†of sex. Could you enlighten me as to exactly what your definition of a woman is?”
I’ve seen that question so many times in discussion about transsexuality, and it seems that as soon as one answer is given, reams of nitpicking and accusations of “policing” what a woman is start getting thrown out.
In the end I realised the answer is quite simple, it’s someone who hasn’t been born with a penis, testes and a Y chromosome.
Do you think I shouldn’t be confident of the physical reality of sex, Catherine, when it’s actually the reason why every single one of us is here? Didn’t you have a biologically female parent and a biologically male parent?
“To me, it is worth examining how and why some people don’t feel as though they fit into the traditional binary system of gender.”
Women have been doing this for years using feminism but now somehow transsexuality that gets the credit? I don’t fit into the binary system of gender because it’s a patriarchal fantasy that has nothing to do with me as a woman. Feminism helped me realise that.
It’s true, I am only really an intermediate blamer; maybe my question was naïve, or coming from a place of prejudice. I don’t know. I just know that my sister has male privilege in spades and that it drives me crazy.
I’m not being deliberately obtuse; I’m figuring this out as I go along. I’ve only come to feminism consciously in the last couple of years so I’m still learning to deal with my anger, and my relationship with my sister has sort of (fairly or unfairly) been a focus for me. I did not think it was inappropriate to post about that relationship here, as I’ve seen others post personal stuff; I apologize if it was.
No, I should not be disrespectful of my sister, in the same way that, for example, if I had a gay brother who was an asshole I should not call him a “fag”. I suppose I should just call him an “asshole”. Okay, I get it now.
I’ve just been so angry around my sister lately that I can’t see straight.
Thalia, sorry that my post was silencing. I did not intend for that to be the case.
Yes, personal information is posted ’round here all the time, and others don’t immediately discount the validity of that aspect of discussion in a feminist venue.
However, I was a bit dismayed to see that your posts were feeding an anti-trans faction who were obliquely warping your frustration with your sister into the kind of anti-trans platform (what Twisty calls “bigoted anti-trans crap”) that, besides being inadmissable on this forum, is not relevant to the discussion at hand.
Will somebody please point out where on this thread “hatespeech” has taken place?
Because I’m confused.
Some(and definitely not all) trans people, like Thalia’s sister, as she has shared, trade on their previous priviledged status, quite unconsciously, while simultaneously trying to enforce “feminity.”
That this happens,ever, is clearly nobody’s fault, and the only thing to blame is the patriarchy.
I thought Thalia shared quite eloquently her own struggle to untangle her personal issues with her sister from what she clearly sees as the ethical stance of treating transgendered folk with respect and acceptance.
I’m not seeing any hate, here.
I certainly intended my previous comment to be directed only at the situation discussed.
And I’m really not being rhetorical in my request for examples to be pointed out to me.
What am I missing?
Thank you Virago.
I guess I thought that we (the commenters here) were starting on the same page and that some things were so obvious they didn’t need to be stated, but to clarify, I will:
When I asked about transwomen retaining male privilege it was from the point of view that it was something I’d seen in my sister, and that it was annoying. Minor, and annoying. It in no way compares to or makes up for the prejudice and violence transpeople face in this stupid world. I certainly did not mean to dismiss those experiences.
If those catcalling men were to find out my sister is trans (she passes quite well), they would beat the living light out of her. And that is way the fuck not right.
And I want to make it clear that I was not extrapolating all transwomen’s experiences based on how my sister acts. And that also, ticked off as I am at her choices, I don’t blame her for doing her best to get along any more than I’d blame a genetic girl (my sister’s term) for wearing lipstick and dieting. It’s all individual choices, and we all do the best we can. Obviously.
Whoa, bad tags. Only “Minor” should be in bold. Where’s that edit button?
Thalia, I was by no means singling you out, or trying to discount your experiences with your sister. You were careful to distinguish between your own situation and transpeople in general. My apologies if you felt that I was picking on you.
Oh, no, NicoleGW I didn’t think that. I’m in perfect agreement with you, actually.
V., There were carom shots against trans-folks and their supporters, which don’t, I believe belong in honest discourse. For the use of this tactic, IBTP, natch.
Thalia, I think you show a lot of insight into the kind of oppression and discrimination that transgendered individuals face. Because you have this kind of understanding, your sister is lucky to have you. I’m sorry she doesn’t recognize it.
You know, I forgot to mention, I totally love that photo of the bug, and want to again bring up the idea of Twisty selling prints – please? And, there’s a bug paddock??!! Wow.
I agree, thalia, that you’re experience with your sister doesnt constitute anti-trans hate speech, but I’m going out on a limb to suggest that mars stuff DOES constitute that and that lousia’s attitude is strangely bitter if not explicitly hateful, and that her analysis is myopically focused on teh trans as teh enemey when that is a stupid anti-trans attitude to take.
Virago:
Thanks. Now if only we could convince her of that. :)
[Note on name: changed to Raven from Artemis now that I see that there is a blogger by that name who also posts here.]
LousieMayAlcott – despite the constrained circumstances here, you have made beautiful work of explaining these ideas. Mar Iguana, please don’t leave this conversation. I read your comments on the December ‘06 thread – you and others made these points so cogently I saved the whole thread to remember your points for future conversations.
As for what’s going on here: Who but a man could say the following?
“We can all unzip our pants, whip out our oppression and compare sizes” – this is courtesy of Mireille.
You reek of male privilege, Mireille, and for those of you on this thread who wonder why some of us are angry, Mireille’s words are all you need to read to figure out why. Mireille sounds just like a liberal dewd – here to tell us silly girls what’s what.
Yet again there is an assumption that feminists don’t know what they’re talking about. This attitude is one major reason we are angry. We get it. We’re the ones who deconstructed gender decades ago. We don’t need johnny-come-lately MTFs or their defenders to tell us about oppression.
I’ve lived with MTFs and I’ve also had a good friend transition from male to female. My friend spent years with lesbians, quietly listening and earnestly asking questions and learning. As a person she has always loved women and that comes through loud and clear. She has worked to listen to what women say about their experiences and has transitioned with respect for what she was transitioning into. As a woman she is no different from the rest of my lesbian crowd – we love her and accept her as one of us because she is one of us. My friend is not on the front lines demanding womanhood from feminists – she is living her life coherently and consistently.
On the other hand, the men I lived with transitioned to some version of womanhood they had in their heads. They were not interested in what real women thought because they knew better. They are dismissive of my experience as a woman – a lesbian – because now they are straight women, determined to meet the high-femininity standard they learned from reading Cosmo. There is not a feminist bone in their bodies.
There are a few people on this thread who are attempting to dismiss us as having knee-jerk prejudices, but that is just another way of dismissing women’s experience of the world. This is a blog for advanced blamers. We get it. We’ve heard it, we’ve read it, we’ve discussed it, we’ve lived it. We don’t need lectures from you any more than we need lectures from liberal dewds.
Way up at the top of the thread LouisaMayAlcott posted a URL – if you want to have a meaningful conversation with advanced feminists about gender, reading all the posts at that URL is a place to start. It’s just like Twisty’s -whataboutthemenz page– – if you haven’t read it, you’re missing a big part of the base from which we’re arguing.
Yes, I suggest that all who share the viewpoint of Raven/Artemis, Mar Iguana, and LMA pack up their opinions and head on over to the suggested forum.
Raven/Artemis is right: Twisty’s certainly made it clear that bigoted, anti-trans crap is not welcome here.
Are you attempting to silence women, Virago?
You answered my post within seconds. Why is that? What person would attempt to silence women? I wonder. Is this your space to determine who can speak? Is it your place to stand in for Twisty? You’ve shouted down various women on this blog on various threads since you showed up. Why is that? Who would want to do that? I wonder.
Don’t speak for me, Virago. Don’t re-interpret my words. Don’t tell us when and where we can speak. Don’t re-interpret any of our words.
This is a really hard post for me to make. I did all the radfem things right. I’m biologically female, pursue women as my romantic interests, went to a womens college, and may even (making me a bad feminist) have a touch of “women are naturally superior but equality is the right thing to do.”
BUT. (And it just about killed me when I figured it out.)
There was always this nagging feeling that inside I was a boy. I don’t know how to describe it. I would look in the mirror and it was wrong. A lot of you on this seem to feel in the ideal femtopia, where our current societal construct of gender would be abolished and it would truly be the Land of Do-As-You-Please, would solve the “problem” of being trans. A number of you have indicated this. I think it’s wrong and I find it personally insulting. I do already do nearly exactly as I please and it doesn’t take away the feeling of mismatch and void. Even if I did do exactly as I pleased (like I did while I was at my women’s college) it would not make me feel right and whole. For me personally, I don’t think surgery would even help because it would still be wrong. It would be man-made. A helpful analogy: Putting a BMW engine into a Ford doesn’t make that Ford a BMW. That’s how I feel about surgery. Something about knowing the truth about it all would still bug me, I think. But I digress from the point.
I think a lot of feminists (hardcore and not) along with a lot in the queer movement have a lot of animosity towards the trans community. Yeah, there are those few that stick out and behave in ways that brings the community down but every community has those. Maybe because you think it’s all in our heads (which I strongly dispute — as a scientist and having lived in this body for as long as I can remember). Maybe it’s because you don’t “understand.” All I know is that we’re here, it’s real and we need the whole fem/queer community to have our backs. How can we expect equality when we are not even fully accepting of each other within our own movements?
Oh, Raven. You needn’t be threatened by me. I’m perfectly harmless. I answered in seconds because answering your “argument” required no thinking or in-depth analysis or interpretation (much less “re-interpretation”?) whatsoever.
Of course I would never presume to speak for Twisty (or for you or for anyone). It is only my opinion that you should take what Twisty calls “bigoted anti-trans crap” elsewhere.
See, I was merely quoting her (if you don’t trust me, you can read it for yourself if you scroll up to her post). I trust she will correct me if I have overstepped my boundaries.
Thank you, SyntheticGenius, for your post.
When someone who is oppressed and discriminated against (as transgendered and transsexual individuals are) asks in sincerity for support from a feminist community, I believe we should offer our sisterhood.
Holy crap, some people need to take irony classes. I said “We can all unzip our pants, whip out our oppression and compare sizes†because it was ironic… Jesus christ, it was not literal. Y’all just sound like you want to say your oppression is greater than anyone else’s. If you took me literally, I’m sorry. It was meant ironically. But it is telling that you jumped to the conclusion you did. Don’t let the oppression you’ve experienced make you think it’s ok to oppress a weaker minority, because honestly, that’s what you’re doing.
Let me be completely literal. I never tried to oppress women. I never felt any privilege. I was never rich. My core belief is, no war but a class war. Sure, women are an easy target because they are not men. And in America, anyone that is not what is an easy target. And even among white men, anyone that is not rich is an easy target. So, bottom line, anyone that is not male, white and rich is pretty much fucked. That women here want to exclude me, that’s your right. You can hate on me all you want, but I will still fight for the rights of non-male, non-white, non-rich people. If you want to fight for some part of the male, white, rich partiarchy, that’s your right. Have fun!
“She very much conforms to the sexbot stereotype (tall, very skinny, always in high heels, makeup, frilly sexy clothes) and will criticize me mercilessly because I don’t. She has no clue at all about feminism and probably doesn’t think there is any need for it, and will not listen when I try to explain. An example of her attitude: she thinks catcalls are complementary, and doesn’t get (though I have explained it) that they are actually threatening.”
Thalia, your sister sounds like a lot of women I know. Try not to let it get under your skin, that kind of misunderstanding from relatives can be very irksome.
“Yes, I suggest that all who share the viewpoint of Raven/Artemis, Mar Iguana, and LMA pack up their opinions and head on over to the suggested forum.”
Well that’s a problem isn’t it? Advanced patriarchy blaming goes on at this blog and the radical feminist analysis of transexualism is advanced patriarchy blaming. Which is not to say that all radical feminists share that particular viewpoint, but it does exist and it is a legitimate one.
I took a look back and the last debacle about transsexualism started on a post inspired by Sheila Jeffreys “Beauty and Misogyny” which contains a whole chapter on transfeminity and crticism of the same. So Sheila would be welcomed by blamers for her views on lipstick but her views on transsexualism would have her marked out as a bigot and she would be told to go elsewhere.
curiousgyrl, you can call me Mar Iguana. Thanks.
And, sorry, Raven, but I’m not exposing myself to the lynching I get everytime I point out women have these little things called wombs that kinda sets us apart from those who do not. Crazy, huh?
Back to my choco chex.
sorry mar iguana, I dont know what happened there. however, disagreement does not equal lynching. Maia has a great post on that point at Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty right now.
Raven: Are you attempting to silence women, Virago?
You answered my post within seconds. Why is that? What person would attempt to silence women? I wonder. Is this your space to determine who can speak? Is it your place to stand in for Twisty? You’ve shouted down various women on this blog on various threads since you showed up. Why is that? Who would want to do that? I wonder.
Well, quite a number of transpersons and people who consider themselves to be allies do attempt to silence women quite often, as the recent Gendercator debacle evidences. An acclaimed lesbian filmmaker, Catherine Crouch, makes a satirical film about body modification and gender, postulating a future in which no one may do his or her own thing, genderwise, in which, courtesy of the Religious Right, everyone must choose a gender and will then be accommodated by all sorts of surgeons and pharmaceutical types.
A couple of hundred transpersons, most of them online, as I understand — without having seen the film — sent a petition to Frameline declaring the film transphobic and insisting that it not be shown.
Frameline caved. The film will not be shown. Note: all or by far most of the people who circulated and signed the petition had NOT seen the film.
And so, yes, all sorts of silencing going on, and in feminist/lesbian circles, it is not transgendered persons or their allies who are being silenced, it is advanced patriarchy blamers, beat about the head and neck with a vast array of thought-stopping cliches — which “transphobe” is.
Hey, Louisa May Alcott, thanks. :)
Heart
A few things:
1)Nobody has been silenced so far. Only Twisty can say “go away”, and Twisty either a) thinks nothing posted here so far is anti-trans crap, or b)is drinking margaritas elsewhere or c) is super annoyed/amused that we went this way with it when we werent kinda supposed to and is riding the silliness out. Either way, you’ve all been free to post your points. And I’ve been free to post mine. Several tiems I’ve made the same substantive point, but so far nobody’s chosen to take me up on it.
2 The point: I’m not saying people should go elsewhere. I’m not even disagreeing that transgenderism is un- or possibly anti-feminist. I just dont think there’s been any legitimate explanation for why transgederism is seen as a direct attack on feminism and calls for extremely tense and bitter responses in way that other individualist, un or anti-feminist behaviors don’t.
3) Another point I’ll bring up for the first time: I’m not sure you can have it both ways. Either MTF’s are “really” men invading womens spaces or FTM’s are abandoning women and accessing male power, but how can it be both?
Wait, but gender is a social construct? Twisty and my mother don’t have wombs, but whatever.
curiosgyrl, that would be Mar Iguana, capital “M,” capital “I.” Clue: You have to hold down that thingy called a “shift” key at the same time you’re pressing a letter key.
Interesting that you’ve gone from calling me hateful, bitter and bigoted to now merely disagreeing with me. Eeeyeah. Carry on.
I’d like to thank SyntheticGenius for her thoughtful, open, honest post about her experience. SG doesn’t jump to any conclusions about what her experience means, or what she ought to do about it if anything — she just says “here’s how it is for me and has been for a long time.” We’re then left to think about what it would be like to have that experience and those feelings, and (for me anyway) about what it would be like to take the experience seriously, not jump down her throat to tell her whether it’s right or wrong, or what it means she “really” is or isn’t, etc.
Anyway, just wanted to give SG a shoutout as her post seemed to have gotten lost in the din.
rad fem argument: merely wrong
tone and emphasis: hateful and bigoted
and PS to Mar Iguana: hateful and bigoted happens. People pointing it out when they think they see it is the only way that ever changes. you know, like the principle that being called racist (rightly or wrongly) is not nearly as bad as being the subject of racism. you’re case is particularly bad because you haven’t made any actual arguments, and you only have your nasty tone going for you. I’m happy that at least now its directed at me and therefore no longer constitues bigoted anti-trans crap.
Heart: as for your story about the movie, sounds to me like politics. Possibly bad politics. I dont know, I haven’t seen the movie.
Right now there are thousands of women across the country who claim to be advocates for women and teaching school-age children that life begins at conception and abortion is wrong. (using weird little plastic fetuses as a visual aid, but that’s netiher here nor there.)
These women have bad politics and I think they are not the advocates they believe they are. I think they are doing women children and feminism a disservice. But theat doesnt make me think that all women or all women who dont have abortions or who dont believe in abortion are outside of feminism or enemies of feminism. Why dont transfolk get that distinction?
oh, and by “get” I meant “deserve” not “understand.”
“The point: I’m not saying people should go elsewhere. I’m not even disagreeing that transgenderism is un- or possibly anti-feminist. I just dont think there’s been any legitimate explanation for why transgederism is seen as a direct attack on feminism and calls for extremely tense and bitter responses in way that other individualist, un or anti-feminist behaviors don’t.”
Transgenderism/transsexualism enforces gender binaries it doesn’t overthrow them the way feminism wants to. It essentialises sex i.e. the idea that sex is an essence that exists inside us rather than simply a physical aspect of our bodies.
I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that postmodernism and transgender have arisen alongside this latest wave of feminism. The whole concept of “woman” is now under attack as never before. When we were safely second class citizens under the power of men there wasn’t much debate, now when we say we are fighting for women’s freedom, we are told there is no such thing as a woman or that if we use the definition of woman that has always existed (a female human being) we are suddenly being essentialist or policing the boundaries of womanhood. You might as well tell someone who calls a tree a tree essentialist, because the logic is pretty much the same.
“Another point I’ll bring up for the first time: I’m not sure you can have it both ways. Either MTF’s are “really†men invading womens spaces or FTM’s are abandoning women and accessing male power, but how can it be both?”
Why can’t it be both? It’s possible to invade women’s space without being a woman, just as it’s possible to access male privilege without being a man, I don’t follow.
One more little thing. Maybe it’s because I don’t pass (I’m very small and baby-faced so I look like a 14 year old boy) as a grown up man, but I am not accessing any male power. Quite the opposite. Truth be told, society barely knows what to do with me, let alone grant me power.
Delphyne, your argument does not compute.
You say: Transgenderism/transsexualism enforces gender binaries it doesn’t overthrow them the way feminism wants them to.
her you seem to be arguing against what I think folks are saying is the idea that gender resides primarily in our bodies and is not a societal construct. Your objection here as stated is that you think trans folk are saying that gender is about bodies.
Yet you also ,in the same post, argue against trans MTF in “womenspace.”
Is this not also saying that gender is about bodies, the very same thing you object to so stridently, above?
â€
In my experience, some trans people view and use gender in ways that do this and some dont, just like some women do and some don’t. In any case, it can’t get worse on the gender bianary/essentialism front than the womb quote up there from presumable non-trans Mars Iguana.
maybe so, but this is a political argument about transpolitics not about trans people. Even if transgenderism is an obviously historical development, that doesn’t make it less socially real for the people that are feeling it. Feminism needs to come up with a politics that responds to the individualism and easy “smash gender!”-ism of some transpolitics and includes the experience of trans folks in a deeper way than simply saying “please stop existing.”
Well perhaps I was being a little intentionally obtuse. Some passing transmen probably do access male power, and a lot who don’t (many of whom dont want to) dont. Transwomen who pass face the violence that women face, if not the same childhood development and treatment. Transwomen who dont pass face more. If you have a radfem analysis of pronstitution as slavery, please explain how all these people who are “really” privledged men end up as sex slaves at such high rates?
Transwomen are not exactly the same as people who’ve been women thier whole lives, but I’d like to see a feminism with enough smarts to deal.
Finally, if you really believe that transgenderism rather than some versions of trans politics are the problem, when does transgenderism become a problem? When its just on the inside like SG who was doing rad fem stuff and feeling trans? or is it the surgeries, clothing etc that is the problem–eg someone like Twisty who had to have a mastectomy and sometimes wears “men’s”clothes and who thus might occasionally get treated like a man, despite not adhereing to transgendered politics?
I’m not saying there’s an easy solution, and am sympathetic to your anti-pomo stance, but I think we can come up with a feminism that fights for all of us that are oppressed by bianary gender and misogyny. Even if not, transgendered folks are just about the least of feminisms problems. We should start with men, and then with the infinitely more massive “I’m not a feminist but” women’s crowd.
“her you seem to be arguing against what I think folks are saying is the idea that gender resides primarily in our bodies and is not a societal construct. Your objection here as stated is that you think trans folk are saying that gender is about bodies.”
I think people are confusing sex and gender. Sex is an immutable physical reality that can’t be changed even with the addition of hormones or surgery. Gender is a social construct, a system of power relations designed to keep men dominant over women.
Re: sex and gender
Biological sex is a continuum of variation, but we tend to base it on whether someone “looks” male or female, mostly whether or not that person has a phallus – which is why there are some people assigned as males who have XX chromosomes and some people assigned as females who have XY chromosomes.
Gender is a social category and something that virtually everyone, regardless of where they lie on the continuum, is categorized into. If gender is a social construct, I would hope that within the category of a woman born woman (leaving aside for the purposes of conciseness transwomen), radical feminists would accept people raised as women regardless of their chromosomes, gonads, hormone levels, etc.
as for the idea that the category of “woman” is under attack–I disagree. Either trans politics will work or it wont. If it will smash gender great! lets go!
But it won’t. Most people are either a man or a woman. We remain safely trapped inside our category and will continue to be oppressed as such. nothing to worry about!
I dont think i am confused about this. this is an okay model for somethings, and works fine wiht my previous arguemnt, but what you think is the immutable physical reality of sex is is not clear from your statement. is it chromosomes?
So, essentially, Delphyne, you are saying that a MTF trans is not, and cannot ever be considered a ‘woman,’ and has no place in feminism, am I right?
According to you, the minimum requirement for a place at the feminist table is being born of the female sex?
Not seeing the difference here between your position and gender essentialism.
And I thought advanced blaming was about overthrowing the societal constructs.
I don’t know how many times I have to say it but gender is a social construct and sex isn’t. Sex exists. It exists in a whole lot of other animals apart from human beings. It is the mechanism that nature created for a whole lot of species to reproduce. It’s something that people and animals are born with and it can’t be changed.
I haven’t said anything about trans people in feminism, it’s up to them whether they take part in it or not.
Gender essentialism is the idea that there are specific characteristics and behaviours attached to a particular sex. That has nothing to do with my position.
Women’s liberation, aka feminism, was created by and for those born female back when “woman” and “female” were one and the same. Now some born male, formerly known as “men”, want to get in on women’s liberation, aka feminism, by calling themselves “women.” For me, “that dog don’t hunt.” I am not fooled.
yes! if we keep all the liberation for ourselves we’ll have the MOST liberation! bwahaahaaaa! Because as we all know there are some people that DESERVE to be kept out of the job market and prostituted, and those people are transwomen! no liberation for you!
holy jeez. I thought the fact female and woman being automatically the same thing was part of the problem. Why are we even talking about sex if gender is the socially meaningful part? Who cares if you cant really change sex (whatever that means)? So what? relevant how?
Well there’s the small fact that a whole lot of men think they can change sex, undergo something called sexual reassignment surgery (as if sex could be reassigned), then start demanding entrance to women only spaces like MichFest or Newnham College Cambridge and also demanding that other women treat them as women rather than the men they are. I’m a separatist so I don’t view women and men in the same way.
Then there’s the other group of men who don’t bother even going as far as surgery but still think they can claim to be women and demand that women treat them accordingly.
“I thought the fact female and woman being automatically the same thing was part of the problem.”
No the problem is that women are regarded as being inferior to men and are treated as such. Attitudes are the problem, not physiology or semantics.
“Woman” and “female” being the same was NEVER part of the problem as the definition of “woman” is (was?) simply “an adult human female.” No problem. The *problem* was that “woman” and “FEMININE” were considered the same. THAT was the oppression. “Woman” and “female” as the same was *never* the oppression.
Female born humans making a movement for themselves was women (female ones) TAKING RESPONSIBILITY for ourselves and our status in the world, something I was always told I should do.
As for transfolks having NO LIBERATION unless women do it for them, that is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS.
I don’t think it’s that easy to say gender=social construct, sex=reality. We were talking the other day about intersex issues (and I’m not asserting anything about intersex and transexuals, or any relationship between them, I mean to add to the conversation about the category of sex here),and with growing awareness of the commonality of people being born intersex, I think there is a growing recognition that the immutability of sex is at the very least informed by social constructions.
Sure, most people are male or female. Their exterior bodies match their chromosomes, and that’s nice and easy for them. But if 1 in 1000 people are born with this not being the case, it seems that the binary category of sex is not so easily asserted as material fact. 2 2=4, but male female does not equal all of humanity– unless you are willing to give a social construction to what a male or a female is in these grayer areas (Is it chromosomes? Physical features? The presence of a hyster and the ensuing hysteria?).
Given this difficulty, it seems like it might only be political to insist upon a static nature of sex and a fluid nature of gender.
delphyne, that is semantics. “woman” is an inferior social category the characteristics of which are commonly believed to derive inherent qualities of female people. As feminists, we know that inferiority does not, in fact, derive from female sex, but from social relations of power.
women dont have to do liberation for transpeople, but we shouldn’t shit on them or tell them they are “really” men or all the crap that you just did. And since we all need liberation from the patriarchy, we should find a way to work together. the patriarchy is big and bad bad and really hard to get rid of.
delphyne:
A bunch of men are undergoing surgery so they can attend a music festival?! I heard the bands are really good, but that’s some mad fandom, that is.
delphyne, many people who agree with your sex/gender distinciton call themselve transGENDER for that reason. Whether or not there is some immutable sex that exists, who cares? what significance does that have if gender is the socially meaningful category? Clearly, gender is mutable, and changes over time anywya, whether you want it to or not.
As for women-only spaces, If I was a transwomen, I would tell you to keep your spaces, they sound really bad. In fact, I feel that way anyway. I mean, seriously? This is the reason that trans people–rather than men with all their male privledge in tact, who run the country, make sexist law, are women’s bosses, ec—are the enemy of feminism?
Seriously. And none of you have responded to the prostitution question. Why is it ok for transwomen to be subject to that? Can you really argue that women and transwomen have no oppression in common? Give me a break.
SusanM :)
“I think there is a growing recognition that the immutability of sex is at the very least informed by social constructions.”
Immutable means unchanging. If someone is born male, their sex cannot be changed, if someone is born female their sex cannot be changed and if someone is born intersex their sex cannot be changed. That has nothing to do with society and everything to do with physical reality.
“A bunch of men are undergoing surgery so they can attend a music festival?! I heard the bands are really good, but that’s some mad fandom, that is.”
You know fine well I didn’t argue that.
delphyne, seriously, what physical reality? are you talking about chromosomes?
It just doesn’t matter. I guess there is really nothing left to say. (Though, Delphyne, just replace “nature” with “god” in your argument and you could pass for James Dobson. Way to go!) People who are against “trans-politics” are going to keep arguing against trans-people, keeping up the binary gender system, how very feminist! And somehow, whether you know me or not, I am seeking to reinforce it too! And here I thought I wasn’t. Thanks for pointing that out! I’ll go out and buy some more skirts and makeup. I’d hate to disappoint the haters here.
Here’s an idea… don’t stereotype people.
I mean I assume I am xx, but I’ve never checked.
That’s one beautiful bug.
I’m not keeping up any binary gender system. The whole of my radical feminism is about ending gender.
delphyn, I don’t think anyone is dismissing your argument out of hand. You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into it, and if “sex” is at the crux of the matter for you, I’m interested as to how you define it. If you do so, we might better understand your position.
Catherine Martell wrote above: Delphyne, you seem very confident about the “physical reality†of sex. Could you enlighten me as to exactly what your definition of a woman is? I don’t mean to be facetious; I’m genuinely interested as to whether anyone can do this. Medical science currently can’t. Sex is determined in humans by the balance of between six or eight indicators, none of which is decisive.
I really hope that the point of feminism is not to prevent people from calling themselves women. I really hope that the goal of feminism is to liberate people who suffer from violence and oppression. Transgendered individuals are subject to sexualized violence and oppression; they too deserve liberation from that violence.
When I hear feminists protesting that transwomen aren’t “real women” I always think of Sojourner Truth and why she had to make her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech in 1851.
For all the people who don’t think sex exists, ask yourself this – how did you get here? You didn’t have two male parents or two female parents, or two parents with no sex at all did you?
We could talk ourselves out of anything. I mean how do we know the world exists, how do we know we’re not all just a figment of our imaginations? How do you know a tree is a tree, I mean a lot of trees look like bushes, how can you be sure?
The fact that transsexualism/transgender has been created wholly around the fact that two sexes exists and people are trying to put themselves into one box or the other, doesn’t seem to be a problem, but mentioning that those sexes have a prior physical reality, does.
I just dont think there’s been any legitimate explanation for why transgederism is seen as a direct attack on feminism and calls for extremely tense and bitter responses in way that other individualist, un or anti-feminist behaviors don’t.
One reason transgenderism is seen as a direct attack on feminism is, many transgendered persons — online in particular — relentlessly attack feminists, that is, individual feminists, personally, and feminist thought, work, herstory and activism as well.
Nobody transitions to attend Michfest or any music festival. But Michfest has become a site of contention because people like those in the paragraph above this one — who are not part of the Michfest community, know nothing about it, and are not vested in it — have attacked it in every conceivable way, including with egregious, destructive and really hateful lies about it online, for years now.
Beyond that, Michfest is not a “music festival.” It is what remains of lesbian feminist women’s culture, and in particular, lesbian separatist women’s culture. Music is one part of that, and not at all what is most central to it.
I don’t get the comparison someone up there a ways made of transgender folks insisting that Frameline boycott the work of a brilliant lesbian feminist playwright (an endangered and struggling-to-survive group of feminist women) — and being successful in that endeavor — with anti-reproductive choice teachers, other than that both groups, in my opinion, stand opposed to the liberation of women in their behaviors.
What I am saying is, a very vocal group of mostly-online transgender activists successfully petitioned Frameline to drop the showing of a film, without having even seen the film, because a few people shouted, “Transphobe” loudly enough. I recently read commentary by a woman who was IN the film. She says this is in no way a transphobic film, and she is in no way a transphobe. My response here went to this issue of silencing which boycotting, or demanding that a film not be shown, as I’ve just described is. Raven asked how it was that Virago was there within seconds to rhetorically clobber her in a silencing way. I responded that silencing is the order of the day in my experience when it comes to being female-centered, and viewing all of life, and all of political activism in a female-centered way.
Heart
“Yes, I suggest that all who share the viewpoint of Raven/Artemis, Mar Iguana, and LMA pack up their opinions and head on over to the suggested forum.â€
Well that’s a problem isn’t it? Advanced patriarchy blaming goes on at this blog and the radical feminist analysis of transexualism is advanced patriarchy blaming.-delphyn
I have seen precious little “radical feminist analysis” coming from that source, delphyn.
One of the reasons I’m interested in your point of view is that I think you are engaging in radical feminist analysis and I am keenly interested in why and how you come to your conclusions because we are so opposed on this issue. Because I respect your views on many, many other subjects, and the effort you put into your analyis, I’m willing to listen and engage. But I don’t think that anyone who comes in flying a radfem banner gets a free pass to spout bigoted, anti-trans crap.
nobody is denying the reality of sexual reproduction. sexual reproduction does not, however, soley define female sex (those who are intentionally or unintentionally infertile, post-meopausal, prepubescent or post-surgical femmale people who for example make up most female people and most women at any given time). Interestingly, sexual reproduction IS at the heart of traditionally defined femininity.
If we didn’t have reproduction, we wouldn’t have sex, that’s what those organs are for. Well, apart from the clitoris which is for fun. :)
I have some questions one of which maybe I ought to ask my dad but I hesitate to for a number of reasons, one of which is that my understanding of transsexuality/transgenderism is not as important to me as my dad knowing that he doesn’t need to justify himself to me, so I’ll put them to you instead. Hopefully, seeing as we have people here who are both better educated than me and who are coming from a lot different positions someone will be able to answer them for me.
Number one, when a person says they have always felt they were a man/boy/woman/girl, what do they mean? Perhaps that’s best answered by someone who has felt that way. Number two, in my own use and understanding of the language, I consider woman to mean a female human, man to mean a male human, so I use man and woman to describe sex rather than gender, unless, that is, I know the other person doesn’t use them that way. My dad uses them to describe gender. That’s a matter of words. The question I want to ask is about the nature of sex. Are all people either XX or XY including inter-sexed people? Is XX or XY the only thing that decides a person’s sex (in terms of their body)? The other thing I want to ask is to do with inter-sexed people (I hope that’s the right word). Is it that it’s a case of an accident in their development in the womb? I mean, someone said that sex is not binary, is it fair to say that humans are meant to be male or female biologically but sometimes things don’t go to plan, or does that simply reveal my ignorance? I don’t intend to be offensive, I’m asking in the hope that someone who knows a bit more can help me to understand better. Sorry if this is derailing.
heart, my point up there was that the trans people you dont like, whatever else they are, are a tiny minority of transpeople that most transpeople have never heard of. Go ahead and dont like them, but leave the rest of transpeople out of it.
I actually feel enormous gushy admiration and pride for Virago, curiousgyrl, Catherine Martell, Mireille, V, SyntheticGenius and quite a few others, but I am constrained by the B. Dagger code of repression to the big dyke chin nod.
Virago, the point of feminism is not to “prevent anyone from calling themselves a woman,” — and I think that and the reference to Michfest, whoever made it — were cheap shots and really unproductive. But that issue, the issue of “preventing someone from calling themselves a woman” seems to be near and dear to the heart of those who are who are transgendered-person-centered, as opposed to female-centered. Note: I don’t condemn anybody for being transgendered-person-centered. We all gotta do what we gotta do. But I WILL condemn anyone who tells me female-centered persons are wrong to be female-centered and we ought to be somebody-else-centered. Because as females, we gotta do what we gotta do,too.
You know what? I could care less who calls themselves whatever they call themselves, whatever, I could not care less, I will call you whatever you (rhetorical “you”) say. But this one thing I know: so long as females are born second-class citizens, so long as we are the class which from the moment of our birth grows up knowing, being forced to know, that we are expected to sexually, ritually, slavishly serve those born male, we will need words which adequately and accurately describe the class we are talking about. “Woman” is such a word, though it has nearly successfully been gutted of meaning. “Female” is also such a word; that word still means something so far.
If you were born male — not talking about intersex, that is a tiny tiny tiny percentage of people and everybody here knows it — but if the doctor said, when you were born, “it’s a boy,” then you did not come into the world, as females have, expecting to, for example, experience FGM, expecting to be murdered because you refused the male partner your community was forcing on you, expecting to be sold into marriage at the age of 13 to someone 50 or 60, expected to prostitute yourself, whether by selling yourself to one man or hundreds of men, expecting to see visual representations of you in media which amount to hate speech, expecting to spend all of your life having to fear rape at the hands of males, knowing if you are raped, you won’t be believed, taught to fear male deities and view yourself as dirty because you bleed and aren’t male, taught that your body is revolting and disgusting to the degree it does not conform to the imagery which amounts to hate speech which surrounds you all of your life, expecting to be paid half or three-fourths as much as men, expecting to do most of the caregiving the world requires, needing to protect yourself against unwanted pregnancy and forced childbirth, and a host of other oppressions which are visited on those people born female, and by female I mean, when you were born, the person who caught you said, “It’s a girl.”
Those of us born into this class remain an oppressed and subordinated people group. We must retain the rights to language which identifies us and by way of which we communicate the facts of our subordination until our subordination ends.
Heart
actually, if you think about it, for most oft he people you call men or woemn, you most likely dont know what their sex is. You believe you do because of their gender. I’m not saying you’re necessarily drawing the wrong conclusions, just making an epistemological point.
no, there are other possibilities like XXY and apparently now they’ve found some folks with combinations of four, eg XXYY XXXY. These are pretty rare.
This is a matter of interepretation. In one kind of intersex, Some fetuses with XY chromosomes never become “masculinized” (due to lack of the right hormone bath or lack of sensitivity to hormones) in the womb, so are born wiht “female” genitals, but will infertile. People wiht XY or XX can be born wiht “ambiguous” genitals, with something between a clit and a penis size-wise. Or undescended testicles. Or a phallus and a vaginal opening.
Sorry if that was too graphic. But the possibilites are endless. I imagine that a lot of people do not want to consideres the possibilties “mistakes” on the way to being a man or a woman but that some do think of it that way.
Interestingly, sexual reproduction IS at the heart of traditionally defined femininity.
At the heart of traditionally defined femininity is, each man gets to own hisself a woman, “woman” being those people who have the babies.
It isn’t sexual reproduction which is at the heart of traditionally defined femininity, it is male heterosupremacy. Male heterosupremacists created the subordinating sexual binary under which we now labor; male control of sexual reproduction is an important part of that but it is only one part.
Heart
batting my eyes in your general direction b.dagger :)
Layla – when my son was 3, he had a friend, a boy, who felt he was a girl. It was fascinating – his mother was very calm about it, and accepted that part of him really gracefully, which really endeared her to me. It wasn’t like he was playing at being a girl, it obviously came right from his heart, and I felt that he would probably have surgery, etc., when he got old enough. They moved away when he was 4. I’m sure the rest of his childhood has not been easy – I’m sure his male “peers” do not consider him one of them, the ruling class. It would be sad if he were an outcast no matter where he went.
That women are defined this way and required to fulfill this definition is at the heart of womens oppression, aka femininity which is, as you say a result of male heterosupremacy or the patriarchy or whatever you want to call it.
women being defined by sexual reproduction is part of the problem.
not sure that we’re disagreeing, but you can go ahead and try again :)
layla I responded at length to you, but bad words got me held up in mod
heart, my point up there was that the trans people you dont like, whatever else they are, are a tiny minority of transpeople that most transpeople have never heard of. Go ahead and dont like them, but leave the rest of transpeople out of it.
And this isn’t about who I do or don’t “like”, curious gyrl. This has nothing to do with who “likes” whomever. (And I think most transpeople who have any political consciousness at all *have* probably heard of Susan Stryker, who was front and center in the drive to silence Catherine Crouch and those who were in her play and supported her.)
This “tiny minority” of transpeople most transpeople have never heard of has managed to keep hundreds, maybe thousands of people, from enjoying the work of a brilliant feminist filmmaker. That’s big. That’s huge.
And in my opinion, it is really low. If a “tiny minority” of people acts in ways which have damaging repercussions for brilliant feminist lesbian playwrights, for lesbian feminists, for feminist women in general, and for a film-watching public, then that’s going to get called out by some of us, at least, because we are feminists. That has nothing to do with who we do or do not “like.” That has to do with caring about female people.
Heart
Ok, Heart. Call Susan Stryker out. Be my guest. I dont care. But I dotn see how this situation is relevant to the question of whether the EXISTENCE of trans people is an assault on feminism. All you’ve demonstrated if your’re right, is what we already knew and was in Twisty’s oringinal post: Some trans people are anti-feminist. So what? Way more women are anti-feminist, certainly in numbers and probably in percentage as well.
Well, Heart, I agree with you as far as your eloquent description of the pervasiveness and extremity of the oppression involved in being born female.
BUT it’s cornerstone of my personal ethics to, as much as possible, avoid contributing to the hurts piled on to any individual member of an oppressed class.
So if taking a political stand, no matter how outwardly righteous (in the best sense of the term) involves my adding to oppression (the targeting for destruction or subordination) of a person ,then I don’t see how I can do that.
How come you don’t address anybody’s points curiousgyrl but keep trying to make people justify themselves to you?
I’d like you to address this -
“The fact that transsexualism/transgender has been created wholly around the fact that two sexes exists and people are trying to put themselves into one box or the other, doesn’t seem to be a problem, but mentioning that those sexes have a prior physical reality, does.”
Why does sex cease to exist when radical feminists are discussing it, but as soon as a man says he feels like he is the “wrong” sex, sex becomes real again? How can he be the “wrong” sex when the right one according to you, doesn’t exist? Why aren’t you interogating him as to what he means by sex?
Curiousgyrl, I don’t think we are going to end male dominance and female subordination by redefining the word “woman.” You don’t, as someone else I respect said, deconstruct power relations by shifting the markers around in your head.
Consider this in the context of any other subordinated group: do we broaden the meaning of the word “disabled” to include non-disabled people, then call that somehow subversive, as though to change the meaning of the word “disabled” actually changes anything so far as the difficulties deaf people face in a hearing world? Do we broaden the meaning of the word “elderly” to include the young, as though changing the meaning of the word “elderly” changes anything so far as the elderly’s actual, material difficulties in an ageist world? Do we broaden the meaning of the word “poor” to include the wealthy, as though including the wealthy among the poor changes anything at all for the poor? In fact, broadening the word in this way makes the difficulties of those who are actually subordinated less visible and less easy to identify and name. It’s no different with the words women use to define and describe our own lived reality in the world.
Heart
Sorry, typo, I meant to write:
Heart
You know, frankly, I’m a little tired of the gender-privileged holding forth on the issue of what constitutes a valid, ethical and responsible gender (specifically, trans) experience. While I know of a few non-trans people who get it, they are few and far between, and most aren’t qualified to make any judgements. To me this is very much like straight people talking about what it’s like to be queer: until you’ve experienced it, you can’t understand it.
While I do appreciate and agree with the critique of some trans people who fall into the stereotypical behaviours they feel are expected of them, I think we all need to remember where that comes from. If you’ve spent your whole life not fitting in, and desperately wanting to find a place to belong, I think it’s understandable that you might go a little overboard when you finally get a chance to fill the spot. I’m not justifying it, because I think we all need to look critically at our own actions, but can’t we be a little more sympathetic? When there are non-trans straight women who don’t “get” feminism, we try to educate them. Why would we not do the same for trans women?
I’m also tired of people who point at trans activism or outspokenness and scream “male privilege!” I’m not sure the last time you experienced what it was like to live as a trans woman, but privilege of any kind is about the last thing on the shopping list that you take to the local social market. Besides, I know a lot of flaming jerks who are non-trans women. Arseholiness knows no gender boundaries.
Heart, as I’ve said several times above, I agree, in part. I dont think transgenderism is a strategy for ending patriarchy. Lots of other things that people do also aren’t strategies for ending patriarchy. Lots of things I do aren’t. I dont think attending Michigan or getting manicures will help take down women’s oppression either. The fact that someone is a transgendered person isnt a reason to be hostile and attacking.
The fact that we do them doesn’t mean we cant ALSO pursues strategies to combat sexualized violence, the wage gap, free childcare, stopping DV,etc etc.
I belive that keeping transgendered women out of the club is ALSO not a strategy for ending patriarchal oppression. Noticing the sexualized violence against transwomen doesnt preclude recognizing the same when its happend to me. I’m not saying that transwomen have exactly the same experiences as I’ve had, but then again I’m white and so I have a different experience of sexism and oppression than a lot of women who aren’t. I’m fairly young, so my experience is different than women who are older. But there’s room for all of us in, say, stopping rape.
Patti, thanks for sharing your story of the child you knew who felt he was a girl. I hope you don’t think I would want to add to his suffering or exclusion. I guess my question is, if there were no word for boy or girl, what would he be saying he felt?
But, Heart, definitions of varying classes have shifted with changing conditions, in ways that are completely rational.
A century ago, 55-60 was considered ‘elderly.” Now, due to improved health care and longer life expectancies, it no longer is.
30 years ago, “autism” was synonymous with extremely limited verbal abilities, cognitive deficits (with the exceptions of savant abilities), and nearly no ability to interact or demonstrate affection. Now the class has expanded to include a broader spectrum of social/interactive/sensory/linguistic deficits and differences.
And though I am neurotypical, I can spot a person with an autistic spectrum disorder a mile off–in other words, broadening the category hasn’t lessened my ability to distinguish ASD from nerotypical.
Which doesn’t mean that I am like any of those folk from the breastbeating/antivaccine/prochelation organization. Gawd forbid! It means I am more aware and sensitive to my interactions.
So the argument that broading a class means eliminating categories doesn’t hold water for me.
I have addressed this several times. To quote myself:
and
To restate: is my position that some transgendered people understand sex and gender in the reactionary, binary way that you describe. Many, including the folks who’ve commented here, don’t. I dont think that transgenderism as a practice is always predicated on bianary reactionary understandings of gender.
In addition, many women (including some here) have a reactionary bianary understanding of sex and gender. Some women don’t share that understanding
The fact that some women have crappy analysis of gender is not a reason to deny their existence. Similarly, that some trans people have crappy politics is also not a reason to ask them not to exist.
Thalia, I believe I know exactly what you are talking about, and it drives me stark raving annoyed. I spend much time with them, nuff said.
When/if they get sexually assaulted, they assume it’s because their tranni slip was showing, and they’re offended because “tg’s are once again being discriminated against”. It never fucking occurs to them that they were assualted because they are female living under patriarchy.
You would think that coming from a male priviledged background that they would more easily discern the unequal power dynamics of gender, but it works just the opposite. Patriarchy is just a word in a dictionary to them. Does.Not.Compute.
It is for this reason alone that I am in favor of excluding them from women-only space. While I’m sure there are “natural-born” women who are unaware of the more subtle effects of gender expectations and discriminations, the mtf seem to miss it all. What’s the point of including them, when they don’t get the point of exclusion in the first place?
From the link Catherine Martell posted:
You become a woman by being treated as one of the tribe. Nothing else is essential.
If gender constructs didn’t exist, then they wouldn’t have need to hack off body parts or wear gender uniforms. But instead of deconstructing the substance of patriarchy, they construct superficial solutions.
Sorry, Twisty. Support of the oppressed shouldn’t be conditional, but neither should it be free of critical analysis. There’s a fine line in there somewhere.
They are very fine people, and I wish them peace and all good things.
Gah.
I’d argue that the nature(sex)/culture(gender) distinction is itself an artificial creation, subject to perpetual redefinition. I realise that isn’t the point of view of most commenters here, though I believe Twisty wrote something similar at 6.27pm.
Nonetheless, I don’t think you have to agree with me on that to see comments such as
as incredibly insulting and reductive to the motives of transpeople. Sufficiently insulting and reductive to qualify as ‘bigoted anti-trans crap’, in fact. How on earth can you object to rude generalisations about class:woman and think that the same rhetorical strategy applied to another group of people is reasonable?
“if the doctor said, when you were born, “it’s a boy,†then you did not come into the world, as females have, expecting to, for example, experience FGM, expecting to be murdered because you refused the male partner your community was forcing on you, expecting to be sold into marriage at the age of 13 to someone 50 or 60, expected to prostitute yourself, whether by selling yourself to one man or hundreds of men…”
Ok, true enough. I was never forced to marry anyone. However, IU doubt you ever were either. In fact, I would guess very few American women ever had to worry about being sold into marriage. So are non-American women more feminist because they face harsher oppression? Should women who have faced those things exclude you because you didn’t? I am not trying to discount the all too real issues that women face that I never did. But just because I was not directly subjected to them does not mean I can’t fight them.
I know that this site focuses on blaming the patriarchy and the goal is smashing that oppression. Trans issues are not the point of this site, and honestly, I avoid trans issues personally. (It’s complicated…) But I think the point is still to oppose oppression, and not redirect it.
I read about the Catherine Crouch issue at Pandagon. I didn’t personally understand the uproar. The film was obviously not aimed at trans issues and I think it’s sort of selfish and ridiculous for someone to latch onto something that was obviously making a point for women and lesbians and turn it into a trans issue. It wasn’t right.
Anyway…
Sorry for serial posting – just realised I forgot to say thank you to curiousgyrl for her posts.
liss, I’m actually with you on that nature:culture thing, but thought better of getting into it.
mAndrea: I know what you mean! I hate it when rape victims just dont respond correctly to their rape! stupid bitches.
“To restate: is my position that some transgendered people understand sex and gender in the reactionary, binary way that you describe. Many, including the folks who’ve commented here, don’t. I dont think that transgenderism as a practice is always predicated on bianary reactionary understandings of gender.
In addition, many women (including some here) have a reactionary bianary understanding of sex and gender. Some women don’t share that understanding
The fact that some women have crappy analysis of gender is not a reason to deny their existence. Similarly, that some trans people have crappy politics is also not a reason to ask them not to exist.”
I think you are still mixing up sex and gender. I don’t know if it’s because you don’t understand the difference or whether it’s just becasue it suits your arguments at various points to do so.
MTF trans are demanding to be treated as women and called women. Correct me if I’m wrong about this. They are expecting to join the sex they weren’t born into and can’t become. This isn’t about gender it’s about sex. That’s why they undertake so-called sex change surgery – http://www.srsmiami.com/ (look at the lovely graphic they’ve got going on there).
If it were about gender, MTF trans would actually stay M and simply take on the accoutrements of feminity that they feel suit them. That would indeed undermine gender as it would highlight it very strongly for the social construction that it is.
“liss, I’m actually with you on that nature:culture thing, but thought better of getting into it.”
Postmodernism has got a lot to answer for.
A century ago, 55-60 was considered ‘elderly.†Now, due to improved health care and longer life expectancies, it no longer is.
When women’s status in the world has similarly improved, I think it might make sense to think about broadening the class. I don’t think that day has come. Do you?
30 years ago, “autism†was synonymous with extremely limited verbal abilities, cognitive deficits (with the exceptions of savant abilities), and nearly no ability to interact or demonstrate affection. Now the class has expanded to include a broader spectrum of social/interactive/sensory/linguistic deficits and differences.
And though I am neurotypical, I can spot a person with an autistic spectrum disorder a mile off–in other words, broadening the category hasn’t lessened my ability to distinguish ASD from nerotypical.
V., the point is not to “distinguish” women from men on the basis of how people look or present. The point is the OPPOSITE of that. There are lots of females that are read as male all of the time, and that is just FINE. There is no reason to be concerned about that, from the standpoint of politics. It is of no concern how someone is or is not “read”. Again, the issues are opposite of that.
What is of concern is so redefining the category “woman” that subordinated people (females) do not have words with which to mount a challenge to those specifically subordinating them *because* they are females (males.)
So the argument that broading a class means eliminating categories doesn’t hold water for me.
There’s no problem with broadening a class if the class is no longer being subordinated. In fact, you’ve got the cart before the horse there. As subordination lessens and finally ends, the class will unavoidably broaden and ultimately there will be no class at all. In other words, if a male, a female, can live, do, be whatever, present, however, if there is no subordination on the basis of sex, then there will be no more gender binary– no “woman”, no “man.” But this isn’t a revolution that is going to happen by fiat, by people broadening the definition while gender subordination continues to exist. That would be like, say, 100 years ago, moving the marker for “elderly” from 55-80, even though, in fact, lots of people got sick and died at 55. It would obscure the realities of being 55.
What is missing in your analysis of the state of women is,I think, the fact females are STILL SUBORDINATED to males, right now, this moment. We haven’t made all that much progress, especially on a global scale.
Heart
I don’t see why the categories of men and women won’t exist after the revolution. Female and male already exist in animals without any social constructions imposed upon them. Whilst reproduction in its present form exists, sex will exist.
Mireille, the issue (for the purposes of this discussion anyway) is not who is “more oppressed” than whom so far as females worldwide. The issue is that all of those oppressions I named in the comment you quoted are oppressions female people suffer at the hands of male people/institutions/laws. Males do not suffer any of those oppressions at the hands of females. It’s this reality that gets obscured when people start moving the markers around in their heads, as though that solves the problem of sexist oppression.
Heart
Delphyne, you keep taking individual examples and broadening them to a whole group of people. I’ve never see the srsmiami site before. And on the site itself it refers to the surgery as “gender reassignment surgery”. Just a semantic argument, but thought I’d put it out there.
And as far as the surgery itself… Why did I get it? It wasn’t to be more feminine. It wasn’t a whim or some sort of desire for deviant sexual experiences. The surgery did not change who I essentially am. But I did it because it was the right thing for me to do. I had a growth that I was not comfortable with. You assume that the only reason to have the surgery is to become a woman… Whereas personally, I feel, and I only speak of my own personal experience and nobody else’s, it was akin to having a non-cancerous tumor removed, or a superfluous nipple or an extra finger. If there is any negative attribute to connect to it, it would be personal vanity, not oppression or co-opting.
delphyne, I think the categories “female” and “male” will exist post-revolution, but not the categories “man” and “woman,” which I believe are socially constructed categories, “man” equalling dominant, “woman” equalling subordinate.
Heart
its actually not postmodernism but 70s feminist anthropology that put the squash on the patriarchal nature:culture distinction. But its really not that relevant.
There is physical reality, sexual reproduction exists, people have chromosomes, hormones and genitals. I’m not a postmoderninst, its just that the world is complex. These things interact in different ways, and noe of them explain why women are oppressed by men in the ways that we are.
That said, think sex/gender is a fine model for alot things. I wil use it the way you’ve described (sex=physical reality, gender==social reality) from here on out. Your position is that MTF’s are always and forever ’sexed’ male, regardless of surgery hormones etc–if thats true, they have changed gender, not sex in your analysis. My question is, who cares if they are always and forever ’sexed’ male? What relevance does that have?
In reality, of course, some people get surgery and some don’t. Some people udnerstand themselves as transsexual, some people see themselves as transgendered. I of course have positions on which of these are the ‘best’ understandings that are compatible with feminism, but consideration of these is not my task at the moment.
B Dagger Lee, Your comment made my tiny, little, bitter-as-black-coffee heart flutter a bit. Thought it might be a cardiac infarction–but, no, it was pure B Dagger Lee.
I see above that Heart has called me “transgendered-person-centered” (as opposed, apparently, to “female-centered”). Good one. Kind of reminds me of back in the day when whites fighting for civil rights were called “n***** lovers.”
And yet, I am still trans-friendly. Go figure.
Heart: a lot of the experiences you describe are also experienced by transwomen, transmen, and male children at the hands of men. nothing about trans suggests that women are the oppressive class.
For example:
expecting to be sold … at the age of 13 to someone 50 or 60, expected to prostitute yourself, whether by selling yourself to one man or hundreds of men, expecting to see visual representations of you in media which amount to hate speech, expecting to spend all of your life having to fear rape at the hands of males, knowing if you are raped, you won’t be believed, taught to fear male deities and view yourself as dirty, expecting to be paid half or three-fourths as much as men..
IBTP and want it to stop.
Heart, I am totally in agreement with you insofar as the the oppression and the subordination of woment worldwide. I agree with you about the state of the revolution.
But I suppose I see most MTF trans folk as wanting to ‘trade down,’–that is move from a priviledged status (male) to being a member of an oppressed class.
I figure anyone who is willing to do that is scoring points with me.
If you can show me ( other than the few situations you cited earlier) how the very small number of mtf transwomen are endangering feminism, you’ll have a more persuasive argument. At least with me.
“Your position is that MTF’s are always and forever ’sexed’ male, regardless of surgery hormones etc–if thats true, they have changed gender, not sex in your analysis.”
How could I think that someone could change gender when I don’t believe gender actually exists? SRS and hormones have effects on someone’s body, they don’t change what that body actually is. If someone gave a bull surgery and fed it some hormones would you believe it had beome a cow? And if not why do you believe it about human beings?
“My question is, who cares if they are always and forever ’sexed’ male? What relevance does that have?”
Well the fact that men have been oppressing women for millenia now might have something to do with it. Radical feminism and all that.
“In reality, of course, some people get surgery and some don’t. Some people udnerstand themselves as transsexual, some people see themselves as transgendered. I of course have positions on which of these are the ‘best’ understandings that are compatible with feminism, but consideration of these is not my task at the moment.”
Which completely avoids my point regarding men deciding that because they feel that they are women that they therefore must be and demanding that the world ought to agree with them.
I’d better leave it there as I’ve probably said more than enough. It’s quite clear that there can be no agreement as we don’t even seem to be using fundamental terms in the same way.
I’m going to get a life in a minute I swear, but one analogy:
I think the gay marriage movment reinforces messed up, antifeminist institutions of marriage and monogamy. But I dont think that means that all lesbians and gays should get the hell out of feminism or constitute an attack on feminism.
yeah, we dont seem to be using terms in the same way. Socially constructed things like gender arent non-existant things in my book. The fact that i’m stuck as a woman is social construct and central to myh lived experience.
I love the cattle analogy. that always says feminist to me! I can assure you, though, that if a bull tells me he is really a cow, I will take a moment to listen to what he has to say!
Heart,
My point wasn’t to compare the egregiousness of the oppression different groups face. The point was, just because an individual does not face a particular form of oppression doesn’t mean that that individual cannot recognize it as such and work against it. I may not be able to understand what it is like to face a particular issue, but I can empathize, and I can do what is in my power to do to fight it.
I am not trying to insert myself into a group that does not want me. I consider myself feminist, and there are feminists that will embrace me and there are feminists that will exclude me. I’ll do what I can with those that want me to help. For those who don’t, I’m sorry they don’t think I can help them, but I won’t out of spite do anything to hurt their cause. I will still help where I can whether they want to recognize it or not.
I don’t often give my opinions in this forum, particularly when I know I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I read, I learn, I hope to become a better human being. And with this thread in particular I feel my contributions are valid and on point. I have given up on trying to change anyone’s mind, but there are transsexual women out there that are not about bringing attention on themselves and trying to assert they have experienced the same things as cisgendered women.
Personally, I don’t think much about trans issues except when they intersect with my life, and that doesn’t really happen much any more. But I do try to keep involved in feminist issues. I am still learning; I will always be learning. But why do my opinions have to be ignored or disregarded? I have not had the same life experience as other women, but women have had different experiences from other women, too.
According to Delphyne, we are “interrogating the text from the wrong perspective.”
Well, Delphyne, I daresay we understand your terms well enough. I would say that most of us disagree with your premise that sex is binary, while others of us don’t see that your argument logically proceed from your use of your terms.
I should state that the quote in my jprevious post is not Delphyn’s abut stems from a rather well-known (in some circles) internet argument.
V. If you can show me ( other than the few situations you cited earlier) how the very small number of mtf transwomen are endangering feminism
V, I can’t do that, because I don’t believe the very small number of mtf transwomen ARE endangering feminism.
I believe it is the gigantic, rich, overwhelmingly white male heterosupremacist institutions of medicine, psychology, pharmacology, academia, law, media, entertainment, and fundamentalist religion which are responsible for the creation of the theories and mechanisms by way of which men view theoretically “trading down” via various presentations/surgeries/body modifications as a legitimate and rational response to the suffocations of an oppressive gender binary, and by way of which women see theoretically “trading up” surgically as a legitimate and rational response to the suffocations of that same oppressive binary, as endangering — to women, to men, to males, to females, to feminism. Beyond that, the trading down and trading up don’t “work.” All of this “trading up and down” just creates a new category of human beings to be oppressed in ever new and improved ways by the system which provided the mechanisms by way of which the category was created in the first place, because it’s all about subordination. The creation of the category “man” is about dominance. The creation of the category “woman” is about subordination. The creation of the category “transgender” is also about subordination– again, to men.
Transgendered persons are not my enemy. They’re doing the best they can, just like we all are. Male heterosupremacy and its institutions as I’ve listed them, which prescribe life-threatening, life-changing, obscenely-exorbitantly-priced surgeries, drugs, and body modifications as an answer to the discomforts and oppressions of the gender binary: these are my enemy.
As to males/boys being oppressed in some of the ways I listed in which females are oppressed, this is true, but it isn’t relevant. The oppressors are not females whether the oppressed are females (which they overwhelmingly are) or males. The oppressors are males and their institutions.
Heart
“If gender constructs didn’t exist, then they wouldn’t have need to hack off body parts or wear gender uniforms. But instead of deconstructing the substance of patriarchy, they construct superficial solutions.”
Interesting. I think that this raises the possibility that identity has at least some biological component. I realize it might shape up to be an inconvenient truth (sorry), but I think it’s probably better to deal with evidence than to dismiss it because it doesn’t fit our current model.
For the record, I am very far from a biological essentialist, but any hypothesis we have about the origin of gender has to explain all of the data.
V, I can’t do that, because I don’t believe the very small number of mtf transwomen ARE endangering feminism.
I will say this, though: feminism, particularly radical feminism, is the target of ALL of the groups I’ve listed in my post above, AND of visible, vocal, MTF transwomen as well. We are easy to target. We are easy to attack. Much easier than all of those powerful institutions I’ve listed, much easier than male heterosupremacy itself. In fact, it’s male heterosupremacy, patriarchy, which is to be blamed for the strife between radical feminists and transgendered anti-radfems and their allies.
Heart
A thought suddenly came to me. If I can’t help feminists because I was born male (per the birth certificate, at least), then I assume that cisgendered males cannot either. And if that’s the case, you will never overcome patriarchy. The only solution is segregation of the sexes. I mean, if men cannot recognize their oppression for what it is, it will never end. If you don’t want my help, it’s your right to refuse it, but then all you can do is preach to the converted and you will never exert any influence outside of your inner circle. If you want to ever effect any sort of meaningful change, you will have to accept the base of support for your cause is going to have to expand.
Virago – I see above that Heart has called me “transgendered-person-centered†(as opposed, apparently, to “female-centeredâ€). Good one. Kind of reminds me of back in the day when whites fighting for civil rights were called “n***** lovers.â€
It’s not anything like that, I am tired of feminists bringing racism into a discussion that does not compare nor have anything to do with it. How you can put them on the same level is beyond me.
To me, the problem isn’t that transwomen or transmen endanger feminism through their individual choices to transition–the problem is more that the idelogy around transgender politics suggests that the experience of being supremely unhappy in one’s gender role is the result of a biological mismatch (between one’s bio sex and one’s “true” gender). The theory is that nontransgender people feel a match between their sex and our gender and have no problems arising from gender issues. It seems to me instead that LOTS of people are unhappy in their gender roles, but many choose another way, such as feminist work to change narrow prescriptions about what one should or should not do based on one’s sex. And many just feel quietly unhappy and live their lives.
In an analogy, lots of women feel unhappy with their breast size and go so far as to get surgery to augment their breasts, but does that mean they are really large-breasted women in a small-breasted body? Of course, in this instance we can clearly see how the larger socio-cultural milieu shapes an individual’s desire to alter her own body. Yet the very women getting breast implants would not describe their problem as one of society (men) rewarding large breasts and devaluing small- or no-breasted women. They tend to say things like they are “happier” that way, it feels more “natural,” that is the “real me.”
So to my mind, the problem is with the ideas that surround transgender expression–those ideas siphon off real dissatisfaction with gender roles, explaining it as a disjuncture between bio-sex and gender, rather than fomenting consciousness-raising about the very real problems women and men have living within the gender roles we are all handed. Instead of fomenting collective action, transitioning, to varying extents, is seen as the solution.
And actually, since I’m white, I guess I can’t fight racism. I can’t possibly understand what minorities face, so I must be personally oppressing them. I hope none of you white radfems ever try to fight racism, because you couldn’t possibly understand so any contribution you attempt to make is worthless and only reinforcing racist oppression.
Yes, some white people are racists. Racism exists. But not all whites are racists and not all racists are white.
Yes, some males are oppressors. Patriarchy exists. But not all males are anti-feminist and not all anti-feminists are male.
Why turn away allies just because they aren’t just like you?
Mireille, feminism doesn’t become a waste of time if only women are involved. Men and the transgendered can help feminism. If feminism is right, it’s right no matter who doesn’t want your help.
heart, you finally made some sense! I agree with everthying in your second to last post.
Unfortuantely, seperatism doesnt work either.
So my question to you–actually Mireille’s– is now what? how can “this not be relevant?” We all share the same oppressor and face related oppressions. Why would we not want everybody in one big union? How else could we possibly win?
Heart, I wasn’t making the “men are oppressed too!” argument.
Again, although I take your political point, I can’t agree with colluding in/piling more rejection on transgender folk.
And for those who are truly suffering the extreme discomfort of the patriarchy, barring the overthrow of the patriarchy, transitioning to another sex may be their best interim option.
And really, until we are much further along in our ability to help each other withstand the predations of the patriarchy, I can’t argue with the existence of the transgender response.
How can I argue with the relief of suffering? What else do we have to offer?
Perhaps it’s a theory versus practice approach.
Who is turning away allies? Since when is it necessary to be part of an oppressed group, or to “identify” as a member of an oppressed group in order to act as an ally to the members of that group?
Males can be, and ought to be, allies to females, in every possible and conceivable way. It is in their best interests to be our allies, because the truth is, patriarchy really does hurt males, too. The sooner it ends, the better for all of us. But as to who our allies actually are, as to the way males can serve as our allies, that’s our call. There, we need to drive.
Heart
“The definition of woman is under attack.”
(HPS raises hand)
I’m going to border on invoking another True Scotsman Fallacy, but I’m baffled as to why ANY feminist would have a problem with this.
OK, now that I’ve thought about it for a minute: Martyrs DO cling to their oppressed minority status as though it were some kind of badge of honor, so perhaps this is the part of this argument that really bothers me. I just don’t get it.
Let me throw something else into the pot: The racial category of “white” has changed several times during the last few centuries. For instance, Italians weren’t “white” until just a few decades ago. We’ve moved the markers with race, so why not with the categories “women” and “men?”
Another thing that baffles me: Our geekiest blamers (luv ya, mwah) have already informed the Blaming community that, genetically speaking, we can’t define “sex” any better than we can define “gender.” We’ve got XX and XY and XXY and YYX and XYZ and CBS and – - OK I made those last few up because I’m not a science geek, but you get my point. Or perhaps the anti-trans camp DOESN’T get the point? Or the camp gets it but prefers to put their fingers in their ears going LALALALALA?
We define “sex” by the presence or absence of a penis at birth. We do a visual, same as we do with race. It all strikes me as another dick obsession: Humanity gets to shit on anyone who wasn’t born with the Magic Dick of Oppression, you can’t give up your Magic Dick, and the Dickless can do nothing about their status but wallow in their oppression, consoling themselves that at least the oppressed are – I dunno – morally superior nicer or something. Why? Because it’s all about the Dick!
Shit, I come to IBTP to get away from that mess.
But how am I, as transsexual, hurting the cause? Why does my wanting you to see me as, if not female, at least not male, or just accept me as I see myself, such anathema? Why does my support become less valuable? Why do genetic arguments have to come up? I am not trying to assert gender binaries or trying to keep men and women in traditional roles.
Yes, it seems contradictory that I would fight against gender distinctions when I had gender reassignment surgery. I can’t fully explain that myself. But it was not a political statement, it was a personal choice. It has helped me in my life… Not economically, of course, but in much more important ways. I don’t know why I keep arguing… I know I’m wasting my time and just contributing to the inevitable onset of carpal tunnel syndrome. I should just be happy that I believe the majority of comments here tend towards inclusion rather than exclusion. But I’ll probably post again anyway.
Mireille, I believe that Delphyne stated that she is a seperatist.
She is not inconsistent in that regard.
Oh, forgive my spelling, Twisty! I am so hot under the collar that I keep forgetting to spellcheck.
I heartily apologize.
Damn: I’m stuck in moderation. FWIW I threw in my 5 cents, you’ll find it upthread later if you’re interested.
Alaina, you said:
“You know, frankly, I’m a little tired of the gender-privileged holding forth on the issue of what constitutes a valid, ethical and responsible gender (specifically, trans) experience. While I know of a few non-trans people who get it, they are few and far between, and most aren’t qualified to make any judgements. To me this is very much like straight people talking about what it’s like to be queer: until you’ve experienced it, you can’t understand it.”
This is EXACTLY the point I would like to make to Mireille, who seems to believe that she is no different than a woman who was raised female, now that she has transitioned. But, no matter how much she may hate to admit it, she has not experienced a lifetime of female-ness under patriarchy and therefore cannot Get It. Yes, the transgendered experience another kind of oppression, but for most M-t-F folk, they probably “passed” as male for many years until their transition, and therefore were automatically granted male privilege, whether they asked for it or not. (just as I am granted white privilege even though I certainly don’t ask for it, for example).
I am not hating on you, Mireille, but I would like to suggest that you are a novice blamer and might want to brush up on feminism now that you have joined the category “woman,” and are subject to its caprices. You may wish to start by acknowledging the fact that you were indeed granted male privilege at any time in your life that you presented as male. It’ll be a hard habit to break.
V., I am feeling frustrated because it seems to me you are arguing with positions I have not taken. I have said at least twice in this thread that I don’t fault transgender persons for doing whatever they have to do to be okay in this male heterosupremacist world. I am not blaming transgender persons, in other words, for availing themselves of the remedies patriarchy provides for their discomforts, any more than I blame women for doing the same thing in a million ways.
I am *blaming the patriarchy*.
If so far as “colluding in/piling on” rejection, you are saying that lesbians don’t have a right to our own communities and to defining the boundaries of our communities, as with Michfest — which is, again, lesbian-run-and-driven community, not just a festival — or that females, in general, have no right to female-only space from time to time, then I will have to disagree with you that this constitutes any sort of “rejection” of anyone. So long as females remain oppressed and marginalized, we will benefit from having our own spaces, as with all oppressed and marginalized groups. Our allies will recognize this and support us in it.
Heart
V–this is v. good:
Heart: transwomen exist. They are oppressed. The question is not whether they should exist but since they do, how can they relate to feminism and how feminists should relate to them.
I believe it is the gigantic, rich, overwhelmingly white male heterosupremacist institutions of medicine, psychology, pharmacology, academia, law, media, entertainment, and fundamentalist religion which are responsible for the creation of the theories and mechanisms by way of which men view theoretically “trading down†via various presentations/surgeries/body modifications as a legitimate and rational response to the suffocations of an oppressive gender binary
Aren’t you rather adding a whole load of non-sensical and theoretically dubious baggage to transgenderism, which you are then conflating with transexuality?
Is this gonna turn out to be one of those things where there’s been all these blogwars that end with both sides realising that they weren’t quite speaking the same language on an issue?
Heart, if I am misinterpreting your responses it is not intentional or passive-agressively meant.
I appreciate that it is frustrating to feel/be misunderstood.
And I deeply appreciate your work on behalf of feminism.
There are definitely parts of your argument I do disagree with.
Out of respect for you and your longevity and dedication to women and feminism, I’ll take a time-out from commenting to review the last series of posts, and see if I can pinpointmore clearly where I think we diverge, and to see if I am misinterpeting some of your positions.
I fully recognize that I was raised male. I fully realize that I did not live your experiences. I don’t claim to understand it all. And I know I’m late to the revolution. It’s why I don’t often comment, but mostly just read and learn and grow. And most all the comments here have not been anti-trans crap, and I haven’t taken them as such. I guess maybe it’s a matter that much of my life has dealt with feeling excluded and it’s hard to deal with the fact that the exclusion will always be there. And I realize that most everyone feels the same way about being excluded, I’m not special. I suppose I’m just worse at dealing with it.
Curiousgyrl, I see no reason why transwomen cannot be profeminist and allies to females, just as females can be allies to transwomen. Why can’t they be? We be?
Honestly, it becomes sort of absurd. What if someone insisted that in order to be an ally, they had a right to, say, call themselves disabled, even if they were not disabled? Or if someone insisted that in order to be an ally to the poor, they had a right to call themselves poor, even if they were rich? And along those same lines, what if these same people insisted that in order to be an ally, they had a right to be present wherever the disabled or poor were gathering, and if the disabled or poor objected, the response was, “Well, then, how can I be your ally?”
In some groups, if you attempted to identify as a member when you weren’t one, you’d be metaphorically folded, spindled and mutilated in a heartbeat, let alone inserting yourself into gatherings to which you were not invited.
Heart
Mireille = Liberal Dewd. Every one of his comments identify him more clearly. If I had the energy to read all that nonsense, I’m sure I could have BINGO by now. He’s now into the dismissive “good luck with that!” portion of his long-winded boy tantrum. But rather than see this behavior as the one we see all the time on IBTP, all he had to do was say he was trans and he’s being taken seriously instead of being seen for what he is. Substitute Robert for his name and look! Liberal Dewd here to school us ignorant wimmins – this from the wisdom he has gained from minutes of deep thought. This is precisely why feminists like me are angry about transpeople like him. Rather than being off fighting the patriarchy where it actually lives and works, he’s here refuting and dismissing women’s ideas. Imagine that.
Delphyne, that was helpful. Thank you.
But you still ended up saying TG folks are not happy with their biological sex, so they change it.
I’m saying that there is no reason to be unhappy with one’s biological sex, unless society has placed restrictions on that particular sex. It is the restrictions and expectations which make the person unhappy.
Even a 3 year old is aware of gender, so relying on that as proof is circular logic.
“If gender constructs didn’t exist, then they wouldn’t have need to hack off body parts or wear gender uniforms. But instead of deconstructing the substance of patriarchy, they construct superficial solutions.”
In some ways, I think they exhibit the worst traits of blind male entitlement. They want to be more “feminine” – whatever that means. So instead of being more expressive, more caring, more empathetic, they wear frilly dresses.
They miss the point completely. By saying that they can only express themselves by external change, they fail to realize that inside, they are the same fucking person.
Do they mean, instead, for society to treat them as if they are more compassionate, more caring – rather than as a predatory, competitive man?
curiousgyrl: comparing someone’s immediate reaction to a sudden trauma is a tad different that someone’s measured contemplation over a long period.
Uh, mireille aknowledged this. I’d like to suggest that you are a novice reader and that you should brush up on your reading comprehension.
quoting Mireille from uptrhead:
Wow Raven. Let out the hate. Congratulations, I give up.
Heart – thank you for all your patience, clear thinking, beautifully-written responses, and hard work on this thread.
The simplest explanation for the existence of transgender people is that gender IS NOT a social construction.
If gender were a conspiracy whereby all people with testes are brainwashed to have one set of tendencies, and all people with ovaries are brainwashed to have another set of tendencies, then how could a person ever adopt tendencies that where the exact opposite of his or her brainwashing?
On the other hand, if gender differences occur in the brain as well as in the pants, then it is easy to imagine that a mismatch could occur biologically between the two.
Radical feminists have to believe that trans people choose their gender for the same reason that fundamentalists have to believe that homosexuals choose their orientation: neither wants to believe that something they disapprove of could be a part of human nature.
Raven:
if that isn’t transhating crap, I kind of dont know what is.
Heart:
I guess i’m not that interested in the women-born-women only space question, because I’ts not central to my definition of feminism and it seems kind of low on the list of oppressions faced by trans people. I think exclusion is bad politics, but its not the main thing that got me so exercised. It took me most of the thread to realize that this seems to be the main issue for lots of radfems.
I think that if we are goign to build a feminist movement in which transwomen and women-born-women are allies, feminists can run around telling people they are “really” men or “really” women. Thats what I would mostly like to see stop. Whatever you think of transpolitics, its polite to address people as they’ve asked to be addressed. It seems some folks (not you as far as I can tell) cannot manage that simple thing.
upthread I inadvertently did the same thing to Mars Iguana. I apolgized, fixed it and moved on. I think feminists would benefit from that strategy w/r/t to transpeople.
Hey, Jezebella,
Thanks for your comment! When I talked about having to experience it to get it, you said:
“This is EXACTLY the point I would like to make to Mireille, who seems to believe that she is no different than a woman who was raised female, now that she has transitioned. But, no matter how much she may hate to admit it, she has not experienced a lifetime of female-ness under patriarchy and therefore cannot Get It.”
I don’t think that any trans person would make the claim that they are “no different”.
Also, I don’t see any evidence that it requires a lifetime of femaleness to “get it”, especially given that “it” is elusive and contextually different. I’m white, lesbian, Anglophone, educated, relatively affluent, and an urbanite in the socially and economically leftist city of Toronto. My experienced “it” is very different than the experience of a refugee straight woman from Rwanda who piled her kids on a boat and ran away from an abusive husband, and I’ll never know what that’s like, but I know some of the same things she’s experienced because we’re both women.
Lots of women go through life without recognizing that they are being shat upon by the system, and we all had that moment where we were, like, “holy geez, this is MESSED UP”. Sometimes that moment comes at age 12; sometimes it comes at age 50. Does the age 12 moment become less valid because it is 38 years less than the age 50 moment? Or is the age 50 moment the less valid one, because that woman spent a lifetime justifying and supporting the patriarchy, thereby enabling the oppression of many, many other women?
Charles G. Koch, that would make sense if all non trans men actually had all the same tendencies. There have been so many different ideas of what constitutes the masculine and feminine from the societies of different times and places, just what exactly is genetic? Only those tendencies that your own culture presently promotes? Why then did all the other people throughout time end up displaying different tendencies?
Charles– i know this might be hard to grasp, but the world is not always simple! thanks for trying to set us straight, though really
Yes, that too is the liberal dewd response: “I give up” (instead of: I guess I’ll go fight the patriarchy among men now). It’s another liberal dewd tactic to claim that I hate you. Nope, I don’t hate you. Don’t even know you. Know what I hate? Being talked down to by men. That’s why I’m here, so I don’t have to experience that on a minute to minute basis.
When a group of people are telling you of their experiences in an advanced forum of a topic they know much more about, and you can’t get your head around it, the thoughtful and honest (and admittedly difficult) response is to wonder whether you have any gaps in knowledge and then go about fixing that. It’s not our problem that you don’t get it.
“Advanced” for me means that I’ve read feminist literature covering every side of this issue. I’ve read Leslie Feinberg, been to a half-dozen of her speeches (which are brilliantly constructed, by the way) and those of other trans activists. I’ve had long discussions with transpeople and intersex people. I’ve been doing this for years and years; my position on this isn’t a knee-jerk response.
No one gets to call me a hater because the analysis is going over your head. That’s your problem.
“I may not be able to understand what it is like to face a particular issue, but I can empathize, and I can do what is in my power to do to fight it.”
I think what some posters are trying to say is that insistence on redefining oneself as part of a particular oppressed class of people can, in and of itself, constitute lack of empathy for the members of that class.
As several people have noted, the transgender argument is always an interesting one because it puts a segment of the radical feminist population in the position of decrying transgenderism as an affirmation of gender qua social construct while simultaneously invoking gender essentialism to exclude transgender people from the category of women. Far be it from me to challenge anyone’s consistency in holding to both positions simultaneously – one contains multitudes, after all – but what is the feminist rationale behind the latter statement? If one doesn’t deconstruct power relationships by shifting the patriarchically-mandated markers of binary gender around, what does one accomplish by preserving and policing them?
Yeny writes: [...] I am tired of feminists bringing racism into a discussion that does not compare nor have anything to do with it.
As a radical woman of color feminist, race has to do with everydamnthing in my life. If we radical women of color feminists are screwing with the nice, neat, transphobe argument by comparing it to the anti-civil rights movement well, that’s just too damned bad.
We’re here. We’re women of color and some of us are transgendered. Get used to it.
Wait. That doesn’t really work as a rallying chant. I gotta think of something snappier.
Mireille, don’t worry about the attempt to silence you because you are a “newbie.” That’s what they resort to when they got nothing else. (That, and name-calling.) Hang in there, my friend.
And, jeez o pete, I’d answer some of Heart’s postings if she could, like, get them to 25,000 words or less.
curiousgyrl, you rock.
Raven, I can’t argue with you. What you wrote was meant to be hurtful and congratulations, you succeeded.
Heart, I see what you’re saying. You aren’t turning away anyone. You’re not saying I can’t contribute, but I can only contribute as a man. I respect that and can’t say you’re wrong. It’s just personally disappointing. But that’s my issue, not yours and not relevant to feminism.
I am not trying to be right. I’m not trying to tell anyone they’re wrong. I don’t claim that I have anything to teach anyone. I’m trying to learn and find a place for myself. If I came across as “liberal dewd,” I’m sorry. Like I’ve said before, I mostly just try to read and learn, but this thread touches on my experiences directly, so I thought I could add something valuable. I’m sorry if it wasn’t.
Curiousgyrl, I don’t think it will work to minimize the significance of woman-only space issue, for reasons along the lines of what PhysioProf just commented (which was imo really good). I agree with you that woman-only space ought to be low on the list of “oppressions” transwomen face. But the fact is, it isn’t. It is high enough on their list that in the one venue in which woman-only space is actually defended, an entire organization sprang up to dispute its validity and the right of females to have the space in the first place.
In any movement, if you want to know what the issues actually are, and what is actually at stake, beyond all the rhetoric and posturing and so on, find the watersheds. Woman-only space is a watershed. It’s the issues that are raised, themselves, in any watershed scenario which are important and significant, not the actual arena or venue in which the issues are being negotiated.
The issue of woman-only space is also important to radfems because how and whether women’s spaces are or are not respected tells us whether or not specific males or transpersons are, in fact, our allies. And it is very important for us to know who our allies are.
Heart
I’m still confused about where these bigoted hateful comments are? IT seems like people have different thoughts and opinions, but I really didn’t see anyone saying anything “bad” about any trans issue. Can someone point it out, if I missed it?
It does feel to me, on many blogs/feminist websites, that if you have ANY questions about transexuality, you are immediately labeled a troll or a trans-hater or whatever. I don’t get this. I’ve never seen a single feminist online say that people should NOT have surgeries, or should NOT be allowed to. Not at all. Only analysis of it.
I thought Thalia had excellent points, and was being honest about her own experience, and yet she got jumped on by some posters. And called trans-phobic!? What? Why?
Personally, I’m pretty ignorant about all of it. I just don’t get it. And that’s fine, I don’t have to get it, and I’d never tell anyone what they could or couldn’t do with their body. But, I just don’t get it. What does it mean to “not feel like a girl?” What does it mean to “feel like a woman?” It’s as if there is some essential experience or feeling that ALL girls or ALL boys have, and if you don’t have that experience, you are somehow “not feeling like a girl.” I just don’t get this. And when I express the not-getting-it, I’m called trans-phobic. Grr. I’m not afraid, I just don’t understand it. I still don’t get the “why.” I can understand not fitting in with other woman, or men. I can understand not wanting to conform to the social roles and refusing to be “ladylike” or “macho.” But why surgery? Why chemicals? Why does that make a person feel so much better-to be called a woman or a man? To have the “right” genitals. Why does that feel so much better? How does having different genitals make a person feel that they are the “right” sex?
Raven, your analysis isnt going over my head. And I reserve the right to think you are a hater. You’re being a hater.
I dont know if you believe that transpeople face oppression, but lets assume that you do for the moment. Whether or not you think trans people are really women or men, you should at least recognize that transpeople have had experiences of oppression that you haven’t, and that you’ve had experiences a transperson hasn’t. You can talk to Leslie Feinberg all day long and that will still be true.
A little consideration is in order. You’re being really nasty and condescending. At various times people didnt believe lesbianism was real or legitimate, but polite people who thougth that still didnt call people “friends” who’d been introduced as lovers, life-partners or wives. Its incredibly rude.
The exclusion thing is kind of funny though–how are we gonna keep the trannies out? Blood tests and medical exams at the door? That would be great. Probably a few people would find out that they are “really” men too.
I point out that within my lifetime, there were attempted purges of lesbians from the ranks of feminism–hello lavender menace!
As for being raised in male privilege: I don’t pass as heterosexual now, because I’m a nine-foot tall B. Dagger, but as a wee B. Dagger, I was assumed to be heterosexual; I didn’t like it, and it marked me and negated me. I also didn’t avail myself of the privilege of passing as heterosexual. Most of the transgendered people I know were marked out as different as small children and beaten within an inch of their lives for it. I question how much privilege they were accorded.
Back to Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.†The main master’s tool she is talking about in that essay — and what makes it a richer, more supple and more useful essay tool — is the non-recognition of difference.
The hatred and non-recognition of difference (and valorization of purity) are the main master’s tools.
thats B. I bet you were a cute wee b.dagger.
For light relief:
There is a short story called “X: A Fabulous Child’s Story”, by Lois Gould, about a child raised as gender-undefined, and how that turned out. Sample line of advice to the parents: “X ought to be strong and sweet and active. Forget about dainty altogether.”
You can read it online at http://www.trans-man.org/baby_x.html
Buggle, if I had the answers to your questions, I’d… Well, I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t get it either, and I’m living it. You can read the books and hear the personal stories, and many of them go “I knew I was a girl from the age of two. I always wanted to play with dolls. I wore my mother’s makeup. I crossdressed. Now, after the surgery, I feel like me.” That’s not me. I was sort of behind the curve. I didn’t really understand the difference between boys and girls (and not the genital thing) until I was, I’m not even sure how old. I never felt like a girl, but t