Transsexuality sometimes presents a problem for feminists. On the one hand, many feminists come from an intellectual tradition of sympathy for the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the discriminated-against, and transsexuals certainly seem to fit the bill.
But on the other hand, a major tradition in feminism is that gendered behavior is not inherent. That is, one does not have to be biologically male to be an effective leader; one does not have to be biologically female to be a good nurturer of children; and so forth. Transsexuality can seem like a slap in the face to all that. “I was a woman trapped in a man’s body; I wanted to be soft, I wanted to express my emotions, I couldn’t relate to any male things.” One of feminism’s Big Projects, arguably, had been to give society a slap on the face and say “snap out of it! Gender’s not a big deal! Sex does not predict behavior!” And along comes transsexuality, with exactly the opposite notion - sex does predict behavior, so much so that if you “behave” like the “wrong” sex, you might consider surgery to bring your behavior and your private bits into accordance.
Some feminists saw something even worse in transsexuality: double agents. Men who dress as women and then try and take over the feminist movement from within. Challenges to women-only space. Other feminists - including me - tend to see the opposite danger: some feminists using such fears as a way of legitimizing anti-trans bigotry.
The real story is more complex. Which brings me to Dean Spade’s article Mutilating Gender, which I’ve been meaning to blog since I read it via Blargblog last week. It’s a terrific article (although if you read it I do recommend following “Ampersand’s rule,” which is to skim right past any paragraph that mentions “Foucault”).
The article admits forthrightly that transsexuals - and, particularly, transsexuals seeking help from the medical community - have been extremely dedicated to maintaining and supporting gender stereotypes. However, that dedication is a response to the desires of the medical community. Doctors, in effect, latched onto a biography of “the life of a transsexual.” In this biography, little Billy Pre-Transsexual was Always Miserable as a boy. He was No Good at sports (because he’s a girl inside, and we all know girls are never good at sports). Little Billy played with dolls and makes drawings with lots of flowers and hates his penis… and, eventually, Little Billy gets the surgery he wants without any ambiguity at all and becomes happy Suzy Transsexual, a woman who is entirely feminine and not even slightly butch, since we all know butch women aren’t real women.
If you wanted SRS (sexual reassignment surgery), then you’d better have a biography just like little Billy Pre-Transsexual’s (or just like his opposite-sex counterpart, little Wendy Pre-Transsexual). The doctors will test and interview you to make sure you have little Billy’s biography; and if you don’t have it, then they won’t help you.
With hindsight, the result of this medical requirement was predictable. Sooner or later, everyone wanting SRS learns that there was only one set of “right” answers doctors wanted to hear. Of course, some patients really did have a “little Billy” or “little Wendy” biography. But other patients learned to manufacture those same biographies; tell the doctors what they want to hear, and the doctors will give you the medical treatment you want. From the article:
Since the reputable clinics treated only “textbook” cases of transsexualism, patients desiring surgery, for whatever personal reasons, had no other recourse but to meet this evaluation standard. The construction of an appropriate biography became necessary. Physicians reinforced this demand by rewarding compliance with surgery and punishing honesty with an unfavorable evaluation.
In effect, medicine said to transsexuals: “Be as conservative about gender as you can. Conform to all the gender stereotypes you can think of; if you want to be a woman, be a stereotypical woman, if you want to be a man, be a stereotypical man. Wipe all traces of ambiguity from your life story. And if you do that, medicine will be willing to help you.”
The alternative is difficult to imagine - but it’s worth a little effort. From the article:
What if the “success of transition was not measured by (non-trans) normative perceptions of true feminity and masculinity in trans people? I imagine that, like me, some people have a multitude of goals when they seek gender-related body alteration, such as access to different sexual practices, ability to look different in clothing, enhancement of a self-understanding about one’s gender that is not entirely reliant on public recognition, public disruption of female and male codes, or any number of other things.[53] Some birth- assigned “men” might want to embody “woman” as butch lesbians–in a way that meant they enjoyed occasionally being “sirred” and only sometimes “corrected” the speaker. Some birth-assigned “women” might want to take hormones and become sexy “bearded ladies” who are interpreted a variety of ways but feel great about how they look. When the gatekeepers employ dichotomous gender standards, they foreclose such norm-resistant possibilities.
Even those of us who support SRS can - and should - question the way that the medical community has used SRS to enforce very conservative views of gender on patients. Gender is a spectrum - and everyone, including people seeking SRS, should be free to place themselves where they want on the spectrum.
