Two feminist blogging carnivals were published this week:
Both carnivals contain plenty of excellent posts to ponder, provoke and especially to disturb. Which brings me to the posts that provoked the rest of this post:
I note a disturbing contrast here between the way in which the two carnivals are dealing with discussions of the transgender experience and transphobia: the Carnival against Sexual Violence includes a post about how yet another murder of a transwoman [triggers] is being reported as the accused “being enraged beyond all reason” about being “duped” about the dead woman’s womanhood (and what this means for all women), while the Carnival of Radical Feminists, (edited to add: implicitly aligning all radfems with the trans-exclusionary radfem (TERF) activists, which I resent), links to yet another post from Miss Andrea that argues that transgenderism should be regarded as just another fetish and that transwomen are wrong and probably deliberately deceptive for claiming that it’s anything more fundamental in respect of gender identity.
I don’t pretend to have any magic wand to wave to reconcile those who accept that people can have a gender identity discordant with biological sex and those who don’t accept it. All I can do is explain my own views, and explore aspects of chains of logic offered by others that perhaps they haven’t fully considered, in the hope that this may lead to further examination of what appears to be very strong prejudices.
Now, on to one argument that Miss Andrea has used repeatedly and has received much praise for as an exercise in logical deconstruction: that transfolk, in reinforcing the gender binary by identifying as the opposite sex rather than presenting as more androgynously genderqueer, somehow undermine the classic view of gender as a social construct. The argument appears to boil down to “when feminists say gender is a social construct, they mean it isn’t “real”, therefore if we say that men can become women and vice versa, then we’re arguing that gender is real, and thus feminist gender theory disappears in a puff of smoke”. This simply does not compute, unless one has a very hazy grasp on the concept of social constructs in the first place.
Social constructs are not “unreal” rather than “real”, they are artificial rather than natural. Artificial things are not “unreal”, otherwise you, dear reader, are not “really” reading this blog. Constructs are made rather than found, that is the crucial concept (eta: and things that are made can be remodelled).
Each of the major social hierarchies of race, gender and class is socially constructed in terms of who is regarded as inferior to whom. Each of those social hierarchies is also based on certain objective physical signifiers – skin colour/physiognomy and sexual characteristics and material acquisitions – which are used to justify the assignment of “inferior” characteristics in those hierarchies (e.g. blacks/Irish are stupid, women are weak, poor people are lazy). But the fact that those physical signifiers exist has no necessitating natural correlation with the assignment of social inferiorities, and it is in the assumption of innate inferiorities that the gender binary is socially constructed on the physical framework of sexual dimorphism. The only innate aspect of the gender binary framework balancing on top of human sexual dimorphism regards who can give birth/suckle infants and who cannot, everything else about gender roles is cultural, not natural.
Miss Andrea argues that “guys in frocks” are merely buying into gender essentialism, but I don’t see how arguing that only those born with ovaries1 can ever be regarded as “real” women isn’t doing exactly that. It’s treating gender as inalienably aligned with biological sex, whereas those who have a trans* history are those are saying that their biological sex has not been sufficient on its own to make them feel comfortable in their assigned gender role. That strikes me as the very opposite of biological essentialism; even in cases where a transitioning individual adopts genderised dressing stereotypes, because the whole point of gender being a social construct is that those stereotypes are artificial rather than essential in the first place.
Of course transgender behaviours are an exercise in artificiality – but is it fundamentally any more artificial than cisgender behaviours? If reifying gender by dressing so very femininely is so fundamentally awful, then why so much criticism reserved mainly for the transwomen who do so, and so little criticism by comparison for all the ciswomen who embrace all the rituals and accessorised impedimenta of femininity?
It’s also important to note that choosing to display conformity to the social expectations of their transgender identity may literally be a matter of survival as much as preference for people who are gender-transitioning. It strikes me that arguments such as Miss Andrea’s are feeding back into exactly the same sort of attitudes about transwomen being out to fool the rest of us that end up bringing on the rage that results in their murders, especially when some of the commentors there respond to a challenge from a transwoman by simply mocking her as a “little boy” and asking “do you miss that penis you had chopped off?”. The contempt just drips from every pixel (eta: of those comments), and why exactly? Isn’t that sort of contempt and disgust exactly what led to Allen Andrade beating Angie Zapata to death when he found out (through an act of sexual assault) that she wasn’t a born-woman?
To demand that those in gender-transition step back and only adopt more androgynous, genderqueer identities rather than “appropriating” womanhood is to demand that they put themselves at greater physical risk, surely? Transwomen who “pass” are far less likely to be attacked when going about normal livelihood and leisure activities than transitioning individuals who are obviously “guys in frocks”. Is this what it comes down to? Back off from our women’s space and no I don’t care if you die because you have nowhere safe to go? The callousness of this appals me.
Now, I also understand that some women who identify strongly as born-women find the concept/presence of transwomen disturbing, confronting and even threatening. They speak of transwomen who identify as lesbians displaying all the sexually predatory behaviours with respect to women that entitled sexist gender-normed masculine men do. I don’t doubt that there are some transwomen who exploit women sexually, and it is right to criticise them for doing so, but are those shits sufficient reason to reject every single transwoman as a potential sister? Not for me.
There are also those who argue that women-born-male can never share some of the most fundamental gender experiences that result from gender socialisation as feminine from birth through childhood, and thus can never be “real” women because they lack this shared experience. This shared-experience is largely true, but I wonder just how crucial this distinction really is. What about those who realise their trans identity very young, before school age, and whose family fully support them in their transgendering as girls? Surely women raised in hypothetical all-female non-sexist communes would also lack the shared experience of a genderised second-sex upbringing, but would any Women Born Women group exclude them because of that? So is this difference in upbringing enough to demand that people in gender-transition divorce themselves from womanhood entirely? Not to me.
Yet, one point of Miss Andrea’s that I think she does get right is that many of the definitions offered with respect to gender transition by various organisations promoting trans* acceptance are hazy and overly generalised, to the point where any departure from gender conformity is labelled “transgender” by some, which I agree is over-reaching if it is argued to apply to boys doing ballet and girls playing football. Not all challenging of gender norms is necessarily about transitioning gender versus extending expectations of gender.
In contrast however to Miss Andrea’s assumption that this reflects an appropriation of women’s and particularly feminist experience, I argue that this more accurately reflects a lack of a proper vocabulary to discuss gender roles without falling back on the assumptions of the gender binary construct. That vocabulary will never develop or gain traction in these discussions while some people simply mock those who have gender-transitioned as fraudulent cross-dressing fetishists.
1. For the sake of brevity, I have ignored here all those women-born-women with vaginas and breasts who don’t actually have ovaries because, unbeknownst to themselves and the world unless they get tested, they are not XX women e.g. XY women with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, and XO women with Turner’s Syndrome, as well as intersex individuals with rarer conditions, all of whom further complicate biologically essentialist arguments. [back]
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This only holds if one assumes that “internal character” arises only from an instinctual knowledge of our chromosomal distribution rather than arising from how other people categorise us based on our appearance. Pure biological essentialism from you, yet again – and very simply refuted by the many XY women with AIS who have grown up as “women” since birth with nobody ever knowing any different until they undergo a fertility test.
Given that our society only acknowledges a gender binary (even though biological sexual dimorphism obviously has a continuum) it is hardly surprising that people identify as one or other of that binary rather than as some strange third or fourth gender.
The ultimate goal of fuzzing the gender binary into a gender continuum with the extremes closer together is a fine one. There’s no reason to demand that trans* people do all the heavy lifting on dismantling of the binary though: surely fuzzing the boundaries means encouraging people to cross them rather than fencing them off in a separate zone in the middle.
Sorry for the long post everyone.
mAndrea:
You keep inserting “Musts.” There is no “Must” about any of the statements you make. For example: even if it is true that “Man” and “Woman” are two distinct genders which are completely separate and unrelated, it does not follow that intersexed people are a third gender. They could just as easily be a blending of the two, or a jumble of different characteristics.
The flaws in your logic don’t stop there however. You then assert that because a trans* person has a gender identity that does not match their born physical body that they must be a 4th sex. There is no logic to show why this is true, just the assertion and then the results that you extract from that assertion. Given your repeated assertions that gender is not “real” and has no basis in physical reality, I am confused as to how you can claim that only someone born XX can be a woman. This implies that there is actually something physical about gender.
I find it telling that you keep referring to gender identities as a discrete static, and limited. Even non-trans people, including some trans-exclusionary radfems have refered to their individual gender expression as something that is not only varied but variant. They may not use those words, but the concept is there.
You don’t have to be trans* to feel differently from day to day. That’s just being human. Please, step out from behind the strawman. If you are going to criticize what transpeople say, you might as well use we actually say instead of ..yahknow.. telling us what we feel and live.
Speaking of which, you never did tell me what you would have transpeople in general do?
Lisa:
And this is the frustrating thing, because the essentialist basis of the anti-trans arguments is not the only thing that is covered up. The real people we are talking about are obscured by the layers and layers of theory and obfuscation.
And that is a tragedy.
Yes, this.
And lodes of people posses mind-maps; where do you think phantom limb syndrome comes from? Actually, there was a study done that showed that many trans* folks actually have phantom limb syndrome.
I met a biologist festie at Camp Trans and she was amazed when I mentioned this, it perfectly matched up with her theories (summarized as: trans* folk, in all our variations and diversity, are perfectly natural for any normal population). ^.^
Course, I don’t think having a biological cause will solve our problems or anything, but I find this sort of thing fascinating (even if I’m afraid of cis* folk searching for a “cure”).
Yep. Never mind that people transitioning is anti-essentialist (your body doesn’t define you), but I guess it’s about control – forcing people into boxes that make other people comfortable, and not about actually acknowledging the diversity of human experience.
#254
In this discussion I’m concentrating on labels because you use them inconsistently.
Is that what you are trying to do? Really?
Ok, exactly what do you mean by “biological sex”? For most of us, it’s what we think we see. For pure science, it’s about chromosomes, which often don’t match what we see. Which do you mean?
Nice shot (have you had some coaching?), but no goal. That a unique intersex gender can be hypothesised does not invalidate that historically and currently what is actually socially accepted is a masculine-feminine binary (that would be like arguing that it is invalid to point out that the acknowledged social constructs of “nations” does not actually include the hypothesised social construct of “Atlantis”, even though the island builders of Dubai could well be creating an “Atlantis” as we blog).
People who want to create a genderqueer identity should be free to do so. Intersex and trans* people who don’t want a genderqueer identity should not be forced into compulsory pioneering of genderqueering as well as coping with variant gender identity in the first place.
Where did you do that?
I am a fast learner, Tig. Google helps. You do too, actually.
It’s my latest argument, currently bloated at twenty pages. Still trying to cut it down into recognizable chunks.
Come on, humor me. Tell me the thing in bold as if you mean it. I presented an impossiblity but conveniently left out the other half. That comes next, after you totally incriminate yourself by saying the thing in bold.
What, that false dichotomy you’ve formulated up there? Tosh and folderol.
Socialised gender and biological sex are wound around each other. People treat babies whose genitals are hidden under nappies entirely differently depending on whether they are told that the baby is a boy or a girl. This difference in behaviour seems to be subconscious – people denied that this happened until sociologists filmed adult-infant interactions and did time-motion analysis. Obviously such socialisations that vary according to which gender the adult perceives the child to be have no rational connection to actual biological sex, yet to say that thus they are independent of biological sex would be a naive over-simplification.
This divergence in socialisation along the masculine-feminine only increases as a child grows, with reward-punishment schemes coming into effect. That there will be some natural variation both in how intensely some adults reinforce gender norms as well as in how some children respond to such socialisation hardly seems surprising to me, and I very much doubt that there is one single “how” answer to the question of gender attaching to specific bodies: human experience is too diverse.
mAndrea:
Never mind the fact that I have already said of myself, that I don’t need SRS to act as I want. Nor the gobs of other people who say and live the same thing.
The body helps in making my life better. It’s not great, but the truth remains that the better I pass, the less likely it is that I will be viewed as a freak, and have to defend myself, either verbally or physically. And before you tell me that my transitioning hurts women, and that you are defending them with your views, I want you to read something.
Trigger warning: I don’t know if this qualifies for a trigger warning, but first quote makes ME clench up remembering it.
This is a log of an argument I had this afternoon on IRC. There is an image of me that I want taken down. Someone made a suggestion that I should take a picture of my chest and send it to the person as a replacement and incentive to take the other down. These are excerpts, if you want the whole nasty conversation contact me and let me know, but it’s long and upsetting.
Please, don’t mistake this as a plea for pity, or an attempt to get a cookie for saying something. I don’t want either of those… I want you to understand the same language which you and others who agree with you use is the same language used by some fairly misogynistic presumptuous twits. While nobody quoted feminist theory at me this time, I’ve had people do it before.
The language you use is the language of privilege. It doesn’t make you bad, just presumptuous. I am sorry if this is a bit snappy, but the above argument really upset me.
I’ll try to do better on post length from now on, I just didn’t know how to shorten this one up.
Oh for crying out loud.. the names got filtered out because they were in angle brackets. Tig, if I send you the text, can fix?
[sure, no problem ~tt]
My history of being sexually harassed would like to have a word with your acquaintance there.
Pardon moi Polerin, but it IS possible to be so emotionally injured that we perceive correlations where none exist. We know this to be true because otherwise the following is also true: No man should ever, under any circumstances, be allowed to offer any criticism whatsoever of females, as it’ll probably lead to violence. No critism of any political figure or government instutition should ever be allowed, as it’ll probably lead to revolution.
I have no doubt that some types of personalities are continuously skating close to violence, but to attempt to silence all criticism is Orwellian facism in the extreme. Kind of interesting that is the liberals nowadays who are most resembling Big Brother.
mAndrea : I am not telling you what to say. I am simply working on showing you the impact of what you say, and the fact that the language you and he both use has the effect of silencing me or discarding my voice. You accuse me of attempting to censor you through exercise of privilege, but have refused to let any of my comments out of moderation.
What power then do I hold over you? And just as I asked him, what am I to you?
Polerin I’m trying to point out that there is a difference between silencing completely, criticism, and outright irrational hatred. You are obviously a kind-hearted person and anyone who would be rude to you is just mean.
But why does absolutely everyone think their comment should be posted and responded to, and yet somehow I’m supposed to moderate comments??? I suck at playing nursemaid.
Did you notice how Tig causally ignores my requests for clairification? I’m deeply profoundly offended. Hey, I can be ignored anywhere, yanno.
The idea that “biological sex is a permanent physical reality” does not fit the definition of essentalism as that term is being used by the transgendered, btw, and much thanks to Tig who is now requiring me to look up every freaking word.
Radical feminists claim that one’s birth body is capable of expressing any and every type of internal character which one may possess; and as such, one’s internal character is independent of physical bodies. What is it again that trans advocates claim?
That should have been “under normal circumstances radical feminists claim that one’s birth body…”
If you don’t want to host a discussion on a controversial topic that may draw heated response, why are you allowing comments at all? It disturbs me that you ask questions, and say that transpeople don’t answer, when I have answered, and my answer never sees the light of day. I don’t ask you to moderate comments, nor will I tell you not too. It’s your blog.
You claim that a persons birth body can express everything that one might ever want to, and yet I know it cannot. I know this from sitting in a closet crying while my wife begged me for hours to come out. I know this because of the years of self hate and destructive behavior that I put myself through.
I know this because I expressed what I could with the body I could, and it was not enough. It never would have been. This is because it was tainted, wrong. You can make found art from garbage, but the pieces are still garbage. I needed, and still need, something more than expression: a physical change. Your arguments are based in what is material, stating that nothing else is real. Why is it difficult for you to accept that for me, expression is only one part of the equation?
Sorry to go back to old comments, but I wanted to react to what mAndrea said:
“Feminism: the idea the females are human.
Lesbianism: the idea that lesbians are human.
Transgenderism: the idea that transwomen are women.”
Actually, I think part of fight for lesbian rights is ALSO fighting for their rights to be considered as woman, just like transwomen, because for lesbophobic people it is not always quite obvious and I think it isn’t rare to see lesbophobic people talking about lesbians (particularly masculine ones) using “he” and more generally refuting the fact that they are women.
So lesbians also have to fight sometimes to be considered as “a particular gender”. I don’t think there is a huge difference with transpeople.
(Now there are also lesbians who don’t consider themselves women and trans who don’t consider themselves men or women, but I don’t think it’s contradictory: it’s a fight against seeing your gender attacked)
That strikes me as a very odd definition indeed of biological essentialism as used by the social sciences, and one that I couldn’t actually find on the wikipedia page you referenced (one that has been flagged as lacking clarity anyway, so why not use another resource?). Are you perhaps being confused by how the term is used by creationists in their criticisms of evolutionary biology?
There’s no such thing as “the transgendered.”
Which I think has been pointed out many times over to mandrea which leads me to think she’s willfully being obnoxious. I know…the shock!
Well, yes, I think willfully obnoxious has been a given.
I’m going to talk to my diabetesed mother now. She’s also been fibromyalgiad.
Well, perhaps all us women could be the womaned? The womanised? ;-P Then men could be the manned, and… what… the manitised? the manised? those who have undergone manitisation? or manification? Sorry, forgive. I actually totally love playing with the verbal and the nominal, not least because it points out what we think is a matter of being and what we think is a matter of doing. In this case, it points out mAndrea’s essentialism all over again: men and women are defined by what they are, “the transgendered” by what they do. Pah. I could get all de Beauvoir right about now, and, really, why not? ‘One is not born, but becomes a woman.’
But I keep coming back to the same point, which mAndrea keeps on not responding to. Even *if* your understanding of sex/gender is right, mAndrea (which to be clear I completely disagree with your understanding which seems rather all over the place), I still don’t get it. Why can’t trans* people transition? Why should they ‘keep’ the bodies they were ‘born with’? Why shouldn’t they change them? What is it about the ‘naturally given’ body that implies an ‘ought to remain that way’? We all change our bodies all the time: through diet, through how much sleep we get, how much exercise, through how we feel about ourselves and so on and so forth. Why is it that hormonal and/or surgical intervention is a problem? What is it about the allegedly ‘natural’ body that you think ought to be preserved? You seem to imply there is some kind of fundamental truth to it — something that trans* people are fooling themselves and others about by ‘pretending’ to be male/female (whatever category you think their ‘naturally given’ body prevents them from being). But you’ve already been suggesting that this isn’t the case: that the body ought not to define who someone is ‘on the inside’. So why would someone changing their body matter, and more specifically, why would it matter to you?
If the problem, as you see it, is that there is, or should be, a radical distinction between mind and body, between sex and gender, such that those who undergo some kind of sex reassignment are falling back in with the conservative assumption that the body and the mind ought to match, then again, I have to ask: why exactly do cis women get a ‘get out of jail free’ card? Why is being cissexual a politically neutral existence? Why aren’t you picking on cis women? It is only by characterising trans*-ness as a choice and cis*-ness as naturally given that you get to position cis women as neutral. But neither of these claims are, in fact, the case; and you acknowledge this when you claim that what is ‘inside’ ought not to have to match what is ‘outside’.
(N.B. My own positions on questions of sex and gender involves a deconstruction of the cartesian split between mind and body (at the same time as understanding that split to inform how we experience ourselves). So the above should not be understood as anything other than yet another attempt to get mAndrea to think about her own position. Sigh.)
WildlyParentheticals last blog post..Am I back?
Oh Elly, thanks. “One’s preference for the biological sex of one’s partner has absolutely no bearing on one’s internal character” — that is the original tenet of gay rights and apparently the only one which can provide adequate protection under the constitution. As soon as gay ideology completes it’s metamorphasis into “my sexuality is my identity and I insist on being reduced to my sexuality”, queerdom practically begs for legal discrimination.
Women want out of the gender pool, gays want out of the sexuality pool, people of color want out of the racial pool… When everyone else is running away from the tsunami, but you’re running towards it — does that rather large directional discreptancy tell you anything exciting?
Suppose we could use a dictionary, if that makes you feel better Tig. Radical feminists believe that one’s birth body is capable of expressing any and every type of internal character which one may possess; and as such, one’s internal character is independent of physical bodies. What is it again that trans advocates claim? Come on, tell aunt feminazi.
I thought Polerin and I already had that conversation last week, WP? Of course it’s a given that certain individuals require switching genitalia or role-play in order to obtain relief for their emotional distress. That seems so obvious it’s almost redundent to mention at all. Nothing else works, yanno.
My only concern is that the manner in which the entire issue is being framed is inaccurate. What is so terrifying about acknowledging the striking resemblance to amputation disorder? Lots of normal people have a chemical imbalance in the brain and need medical assistance to feel better — big whoop. And anyone who attempts to discriminate against someone with a health issue or otherwise hinder treatment immediately triggers the wrath of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
And I am not obnoxious, the proper term is evil. I eat kittens ‘n stuff for breakfast.
No, I think obnoxious pretty much sums it up
My adjective was going to be ‘pedantic’, but ‘obnoxious’ works.
mAndrea:
“Women want out of the gender pool, gays want out of the sexuality pool, people of color want out of the racial pool… ”
Yeah, right. Well, maybe it’s because we’re not living in the same country, but here we have a whole lot of women who only define as their gender and scream if you want to remove it from them, lots of gays who only define as their sexuality and lot of people of color who only define as their skin color.
The fact is that there is a whole lot of diversity among those groups, as there is a lot among trans people.
“Radical feminists believe that one’s birth body is capable of expressing any and every type of internal character which one may possess”
Even there I’m not certain it’s as homogenous as you present it. Cause I think I heard from radical feminists things like “you don’t have a womb, so you’re not a woman” or “ok, I can accept post-op trans women into women’s spaces but not pre-op”.
Which, to me, sounds a bit contradictory with what you advance.
“My only concern is that the manner in which the entire issue is being framed is inaccurate. What is so terrifying about acknowledging the striking resemblance to amputation disorder? Lots of normal people have a chemical imbalance in the brain and need medical assistance to feel better — big whoop.”
Yeah, right (again). And I suppose people who have, say, six fingers (or their parents since I think there is often surgery just after birth) want to get the sixth one removed because of amputation disorder and not, say, because it is absolutely unthinkable to have a body that “monstruous” ?
I mean, I am not a shrink, but at least in my case I would think that I would have more reasons to get surgery because I am often insulted in the street and called “Satan” (sic) than because of a self-desire for mutilation or even deep feminity.
(But well, since I hate sharpy stuffs and expensive ones, I think I’ll pass anyway)
“And I am not obnoxious, the proper term is evil.”
I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but most villains who claim to be evil and do “mwahaha”… well, pfff.
Now, me, I make no specific claim, but I am being called Satan, see ?
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name /o\
The comparison to Amputation disorder is disturbing because they are different disorders and likely have majorly different causes. Also, I’m not fighting to just have my status as transsexual not make me a second class citizen. I’m far FAR more than my GID. I was actually having a conversation with my sister about it and came to the realization that the desire to be recognized for more than trans* is what is behind my love for bumper stickers and decorating everything I own with my beliefs. I’m not running towards it, but standing against it. I am who I am, and I will not be ashamed.
Also, comparing me to rapists and pedophiles? yeah that’s classy mAndrea. I’ll have a comment for you when I can stand to look at the post for more than 30 seconds at a time.
Yes, I know from evil, mAndrea. You’re not it. Your participation in this thread is obnoxious because you are pretending to know more about trans* people than they do themselves. You don’t seem to see that setting yourself in judgement above them is precisely the articulation of your privilege.
And you keep missing my point: I don’t get what the problem with trans* people altering their bodies is, for you. You say it’s okay so long as… what, they’re considered pathological? I know that there are many trans* people who feel that the medical definitions of GID are absolutely adequate to their own experience. But there are many who do not. Why is it that people have to be suffering in order for their alterations to be okay by you? And why, exactly, do they have to be doing the right thing according to you: what’s your authority?
But the real bit you keep missing, and I think it’s pretty telling you keep not responding to it, is: why exactly are cissexual women innocent of the allegedly politically retrograde step of coherence between gender and sex?
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